Sitting With My Staff In My Hand

“Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each one with his staff in his hand for they have lived many days'" (Zechariah 8:4). 

On January 1, 2021 I will have lived "many days"—about 31,765 to be precise.  I must admit that many of those days, especially of late, have been spent sitting.

 

Oh, on occasion I have taught the scriptures, shared my faith with a few non-Christians, helped some new believers get on their feet and scribbled off a few books, but to be honest, I don't consider these activities more praiseworthy than “sitting” for I'm learning that what I am at all times is just as important and, in some situations, more important, than what I’m doing. Malachi the prophet said this of Levi the priest: “He walked with (God) in peace and righteousness, and turned many away from iniquity” (Malachi 2:6).That's a splendid truth to grasp as I look into the New Year and see myself sitting on our back porch with my staff in my hand.

 

But, some will say, the world is dying; "Tempus fugit! You must be up and doing!" Perhaps. On occasion. But Peter has another word:  Since the universe and everything in it is passing away, “what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness…" (2 Peter 3:11). 

 

David Roper

12.21.20

Growing Old With God

“My life is light, waiting for the death wind...”

T. S. Eliot.

Anna was elderly and frail, waiting for the death wind to carry her away. She had lived with a husband for seven years and then, after his death, as a widow until she was eighty-four. Now she spent her days in in the temple, "speaking of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem"(Luke 2:36–38).

Old age is often overclouded by losses—separation, bereavement, physical and mental decline. These blows can fall on us at any time, but they seem to fall heaviest in our latter years. There’s no way to shield ourselves from the difficulties we encounter as we age, but our last years can be happy, productive years if we grow old with God.. 

Age breaks down our strength and energy and strips us of energy and busyness so we have more time to develop intimacy with God. Without the limitations of old age we might never make the most of our lives. Poet Edmund Waller (1606-1687) wrote, 

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made;

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become

As they draw near their eternal home

A friend of mine once mused that years of weakness and failing health had made his life worth living. “How awful it would have been if, instead of getting old, I’d been extinguished in middle age without learning what God has to offer.” 

The senior years can be viewed as a pleasantly useless era where we qualify for Social Security, AARP, senior discounts and have a lot of free time to spend on ourselves, or they can be a time of great usefulness to God. 

First off, we can serve as mentors and conservators of wisdom and virtue, the essential role elders play in society. We can point out the ancient paths and show others how to walk them (cf., Jeremiah 6:16).

Furthermore, there is the power of an ordinary life lived with an awareness of God’s presence, seeing him in everything and doing all things for him—Teresa of Avila in her kitchen working among the pots and pans; Brother Lawrence in a monastic scullery. This is the mark of a mature soul, quietly, humbly going about his or her homely business, living in joy and leaving behind the sweet fragrance of Jesus.

Izaak Walton, the olde angler, wrote of a companion: “How comforting it is to see a cheerful and contented old age…after being tempest–tossed through life, safely moored in a snug and quiet harbor in the evening of his days! His happiness sprung from within himself and was independent of external circumstances, for he had that inexhaustible good nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather" (The Compleat Angler). 

And when our journey leads to illness and weakness and we’re confined to our homes, our years of fruitful activity are not over. Like Anna, we can worship and pray. 

And we can love. Love remains our last and best gift to God and others. As St. John of the Cross wrote in retirement, “Now I guard no flock, nor have I any office. Now my work is in loving alone” (A Spiritual Canticle). 

Prayer and love—the mighty works of the aged.

And finally, on ahead, there is what ancient spiritual writers called the  athanasias pharmakon (the medicine of immortality), God’s cure for all that ails us. This is God’s loving provision for us beyond earthly existence—“that when this mildew age, has dried away, our hearts will beat again as young and strong and gay” (George MacDonald).

This is my hope and, I must say, the most cherished article of my creed.

David Roper 

12.23.20

Two Caves

“David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father's household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him”  (1 Samuel 22:1-3).

English novelist Thomas Hardy writes of Mixen Lane, a low district in the city of Castlebridge in Ireland, as “the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the hiding place for those who were in distress, and debt, and trouble of every kind” (The Mayor of Castlebridge). 

