I believe that one thing that sometimes hinders prayer is a fear that what we want to ask for is either too little or too big. I believe that such a fear is always mistaken.

The question I would ask is what could possibly be too big for God? He made the universe (Genesis 1). He stopped time (Joshua 10: 12-14). Paul describes God as “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20 ESV). How, then, can anything that we ask be too big?

There are many examples of God doing things that we would see as big, but one of my favorites, partly because it is often overlooked, in the raising of the widow’s son in Nain (Luke 7:11-17). Jesus is walking into town and passes a funeral procession on its way out of town. He sees the mourning mother and walks up and raises her son. She didn’t even ask. It never even crossed her mind to ask. Of course, Mary and Martha made the same mistake before Jesus raised Lazarus, and they knew Jesus relatively well. They knew he could have healed Lazarus before he died, but it never occurred to them that he could raise him from the dead. Isn’t it wonderful that God is willing to do things that we desperately want but do not dare to ask? However, we have been encouraged to ask, so we should be more willing to dare to ask even when the request seems big to us.

However, there’s another side to this. If nothing we ask is actually big to God, then how can anything be considered small to God? I think that believing our problems are too small to bother God with is actually a bigger problem for many of us than thinking our requests are too big. However, Jesus said God numbers the hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30). And if nothing’s big to God, then everything is small, so what leads us to think anything is too small if it matters to a person God loves?

I have built in myself a habit of praying about everything that concerns me, no matter how small it is. For example, if I’m concerned about getting an opening in the traffic as I merge on to a highway, I pray about it. For most of the “little” things I pray about, I can’t really demonstrate that God has acted on my behalf. Would traffic have opened up if I hadn’t prayed? Maybe. However, I want to tell you a story about one “little” thing that I and my whole Sunday School class prayed about a number of years ago.

First, let me set the stage. This happened back when I was working on my doctorate with two preschoolers. I was taking three classes and doing some teaching, so had to be on campus most of Monday through Wednesday as well as some time on Thursdays and Fridays. I had about a 25 minute commute to campus. My husband commuted 90 miles the other direction on Mondays and Tuesdays, though he did work from home the rest of the week. I need glasses for distances including for driving. At the time, I had exactly one pair of glasses and had not seen an optometrist since we moved to the area. And I didn’t wear contacts.

One weekend, my glasses broke: snapped in two at the nose. I’d been through this before, more than once. I was aware that we could glue them and they would hold for a day or so. We had not, at that time, found a glue that would hold for longer. And usually subsequence gluings lasted for less time. I was able to get an optometrist’s appointment for late Thursday morning, and I really couldn’t have fit anything sooner into my crazy schedule. I needed those glasses to somehow stay glued so that I could get to classes and drive safely.

So on Sunday morning I asked my Sunday School class to pray. I’m pretty sure that some of them thought I was a little crazy. We were pretty new to the class at the time, but they were the support group that I had, and they prayed. And my husband and I prayed.

The glasses did not come apart again until I was sitting in the optometrist’s office on Thursday morning, and I walked out of that office with new glasses. You think what you want, but I will always believe that God cared enough to keep my glasses together for four days because that’s what I needed and I asked.

So if you need it, however big or small it is, try asking?

My grandson came to visit this past weekend (along with his parents). He’s 23 months old today. We have been fortunate to see him fairly frequently over his short life, and watching him develop had become one of my joys. He happens to be a very large child with advanced motor skills, so that has been fun. He can play catch with some success, and he spent a while this visit running around chasing balls and yelling “Kick” with each kick. However, as someone who has studied human language development and worked on making machines try to “understand” human languages, what intrigues me the most is his developing language skills.

His language has been particularly interesting to observe because it hasn’t followed the expected pattern very clearly. He has had a great tendency to come up with surprising vocabulary that he’ll use very infrequently. And he’s been coming up with the occasional full sentence for a few months. However, most of his speech is still repetition of fairly typical favorite words like ball, Mama, Daddy, kitty, shoe, side (outside), etc. On this visit, he had a new word: James. That happens to be his father’s name, so every use was immediately followed by his mother saying, “That’s Daddy to you.” Note that he was still using Daddy, but was using James when he was upset with his father or was calling him from a distance. As you might guess, those are the times when he hears his mother calling James: when she’s calling James to come or when she’s irritated with him for some reason.

