Category: Bible

Jesus Isn’t White

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Before I get started, thank you all so much for reading last week’s post and providing such encouraging feedback. I feel a lot calmer and more sure of what I need to do about that relationship. However, I don’t have any updates I’m comfortable sharing right now. Thank you for clicking on this post and being willing to let me talk about something else this week.

A Facebook friend recently posed the following questions for her followers, largely White people like me, to consider: 

What kind of impact does depicting Jesus as a white man have on those who are not white? 
What harmful narrative is being upheld by depicting Jesus as white?

A lot of people who commented responded in one of two ways. First, they admitted that they think of Jesus as White, but don’t think that matters. Artists all over the world can depict Jesus as looking like them, however they look. Second, people said they always assumed that Jesus should be depicted as White because the Jewish people they know look White to them. I want to respond to both of these ideas, but first, I want to break down how Whiteness is perceived and used in the US.

First, let’s acknowledge that race is a social construct. It is a made-up label. It has no biological basis. White and Black are words people use to describe others and themselves, but they are made up. They have been assigned significant and complex meaning, but they are not real in the sense that they are not objective. Race isn’t biology. So it’s perfectly understandable if a person chooses to not use any of these made-up race labels, and thus to avoid those assigned meanings. But that’s a different blog post.

I recently read an explanation of Whiteness in the US that goes like this (paraphrased from Robert Nash’s book Moving the Equator: The Families of the Earth and the Mission of the Church). When Europeans first began coming to what would become the US, they categorized people in two ways: White and Indigenous. White meant free. Indigenous meant eradicate. This wasn’t universally true in every instance, but it was the shorthand White people developed and governed themselves on the assumption of. After 1619, there was a third category: Black, meaning enslaved. In time, White people had eradicated Indigenous people so thoroughly that they dropped off as a category (though they of course still exist) and there were only two categories: White meaning free and Black meaning enslaved. The assumption was enslavement even in the north, and White people terrorized Black communities for decades as a result (Indigo by Beverly Jenkins depicts this period well). 

Though enslavement is not technically true for Black people in this country anymore, we White people have kept to this shorthand. It was apparent in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, for example. We know he was innocent of any crimes, certainly any that would have warranted him being shot in the back by two random men. Those two White men were acting as though they had total authority over him, authority to question his behavior, to judge it unsuitable, to follow him, and then to murder him. I heard Rev. Starlette Thomas describe it on a podcast as those two White men were acting like they were “still on the plantation.” They were acting off of this old binary idea that Ahmaud is Black, therefore he isn’t free. They were acting like Black = enslaved. They were acting like plantation overseers and slave catchers.

Perhaps most insidiously, we White people have forced other races who have come here (or have been brought here in the case of Chinese railroad workers, for example) to prove themselves “not Black” in order to be considered free, contributing to anti-Blackness around the world. The existence of this binary is why Columbus has such a large role in our culture’s mythos and a holiday dedicated to him. Italian immigrants in the early 1900s were facing horrible discrimination and were trying to prove they belonged here, so they popularized this story about the Italian founder of the continent. This effort to prove Whiteness was apparent recently when Asian Americans were facing racism as the coronavirus began spreading in the US. Articles encouraged Asian Americans to present themselves as professionals, always prepared and dressed nicely, to try to combat this racism. This amounted to a demand that Asian and Asian Americans prove their Whiteness in order to not face racism, to be treated as free. It wasn’t considered enough for them to just exist, and it wasn’t enough to expect White people not to discriminate against them.

Jesus was Jewish. But we shouldn’t base our assumptions of Jesus’ physical appearance on what many Jewish people in the US look like today. It’s an understandable tendency but it ignores about 2000 years of Jewish history as well as our tendency to see people in a binary of White and Black (or White and not-White). Most Jewish people we encounter daily, who are our neighbors and coworkers and classmates, are descended from people who lived for centuries in Eastern Europe, Northwestern Europe, and Russia. And regardless of how White many Jewish people look to our biased eyes, that assignment of Whiteness is conditional. Jewish people face racism and xenophobia in xenophobic jokes from the president as well as internet mobs about public figures, and in such events as the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacists. It’s very hard for Jewish people who don’t look White to be accepted even in Jewish circles, and all Jewish people (from what I understand) remain aware and wary of how conditional that acceptance from White Western culture is. 

Remember the St. Louis: Nearly a thousand Jewish people, including families with young children, fled from anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany aboard the ship the St. Louis. But when they arrived in New York City, they were not allowed to disembark. The US was unwilling to accept them as religious refugees, and neither was any other country. Eventually, they were forced to return to Germany and most passengers were murdered in the Holocaust. This same anti-Semitic reticence to welcome Jewish people into Western countries led to Western backing for the creation of the state of Israel. 

We can’t know for sure what a Jewish man living in Palestine actually looked like in the first century, though there are a number of brown skinned, black-haired guesses. We as White Christians cannot know how painful it must be to see so many depictions of Jesus as White, blonde haired and blue eyed. How many depictions? Is it really that ubiquitous? Well, I have two questions for you.

(1) How many of you grew up seeing the below photo of Jesus in your church, or even your home? 

There’s a great article in the Washington Post about how this painting became a 1940’s Protestant advertisement and spread the image of Jesus as White around the world.

(2) How many of you have a nativity set that doesn’t depict the Holy Family as White? 

It can’t be many of you because I had the darnedest time finding one for Tyler’s and my first Christmas together. And what I often did find was a base with anglican features and bone structure and hair texture, painted over in blacks and browns.

A peach-colored crayon is not the only definition of “flesh.” And it is despicable that for 100 years, the only products Band-Aid made were shaded for White skin. That ended this month.

You may feel that what Jesus looked like while on earth has no effect on your belief and trust in him. Let’s assume you’re totally right. But how we as people portray him definitely does matter. It matters because our White Western culture is dominant and held up as the ideal (or at least influencing others’ ideals) all over the world. In Trevor Noah’s memoir Born a Crime, he says his grandmother always wanted him to pray aloud because he could do so in English. To her, it was perfectly obvious that Jesus was White and spoke English, so a prayer in English must be more powerful. Read Noah’s full explanation below. 

If every culture simply represents Jesus as looking like them, as I’ve heard argued, we wouldn’t have beautiful black grandmothers in South Africa believing both that Jesus answers White people’s prayers in English first.