He was thinking of a biblical place, a cave near the city of Adullam in Israel’s lowlands, a safe place to which David fled from the rage of King Saul (1 Samuel 22:1,2). 

As the story goes, word of David’s refuge spread rapidly and mysteriously through Israel and in time “every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered to him; and he became a prince over them.” 

It was a restless crowd that found David, filled with their own trouble, frightened, faint–hearted, stressed out, burdened and embittered by what they had endured.

So David took them in and taught them what God had taught him through long years of adversity. He read his poems to them, sang of God’s covenant love (Psalm 89:1) and taught them to fight the battles of the Lord. The outcasts found a new center of life in David, and he in turn became their “prince.” 

This once–motley crew became the core of David’s mighty men, brave warriors, “ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains” (1 Chronicles 12:8). 

They were Israel’s border guard protecting her flanks against the Philistines and Amalakites, a wall to Israel “by day and by night.” They became the nucleus of the greatest fighting force of that day, an army that carried the standard of Israel from the Tigris to the River of Egypt…  All of which suggests another cave not too far away, near Bethlehem in Judea, a stable in the earth into which shepherds drove their flocks at night. There the Prince of Peace was born, that other “David” whom the prophet foretold: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says,” ‘…my servant David will be a prince among them’” (Ezekiel 34:23–24).

There, to that cave, the weary and heavy–laden still gather. Some come in deep distress, worn down by worry and fear. Others come burdened with debt, owing much to many. Others are downcast by an unhappy childhood, a failed marriage, a cruel death that snatched love away. Still others come starved for want of something they cannot name. 

There in that lowly cave (one must stoop very low to get in) they find a Prince who sings to them in their misery and weakness, who tells his stories and strengthens them with his love. There, as they sit at his feet, they learn to be mighty men and women once more. 

David Roper

12.20.20

Into My Heart

We’re celebrating Christmas–lite this year: No Christmas tree. Only some bright poinsettias and a few of Carolyn’s “set-arounds” in our living room., 

It was my job again this year to set up the small olive-wood crèche we bought in Bethlehem years ago and arrange it on our living room coffee table. As I unwrapped each piece I came across the tiny carving of the Christ-child and remembered a Christmas, long, long ago, when our granddaughter, Melanie, was very small. 

Melanie was wandering and “wondering” her way around our living room, gazing intently at Carolyn’s decorations, when she came to the little, olive wood crèche. She stood transfixed for a moment. Then she reached out, picked up the carving of the little Lord Jesus and drew it to her heart. She closed her eyes and whispered softly, “Baby Jesus, sleep,” and rocked the little figure in her hands. 

 

Tears sprang to my eyes. 

I could not have told you then what I was feeling, or why I was moved so deeply, but I knew that something profoundly stirring had occurred. Later I realized why my heart was so deeply touched by her simple gesture: it was symbolic of that childlike act in which we take up the wonderful gift of God’s love, our Lord Jesus, and draw him into our hearts. 

There is a song that children sing, and adults too, once they get over their fear of being childlike:

Into my heart, into my heart;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today; come in to stay;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. 

And so it is today: “Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

David Roper

12.16.20

The Child

There’s an old Doonesbury cartoon that I recall every once in a while: Michael J. sits ensconced in his easy chair watching TV. After loud shouts and sounds of gun fighting, the announcer says, “This concludes our regular broadcast day. Stay tuned for film clips of the Marines, a story from the life of Jesus and our National Anthem.” Doonesbury gets to his feet and joins in the singing of the anthem.

 

There you have it—the good, old American way: Equal time for everything. Even at Christmas. Nothing is special, not even Jesus, who, if we acknowledge at all, we place in a cluster of yuletide traditions. 

 

We keep the Christ child around to grace an occasional manger, but he’s only one symbol among many: Rudolph, Scrooge, St. Nicholas and his elves, toy soldiers, little drummer boys, shepherds, angels, Christmas trees, Yule logs and the little Lord Jesus, all vie for our attention; everything alongside everything else. But the Son of God gets lost in the clutter.

