Monday, July 27, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
from danger to danger
One of the purest joys in my life is the act of preaching. In particular, this joy is the product of moments of unexpected creativity. In the flow of retelling a Bible story, words find me, flashing across my mind seconds before they leave my mouth.
Several weeks ago, I was taking my time in preaching the story of Moses. I came to the part in the story in which Moses' mother places him in a basket in the river in order to hide him from Pharaoh's campaign of slaughter of Hebrew boys (Ex. 1-2). In the concern of making the story exceedingly clear for my audience, I realized that it didn't make sense for me: why exactly would a mother think that putting her baby in a river, however pitched the basket and however watched by the baby's sister, is a situation more conducive to the child's survival than hiding him away in a house somewhere? Feeling my way through this dilemma, I suggested that the river was surely infested with hungry crocodiles. Then another scripture came to mind. In response to evildoers who proclaimed the coming of "the Day of the Lord", the prophet Amos had declared that "Day" not light but darkness. It was to be a day of judgment, and not one in which the perpetrators of justice would find comfort. Amos likened it to someone "who fled from a lion and was met by a bear", or "rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake" (Amos 5:18-20). Taking up the imagery, I suggested that Moses adrift on the Nile was akin to going "from danger to danger."
From danger to danger. It was simply a phrase coined to find a way through a telling on my way to a broader point. It was, in the end, the phrase that one listener had filed in his memory bank, the phrase which he recounted to me weeks later upon our next meeting; the phrase had gone with him as the presence of God for weeks and weeks.
Why? I wondered. I do not know exactly, but I suspect that it has something to do with the reality that this brother's life is a going about "from danger to danger." A tempestuous marriage. A physically abusive wife (yes, contrary to the dominant pattern in South Africa, the domestic abuse in this situation runs the opposite way and, by the way, the wife is much bigger than the husband). Sporadic "piece" jobs. Wandering through town, dependent upon the generosity of acquaintances to provide for daily bread. Scrapping to pay school fees for four children.
If his life is not danger to danger, it is hardship to hardship, stress to stress, insecurity to insecurity.
"How are things?" I ask my friend. "It is better to have hope than not to have hope," he replies, reduced to one of the "three things that will remain" (1 Cor. 13:13).
"God is taking us somewhere", he also testifies to me. For my friend perceives that "from danger to danger" has a flip-side. The weight of suffering now is preparing him for "an eternal weight of glory", a "yoke that is easy and a burden that is light" (2 Cor. 4:17; Mt. 11:30).
"From danger to danger" is one side; "from glory to glory" is the other (2 Cor. 3:18).
-Joe
Several weeks ago, I was taking my time in preaching the story of Moses. I came to the part in the story in which Moses' mother places him in a basket in the river in order to hide him from Pharaoh's campaign of slaughter of Hebrew boys (Ex. 1-2). In the concern of making the story exceedingly clear for my audience, I realized that it didn't make sense for me: why exactly would a mother think that putting her baby in a river, however pitched the basket and however watched by the baby's sister, is a situation more conducive to the child's survival than hiding him away in a house somewhere? Feeling my way through this dilemma, I suggested that the river was surely infested with hungry crocodiles. Then another scripture came to mind. In response to evildoers who proclaimed the coming of "the Day of the Lord", the prophet Amos had declared that "Day" not light but darkness. It was to be a day of judgment, and not one in which the perpetrators of justice would find comfort. Amos likened it to someone "who fled from a lion and was met by a bear", or "rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake" (Amos 5:18-20). Taking up the imagery, I suggested that Moses adrift on the Nile was akin to going "from danger to danger."
From danger to danger. It was simply a phrase coined to find a way through a telling on my way to a broader point. It was, in the end, the phrase that one listener had filed in his memory bank, the phrase which he recounted to me weeks later upon our next meeting; the phrase had gone with him as the presence of God for weeks and weeks.
Why? I wondered. I do not know exactly, but I suspect that it has something to do with the reality that this brother's life is a going about "from danger to danger." A tempestuous marriage. A physically abusive wife (yes, contrary to the dominant pattern in South Africa, the domestic abuse in this situation runs the opposite way and, by the way, the wife is much bigger than the husband). Sporadic "piece" jobs. Wandering through town, dependent upon the generosity of acquaintances to provide for daily bread. Scrapping to pay school fees for four children.
If his life is not danger to danger, it is hardship to hardship, stress to stress, insecurity to insecurity.
"How are things?" I ask my friend. "It is better to have hope than not to have hope," he replies, reduced to one of the "three things that will remain" (1 Cor. 13:13).
"God is taking us somewhere", he also testifies to me. For my friend perceives that "from danger to danger" has a flip-side. The weight of suffering now is preparing him for "an eternal weight of glory", a "yoke that is easy and a burden that is light" (2 Cor. 4:17; Mt. 11:30).
"From danger to danger" is one side; "from glory to glory" is the other (2 Cor. 3:18).
-Joe
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