Coming Up For Air

 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord… Jeremiah 31:34, New King James Version His name was Dr. Ronald Jones, and I encountered him in the University of South Carolina course "The Bible as Historical Literature." He seemed to work in previous pastoral experience as though he had transcended rather than followed the Lord to work in another vineyard. Working among the great Truths of God's Word, he managed to drop that he had come from Duke only on negotiated terms that included adding the titles he suggested to South Carolina's library. From his lofty perch, he offered us the assumptions of scholarly higher criticism. Accept these, he admonished, and you can know what the Bible writers were really telling their contemporaries about knowing God. God had every right, of course, to reveal Himself to the imminent, the learne

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ … Jeremiah 31:33-34a, New King James Version My brother, in a coma, was a heartbeat from Hell, and Saturday Night Live rather than something more profound helped me confess my awesome responsibility. There was a skit on the show back in the 90s in which the game show contestant had the considerable advantage of being able to tell the future. Yet, every time he buzzed in, all he could see and all he could say was that a big gray rock was coming. He was pummeled on the game show as his fellow contestants were able to focus on what was immediately relevant and score points. As the sketch unfolds, a big gray rock descends from the sky and crashes into the game show set. I had

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Jeremiah 31:33, New King James Version I befriended Yael when we cofounded a Facebook group in tribute to Aaron Sorkin's show of one-season wonder Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip . I described myself aspirationally and maybe ostentatiously for a first meeting as the Harriet of these kinds of groups. I aspire to be what the comedienne on the show was, a Christian living to shine light, in context but in unexpected places. Her frontier of faith was late-night comedy within the fictional framework of the show. Mine was to integrate the Gospel authentically into conversations on secular pop culture. Eyeing each other from across the Atlantic, we recognized that we shared a love for quality wording often missing in a culture of banality. We also shared a ferreting enthusi

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God… Jeremiah 31:33d, New King James Version In his sermon "Elijah's Appeal to the Undecided," Spurgeon reflects on a differing conviction from that of his father and grandfather, in this case on infant baptism. I love them and revere them," he testifies. "Yet it is no reason why I should imitate them!" Such as the fork in the road we come to buy the sovereignty of God in Jeremiah 31:33. God has traced in the preceding verse His ways with the forefathers of the audience he forecasts. He has been faithful both parentally and intimately. They have been faithless. God takes them through this history that they might know His ways, His heart. Yet THEIR hearts, He says He will make new. Their minds He says He will renew. They will perceive and receive His Word, described overall

 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts… Jeremiah 31:33c, New King James Version My wife was wondering what was wrong. At the other end of the house from her, I was so caught up in the worship course I was listening to that I shouted with joy. I was, in the phrasing of Bethel Music's "Let the Redeemed," pouring out my thankfulness, letting it overflow. Or, in the sort of transformation Rend Collective pleads to God for in "Free As a Bird," ""Take us beyond our horizons, leading us into Your wildness." Rend Collective, "Free As a Bird" She hadn't known this to be my way. Yet, even past midlife, it was evidence of Christ's faithfulness to impart new affections as He promises in the progression of Jeremiah 31:33. She was familiar with the incorporation of His Law into my thinking and could be mystified as I,

33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds… Jeremiah 31:33b, New King James Version My church recently held a prayer service in place of the usual Sunday order. My wife and I participated over the Internet from our living room. When directed to pray for a particular manifestation of God's glory, I started to speak to the Lord out loud. My wife seemed to shrink a little, to withdraw within herself. With at least as much defensiveness as deftness of discipleship, I asked why. "You're overwhelming," she confessed. My demonstrativeness was smothering her quieter considerations nurtured in the Church of Christ in which women did not pray out loud in the presence of men. Honest, she connected this particular expression of my zeal-as-leadership to my habitually unilateral selection of the scriptural passages we read each day.    Her subtext, if not her exact words, revealed that she