 

Melissa, our granddaughter knows better

 

It was twenty-five years ago or more. Carolyn and I took Melissa to the Festival of the Trees, an event in Boise in which businesses and other organizations decorate Christmas trees, competing with one another in various categories. The display is magnificent. 

 

We were enchanted by the grandeur of the hall as we moved from one tree to the next, pointing and exclaiming. But Melissa soon lost interest, surfeited by splendor, until she came to a small manger scene, the only one in the room, and there she paused transfixed. 

 

Nothing else mattered—not the magnificently decorated trees, not Santa Claus who was nearby and beckoning and not even an incredible talking tree.  She was captivated by the Child. 

 

We tried our best to urge her on—we wanted to see the trees—but she lingered behind, wanting to hold the baby, pressing closer despite the ribbon stretched around the cradle, keeping her away. 

 

Finally, she agreed to leave, albeit reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the crèche through the trees. As we were going out of the building she asked me, “Papa can we go back and see the baby?” We returned, of course, to the manger and waited while she gazed at the Child. 

 

As Melissa adored Him, I marveled at her simplicity. Unlike her, I often fail to see Jesus for the trees. 

 

“There are some things worth being a child to get hold of again,” George MacDonald said. “Make me a child again,” I prayed, “at least for tonight.” 

 

David Roper

The Sign

"And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. 10 Then the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).

The angel bypassed Jerusalem and the religious folks of that day and appeared to a band of shepherds living in the fields. 

No one back then would have thought that shepherds would be interested in such things, for they were rough men, more like Idaho’s hardscrabble Owyhee County buckaroos than the spick and span shepherds we associate with the story these days.

Yet, like all of us, they were spiritual men, for “spiritual” is not something we seek, but “something we are and cannot escape” (Philosopher Dallas Willard). In all of us there is a deep, insatiable hunger for transcendence, an longing for an elusive “something more,” for which our hearts break with longing.

Here is our satisfaction: “Today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord.” 

The shepherds, when they heard this promise, went off to search for the baby. They skirted the resorts, spas and lodges of the rich and famous (there were no feed troughs there) and went looking for a stockyard, a feedlot, or a corral. They found the baby “nearby” (They had no idea how near he was), lying in a manger—the "Savior who is Christ the Lord.”

Let’s hear it for the shepherds who found salvation that night. Let’s hear it for a God who humbles himself to save—the only God for you and me.

The shepherds found the baby nearby—it was easy to find him. I hope you’ve found him too. If not, I hope you’re still seeking him. Wise men and women still do.

If you’re seeking him, I can tell you where to find him. He’s not in our culture, devoid as it is of any indication that our Savior was born.

Not to worry, however: he’s still very near: “This will be the sign to you: You will find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

David Roper

The God Who Would Be Man

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling to himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two very different places.” “Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “it’s inside is bigger than it's outside.” Yes, said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside that was bigger than our whole world.” 

(C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle).

“The Incarnation is the central miracle asserted by Christians,” C. S. Lewis wrote. “They say that God became a man.” 

One of first questions raised by the early church is how did it happen? How did the immortal, eternal Word become flesh? Matthew and Luke explain Jesus’ entry into the world as a virgin birth, or more correctly, a virgin conception—for it was Jesus’ conception and not his birth that was extraordinary. Jesus’ gestation and birth was normal in every way, but his conception was unique for he had no human father. As the Authorized Text put it, Mary “had known no man.” 

Mary herself was concerned with the question, for nothing in her schooling or experience led her to believe that her Messiah would be virgin born.  Isaiah's prophecy, "A virgin shall conceive..." (Isaiah 7:14) did not necessarily raise this expectation. The word Isaiah uses, sometimes translated virgin ('alma), is ambiguous and may simply mean "young maiden." In the prophet's mind it probably referred to his wife who was not a virgin. (She had already borne children.) Matthew, however, translates and interprets Isaiah's prophecy with the Greek word, pathenos that is not ambiguous and unequivocally means "virgin" (Matthew 1:14). 

 

“How can this be?” she asked the angel, who then explained, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:34, 35). 

Once, for a very special purpose, God dispensed with natural processes and a long line of descendants. With his naked hand he touched Mary's womb and made a wee bairn who was…well, himself. 