Watching this scenario play out, I was grateful for the perspective that said it’s going to be okay because the child is not going to keep this up forever, and, of course, I felt sorry for my daughter-in-law, who was clearly frustrated and perhaps a little embarrassed. I also found myself reminded of a time when James was a few months older than my grandson is now. I was taking a human language development class for my Ph.D. and had to do a project where I analyzed the language of a child who was between 18 months and 3 years old. Since I had a handy 2-year-old in my house, I did the project with him. As I was transcribing a session, I noticed that James had used the phrase “I don’t think so” in a really weird way in a situation where he clearly just meant “No.” That led me to realize that I used “I don’t think so” a lot with my sons in order to avoid just telling them “No.” Of course, James had figured out that I meant no whether I actually said it or not, so he had decided that the phrase just meant no and used it that way.

While adults tend not to be so humorous in their imitation, we all do have traits that echo others we are close to, be it parents, siblings, mentors, or friends. I find myself occasionally recognizing a turn of phrase or a gesture as being clearly learned from a parent or a close friend. Some of those I’m glad of; some I’m less enamored with. There are times when my imitation is deliberate, as when I adopt teaching practices of other teachers I admire. There are other times when my imitation is unconscious and comes as a complete surprise when I notice it. The key point is that imitation is a thing. We are all imitated, and we all imitate.

If we are imitated, what a responsibility that is. I’ve always be amazed at Paul’s bravery when he twice tells the Corinthians “Be imitators of me” (I Cor 4:16b; 11:1a ESV). What danger to put yourself out there as a model for other Christians. And yet, Paul is not alone in that role. We all walk in a world with eyes on us, both of fellow believers and of non-believers. How do we live with that reality?

The key is in the remainder of I Corinthians 11:1, where Paul says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Elsewhere, Paul commands us to “Be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph 5:1 ESV). So how do we do that? I think the key is in that phrase “as beloved children.” My son imitated me because he spent time with me and listened to me. My grandson is imitating his mother because of the time spent with her and the close relationship there. We can, and should, consciously imitate God, but we will become most like him when we spend the time and energy on that relationship that allows us to begin to imitate unconsciously, simply because we hear and see and God is doing and we automatically do the same.

Despite the increased acceptance of “choruses” and “contemporary Christian music” in a variety of evangelical churches, I still see and hear laments about the loss of hymnals, complaints about the volume of that new-fangled music, and concerns about all these young people who grow up without knowing the traditional hymns and songs of their denomination. Now, as someone who loves to belt the alto in a 4-part rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” and had at least the first verse and usually more of a significant percentage of the Baptist Hymnal memorized by the time I was an adult, I’m certainly not going to argue that there is no value in those music traditions. However, I think that we older Christians too often dismiss the value of learning and singing new songs of worship.

The Bible tells us to sing to the Lord a “new song” 5 times: Psalm 33:3, Psalm 96: 1, Psalm 98:1, Psalm 149:1, and Isaiah 42:10. Besides these injunctions, there are other references in both the Psalms and Revelation to worshipers singing a new song of praise. So that leads me to two responses. One is to seek to be open to new songs of praise, even if they’re not my style of music. The other is to seek to understand why. Why would God want us to sing new songs to Him, and not just the old familiar songs we have?

The first reason, I think, is for the creators. Those who have been inspired to create still often benefit from encouragement, so these verses serve as that encouragement. They affirm that need to compose and point out that there is value in new worship music.

However, I believe that these verses are not just for composers, but also have meaning for all of us. When I sing songs that are extremely familiar, I sometimes (maybe often) discover that I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. My mouth and lungs are engaged along with a subconscious portion of my brain, but the primary part of me is not there. When the music or the words are not so familiar, I have no choice but to think about what I’m singing, and thinking about what I’m singing is what makes it worship.

