Coming Up For Air

After this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was sweet to me. Jeremiah 31:26, New King James Version My Grandma was a warrior woman for God in the true Hebrew meaning of the word virtue in Proverbs 31. She once dove into a well to rescue her toddler, and she was no less all in in prayer. In the latter stages of her glory-to-glory walk on Earth, someone brought her use of the death of one of her grandchildren. She took it to heart, wondering aloud why her precious Jesus would allow this tragedy while He saw fit that she should linger and battle cancer. I'll pray about it, she said, and she did, on the spot. On the same spot, she emerged from prayer as tranquil and as radiant in Him as ever. She knew the One in whom Jeremiah believed and was persuaded that He is able to keep that which she committed unto Him until that day when she saw Him face-to-face. She knew the taste from the well of that prophet's peace as announced in Jeremiah 31:26. As with Grandma, Jeremiah has a s...

24 And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks. 25 For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” Jeremiah 31:24-25, New King James Version For one of our wedding anniversaries, my wife and I went to Mayberry. We found common consolation in the idyllic TV town, or the recreation of it in nearby Mount Airy, North Carolina. Supplementing the feel of the place was a vintage theater advertising Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic The Birds on the marquee. Being an incurable history major, I sifted the irony. Even then, even in the civilized conformity of fedora-tipping politeness I would idealize and maybe idolize, tensions were present and unreconciled. People feared attack. People feared the familiar would suddenly become the fearsome. The space race, that aspect of the Cold War, is mentioned even on The Andy Griffith Show . Barney's concerns that Opie might turn out to be a hoodlum...

23 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity: ‘The Lord bless you, O home of justice, and mountain of holiness!’ 24 And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all its cities together, farmers and those going out with flocks. Jeremiah 31:23-24, New King James Version There have been times when my class came out of my mouth, and not necessarily when I showed my fondness for compound sentences and relished resplendent vocabulary. As I taught students in the poorest counties in three states, they would make assumptions at which I would bristle. Referring to the government benefits that were the lifeblood of many of these communities, they would ask, "You get a check, don't you?" Teacher that I was, I would consider this a Teachable Moment, but really am sure what it conveyed was my pride that, as a man in a wheelchair, I was working. I was Producer rather than ...

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “They shall again use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I bring back their captivity: ‘The Lord bless you, O home of justice, and mountain of holiness! Jeremiah 31:23, New King James Version I used to enjoy going to summer camp. For nine days, I was seen apart from from my relationships at home. I was related to not as son of a particular father and mother, or as a particular person's brother, or as having reached this status in school. Uprooting and replanting, even temporarily, prompted a different kind of flourishing. I also, for this nine-day stretch, was planted separate from many of the comforts of home. For that time, I didn't have regular access to television, carpet on the floor, or complete privacy in the shower. The cabins were even rustic enough not to include a bathroom. Every year, upon returning, home looked different. The same sights and amenities which had been routine a fortnight before wer...

22 How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth— A woman shall encompass a man.” Jeremiah 31:22, New King James Version My weeks in my first semester of my freshman year of college had a certain enforcement to them. They built up tension toward midmorning on Friday. Though the weekend was in sight from that vantage point, more prominent and problematic was my weekly test in Biology. I dreaded it all week, allowing it to color my life experience to such an extent that I calculated out loud Fall Break's marking that I was one sixteenth of the way through my college career. This looming testing cast its shadow in spite of the fact that the results were generally satisfactory. The expectations I imposed on myself based on the comfort and enthusiasm I felt in the humanities just didn't readily translate to the exactitudes of science. My identity settled and succumbed to the point of its lowest and latest reflection on my ...

21 “Set up signposts, Make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, The way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, Turn back to these your cities. 22 How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter? Jeremiah 31:21-22a, New King James Version In his novel The Rookie , Jerry Jenkins tells the story of a major-league project through the eyes of the prodigy's mother. Her shepherding, scrimping foresight toward the future she sees for him is contrasted with the family of his father, who has departed from the picture. His father also had major-league talent, she notes, and the accompanying windfall of a signing bonus that could have changed the trajectory of his father's family of origin. Instead, she looks back mystified on the poor family's decision to blow that money is a rare consolation before returning to hardscrabble life. I wonder if God discerned something similar in the hearts of the children of Ephraim as Jeremiah 31:22 began. He foretells a nat...

21 “Set up signposts, Make landmarks; Set your heart toward the highway, The way in which you went. Turn back, O virgin of Israel, Turn back to these your cities. Jeremiah 31:21, New King James Version "We are quite ignorant of the real power of our habits," writes CS Lewis in a 1942 letter to Mrs. Percival Wiseman, " until we try to give them up." Picture it. Here is a great mind acknowledged by the world as an Oxford don and by the Church fed by his insights many decades after his death. He and Mrs. Wiseman sit in a world set afire, the futility of man's assumptions exposed to their ashen foundations. Still, Lewis confesses the nearly intractable power of habit. Something similar, humbling, hopeless but for the grace of God, is going on in Jeremiah 31:21. In this case, on the scale opposite of depravity's power of habit are episodes of giddy goodness. God has traced them like so much ad copy up to now in Jeremiah 31. His faithfulness to bring His people ba...