Here’s where clinical explanations fail. All we can say is what the first writers said: the child was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). This was as inexplicable then as now, and yet it was acceptable, a staunch belief enshrined in the earliest creeds. The earliest creed, the so-called Apostles' Creed states in part: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary..." It became part of the belief of new converts. Today it stands at the heart of our faith.

Does it matter? Of course it does. “All this took place,” Matthew informs us, “to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means (Matthew translates), ‘God (is) with us’” (Matthew 1:23). 

God is with us. That’s what the virgin birth meant and still means. This is an answer to the old question: Does God care? Does disease, pain, infirmity, handicap and death overwhelm him as much as it does us? Does it matter to him that babies are hooked on drugs and infected by AIDs in utero? Dostoyevsky’s cynic, Ivan, asks of human suffering, “What do the children have to do with it?” Does it matter to God that children suffer? 

The answer is the Incarnation, for in this act God entered fully into our suffering. Pain was his lot in the slow ascent from a struggling, kicking embryo to an utterly dependent baby, through gangling, awkward adolescence to become a man of sorrows. Through all, he was “acquainted with grief.” “In all our afflictions he was afflicted.” Yes, he understands. He cares like no other.

Dorothy Sayers says it far better than I: “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever the game he is playing with His creation, He has kept his own rules and played fair.  He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself.  He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.  When He was a man, He played the man.  He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.” 

Jesus’ conception, though one of a kind, is timelessly typical of what is eternally true of God. He “never does good to undo it again. The union between God and (human) nature in the person of Christ admits no divorce. He will not go out of nature again…” (C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 124) He is, and has always been Emmanuel, “God with us."

David Roper

12.5.20

"Mild He Lays His Glory By"

I have a small piece of ochre-colored plaster on my desk that once formed part of a frescoed wall in the ancient site of Herodium in Israel. 

Herodium was King Herod's summer palace, located on an artificially heightened plateau about three miles southeast of the town of Bethlehem. There's nothing there but rubble these days, but at the turn of the first century it was the location of a lavish royal residence that served as Herod's summer palace, district capital, fortress and monument to his penchant for self-aggrandizement.

According to Josephus the palace was encircled by two concentric walls with four defense towers that soared five stories or more above the complex. Two hundred polished marble steps led from the bottom of the mountain through the walls and into the interior to a villa with opulent apartments furnished for the royal family and their guests. 

A lower campus, at the foot of the mountain, boasted a Roman bath with hot, cold and lukewarm pools, surrounded by colonnaded gardens. Not far from the bath there was an elaborate banquet hall with frescoed walls—from which my piece of plaster came—and exotic mosaic floors. This was a home for the rich and famous. 

Herod built his palace to commemorate a victory in battle against a Hasmonean prince in 40 B.C., but he may have had another purpose in mind. Herod was not a Jew—he was an Edomite—but he knew the Jewish scriptures. He was aware that Israel's Messiah would be born in Bethlehem as Micah predicted: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times" (Micah 5:1). Perhaps Herod hoped that the Coming King would be born in his palace. 

God, however, is not so grandiose. He announced his birth not to glitterati but to lowly shepherds, the outcasts of Israel. He chose to be born, not in a castle but in a cave. It was there in a hole in the ground into which shepherds drove their flocks at night that the little Lord Jesus was born. 

I've written before that the Old Testament is replete with stories about God's desire to get next to us. German theologian Gerhard von Rad, whose thinking dominated Old Testament studies for fifty years or more, described these efforts as irruptions, a word that means "to break in." (It's the antonym of the more familiar word, eruption, "to break out.") Christmas, whatever else it may be, is God's supreme irruption—his effort to break into our world and show us the measure of his love.

One writer, Fredrick Buerchner, put it this way: "The child is born among beasts. The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts. And nothing is ever the same again. Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear, or to what lengths he will go, or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of mankind... For those who believe in God his birth means that God himself is never safe from us, and maybe that is the dark side of Christmas, the terror of the silence. He comes in such a way that we can always turn him down, as we would crack a baby's skull like an eggshell or nail him up when he gets too big for that" (The Hungering Dark).

David Roper