Another factor, I believe, is that God is very aware that language and culture change over time. Music that means a lot to one generation may not mean so much to another. Even though I realized recently that I can still sing every word of “The Solid Rock” from memory, I’ve discovered that singing “On Christ the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand” means more to me when it is part of the driving bridge of “The Rock Won’t Move” than it ever has in the old hymn I’ve sung for 45 or so years. I believe that’s because I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s when it comes to music and that driving beat reaches my heart in a way that the melody and rhythms of that old hymn fail to do. In recent years, I’ve found myself crying during worship, largely due to some major family issues, but in a way that is responding to the assurances of the words of songs like “God Is Able” or “I Will Look Up.” I can’t imagine having the same reaction to any but one or two of the traditional hymns.

To anyone not convinced that new music is valuable as culture and language change, I’m inclined to ask when they last sang a motet at church.

The value of new music that is culturally relevant and uses current language is greater for new Christians or those who are not Christians  yet, but are willing to visit a church. English has changed in the past 200 or so years, and some of those traditional hymns use words or phraseology that are meaningless to those who didn’t grow up in church (and even to some who did). Accessible, authentic worship is attractive and helps new Christians learn to worship.

As a missionary kid, it occurs to me as I think about these issues that it is incumbent upon anyone who is ministering cross culturally to encourage the creation of new worship music by the new Christians rather than just translating their own songs to the new language. Even as we seek to communicate in someone’s heart language, we should encourage people to worship using music that touches their hearts, even if it’s not the music that touches ours.

A final piece of advice to any worship leaders who might read this: if the song has been done at least three times in recent months and people aren’t really singing, either the music is too loud or the song is a poor choice for congregational singing or both. These things can be fixed.

I’ve missed posting the last two weeks for two very different reasons. Last week, my husband and I were enjoying our first real vacation of more than a long weekend with just the two of us in 32 years (since our honeymoon). Since we were on a cruise and I hadn’t had a chance to write something in advance, nothing got written or posted. The previous week, I was at my last grandparent’s memorial service and then traveling home from that.

This week I want to do some reflecting inspired by the experience of losing my grandmother. However, I’m not going to focus on the grief itself or the comfort that Christ offers. While I love 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and other verses that give me confidence that this woman who firmly believed in God is no longer suffering and that I will see her again, I want to pursue a different thought path.

This most recent loss was of my favorite grandparent growing up. She was young to be my grandmother and treated me and my sister in many ways like a (very slightly) more permissive version of our mother. She was also someone I wanted to be like. She was a teacher, and I wanted to be one. She played piano and sang, and I loved to do those things. She became my first role model.

She and my granddad were a major part of our lives. Before we went overseas, we spent a fair bit of time with that set of grandparents. They visited Indonesia during our first term. We sort of lived with them on our first furlough (we had a house in the city, but spent the majority of nights at our grandparents’ house in the country). During college, I generally stayed with them on vacation. I have many, many positive memories of visits of their homes: the cat, the dogs, the horses, the Barbie doll suitcase full of dolls and lovely hand-made clothes for them, the playhouse they built at the first Tijeras house, the piano and organ and the hours we spent around them singing in small and large family groups, the many sounds the organ could be used to make back in the days before digital keyboards, the weird phones (Granddad worked for Mountain Bell), the many friends they welcomed to their home, singing in the choir at their church and working in VBS there. Then, of course, there are the interesting memories like mud coming out of the shower head or trying to water the horses when the hose was frozen or chasing the pig who refused to stay in the back of the pickup. My mother sitting on the pig was the best part of that last one. In many ways, my grandparents supplied a kind of home that couldn’t come from a life of moving once a year on average and that more fixed home had love in it that rivaled the love in the home that moved all the time.

And my grandparents stayed important in my early marriage. My parents were in the States for the birth of my first child, but not for my second, so my grandparents came. When my oldest was hospitalized with pneumonia and other issues before he turned three, my grandparents dropped everything and came to help sit with him and help care for the infant.