How we portray Jesus also matters because to depict Jesus as White is to depict a man born of an oppressed people as looking the way his people’s oppressors look. (The White women screaming in stores for being asked to wear a mask may think they’re being oppressed, but they aren’t. Inconvenience is not oppression.) For much of the world, White Western people have been the oppressors, the colonizers and invaders and economic overlords. So regardless of what Jesus may have looked like, we shouldn’t portray him the way we portray oppressive individuals or oppressive groups. That doesn’t represent Jesus’s humanity, family, mission, or values. In fact, that contradicts Jesus’ message of radical love and sacrifice for God and others.

Relating to Jonah

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Earlier this summer, Tyler and I realized we wouldn’t be able to take a vacation this year, so we planned a weekend getaway to Atlanta instead for this past weekend.

On Saturday, after checking into our hotel, we went to a Braves game. It was really fun. We had great seats, and Tyler caught a practice ball thrown into the stands by a Marlins player. However, it was also hot as Hades. I sweated through every single thing I was wearing. I’m sure all of us in the outfield smelled heavenly. I was immensely thankful for my hat and sunglasses and sunscreen, but they could only do so much in the face of hours in that relentless, direct sunlight.

A baby at his first baseball game in the row behind us cried or fussed much of the game, and no one got upset with him. He was the voice of the people. Sing it, kid, I thought more than once, as well as, Take him home, people! He’s miserable and he doesn’t understand why. At least the rest of us chose to be there.

Twice during the 3-hour game we were blessed by the cover of a cloud that cast us all in shade. Spontaneous applause broke out in the stands around us in these moments, along with calls of “thank you” to the sky and more than one relieved, “Yes” and “Thank God.” By the time the second, larger cloud arrived, Tyler and I had already drank three bottles of water and ate two frozen lemonades between us. We enjoyed the game, but in the shade of that cloud we could focus on the game so much better, enjoy ourselves so much more, and be more generous with the people around us. 

It reminded me of the story of Jonah—not the large fish story, the plant one. After the fish situation, after Jonah went to Nineveh and preached God’s message as God has instructed, Jonah, who hated the people of Nineveh, withdrew from the city to see if God would save them from destruction or not. The people had repented in response to Jonah’s very short sermon on the matter, and Jonah was thoroughly unhappy about it. He hated the Ninevites. 

As Jonah sat in the sand waiting to see what would happen, it got hot. Miserably hot. And Jonah was miserable. A plant’s leaf opened up, giving Jonah shade and relief. He was so grateful for that leaf. And when it died overnight, Jonah was so angry and miserable again that he wanted to die all over again (4:8). God asked him if he was right to be angry about the leaf. After all, he hadn’t done anything to grow the leaf. And it’s a leaf, which Jonah knows doesn’t last. Jonah replied that he is right to be angry, thank-you-very-much. He’s even angry enough to want die (4:9).

I related to Jonah in that cloud’s shade in a way I never had before. I got his anger, his petulance. It was almost comical how much relief that one cloud brought, how used to it I became as I watched the action on the field, waiting for a homer that may or may not ever come our way. I felt affection for that cloud. I knew it’d go away eventually, but I hoped (unreasonably) that it would outlast my need to stay in my seat. It brought spontaneous expressions of gratitude from the miserable people around me, many of them half-drunk, plus that baby in his wide-brimmed hat whose his parents were trying to create a good memory. This might have been the first normal-feeling thing they’d done in months, and they worked hard with ice packs and hand-held fans and frozen treats and a cartoon to keep their baby content. 

A friend who recently visited Israel told me she better understood the Israelites’ desire to return to slavery in Egypt rather than stay in the desert. After she’d walked in a desert in that region for 45 minutes, she was ready to accept just about any terms to get out of that oppressive heat and sun. Imagining days and weeks of that, she assured me she’d be ready to return to Egypt, too. 

When the larger cloud passed on and revealed us to the sun for the final time, we still had a couple of innings to go. The sun seemed more oppressive than it had before the cloud shielded us for that hour or so. I was tired, feeling gross, and increasingly unable to concentrate on the game. All I had to do was sit there and make sure I didn’t get hit with by a ball. I just had to wait for it to be over and to try not to complain and so dampen the good experience for Tyler. He too was miserably hot, of course, but he loves baseball and this was a treat for both of us, but primarily for him. Still, I wondered if I’d make it. And in the back of my mind I knew that the bathroom was air conditioned.

Okay, God, I thought, eying the standings and trying estimate how much longer the game would last, I was judgey about Jonah before. But I get it now. I’m sorry. Jonah had a lot of problems, including being racist, but the combination of his stressful travel (the ship in the storm, then fish travel, then walking), being among people he considered his enemies, and sitting in the desert heat and sun probably tore down his walls really effectively. I knew the Georgia heat was tearing down mine.

God used the shading leaf, and specifically its absence, to show Jonah how out of proportion his angry and hatred toward the people of Nineveh was. Jonah grieved the loss of a leaf but not the potential loss of hundreds of thousands of people. He felt affinity for a leaf, as I had for the cloud, and it’s okay to be spontaneously grateful for part of God’s creation. But that affection should never overshadow (ahem) feelings of sympathy and caring for actual people. Every person, even those you consider to be enemies, are made in the image of God. And since Jonah couldn’t muster that baseline level of human compassion, God reminded Jonah that there were “also many animals” in Nineveh (4:11). Life should be valued, and how much more valuable should animals be to plants, and people to animals? God seemed to be saying, “If you can’t care about the people, can you at least care about their livestock? Think of the cows, Jonah!”

That night, after the game ended and we each took a long shower in the hotel room, we were back out to the Battery to find a restaurant for dinner. When I finally got my catfish fajitas after a long but worthwhile wait at El Felix, I felt miserable all over again. This fish had died so I could eat it, but I had stuffed myself too full of chips and queso. And because we were staying the night in a hotel, we didn’t have the means or opportunity to save the 2/3 of the delicious filet I couldn’t eat. Many hands had worked to get this incredible fish to me, but my urgency to satiate my hunger with chips and queso had resulted in waste. Waste for the life of that fish, and the work of so many people. Yes we paid money for our dinner, but those efforts and the life of this fish couldn’t be bought back. 

