Adventures in the Word

How carefully the earth attends the sun.
It turns its oceans and its lands to face
the scorching heat of unrelenting day,
but finds relief in shades of dawns and dusks.
The spinning globe leans around the turn,
to try an escape but takes an elliptic plane
instead, the hidden rubber band constrains
it back, commissioned to retrace the seasons.

The orb’s countless glints of sapphire hang
above the hush of deepest velvet black.
White lace curtains drape and wrap around
the continental quakes and wars of men.
The longer view will always frame the facts.
The world’s worship is undeterred, to the end.

David Herin

O Lord, how awfully well You hide Your face
among a billion spiral galaxies,
and on seas of men, each face unique,
in endless woven words of the human race.
It must be Your eyes are shut in rage
on evening tides’ relentless waves,
or in the storm cloud’s strokes of lightening.
But can’t You make Your face more plain?

There must be places I forgot to check –
some say You wave at me with a palsied hand
or languish long in a death row cell,
or beg for a word of hope with Your dying breath –
Some see You sprawled beside a street vendor’s stand.
Perhaps You’re not so hidden after all.

David Herin

            spark
            A flint speaks
         and, from the dust,
      kindles, cradles
   infant fire, fragile.
            burn
            Finally, full logs lay
         clothed in flames,
      their fringes sway,
   and effortlessly
they fling gobs of light
and heat away.
            glow
            The wood wrinkles,
         weakens, softly crumbles
      into coals content
   to rest and pulse –
flame-wreathed,
underneath.
ash
Spent coals grow old
   and at last surrender,
      as finest silver.
         They stumble and fall
            but make their bed,
               and dream they fly away
                  in clouds of purest dust.
               And then they
            coalesce

David Herin

Ask. “Ask and it will be given to you . . . ” Asking is the simplest of prayers. It’s childlike, straightforward and simple. I think it corresponds to the faith of young believers, yet none of us will ever outgrow it. I remember Christian Chen saying, “We will all always be His little children.”

Seek. “ . . . seek and you will find . . . ” This injunction corresponds to our taking on some measure of responsibility. It could be anything – making a meal for someone, checking on a widow, writing a book, sharing with someone. Whatever it is, you take it upon yourself to do it. Large or small, you feel the burden to carry it out faithfully, diligently. This is middle-age faith, a faith that gets under the load and seeks to do something for God. And God promises to reward this kind of faith.

Knock. “ . . . knock and it will be opened to you.” We can understand the first two stages of faith. But how do we ‘outgrow’ what would appear to be the mature stage of faithful responsibility? I think with only a small amount of reflection, we can find the answer. What happens in the ‘golden’ years? We become more inactive, more dependent, more helpless. So knocking, I think, alludes to this helpless insistence, this powerless persistence. It’s a new kind of responsibility, a new kind of prayer.

And along with this helpless insistence, there is something else. I think it means, even though your life is at an end, you’re interceding for others. Remember, the friend who knocked on his neighbor’s door did it, not for himself, but for his friend who came at midnight.

But finally, I think knocking has to do with a focusing of our lives. And here’s where I’d like to spend some time. Whereas seeking involves a broadening, knocking forces us to stand and stay in one spot and give our attention to one thing.

I detect this in my own life. As a young man I searched in about any place I could for answers to life’s questions (and in places I should not have searched!) I read and read and naively thought the answers would be a whole lot simpler.

But I didn’t know what my calling really was. I got involved in a lot of things, ministries, people. Life basically became one big search. And in many ways the search was fruitful – I’ve found many things. I’ve found a wife, family, friends, truth, and even the Lord Himself. But I’ve also discovered that these things and the world are much bigger than I had imagined. Somewhere along the way, I had to concede that my search for the depths would never be over, and the last couple of years has been a struggle to accept that. I don’t want to accept it because it’s a dilemma between the hard stop of my own mortality and the fact that God and His universe are infinite. Of course I knew that, but what I didn’t know was just how little of it I would have to settle for.

It’s been somewhat of a scramble to decide how to narrow the search and what door I’ll end up knocking on. ‘Suddenly’ I have to decide what is most important out of so many things, all of which I find so interesting.

But as I talk about all this, you may be thinking – “But David, aren’t you reading a lot into this ask, seek, knock verse?” Maybe. Maybe I am superimposing my own experience on these few words, but I don’t think so. Somehow, I believe it does mean this and even more. Why? Because I’ve always found that about the Word. Just when I thought I had captured the whole meaning, I discover or hear something else. This phenomenon apparently corresponds to God Himself. On the one hand, He is so accessible in Jesus, yet, on the other hand, the depths of Him are not accessible at all and call us to live a life-long ‘mining operation.’ (Asking and seeking and finally knocking all continue in parallel.)

But isn’t this true about all of God’s Truth? For example, over the last hundred or so years, scientists have been forced to fragment themselves into a thousand disciplines to try to keep up with their burgeoning knowledge. Though their discoveries have grown exponentially, so has the amount of material to discover. (And so it’s likely the exponential growth of fragmentation will also continue, at least until it implodes.)

Anyway, as life goes on I feel this growing helplessness, this powerlessness, this narrowing, yet it’s comforting that I’m not alone and it’s all part of the Grand Plan. But I believe that it’s my persistence in knocking and thus overcoming the drag of cynicism that will ultimately cause the door to open. Maybe it’ll open slowly, maybe suddenly, but the truth is I can’t open it myself — only God can do that. It must be this irony of ‘powerless persistence’ that God will reward.

So I’ll keep knocking.