However, sometime in my later twenties I discovered that my first role model had clay feet in some ways. First, I discovered that I had some theological disagreements with her, which led me to look more to other role models. But then she said a couple of things that really hurt me. One was a criticism that may or may not have been true, but that I took offense at. The second was to tell me that I was to blame, at least in part, for arguably the worst thing that ever happened to me, something that happened when I was child. It took me a long time to forgive her for those words and even longer to reach a point where I really believed the words weren’t true so that I could move forward in my healing.

After that, our relationship was never quite the same, even after I moved past my hurt and anger. The grandmother I had idolized was no longer someone I wanted to be. That was hard and some of it was bad, but part of it was right, because I use the word “idolize” deliberately. The reality is that my grandmother wasn’t perfect. My parents aren’t perfect. My pastor isn’t perfect. None of my other earthly role models are perfect. And the role models from the Bible were equally flawed. John the Baptist doubted that Jesus was really the One who was to come. Elijah whined about being all alone. Moses got frustrated and hit the rock. Peter showed his flaws off left, right, and center. And David, well, there was that incident with Bathsheba. I could go on at length.

A good thing about recognizing the flaws of those around us and the reality that we are all flawed is that it becomes easier for us to see past flaws we’ve accepted in order to see the good in people. I got hung up on my grandmother’s flaws because I didn’t expect them and didn’t really accept them at first. I couldn’t deal with the idea that she was telling me something that was wrong and deeply hurtful. Until I came to accept that she could be wrong in her thinking, I couldn’t see past that flaw to all of the good things about her that I’d known all my life. I think that’s a lot like the reaction of someone who puts a pastor or other visible Christian on a pedestal and walks away from the church and even away from God when he discovers the pastor in some act of sin. When we recognize the flawed nature of all humans, we are better able to see past the sin to the good and to the God behind the good. And, really, whenever we get hung up on the flaws of another human, we’re looking in the wrong place, because the only person without flaws is Jesus and that needs to be our only focus.

However, as I reflected on my grandmother’s life and my relationship with her, there’s one really cool thing that I realized about her flaws: they’re gone. Salvation is often described as having three parts: justification, sanctification, and glorification. Justification is the salvation all believers have when they accept Christ, often described as “just as if I’d never sinned.” Sanctification is that often slow and painful process of becoming more like Christ while here on earth. Glorification is what we get after this life, when we become completely free of the remnants of our sin nature and participate fully in our eternal life with God. And that’s now where my grandmother is. And that’s exciting and encourages me all the more to look back and see all of the good that God was developing in her during the 91 years on earth and to look past the flaws that are no more.

We love to think about God as love. His mercy and kindness are the the basis of all that we are as believers, because we would all be condemned to nothing but despair without that mercy. We tend to be a little less inclined to want to dwell on God’s justice.

Last week I was reading Exodus 23. (Yeah, we’re past the fun part and slogging through the law now.) I noticed something that I had never picked up on before. In Exodus 23:3, we’re told not to “be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.” What? Now a few verses later, we do get warned the other way as well: “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit” (Exodus 23:6 ESV). And we’re used to that kind of injunction. James warns us not to favor the rich over the poor in our churches. We have this notion that bribes are bad and favoring someone because of their wealth or social standing or political power is wrong. However, we’re also not to favor the poor in a lawsuit. What should that mean to me?

Interestingly enough, what is in between these two verses has to do with treating an enemy and his animals well in situations where we might be tempted to say, “Why is that my problem?” So mercy and kindness are still part of the mix.

I’ve read this chapter of Exodus many times before, so why did it stand out this time, and why did I miss it every time in the past? Of course, part of the reason is probably that I do have a tendency to glaze over and skim more than I should in the latter part of Exodus (and Numbers and Deuteronomy). However, I think the real reason it struck me this time is that the juxtaposition of justice and mercy seem to have become more a part of my life.