I thought again about God’s entreaty for Jonah to care for the animals and the 120,000 people in Nineveh who God wished to save. I’m sure I’m stretching things a bit, but it all worked together in my head that night and I have yet to shake it: Jonah with the people, the leaf, the cows; me with the people at the game, the cloud, the fish. 

A Creative Christ

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Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the life of my cousin Santee, who died very suddenly yesterday. In time I may write more about him here, but for now I just want to say that he was always such a loving, sensitive person. And he had the best smile in the world. He struggled and he kept secrets and he died in a way we as a culture cringe away from and immediately judge: an overdose. An overdose after years of successful rehab and good community and generous support of others. We thought he was through the worst of it, out of the woods as much as one can be. But the Christmas season is hard. And his late mother’s birthday was coming up, and it was an accident. He worked with his hands and gave that gentle love to so many people. The same love that sent him running toward me for a hug and a game when we were kids. My little cousin. We’ll bury him on his birthday beside his father. He’d lost so many and been hurt so deeply. It is so hard to comprehend that his brightness has gone out of the world.

A few weeks ago, I read an introduction to the song “The Gospel According to Mark” by a musician I had yet to encounter: Nick Cave. Indeed, the article seemed to be as much an introduction to the book of the Bible as to the song, which I have repeatedly forgotten to listen to. I’ve since read conflicting reports about Cave’s theology, but his intro sparked a lot of thinking, and therefore a lot of blessings, so I want to share one those.

Cave said of Jesus,

“He enters a wilderness of the soul, where all the outpourings of His brilliant, jewel-like imagination are in turns misunderstood, rebuffed, ignored, mocked and vilified and would eventually be the death of Him.”

I had not considered that Jesus’ words, at times confusing even for those of us who’ve heard dozens of sermons and read countless books on that very phrasing—as well as the rest of the Bible—sprouted from Christ’s imagination rather than a vague sort of above-ness. I considered Jesus to be more divine than usual in his understanding of the world and in his use of metaphors to describe it. And I viewed the people around him dense and hopelessly defined by the cage of their literal minds. Only after Pentecost did I believe those cages flew open and they understood.

I’ve thought of the phrase, “jewel-like imagination,” daily since I read it. Immediately, my brain pulled forward my memories of a friend whose mind I would describe as having a jewel-like imagination. Her brain is wired brilliantly and much differently than all others I have known. When we lived in the same town, I loved to spend time just listening to her interpret whatever inputs surrounded us. We could be on a walk or crafting or driving to get milkshakes or discussing a movie. She once explained to me, in tremendous detail and depth, the personalities and appearances of her and her three sisters, including who got what from which parent, how stress alters the performative actions of each, and in what ways the older ones influenced the younger. She spoke passionately and precisely, as if she’d been studying a specific scientific phenomenon all her life, rather than a unit of individuals to which she also belonged.

I couldn’t follow along. I confused her sisters’ names as well as their traits (none of whom I’d met). I couldn’t keep it all in my head and quickly stopping trying to understand, but simply listened to her and pretended to comprehend. It was all so simple and straightforward to her. She understood and explained it well. But I hadn’t met her family at that point and didn’t have the necessary context to be able to understand and retain. Some years later, once I had spent time with her sisters and parents, I considered asking her to explain their personalities and traits to me again, certain I’d better understand. I chickened out though, not wanting her to know I only remembered the topic of the conversation, and none of the principles or details she’d so painstakingly laid out.

This friend once confided in me that she thought it very rude, even cruel, that Jesus didn’t explain himself to his followers in ways they could understand. Being divine, he ought to know exactly how to do so. Therefore, their lack of understanding must be the result of Jesus’ deliberate choice not to explain it well enough for them. Worse than the choice to leave them uncomprehending, he then grew angry and annoyed with them for it.

Cave acknowledges the disciples’ incomprehension and Jesus’ resulting anger, saying,

“Even His disciples, who we would hope would absorb some of Christ’s brilliance, seem to be in a perpetual fog of misunderstanding, following Christ from scene to scene with little or no comprehension of what is going on. So much of the frustration and anger that seems at times almost to consume Christ is directed at His disciples and it is against their persistent ignorance that Christ’s isolation seems at its most complete.”

My friend’s logic tracks but her conclusions didn’t sit well with me. I suspect they stem from the intense compassion which my friend and my Savior both possess. In truth, I wonder if Jesus isn’t a good bit like my friend. While walking the earth, Jesus interpreted it in ways none of the rest of us had considered, and in ways which seemed perfectly obvious to him. He used elaborate and apt metaphors and images to explain the material and spiritual world to those around him. And though the words were ones the people all understood, they could not all understand. A few with “ears to hear” understood (see Matt 13:16), and the rest did not. None understood all of the time. Even his closest friends and family members didn’t understand his meaning much of the time. We who surround the jeweled imaginations lack the context to comprehend.

If had I had access to the text of my friend’s explanation of her sisters once I did have context, I’m sure I was have managed to understand. Just as, with the help of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, the disciples suddenly understood all that Jesus had taught them.

How lonely for Christ, to be explaining as well as his humanity and divinity allow and to still be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and frequently abandoned or despised because of it. How lonely for all the wonderfully unique people, driven by compassion for others, who struggle to be understood.

Having now entered Advent, let’s consider the brilliant, creative child who came and the lonely, loving man he became.

The LORD is my Shepherd…

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My sleep schedule has been a little off lately. I’ve struggled to stay awake at 3pm and lain wide awake at 3am. Around midnight last night, as I waited (and waited) to fall asleep, I enjoyed a good long talk with God. Somewhere in there, I took out my phone and used voice-to-text to rewrite Psalm 23 one line at a time. In the daylight, I’ve enjoyed my midnight brain’s insights and priorities. Instead of continuing the shepherd imagery, I named simple ways that God cares for and blesses me.

It’s not my intention to belittle this gorgeous and beloved song of praise. This was simply an exercise in thinking through a familiar passage in an unfamiliar way, personalizing a Scriptural prayer while giving a formal structure to my own prayers of thanks. (Additionally, I’ve been trying to step away from using male pronouns for God in my personal prayers, as God is neither male nor female, so I avoided them here.)

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not starve for anything.
God encourages me to lie down and take a nap,
God reminds me to drink water,
God restores my soul.
God guides me toward righteousness paths
because that’s God’s character.
Yea, though I walk
through the darkest news cycles,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
rom coms and my roommate’s dog,
they comfort me.

