Your Daily Miracle
When I came into Merry's room to kiss her goodnight last night, I found her laughing. She sat propped up, pillows behind her, wet hair combed neatly around her sweet face. A Bible lay open on her lap.
Wow. Flashback to my teenage years. I read the Bible dutifully every night of the week before bed and followed by 'study' by writing in my journal (mostly and almost entirely about boys, though I did scribble some very heartfelt, overwrought prayers). Mostly I read the Psalms, one a night, give or take. Sometimes it felt like a chore and sometimes it felt wonderful. The wonderful nights, I used a highlighter or pencil to outline all the good bits. You know, all the parts about God loving us and redeeming us and giving us feet like deer to climb mountains. And the parts about eagles and crags and "deep calls to deep." I highlighted almost all of Psalms that tells me God knows me fully, that there is nowhere I can go to escape God's love. My Bible is streaked with pink and green and pen marks. All the other parts--about enemies being slaughtered and crushed--remain unblemished to this day. When I read a Psalm out loud, I skip those parts. They make me feel deeply uncomfortable.
If I felt repulsed by and perhaps somewhat afraid of the vision of such a judgmental God, as a teenager I was not without judgment myself. I remember one night lying in bed, across the room from my visiting friend, M.L., who had told me once as we stood by the swings that she couldn't be a Christian because Christians didn't believe that dinosaurs ever existed. (I was unable to offer any insights to the contrary at that time.) Beyond that, her dad was a self-declared agnostic, she said "Oh, my God" at regular intervals and she had that poster of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on her bedroom wall--you know the one. Yeah. They're totally naked, cupping their members, looking out at you with surprised eyes.
I didn't know anyone like M.L.. I met and spoke to and lived with missionary kids like myself. In my high school, we felt the peer pressure to make good grades and pray well. M.L. was spunky, earthy, swear-y, most emphatically not religious. I had to be a good example to her. So sat in my bed, ostentatiously reading my Psalm for the night instead of chatting with her. In so many of my actions toward her, I emphasized again and again the rift between us. I showed her the judgmental God I so carefully avoided in all my highlighting. I even asked her to stop swearing around me because it offended me.
Now that I'm a mom of a teenager, I treasure the open spirituality that Merry has grown up with. I have never pretended to have answers to the unanswerables, but always held out the solid truths I treasure: God loves us, we are born for both joy and suffering, and God is with us in both. Everything we do contributes to the Kingdom, and nothing we offer into this good and hurting world is lost.
Merry believes in the God I've come to embrace as I get older and wiser and kinder: the God who places mercy and love before all others, who astonishes our small hearts with deep and everlasting compassion. I love that Merry read the Bible on her own, without our prodding or guilt-tripping. I love that she read all of the old testament because she wanted to, because she was curious. Yes, all of it. Even Numbers and Kings. She read me just part of the list of names and who begat who and who was more wicked than the last king, giggling the whole time. "I can't believe I read all of it," she said. "Wow, there are so many lists. And listen to this name: Tibni, the son of Ginath!" More giggles.
And she made it through the Old Testament without feeling that her belief in a good and loving God was shattered. I always felt threatened by the actions of God in the OT until I began to understand culture, history, point-of-view, and literature in college. Then I began to understand the complexity of texts. Merry already gets that, and she's a much better reader than I ever was. Still, I felt as though I wanted to shelter her from the violent visions of God in the Psalms.
So when I walked into her room, I was surprised to see her reading Psalms and laughing her head off. "Listen to this! It says her that God's going to come down and knock these guys' teeth out! Wow, that's crazy, right? I thought I'd read one Psalm a night, at least twice and really try to understand it and think about it. And then I read this:
You shall break them with a rod of iron,
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Wow. Flashback to my teenage years. I read the Bible dutifully every night of the week before bed and followed by 'study' by writing in my journal (mostly and almost entirely about boys, though I did scribble some very heartfelt, overwrought prayers). Mostly I read the Psalms, one a night, give or take. Sometimes it felt like a chore and sometimes it felt wonderful. The wonderful nights, I used a highlighter or pencil to outline all the good bits. You know, all the parts about God loving us and redeeming us and giving us feet like deer to climb mountains. And the parts about eagles and crags and "deep calls to deep." I highlighted almost all of Psalms that tells me God knows me fully, that there is nowhere I can go to escape God's love. My Bible is streaked with pink and green and pen marks. All the other parts--about enemies being slaughtered and crushed--remain unblemished to this day. When I read a Psalm out loud, I skip those parts. They make me feel deeply uncomfortable.