Consider:
edfa

Do you hear me knocking?
I’m knocking on your door.
It’s hung and nailed in tight to the wall,
and set on solid, hidden hinges,
daring, staring back at me,
to knock both long and loud.
Polished smooth, its panels proud,
standing straight, stoic, tall,
without a handle I can see.
Arms crossed, it blocks my way.
My jaw hangs limp, I can’t go on;
I’ve worn my knuckles raw.
Is this a trick or does he want
to show who’s really boss?
Who is it there | there on the other side?

I can’t be certain where it leads –
out far beyond the stratosphere,
or down a deep cellar stair,
to meet a man I’ve never seen.
I shrink from my significance.
But if you hear a longer pause –
even one that doesn’t stop –
could you leave the door ajar
for friends who get here later on?
Or could you even swing it wide?
Oh that would be the kindest gesture
of all. Still, I still will stand here.
Do you hear me knocking now?

David Herin

I’ve thought about this Scripture for years and somehow gathered that the “ask . . . seek . . . knock” phrase is some sort of progression. But beyond commonplaces like, ‘life gets difficult,’ or ‘try harder,’ I just couldn’t see it.

But recently, when I realized that it was Jesus Himself that was disguised as the Traveler in the three stories that led up to Him making this summation, things started to fall into place.

I think the simplest way to describe what I’m seeing is to draw it for you:

Notice how this is played out in the stories that Luke tells in Luke 10:25-41 thru Luke 11:8.

The Good Samaritan sees the wounded traveler – “And when he saw him, he had compassion.” It’s all very obvious and straightforward and one-sided and visual – he sees and has compassion. The Samaritan does everything and more for the traveler.

Mary hears – she “sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word”. Yes of course she sees Jesus too, but Luke underlines the word ‘heard.’ She takes responsibility to involve herself, seeking and no doubt asking direct questions of Jesus. The story is not one-sided, but two.

But the friend who knocks on his neighbor’s door neither sees nor hears the traveler. He feels responsible, but finds himself helpless. So he must resort to knocking on other doors. This story is opaque and triple-layered. It’s about persistence and finally breaking through. It combines responsibility with yet a helplessness to do anything out of our own resources.

This story happens where Jesus has been seen and heard (he comes at midnight into his home), but now he’s neither seen nor heard (he’s outside). Nevertheless he must convince his neighbor that he’s real. His neighbor is dependent on how faithful, convincing, passionate, and persistent his account is.

I think this is where I am and where we all will end up. It’s a difficult but a good place.

I’ll try to practically tie this together in my soon to be posted next post.

My moment on the stage is nearly done.
Other actors rise and wait in the wings;
I work to keep my voice from faltering.
I hope to exit long before my lines are gone,
for there I’d play the fool if I prolong
my role with nothing more to say or sing.
I cannot bear the lowered eyes of pitying,
as players thunder lines I might have done.

At most, one act is all we have to give,
one part, and only one soliloquy.
And what a tragedy to force a comic air
with motley costume colors, far too big –
to play the parts that others better speak.
How vain to seat myself in the director’s chair.

David Herin

Here’s a summary of a message I spoke last Sunday, May 10. It came to me in a whirlwind insight on Saturday night. It must have been God because I wasn’t looking for it and then suddenly it was there staring me in the face!
I love it when that happens.

Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. — Matt 25:40

See: Luke 10:25-42; Luke 11:5-8

A sequence of three stories in the Gospel of Luke that normally are told separately, actually are linked by a common thread. In each story, Jesus is ‘disguised’ as an inconvenient traveler who, it is assumed, can be safely ignored. Yet one person in each of the stories, sees the value of the traveler.

There’s actually another part of this message that I’ll post later that relates to the familiar verse: “Ask . . . seek . . . knock.” Luke 11:11.

The Good Samaritan. Usually the highlight of this story is on the Samaritan who has mercy on the abducted traveler to Jericho. But the story is just as much about how easily it is to ignore this traveler. The Levite and the Priest both clearly see the victim, just barely alive, but both “pass by on the other side.” They clearly have more important things to do.

Mary and Martha. This story usually becomes a comparison between Mary and Martha and the Marthas among us consequently tend to get a spiritual inferiority complex. But this is really about the same general theme as the story of The Good Samaritan. Although Martha welcomes the traveler Jesus into her home, after that, she basically ignores Him and is “worried and troubled about many things.” This, all the while Mary . . . sits at Jesus’ feet and hears His word – seeking something she knows she’ll only get through Jesus. Meanwhile, Martha assumes that it’s business as usual and treats Jesus as she would have any other guest. But clearly Jesus is no ordinary guest.

Unexpected Midnight Traveler. Finally, this story is also about overcoming our inertia. The friend who’s been “dropped in on” urgently goes to his neighbor friend to ask for bread for the weary traveler. But it’s late and he’s cozy with his kids in bed and doesn’t want to get up. However, the friend prevails on him and persuades him by his persistent knocking.

The Priest, the Levite, Martha, and the Friend in bed all tended to see the disguised Jesus as an inconvenient distraction. Jesus often comes to us concealed in a way that we’re not expecting him: He is in the hurting, the careless, the ordinary, the inconsiderate, the inconvenient. Often Jesus wants us to stop what we’re doing and ‘turn aside’ and encounter Him in what appears to be the everyday ordinariness. If we do, we may find that Jesus is in more places than we had expected.

Our van is finally quiet. I drive
the miles on I-44 with my wife and crew.
They doze on pillows with hair askew,
and twilight filters through and teases their eyes —
all the while I deftly steer and glide
around the snares that one by one ensue.
My nerves advise to grip the wheel like glue.
I mustn’t fail to check the spot where I’m blind.
I try and trace each car’s projected flow,
my mind keeps trailing off into a haze.
Somehow I hold a cautious calm amid the storm —
then I see each face in softened light composed,
arranged within my rearview mirror frame.
I linger way too long on this — my bless’d reward.

David Herin