You prepare chicken casserole for me
in the presence of the racist Twitter followers I had to block.
You bless me with cat videos;
my laughter overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will find me
all the days of my life,
and I will call the house of the LORD “home”
forever.

What would your version of Psalm 23 look like? What comforts you? What does God prepare for you? Who are your enemies and when are you most afraid? I’d love to hear your variations!

The Mac and Cheese of the Bible

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The psalms are good. A bit simplistic at times. A bit vengeful at times. The world does not exist exactly the way the psalms present it. But it’s full of genuine emotions, familiar phrases, provoking images, and a bit of cheese. It’s comfort food. The psalms work as the main course or as a side. They’re nutritious, especially when paired with good theology and spiced with a sermon series or study. But they aren’t the most nutritious food. And they’re not something you should eat every day, or that you’d really want to eat daily, no matter what your six-year-old self might have professed.

I recently finished reading all 150 psalms, one per day, in order, for 150 days. (Okay, I might not have read every single day, but I stayed consistent and didn’t skip ahead. And I admit to breaking up Psalm 119 over several days. So let’s say it took me 170 days.) It was wonderful. It’d been so long since I’d delved into that book. At times I used resources to aid my reading. At times I paired my daily psalm with other spiritual disciplines. At times, I just read and asked questions of God. For two months or so, I wrote down a single verse every day which confused me and I prayed and meditated on it for the rest of the day.

The book of Psalms is great for establishing discipline. Some parts are hard to understand, but the predominant emotions tend to be pretty obvious and relatable. Some verses are familiar to churchgoers because of songs, hymns, and sheer saturation in church culture. Few psalms are long. Some are downright diminutive.

In high school and my first year or so of college, I read a chapter in Proverbs and a chapter in Psalms every day. And I learned a lot from them. But I kept to this routine for something like five years. I did little reading in other areas of the Bible unless it was part of a formal study or class I had joined. When I felt I needed a challenge, I read more psalms each day. I read the first chapter of Proverbs on the first day of the month, the second chapter on the second, and so on until the last day of the month. If it was the 31st, I would be reading the last chapter of the book. If it was the 28th or 30th, I read all the remaining chapters at once.

I felt like I was ingesting regular, good nutrition, but my leaves were browning in other areas. Not every part of me was thriving. Eventually I learned that even staples can grow stale. Anything can if you eat it every day. Worse still, I had grown so familiar with the verses that I no longer knew how to let them reach me. I felt bored and boring. I haven’t been back to either book in a disciplined way since then.

In the fall, feeling spiritually drained but needing food so I could continue to minister to others, I went back to my old comfort book of the Psalms. I fell in and out of love several times, but I maintained the discipline of daily reading and was back in love with the book as I worked through the final chapters. And once I was done, I felt sad. Adrift. A lost. Where should I go next? I reread a couple of favorite psalms as the month of May approached. On May 1, I read Proverbs 1.

Proverbs, I’ve decided, is like a robust Lucky Charms—sort of like if Honey Nut Cheerios came with marshmallows. The cereal is good. It’s nourishing. But the marshmallows are why you eat it. Sometimes you get a piece of cereal that you know isn’t a marshmallow, but it’s so covered in sugary goodness that you can almost believe it’s one of the pre-shaped gems. You see new value in it. And yet, the more Lucky Charms you eat, the less appealing the cereal tastes. After a while, even when you do get a spoonful with a marshmallow, you’re disappointed by how stale it’s grown. Especially after you’ve had Job and Ecclesiastes, the book’s more complex cousins, it’s hard to feel satisfied with Proverbs.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been praying about what I’ll read next. I’ve kept writing down a verse a day, mostly to help me stay invested and focused as I read.

I’m chosing Isaiah. It’s a long book, which doesn’t particularly appeal to me in this year of transitions, but it’s also one I don’t ever remember reading all the way through. And maybe those 66 chapters will be good for me, will tug me through these busy next few months and provide consistency when my circumstances do not.

I can’t know for sure, of course, what food matches Isaiah. However, when think of the book and its passages that I’m familiar with, I think of a mousse or a pudding. Something seamless that flows and fills. Maybe a huge bowl of yogurt threaded through with bites of fruit. Something half-secret and surprisingly nourishing.

In 66-70 days, I hope I’ll be as in love with the book as I was with Psalms at the end of April.

[If you’re interested in some bacon for your mac and cheese, I highly recommend Sessions with Psalms. Disclaimer: I work for the company that published this study, and I got to work on it during the editorial process. It’s still the best study of Psalms that I’ve ever read.]

Sacred Imagination

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A few months ago I finally listened to several coworkers who know me well and tried the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”. Although I have since stopped for a variety of reasons, my favorite part of the podcast was the sacred practice portion.
 
The hosts would, for several podcasts in a row, engage in a sacred practice for a major world religion. Many of the first season’s episodes use Lectio Divina, a Christian practice I was intellectually familiar with before the podcast, but had never engaged in. Another Christian practice they use is Sacred Imagination, in which a person imagines what it would be like to be in a biblical scene with the goal of better knowing and loving God. St. Ignatius wrote the first instructions for this practice after imagining himself in the manger scene at Christ’s birth and becoming deeply moved by this experience.

I wasn’t familiar with this practice, and looked forward to its use in the podcast because I enjoyed employing my imagination to try to experience the sights, sounds, smells, and other senses as I’m placing myself in the position of a character. And, I learned a lot from the podcast’s hosts using this method, then talking through what they imagined and how it shaped their reading and understanding of the chosen passage of Harry Potter.

Last week, I took out an old Bible to read Psalm 118, the psalm being studied in the Chapter-A-Day project undertaken by my church. This Bible is an NIV Women of Faith Study Bible, meaning it includes profiles of women in the Bible and features short commentary excerpts on every page based on a passage or verse on that page. It’s also an easily understood translation and was given to me by my uncle upon my graduation from high school. It’s the only Bible I really used during college and is full of my underlining, notes, questions, and occasionally a date if a passage particularly resonated with my life or feelings that day.
 
Now I use an ESV Bible that I don’t write in, so even though I keep my beloved college Bible close, it’s not the one I usually read from. But I was curious what I might have written in college about the middle chapter in the Bible, so I fished it out of the stack of books on my bedside table.
 
I read the psalm through once, noting how my past self had divided the psalm into chunks of 3-5 verses (often with the help of the typesetter, who left a little space between stanzas).
 
