at the table

Everything I read and hear these days, Kingdom-wise, seems to point me back to the same thing: I am always on the receiving end; He is always the source.

Most recently, I have been thinking in terms of tables.

I have wanted a new kitchen table for quite a while now. Our old set was one of those Amish-built (truly -- we got it in Virginia from a Mennonite vendor) round/oval pedestal tables and sturdy windsor-back chairs. I remember being so grateful for it when we were able to buy it, and it held up well to toddler seats and school projects and a cook who isn't very careful to use hot pads under the chicken casserole (that would be me). But for various reasons, it was time for that set to go. So I listed it on Craig's List, and it left yesterday for the home of a young couple with a toddler and a baby on the way. It stirred a little wave of sentimentality, I have to admit.

This morning I was looking--for the third day in a row because it intrigues me--at the parable of the sower. I've moved on in my reading to some of the other parables that follow it in Matthew: the six "the kingdom is like..." parables. But I keep returning to that first one, and thinking about what kind of soil I am. And why. By Christ's words, I am good soil. The good soil represents those who hear and understand, those who have ears to hear. I know I am one of those. Most days I know it right down to my toes, and other days I need him to remind me. But I know it. And I know that makes me blessed, because I get to see and hear what the prophets and righteous men of old longed to see but did not, as Jesus tells his disciples. I live in the time of the law written on hearts and minds. Hallelujah!

But why did I get to be good soil?

I don't have an answer other than "because God ordained it so." But I do know that the question is one that I started asking way too late in life. I think many of us who grew up in homes where Jesus was loved, "where children early lisp his fame," who were cherished and well fed and handed every opportunity to know Christ that this world can afford -- we can easily be underwhelmed by the gospel. He weaves himself so gently and so faithfully into our life story that it takes a knock on the head for us to see how amazing that grace has been. We may even begin to take some of the credit for his being there. (We were pretty good kids, after all.)

So we do what well fed children often do: we come to the table without a word of thanks to the father who provided the food, and we retire to the couch without asking how we might help with the work of the family, and we assume that meal will always be there. And it is.

I did that as a kid at home, and so did my kids. I think sowing gratefulness in a child's heart must be one of the greatest challenges in a parent's job. The "starving children in India" line ought to work, but it just doesn't. And no matter how ungrateful your children's hearts may be, you always feed them anyway, because they are your children. Generally, they develop gratitude later, when they have to pay for their own food, or feed their own children.

So how does God work gratefulness into the heart of a son or daughter who has been fed grace from infancy? He works it slowly and faithfully, by the word and by prayer, just as He works the other marks of maturity into us. With the word open in my lap and his Spirit in my ear, I hear him say "blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it" (Matt. 13:16-17). And by his grace, I hear, I see, I understand what He means. And by his grace, I am grateful.

This week, this Holy Week, as I have the privilege of being at my Father's table again, I know that He paid everything He had for this meal, and He did it out of his great love for me.

By his grace, may that knowing keep me off the couch.

deep calls to deep

Here’s my typical formula for quiet time: Read through the passage of scripture (wherever I am in my OT or NT readings), write a short precis of it in journal, pray over it and let the Holy Spirit speak, record discoveries and questions, and then ask God to make that day’s chunk of his word take root in my life and heart. Then lots more prayer. All these people to pray for, and so little time...

But sometimes, when I need a little change, I pull out a short book I picked up at a used bookstore one time called Praying with CS Lewis. It’s a collection of meditations by Charles C. Taliaferro that combine biographical information, excerpts from CS Lewis’ writings, a reflection by Taliaferro, a related scripture passage, and then some challenges for meditation or writing or activity in response to the theme.

I did the first one (again) the other day and have been thinking about it ever since. It is called “Awakened Desire.” It explores the usefulness of wonder to our life of faith. This sounds obvious, but what it led me to is a great thankfulness for my childhood: that I was secure and free to wade creeks and lie on my back in the grass at night gazing at stars. That I had an aunt who could weave tales that would set my imagination spinning. That I had parents who took me trout fishing and camping, and who thought I was amazing when I asked weird questions like “if we can have a dream and in the dream we’re really sure it’s real life, how do we know we’re not dreaming now?” In short, I am grateful that I was taught to wonder, to be aware, to enjoy the moment. Not all children are given this gift.

And it also made me hope that I will never fully outgrow that wide-eyed amazement at life and thoughts and story. I still have, thank God, a tendency to have heart-surge moments. By this I mean a sudden awareness of something I can only describe as eternal and inutterable that completely takes my breath away, makes my eyes tear up, and makes my heart pound.

Now, I am NOT talking about the cloying “gardens just make me feel so close to God” moments that so-called inspirational poets put into so-called inspirational poetry, or even those moments of amazement such as most of us would have at a mountaintop panorama that bursts unexpectedly into view, though those are cool (the amazement moments, not the Hallmark verses). The Romantics’ concept of the “sublime” might come closer, but their association of this concept to death and terror do not ring true to what I’m trying to describe. In fact, the moments don’t even have to involve nature at all. I’ve had them in traffic, in the bathtub, in church. For me, they require a complete loss of self-consciousness and time-consciousness (which is dangerous in traffic, by the way). It’s like I have suddenly tuned my dial to a radio signal coming out of … Mars? Heaven?

Here’s how Lewis puts it:

What is universal is not the particular picture, but the arrival of some message, not perfectly intelligible, which wakes this desire and sets men longing for something East or West of the world; something possessed, if at all, only in the act of desiring it, and lost so quickly that the craving itself becomes craved. (The Pilgrim’s Regress, qtd. in Taliaferro p. 33)

Yes. That’s it. A message. A craving.

The words that came to mind when I read that were “deep calls to deep,” which I knew to be a biblical phrase but couldn’t remember the context. So, I looked it up, of course. It’s in verse 7 of Psalm 42, where David is having one of his slightly schizophrenic conversations with his momentarily tortured soul. In the chapter he is hounded by his enemies and a sense of abandonment, so he inventories what he knows to be true about God (wise man that he is), and he begins down at the Jordan and ends up in the mountains, like a geographical survey of the creator.

I have to insert here that commentators mostly explain his phrase “deep calls to deep” as meaning that his suffering is coming in deep waves, like the waterfall he mentions.
Well, maybe. But sometimes I have to wonder about commentaries on Biblical poetry. Can someone really decide conclusively what a poem means, universally? (And probably not a very poetic someone, at that.) I mean, it’s poetry! You can’t parse poetry! You have to swim around in it and see where the current takes you…this time. Maybe next time it will roll a different way. (Really! It’s okay! David’s in the Spirit, we’re in the Spirit, so it’s safe.)

Couldn’t “deep calls to deep” also suggest that as he surveys glorious creation, with the acute awareness that all poets have, he has one of those rare Lewis moments of extreme longing, when the deepest parts of him are quickened to life by a sudden awareness of the deep mystery of God’s immanence, when God whispers right into his ear “I’m here!” (See, David? I know exactly what you mean! To me.)

1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”

10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.