Of course, as a professor, there’s always a balance between justice and mercy for those students who are on a borderline. Is it better for them to get the higher grade or the one they actually earned? But that’s something I usually find easy. I tend to bend a little between A and B or B and C and sometimes between D and F. On the other hand, bending between C and D basically never happens because I know I’m doing a disservice to the student by letting him or her move on to the next course without actually succeeding with the material in this course. I choose pure justice because I know that apparent mercy turns into cruelty in almost all cases. Because I know that, the choice becomes easy for me, even when the student is sitting in my office crying. Does that raise questions about what God’s choices are really like when we feel they’re not merciful? What are we being spared by an apparently unkind situation? What kindness is God offering in his display of justice?

Lately I’ve had to face more situations where justice and mercy seemed harder to balance. As a manager, as a parent of adult children, as a department chair trying to handle faculty and student disputes, the issues are not always as clear. The benefits and costs of just and merciful choices are often more blurred. I struggle to understand and predict the ramifications of my choices.

So where does that leave me? I think, first and last, it should leave me on my knees. God gave us this juxtaposition. The title of this blog entry comes from a song called “The Walk” by Steven Curtis Chapman, a song that was a favorite mine back in the era when it played on the radio. The chorus comes from Micah 6:8b which in King James reads “what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Modern translations tend to have “to do justice, and to love kindness.” So I guess the real answer is that God calls us to justice and kindness both and that the only way we can ever get those in correct balance in difficult situations is to walk with God in humility. Closeness to God and humility allow us to make choices from the right attitudes and right understanding. And, personally, I then just trust that the God who is in control will cover my errors with grace.

 

One of the comments I got on last week’s post was that we often don’t wait to hear God speak after we ask our questions. Since the source of that comment was one of my *missionary aunts, I suspect that many of us are guilty of that failure to wait. It’s certainly true of me on occasion.

So let’s take a look back at Habakkuk for moment. At the end of his second complaint, he says, “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint” (Habakkuk 2:1 ESV). This is a very deliberate waiting for God to respond beyond simple patience, a deliberate seeking for God’s response. However, it is not a searching out, not a wandering about looking for the answer. Habakkuk is actively watching, but still waiting for God to come to him in His own time.

I don’t know about you, but that convicts me. I have a tendency to talk to God but then go look for answers. Depending on where I’m looking, that’s not always a bad thing. Reading the Bible or conversing with mature Christian friends can be a means for God to respond, since God certainly uses both of those sources to speak to His people. But even those wise and good actions can be an avoidance of truly waiting and watching. And some of the other ways I look for answers are not so wise. We are called to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a ESV). Elijah’s answer came not in the strong wind or in the earthquake or in the fire but in the “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12 RSV). God often speaks in ways that we won’t hear if we don’t stop and listen.

I find that I’m not very good at the being still and waiting in silence for God’s voice. Besides the people around and the tendency to leave the TV running as well as a tendency to interact with a computer of description most of the time, I have deliberately developed a habit of reading at any point when I have spare time. Putting down the Kindle and  tablet and phone, closing the laptop, turning off the TV, and deliberately waiting and watching for God to speak is not always an easy thing. At first, I tend to feel unproductive and even vaguely guilty. But I can say that it is worthwhile to take some time to truly be still and wait and watch for God’s voice. There is peace to be found in that stillness, and sometimes there are answers that come in that moment.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have questions that I suspect will be with me until heaven. Typical questions of that sort, I think. Questions about death and illness and other unexpected life change that feels the opposite of good. God doesn’t give us answers for everything; otherwise, what is faith for? But He does respond, and He does offer peace. But we have to believe, ask, and then stop and listen.

*People who grow up with parents who are overseas missionaries (as I did) are taught to refer to other missionaries as aunts and uncles. So we end up with huge extended missionary families. This is, in my view, one of the big reasons for Facebook: staying connected with my extended family, both missionary and actual relations. Reconnecting with my high school classmates who are scatted across the globe, as we were before high school in Jakarta, is also a positive.

One of my favorite Bible books is Habakkuk. Not a typical choice, I know, but let me tell you a bit about this little known prophet. Habakkuk wrote sometime before the Babylonian invasion of Judah, and the first two thirds of his book consist of him complaining to God and God answering.