When I got to the end, I found a note in pen that said “Sung at the Last Supper” and, at the very top of that page, “Remember the power in these pages.”

I knew my past self might be wrong (it’s impossible to know exactly which psalm Christ sang that night, though Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26 both record the singing, and Jewish tradition tells us that Psalms 113-118 were sung during the Passover week), but I decided to assume my college self was right.

Rereading the passage again one stanza at a time, I used the Sacred Imagination practice. I imagined myself in the upper room of the Last Supper. The Passover meal is eaten, the plates and scraps still on the table. Judas has left to betray Christ. The eleven apostles are pleasantly full and sleepy but excited, anticipating that Jesus will soon overthrow the Romans and rule as the reinstated king in David’s line. For each stanza, I imagined myself as Christ, keeping in mind what Jesus knew was coming, how he must have felt about the disciples around him. Next, I imagined myself as the disciples, recalling their heritage and hopes. I let the lessons I uncovered sit with me, then I read the next stanza.

I’ve picked two stanzas from the psalm to do this with so you can get an idea of what I mean and why the experience was so important to me. If you want to participate in sacred imagination along with me, read the passage several times, out loud of possible, and try to imagine yourself as one of the disciples around the table. What are you seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling as you sit in this room? What do you know? What do you think is about to happen? What do you want? What do these verses remind you of?

When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD; he brought me into a spacious place.
The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
The LORD is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. (vv. 5-7)

Let’s consider Christ’s perspective first.

I thought of Christ being tempted in the desert and cared for by angels sent by God at the end of the 40 days, a “spacious place” after being “hard pressed.” I thought of the torture and crucifixion to come. Though “mere mortals” can kill Jesus, he has power over the grave and will be resurrected by God. This is all part of God’s plans to redeem mankind, as well. The mortals may kill him, but it’s all part of God’s plan. And the LORD will be with Christ. The Spirit will help him. He will, Easter morning, triumph over God’s enemies. Right now, he’s full. He’s been laughing with his friends and leading them in a ritual dinner to remember events that only he still has personal knowledge of. Of those alive on earth, only he was there when the angel of death passed over the Hebrews’ homes in Egypt. Only he is aware of every single household that participated in this feast from that evening to this one.

Now let’s consider what this stanza might mean to the disciples.

They are the chosen handful of disciples. They have learned to preach and cast out demons and heal and do other miracles at Christ’s instructions and by God’s power. They have been saved from storms; Peter’s been saved from drowning. They’ve helped baptize and feed and restore. All because of Jesus. Jesus is God incarnate, and he is with them. In the flesh. He picked them to be here with him. They have nothing to be afraid of! What can “mere mortals” do to them? They are going to be part of the new regime. They went from fishing and tax collecting and farming and normal, boring lives to leaders in God’s service and soon they will be rulers. Everyone who was ever mean to them will be “pea green with envy” (as said by Scarlett O’Hara).

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad. (vv. 22-24)

Christ knows this is referring to himself. The disciples around him don’t know it yet. They don’t realize, even if they should. He’ll be dead and resurrected before they realize all the ways that he is the cornerstone. All these plates full of broken bread must remind him of the breaking his body will soon endure. The lamb they ate is totally gone, but the smell lingers. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, he may think, looking around at these eleven men he loves so thoroughly. God will redeem you all, this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.

The disciples are singing of the promised Messiah, just as their parents did and their grandparents—all their ancestors—but they are the only ones that have been with the Messiah. Maybe they look at Jesus, tears in his eyes, looking around at them. Maybe they are wondering if there’s any wine left in their neighbor’s cup. (Minds can wander in worship, even if the Messiah is with them.) God has done a lot of marvelous things, and they must feel proud that they’ll get to be there for all the marvelous things to comes. Jesus has done amazing things today, even. They can be glad about that. And maybe next year they’ll sing this hymn in the palace.

What stood out to you? What did you imagine differently from me? I hope sacred imagination can be a meaningful practice for you in the future.

Faith in Santa

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***SPOILERS for a long-standing Western Christmas tradition***

In the 1994 movie The Santa Clause, Laura and her second husband Neil are worried because their son Charlie not only believes in Santa, but believes his father Scott (played by Tim Allen) is Santa. The audience knows that, within the confines of this fictional world, Santa and the North Pole and elves and all the mythology is real, but this concerned couple doesn’t know that. Nor do they believe that Laura’s first husband Scott is Santa. As they see his habits and appearance change as Christmas approaches, they assume he’s trying to play into Charlie’s fantasy and take legal action to have Scott’s visitation rights terminated. In the waiting room while the judge and Charlie talk, Laura and Paul recount to each other the occasions when they stopped believing in Santa.

Around the same age her son is now, Laura desperately wanted a certain board game for Christmas. She received “dozens” of other presents on Christmas morning, but not the game she’d wanted. Neil, at the ripe age of three, stopped believing because he, too, didn’t receive a whistle that he’d wanted.

It’s a heart-felt scene, meant to allow the audience to step back into themselves long enough to relate to these parents who, despite playing the villains in this fiction, want to protect their son. They acknowledge that belief in Santa isn’t bad in itself, and Laura questions whether they’ve been too hasty in condemning Scott’s encouragement of Charlie’s belief. This conversation also sets up the final scene, when Scott, as Santa Claus, gives them each the gift that they stopped believing because of. He’s literally flying in his reindeer-drawn flying sleigh over their heads, after having spoken to them in the house a few minutes before, then parachutes down the game and the whistle to Laura and Neil, as well as other toys to other people in the crowd.

You’d think they’d have let go of this already. You’d think, as adults if not as children, they would have appreciated their other presents enough that the absence of one wouldn’t have mattered so much. True, Laura declares that Scott really is Santa in the previous scene, but there’s still a sense of Santa making things right by giving these gifts. And that infuriates me because we don’t have to receive everything we want in order to have a good relationship with our parents, friends, significant others, bosses, or anyone else. Why Santa?

You’d think Laura and Neil would have had more faith.

The first time I saw the movie, around age 7 or 8, I thought, “They stopped believing when they didn’t get one present they wanted? Where’s their faith. It’s one present out of dozens! It’s one year out of their whole lives!” And even as a child, I knew the same could be said of people’s belief in God.