If I felt repulsed by and perhaps somewhat afraid of the vision of such a judgmental God, as a teenager I was not without judgment myself. I remember one night lying in bed, across the room from my visiting friend, M.L., who had told me once as we stood by the swings that she couldn't be a Christian because Christians didn't believe that dinosaurs ever existed. (I was unable to offer any insights to the contrary at that time.) Beyond that, her dad was a self-declared agnostic, she said "Oh, my God" at regular intervals and she had that poster of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on her bedroom wall--you know the one. Yeah. They're totally naked, cupping their members, looking out at you with surprised eyes.
I didn't know anyone like M.L.. I met and spoke to and lived with missionary kids like myself. In my high school, we felt the peer pressure to make good grades and pray well. M.L. was spunky, earthy, swear-y, most emphatically not religious. I had to be a good example to her. So sat in my bed, ostentatiously reading my Psalm for the night instead of chatting with her. In so many of my actions toward her, I emphasized again and again the rift between us. I showed her the judgmental God I so carefully avoided in all my highlighting. I even asked her to stop swearing around me because it offended me.
Now that I'm a mom of a teenager, I treasure the open spirituality that Merry has grown up with. I have never pretended to have answers to the unanswerables, but always held out the solid truths I treasure: God loves us, we are born for both joy and suffering, and God is with us in both. Everything we do contributes to the Kingdom, and nothing we offer into this good and hurting world is lost.
 |
| Merry many, many years ago |
Merry believes in the God I've come to embrace as I get older and wiser and kinder: the God who places mercy and love before all others, who astonishes our small hearts with deep and everlasting compassion. I love that Merry read the Bible on her own, without our prodding or guilt-tripping. I love that she read all of the old testament because she wanted to, because she was curious. Yes, all of it. Even Numbers and Kings. She read me just part of the list of names and who begat who and who was more wicked than the last king, giggling the whole time. "I can't believe I read all of it," she said. "Wow, there are so many lists. And listen to this name: Tibni, the son of Ginath!" More giggles.
 |
| Merry now |
And she made it through the Old Testament without feeling that her belief in a good and loving God was shattered. I always felt threatened by the actions of God in the OT until I began to understand culture, history, point-of-view, and literature in college. Then I began to understand the complexity of texts. Merry already gets that, and she's a much better reader than I ever was. Still, I felt as though I wanted to shelter her from the violent visions of God in the Psalms.
So when I walked into her room, I was surprised to see her reading Psalms and laughing her head off. "Listen to this! It says her that God's going to come down and knock these guys' teeth out! Wow, that's crazy, right? I thought I'd read one Psalm a night, at least twice and really try to understand it and think about it. And then I read this:
You shall break them with a rod of iron,
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
with trembling 12 kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
with trembling 12 kiss his feet,
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Happy are all who take refuge in him."
Man, the guy who is writing this is really angry, isn't he? He's like, 'Whack my enemies with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces.' Then he always says, God is so good." She was just laughing it up. I felt a little worried, but she said, "You know, back in that time people understood gods differently. Like the Greeks--their gods were horrible. At least this God isn't chaining anyone to a rock and sending a bird to pick out the guy's liver night after night."
We talked for a while, about how the Psalms gives us all permission to talk to God any way we want. God can take our anger, our judgment, our longing for justice. And at the end, God is good. All these years and I still believe that with all my soul. Instead of burying our noses in the parts of God that feel safe and self-affirming, we must look up, reach across the ridges of judgment that separate us from others. We must listen. We must learn to see the light of God in others, and honor it. I could have done that all those years ago with my friend, M.L. But it took some years for me to understand how to truly step into the experience of others.
God is good. And I know my daughters know that, too. We've been through some hard things together, and Merry especially has grappled with the darkness that has come our way. Her spirit inspires me. Her lightness of heart, her willingness to laugh and talk openly, to cry, to articulate every good and hard thing that comes her way. Just like the writer of the Psalms.
Comments