Habakkuk first complains about the moral state of Judah, saying that there is violence and evil everywhere and that the law can do nothing because evil people are perverting justice. God answers that complaint by telling Habakkuk that Judah is going to be invaded and punished by the Chaldeans (who ruled Babylon during the invasion of Judah).  Not satisfied with God’s answer, Habakkuk complains again, questioning God’s use of a nation even more evil than Judah to punish it. The prophet also expresses concern about those who are righteous suffering from the invasion. The cool thing here is that God answers again, reassuring Habakkuk that He will care for the righteous and that the evil Chaldeans will eventually face their own comeuppance. The book then ends with an extended passage of praise.

So the reason I love this book and character is that I am a questioner. I want to know why about . . . well, pretty much everything. Thus, I find God’s response to Habakkuk’s questions deeply reassuring. God doesn’t condemn Habakkuk for his questions; He actually answers. I think that is something that many of us need to recognize.

Too often, Christians put up a facade of confidence or happiness when around other people, especially other Christians. That’s not good, but a greater problem is that we often try to do the same with God. We pretend that we’re not mad at God or that we don’t desperately want to know why things turned out the way they did. But He knows already! God knows when we’re angry, when we’re frustrated, when we’re confused, when that niggling bit of doubt is gnawing its way into our hearts. When we pretend that everything is fine, we are lying to Someone who sees through every lie and sometimes responds to lies rather forcefully. Ever hear of Ananias and Sapphira?

I have found that it is better to bring my concerns, my fears, my doubts, my anger to God directly. Since He already knows, it’s better to acknowledge to Him and to myself what I feel. Then I find, if I do that without forgetting who it is that I’m talking with, that I can walk through that emotion and the questions more quickly and come back to that place of worship and trust.

One caveat: I believe that God is prepared for, even desirous of, our honest questions and emotions about our circumstances and His actions in regard to them. I don’t believe that’s the same as questioning His fundamental character. I believe that Habakkuk, Job, and others receive God’s response because they acknowledge Him even as they present their concerns. We must do the same. But if we can be completely honest with ourselves and God while remembering who He is, we will move to a closeness that we can never experience while pretending that we can hide how we feel from the One who knows us inside and out.

In my morning devotions, I’m currently reading Exodus, and I’ve been reminded that God was quite serious about showing the Israelites (and the Egyptians) what he could do. I was particularly struck by the end of chapter 14.

Before quoting the verse, I want to remind you what has happened. The Israelites have see all 10 plagues, including several that hit the Egyptians only, leaving them unscathed. They have then had their former masters practically showering them with jewelry and other goods with a definite feel of “Get out of here before your God does something else to us.” Then they get to the sea, and (after they complain a bit) God puts a dark cloud between them and the following Egyptian chariots, parts the sea, and dries out the ground under the sea. They have then walked across the sea floor between two towering walls of water on dry land. And the chariots trying to follow them have first gotten stuck in the mud and then been drowned as the sea filled back in.

If you think through everything that they have just witnessed, Exodus 14:31 is not surprising. It says, “Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses” (ESV). We look at that and think, “of course they believed. Look at everything they saw.” But the interesting piece is what comes next.

• The water is bitter, so they grumble until God fixes it.
• They are hungry, so they grumble until God provides manna.
• They don’t have water, so they grumble until God provides water from a rock.
• Moses spends too long on the mountain, so they ask Aaron to make an idol to be their new God.

I could go on. The Israelites believed because of what they saw, but as soon as things went wrong again, they lost track of that belief.

So what’s the point? As I thought about this situation and this verse, another verse came to mind: “Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” John 20:29 (ESV). I have always considered this to be a promise that God would bless those who believe without having to see proof, but I no longer think that is the point, or, at least, I don’t think that’s all of the point.

I think that Jesus is saying that when we believe based only on what we have seen, our faith is a little shaky (or sometimes a lot shaky). When we reach the point where we believe without seeing, when our faith is grounded primarily in our knowledge of the character of God, when we can say with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedgnego “My God will, and, even if he chooses not to, I will trust him because I know he can and he must have a good reason for not doing it right now”, that faith cannot be shaken. We are blessed less because we believe without sight, and more by the quality of faith that does not require sight.