Santa doesn’t have to get you every single thing you want in order for him to be everything that children believe he is: good, generous, kind, magical, real. But Santa does give children gifts. Good gifts, unless your people belong to the coal-giving persuasion of Western society. And God gives good gifts, too. There are the obvious ones like life and people to love and a planet that provides for our needs, but also ones like a breeze when you’re indescribably hot and a call from a friend when you’re ready to break apart and the awareness of a gorgeous sunset you would have otherwise missed. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him (Matt 7:11, NLT).

God is not Santa. You don’t ask God for whatever you want and God provides, predictably and lavishly, risking your disbelief if God dares to deny you anything. God does not always provide what you want, and that doesn’t make God less good, less generous, less kind, less supernatural, or less real. Much like a parent not making you fried chicken every single day, even though it’s what you want more than anything else in the entire world, we often don’t want what we need or what would be good for us. And, sometimes, we just don’t get to have the good things we want even though it seems that everyone else does. When a storm comes, literally or figuratively, God has promised to be a parent and to be good to us, but we might still lose a loved one, a home, our health, our sense of security, and more.

This has happened before. It happened to Job. And God didn’t come right away to account for Job’s loss or to answer his questions. God didn’t even answer Job’s questions when God did come. Neither did Jesus appear to Thomas right away when Thomas expressed his famous doubt. Job waited an entire book. Thomas waited 8 days. And I think you’ll agree that these people experienced genuine, painful loss. Job lost his children, home, livelihood, and health. Thomas lost his friend and mentor, his lifestyle, his hope for the future and his country’s well-being.

Santa Claus’s ex-wife not getting the board game that she wanted at age 8, something she wanted more than the dozens of other presents she did get, that’s not genuine loss. That’s entitlement. That’s pettiness. That’s a small view of Santa. How little faith! How unsubstantial a belief if you can lose it so easily over something so slight.

It would be easy to shake my fist at people for not having more faith than Laura did in The Santa Claus, but life is not so easy. If you’ve survived on the planet long enough to read this, you’ve suffered. Your suffering is not insignificant. Your suffering isn’t dismissible just because it doesn’t look like someone else’s.

December holidays, when the world and everyone you encounter seems to be screaming at you to be happy, is a painful time for those who have lost. A person, a pet, a hope, a dream, a self of self, a livelihood, a home, an ability. Maybe it was recently. Maybe it was during this time of year. Maybe your loss just hits you differently when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is stuck in your head and the trees have shaken off all their leaves and red bows on green boughs drape the doorways you must pass through.

If you had faith before your loss, I hope you kept it. I hope your view of God was big enough to include the possibility of pain. I hope you have never thought of God as a celestial Santa Claus, existing only to give you good things. I hope you don’t see God as a Krumpus, either. If you didn’t have faith in God before, I pray that you will search for God. The Bible assures us “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Matthew 7:7). Search for God, and God will draw near to you.

God is good, but God is also so much more than we are. God doesn’t give us all that we want. God doesn’t “only give us what we can handle.” God doesn’t reward the wealthy with wealth and punish the poor with poverty. God demands we help one another, protect one another, seek justice for one another. God offers hope to all who suffer. God is very good and God wants to give God’s children good gifts.

Remember, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Hebrews 11:1-3). By faith, by faith, by faith.

Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief.

A Question of Blessings

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Sometimes strangers and I have weird conversations. Sometimes those conversations are deep and vulnerable and revealing and the experience is a gift. I had one such conversation last week with a man in a black suit coat, khakis, and glasses. I was crocheting behind the half-table we’d set up as check, out of the twelve tables of books and studies my co-worker and I were womanning at a Christian conference in Virginia. He walked directly to me from across the entryway.

“Hello,” I greeted him at the sweet spot of our closing distance. “How can I help you?” Such purposeful direction meant he was looking for something specific, probably either a book or a bathroom.

“Hi,” he said. “Do you have anything on praying the Psalms?”

We had over 1,000 books on the tables around us, well over 100 separate titles. We have hundreds more titles in our stock online, but not one book exactly matched what he was asking for. The book that came closest wasn’t one of the ones we’d brought to Virginia.

“No. I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t. Though, I wish we did.”

He shared that he’d been struggling to pray lately and had begun praying psalms, but was looking for a book to give him more direction. He had still experienced positive change in his prayer life, though, so he also wanted a study or guided devotional book that he could give to those he was counseling through their own struggles. I shared that, at various points in my life, I kept the same practice but had never read a book on the subject. He shared a bit deeper about his struggle and this ancient practice, being vulnerable with me, a stranger, about his spiritual searching. He wasn’t oversharing, but he was being honest in a rare way. It reminded me of a spiritual search I’ve been on for years.

Feeling surprisingly confident that he would hear my spiritual struggle, I shared that I can’t seem to understand blessings.

For years, I’ve struggled with this idea. How can these 2 things both be true: God blesses me and I bless God? What’s more, how can humans pronounce blessings on other humans, but also “bless the Lord” (Psalm 34; 103). What is a blessing, then? The best I could reconcile at that moment was that, when God speaks truth about Godself, God is said to be singing God’s own praises. God praises Godself. This isn’t arrogant, it’s just the truth of the matter. Only God is great, and it’s speaking truth to say so. Therefore, by the power of God, I can be blessed, bless others, bless food, and also bless God. God blesses Godself through me, who seeks to do as Scripture instructs and “Bless the Lord.” My willingness is the conduit by which God blesses Godself.

As I’s hoped, my fellow psalm-prayier listened. Then he considered, silent. Just was I beginning to regret my decision, he stepped into my wonder and searching. For several minutes we shared back and forth, building off one another’s ideas.

“If you bless someone,” he said, “that’s bestowing something. All they have, or all they are at that time, they give to you.”

“So it isn’t by an authority,” I realized, “but a gift from ourselves.”

“You know,” continued the man, “when a man asks for family’s blessing to marry, he’s asking for permission. But more than that, he’s asking for harmony. Harmony between the new family and the old, plus the different families coming together. It’s harmony.”

“And more than harmony,” I realized. “They will support and be devoted to helping that marriage work. Welcoming the new person as part of the original family forever is part of that. So is giving their full support to the betterment and success of the couple.”

“Yes,” he said. “A blessing promises support forever.”

Harmony, thriving, community. Now that I think of it, blessing sounds a lot like Shalom.

