Coming Up For Air

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days… Jeremiah 31:33a, New King James Version This Friday was the first day off I remember as a "professional student," and I was determined to seize it. I was 29, and already the student had become the teacher had become the student yet again. Jarred by and unready for the transition from dutiful recipient of instruction to being the decision-maker and tone-setter, I wanted to make up for years of delayed maturity all at once. I showed up at the government office where I wanted to work at the end of my two-year masters program to lay claim to an internship. The kindly bureaucrat I confronted was startled. The faculty does that for you, you know, she allowed. As I got to know her over time, her name was Jimmie, again and again she had to assure me as my mind leaped ahead months and years to overcompensate for past unresponsiveness, "Trust your program." That's something of the transit...

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. Jeremiah 31:31-32, New King James Version The reality of being fired was still ringing in my ears. My boss's euphemistic expression, "Today's your last day with us," didn't soften the reverberation. I snapped to the duty of looking for new work, but my heart was still wounded, subsisting on the gruel of the old identity and script. Sensing this, my wife stepped in. At that moment, she was the only one earning an income, but she was more than the begrudging subsidizer of my subsistence. Gifted in her spirit with his sense of hospitality, she knew how sight and feel change what we experience within. She took me out to ...

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke… Jeremiah 31:31-32e, New King James Version I had lunch with my friend Billy yesterday. Billy's theology is being burned upon his heart by this moment in history, and his speech flowed from the fullness of his heart. Billy is Black, and he is realizing a different, deeper, more personal connection to the Bible. He told me that the research he has been doing reveals Exodus entirely excised from the Bible proclaimed to his enslaved ancestors. He is putting in perspective the righteous indignation that men taught the parts of the Bible they found useful to uphold the unjust order at one point in time, piously proclaiming other-world Truths in order to distract from their accountabilit...

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, Jeremiah 31:31-32d, New King James Version I was about nine, and I had a lot to look forward to in a hotel room gearing up for another day at Disney World. Rather than anticipating this grace from my parents, I was looking backward in pride. I was taking another opportunity to recount to my brother, three years younger, how worldly wise I was. This must have gone on for too long, for my parents saw fit to interject. They saw fit to remind me how panicked I was just the day before when I thought I was lost. We reconstruct our back story that quickly. We make ourselves the star of it, and we immediately begin wielding it to our comparative advantage. Now, a child being lost in Disney World is not the equivalent of I...

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt…" Jeremiah 31:31-32c, New King James Version My former pastor was born and deaf-mute. He is asked by the curious whether God healed him or whether he went to therapy. He says both. But at the time, as a child, he reflects that he didn't know about the process that was going on. He didn't know he was disabled, and he didn't know he was in speech therapy. He just thought he was following along, playing games with the nice lady who turned out to be a speech therapist. There is something of this in the Lord's overview of the deliverance of His people from Egypt in Jeremiah 31:32. Yes, he led them out of Egypt. Yes, they changed statuses and sovereigns as well as locations. These dramatic changes to...

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand… Jeremiah 31:31-32b, New King James Version Uncharacteristically, Will Smith on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is working himself into a frazzle. The character is growing into young manhood and, sporadically, a sense of responsibility and opportunity. Worn down and in a fixed, he confesses to his father figure, and usual nemesis, Uncle Phil that he wanted to be a man like Phil and show that he could make it on his own. Philip Banks is more given to sitcom putdowns than to tenderness, but he turns a different aspect toward Will – after a putdown of sorts. He corrects the record. "That's the biggest bunch of bull I've heard since I left the farm. He tells his nephew that Will's impression of Philip's rise from South Carolina poverty to...

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers… Jeremiah 31:31-32a, New King James Version Prevented by disability from driving, and, at least for now, from continuing my career, God has an interestingly individualistic way of keeping my questing sense of purpose kindled. He has given me an unusual memory for fragments of pop culture, supplemented by a dogged use of OneNote and cemented by a capacity to connect quotes and scenes to the Gospel. Writing on social media, I endeavor to present Christ to "secular" Facebook groups in their own vernacular. Even here, though, with lipservice to His sovereign purposes, the flesh's leadening of expectations can kick in. No doubt by the negative flipside of my ability to turn small details into a dramatic story, I've been roughed up a little by recent group responses. Some "secu...