I have shared this struggle with at least 15 people over the past 5 or 6 years, former pastors and Bible study leaders and ministers and friends. But only this stranger ever wondered with me. Only he tried to find an answer with me, and he didn’t seek the easy ones. He took my struggle seriously, listened to me, and sought out understanding. I can’t say I’m done in my searching on this subject, but this man helped me travel miles further in 3 minutes then I’d gotten on my own in 5 years. Every moment spent in that conversation was a tremendous gift from God.

I helped him find a couple of books that we felt related to other spiritual interests. He even came back twice the next day, the first time to thank me for recommending a book of devotions for people struggling with depression, the second with a friend we was convincing to buy a copy of one of the books he’d bought the day before. I noticed his enthusiasm to bring people along on his journey. That was what had happened with me. He reminded me of Jesus’s apostle Andrew, who always seemed to be bringing someone to Jesus (boy with bread and fish, Gentiles, his brotherPeter). His openness and willingness to listen invited trust as well as community. And, perhaps most important of all, once someone trusted in him, he remained faithful.

If you’re somehow reading this, stranger, thank you. I hadn’t considered that blessings are like gifts, not words speaking principles into being. Like you said, Isaac blessed his two sons and, once he accidentally give Esau’s blessing to Jacob, he could not take it back. He had thrown his full support and harmony behind his deceitful younger son. Maybe in a couple of years we can publish your book on praying the psalms.

When Good Desires Go Unfulfilled

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What do you want?

I’m in a Bible study on this topic called Teach Us to Want. As Christians, we often have this idea that desires are bad or selfish or sinful or can’t be trusted, that we must strip ourselves of our desires to be content.

First, let’s agree that not all desires are good. Also, not all motivations are good. However, many desires themselves are good, and can show us places God wants to work in our lives through our actions. For you, the desire that’s come to mind may be a relationship, a child, a home of your own, to travel, to be well, to preach, to publish, or something else entirely. And you may or may not have any confidence that that’s ever going to happen for you.

After some feedback about my last post, I want to encourage, specifically, single women who desire to marry. That may not describe you and you may be tempted to click away or to skip down to the starred paragraph for more biblical analysis of desires. You can do that. But I pray that, if you keep reading, you will find this encouraging for you unmet desires, too.

I’m not going to tell you all the “your time will come” stuff that people told me. I’m not going to quiz you on where you go to meet people or if you’ve tried online dating. I’m not going to say that God has someone out there for you. That might not be true and I don’t believe it’s kind to lie and promise that your deepest, most painfully unmet desires will come true. We don’t know that, you or I.

To be honest, as of the week before Tyler and I went on our first date, I didn’t have much hope that I would ever get married, that I would ever find someone who’d want to seriously date. I’d dated a few guys, been on occasional dates in the past few years, but I’d never had a boyfriend, never kissed anyone, and sometimes found myself wondering what was wrong with me. I overanalyzed every missed connection, finding fault with what I’d said or done, trying to feel in control over what I had no control over. “I was too nervous and came on too strong,” I chided myself. “I was too afraid and didn’t let him in soon enough.”

My most painful relationship experience was when someone changed his mind. He dropped me without explanation and without regret, for all I saw. In the aftermath, I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t worthless. I wanted someone to say he was wrong to have treated me that way. I struggled when I realized that God loves him as much as he loves me, because God doesn’t favor any child above another, even when one hurts another. That works to my favor most of the time, but in that pain I wanted God to be more like my earthly parents, who would have been furious if they’d known how he’d hurt me. (If they’d known about him at all.)

My desire to marry hadn’t really wavered. But, even knowing that life is long and we should never say “never” to God, I was less and less hopeful that my desire would ever come true. Previous experiences, including more than one man who dropped all communication without explanation, had made me guarded. Who would hold out long enough to earn my trust, enough that I could let him in? I knew myself better, including my quirks and selfishness. How do people build lives together after so many years alone? How do marriages ever work, really?

I saw the examples of others who had married later in life and clung to theirs stories, but I also knew that, no matter how desperately I want to get married, it truly may not happen. That was—and still is—reality. I told myself that over and over, facing the waves of disappointment while there was still some hope, preparing myself so the possible, future, final realization wouldn’t devastate and embitter me beyond repair.

I’m so sorry for the pain of waiting. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not doing anything wrong. You are worthwhile. You’re wonderful. You wouldn’t be a growing Christian or a sweet friend if you weren’t. That is evidence of what so many people in your life see. That is evidence of God’s work in you and through you. And what a tower of ability you are! You can do so much. You do.

It doesn’t mean you don’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you don’t want someone to share in all these things with you. Loneliness really wears down on you, catching up with you at odd times. It’s like grief in that way. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself as much grace as you give to others.

A friend of mine frequently says that contentment is a daily choice. Every day while single, we have to choose to be content with where we are, the plan thus far, and fight to remember and act as though God has a plan for the future. Whether or not it’s a future I would choose, we fight to believe there is good in it.

*As I think about the thing we desperately want, I think of two women in the Bible in particular: Hannah and Jehosheba.

Hannah, you may remember, was the mother of Samuel, the prophet during Saul’s reign who anointed David (1 Samuel 1-2). But Hannah, for many long, painful years, was barren. In her culture, having children (especially sons) was a woman’s only public sign of worth.

Her husband didn’t understand, saying crap like “Why are you sad? Aren’t I better than having 10 sons?” He married again, probably so that he’d have children, and the second wife was cruel to Hannah. When Hannah went to Shiloh to pray for a child, she was so distraught than Eli, the high priest, thought she was drunk and yelled at her. Even here in an ancient text, we see men confused by emotions expressed by women and actively belittling their hopes and disappointments.

To Eli’s sort of credit, once Hannah told him she wasn’t drunk, just really upset and crying out to God—exactly what you’d expect to be happening in a place of worship, to be honest—he was like, “Sorry! I hope God gives you what you want.” And God did. God heard her and she became pregnant and gave birth to Samuel. When Samuel was still a boy, to fulfill her part of a deal she’d made with God, Hannah took her son to the temple to be raised by Eli in service of God. And then she had other children.

I’m thrilled for Hannah. She hurt, desperately, and had only shallow support around her as she struggled with this unmet desire. Eventually, she got what she wanted. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, our stories go more like Jehosheba’s.

Jehosheba was the sister of the king of Judah and had married the high priest (2 Kings 11). When her brother died unexpectedly, her mother took the throne, killing all her grandchildren who might be heirs. Except, Jehosheba hid one of her nephews, smuggled him out of the palace, and raised him in secret in the temple. When he was old enough, Jehosheba and her husband presented Joash to the people as the rightful king, overthrowing Jehosheba’s mother.

Jehosheba had no children. In her culture, she was considered worthless, unblessed by God. The only recorded marriage between a princess in the line of David and a high priest, and they had no children. And yet, Jehosheba saved the line of David. Through her own initiative and courage, she rescued and protected her nephew, the great-grandson of evil King Ahab. She raised him to know God, and Joash became a good king who led his country to followed the Lord. We can see how she preserved the monarchy and blessed the entire country for generations! But she never had children. She was always barren. She got to help raise her nephew, but she never had children herself. She didn’t get the thing she likely wanted just as desperately as Hannah.

Wanting to have children, though far from a universal desire, is a good one. So was David’s desire to build a temple in Jerusalem. But, David was told no. Jehosheba eventually realized, though we aren’t told of the moment, that she would never have children, either.

If you are like Hannah, and after a long time you are blessed with what you desire, I will rejoice with you!

If you are like Jehosheba, I will mourn the loss of that desire with you.

I will mourn until you know for sure which woman you are, but I will also ply you with truth. You have other desires. God hasn’t forgotten those. You’re doing good work. You aren’t worthless or a failure if your desire doesn’t come true when or how you hope, or at all.

Remember, friends, that like Hagar realized in the desert, God sees you. God hears your cries of pain, and God is far from indifferent to pain. Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died, even though Jesus was a few minutes away from bringing him back to life. Loss and pain are always sad, always hard. God understands that. God isn’t being cruel if God isn’t giving you what you want. God hears the crap other people tell you to try to placate you. God knows. God sees you.

You are not worthless. You are mighty. You are a child of God. You’re getting stuff done. You’re doing the work God has for you. I thank God for people like you!

Be Still and Know

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Recently, a favorite song has been The Fray’s “Be Still.”

It begins, “Be still and know that I’m with you. Be still and know that I am here,” seemingly referencing Psalm 46:10: Be still, and know that I am God. I’ve listened to this song dozens of times in the past month, often dozens of times a day, and find it playing in my head in quiet moments.

Mellow and emotive, the song carries the listener through a variety of situations, following these descriptions with the simple assurance of the speaker’s presence. In the second stanza, he also promises to “say your name”. Then, in the third, encourages the listening to “Remember all the words I said.”

The situations are moderated by either “when” or “if”. The two “when” instances are:
-“When darkness comes upon you and covers you with fear and shame”
-“And when you go through the valley and shadow comes down from the hill”.

These things will happen. “Darkness” and “the valley”—presumably of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4)—will enter our lives. We will feel “fear and shame” and “shadow.” We will be threatened by them. We will have to face them. And when we do, we should “Be still and know that I’m with you.” That exact phrasing is repeated four times, “Be still and know I am” twice, “Be still and know” twice, “Be still and know I’m here” once, “Be still” once. The effect is lullaby-like, as a parent soothing a crying child. The lyrics don’t make it clear whether the speaker is a parent, a friend, a lover, or God, but the words effuse safety, reassurance, and love.

Wisdom is also obvious in the inclusion of four “if” statements:
-“If terror falls upon your bed and sleep no longer comes”
-“If morning never comes to be”
-“If you forget the way to go and lose where you came from”
-“If no one is standing beside you.”

Extreme fear, despair, losing oneself, and feeling utterly alone may not ever happen to the listener, but if they do, the promise is the same: I’m with you. So are the instructions: be still and know.

Don’t lose faith, the lyrics seem to say. Don’t let the world or your feelings lie to you, telling you that you have no one. You will always have me. I will always be with you. Even if nightmares or fear of the future keep you awake at night, you will have these instructions to sustain you: “be still” and “know”.

The singer infuses his voice with simple, straightforward sincerity. His voice edges in pain when he sings of fear, death, and abandonment the listener may and will face. He does not want this person to suffer. He loves this person. He is devoted. And he has no qualms about how difficult and painful and mean and bitter the world can be. It will be painful; when. It may be horrible; if.

Depending on my mood and what else has happened in the day, I imagine a parent singing these words, a spouse, a sibling. I imagine myself as the singer or recipient of these promises. But most often, I listen like I do a psalm addressed from God to God’s creation (to me): be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I’m with you. Be still and know I am.

There is one more assurance I want to point out. After noting that darkness will come and fear and shame will be felt, after giving the “be still and know” instructions, the speaker sings, “And I will say your name.”

In the Bible, names describe a person’s essence, who they are in a real and important way. Every time a person experiences a name change—by choice or divine decree—they are saying their character is no longer the same. Jacob (thief) became Israel (wrestles with God). Naomi (pleasant) becomes Mara (bitter). Simon (he has heard) becomes Peter (rock). Saul (prayed for) becomes Paul (humble). That last one has the additional layer of a person known by a Hebrew name becoming known by a Latin one as his ministry transitions from focusing on reaching Jewish people to Gentile people.

Asking for things in prayer by “Jesus’ name” is doing as Jesus instructed: If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it (John 14:14). But with this understanding of the use of “name” in the Bible, we can see that praying in Jesus’ name can mean praying in accordance with Jesus’ character. For example, if you ask for healing, you are appealing to Christ as healer, knowing Christ did heal many and loves people, so it is in his character to heal.

When we look at the phrases around the one I just quoted, we see shades of this: “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” (John 14:13-14). For God’s glory, not our preferred baseball team or convenience in the carpool line, will God grant prayers. And neither did Jesus act or speak except to bring glory to God. That is very much in Christ’s character.

As is restraint. Jesus did not save himself. He may not save you or your loved one like you hope. Even calling on Christ to save a life or to protect from harm—though fulfilling these requests would be consistent with his character—does not guarantee that Jesus will actually intervene as you’ve asked. Scores of books and sermons have analyzed the meaning and ramifications of “that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). I am by no means equal to them, but can attest that it feels awfully selfish of God—or at least feels like cold abandonment—to not receive the healing or help in my situation that I know another person received in their situation.

The singer promising to speak the listener’s name is an intimate and powerful action. Through this biblical lens, “I will say your name” becomes “I will remind you who you are.” And that, at least for me, is powerful encouragement.