Psalm 23 -- look again

First of all, it's been...a minute since I was able to get a post up here...  And that after I thought I'd get all kinds of things up this year and go way over my minimum-one-per-month goal...  Ah well.  Something's going up now!

And this is a bit of a random thought, but bear with me.  So about things we've heard a time or two, and don't really get excited about anymore.

I know it can be dreadfully easy, when something is as familiar as the 23rd Psalm is, for me to blow past it when I come across it or think about it, even if I give it an appreciative nod as it passes.  I'd guess it's the same for you.  An "ah yes, very good and all that. Frightfully deep, I'm sure" just doesn't cut it when it comes to important things.  Like Scripture.

I'd also guess that, like me, you don't want that to be the case.  I don't want to treat any part of the Word of the Lord like just another slogan I see all the time on an ad I can't even remember from somewhere.  But to get my mind past the obvious, past the familiar just because it's not completely new to me, I need to treat it like it is; "living and active".  Sometimes like a code to be cracked.

The primary way I try to listen for new things in a verse or passage, is to read it about three or four times in a row, and usually out loud at least once.  Trying to actively read it with different emphasis on different words and phrases each time. ...Like you might see in one of those random sentences in something about English grammar, where putting the emphasis on each word in turn changes the meaning of the sentence greatly, like:

She told him only that she loved him.

She told him only that...

She told him only that...

She told him only that...

And so on.  But with Scripture, I'm trying to actually spend some time on it; to see what I'm missing by reading it exactly the same way every time.  This is where reading it aloud (or at a whisper to yourself, even) is really impactful.  Because hearing something in your head and hearing it aloud (or a-whisper, if you like) are not at all the same thing.  When you hear it spoken (and really try to be listening and thinking), different things stand out that you hadn't noticed before.  Go figure; there's a reason so many writers read their own work aloud at some point -- to hear with the ear what the eye picks up in an entirely separate way.

Another way that works wonderfully, is memorizing a passage and spending multiple days re-reading, re-saying, and concentrating on the same portion of Scripture to hear new things.  It's like letting the words maradade in your mind for a long time, and then realizing that you've been missing something important and powerful all along.  Like when you drive down that one street you travel all the time, but notice some random detail and spend the rest of the day wondering if it's always been there and you just never took note of it, or if somebody just put it there overnight.

And a third way I try to do this (the one I was getting to with this post), is trying to re-word and expand the passage in my own phrasing, on paper or out loud, while working very hard to not change any intent of the original wording, but just expound on what's written there to help me better soak it in.

 This one isn't easy, and I don't really do it unless I've done one of the other things above at least a few times with the same section.  I'm not at all wanting to re-interpret what's there, and I'm not wanting to push any of what I might want the passage to say into my exposition; I'm just trying to spread out all the details, and take away familiar words and phrasing that my mind is glazing over, and replace them with the same thing in different words, so the weight of the sentences can get to me again.

I've been doing this with Psalm 23 a couple times recently, and wanted to share it in case it can get you thinking.  I was trying to say it differently this time than the previous attempt I made.  See what stands out to you between the two; the actual Scripture, and my prose-version.

Psalm 23  (ESV)

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

 

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. 

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 

 

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 

 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

—Expounded Psalm 23—

  The Lord is my Shepherd, the Keeper of my life — I will not be left wanting for what I need.  He brings me to good, green places where I can lie down safely, He leads me along cool waters to quench my thirst.  He revives my soul within me when I am weary. 

He leads me in the right paths because He cares for me and upholds His promises.  Yes, even when I walk through the valley thick with death on every side, I will fear nothing, for He will be right beside me; with His rod and staff to guide me and protect me, I am comforted in His care. 

He lays out a banquet table before me even there, in the presence of any who would be my enemies. He anoints my head with precious oil to signify His call on my life before their eyes.  My cup pours over its brim with all the blessing He gives. 

I see that surely I will have His goodness and unending mercy rising up behind me every day of my life, and now and forevermore I will dwell safely in the house of the Lord Himself, through into eternity.

What do you use to try to see familiar Scripture or familiar Bible stories in new light?  Did anything jump out at you or slow you down to listen to something more closely?

I hope this is encouraging or helpful in some way -- I know I wish I'd learned these things long before my teen years, so I wouldn't have felt like I didn't know how to do my own personal Bible study until I was well into my twenties.  But I'm thankful to know it now.  And to keep finding new treasures when I'm digging deep into places that might otherwise seem so ordinary to my distracted eyes.

(Pictures and thoughts are my own.  Please do not use without permission.)

‘The Chosen’ Season 2 begins

   Well wow, ‘The Chosen’ has seriously hit the ground running, releasing several episodes from Season 2 just weeks after wrapping filming in January(!!).  Incredible (and incredibly unheard of) speed!

  I honestly don’t want to say too terribly much, seeing how quick people already are to enormously over-analyze every last little thing in this show...  (which, ahem, they’d never do with another show... so, umm, stop that. :P)  But I thought I’d just highlight a few things I’ve really appreciated/loved/am excited about/etc.

  First off, that Dallas Jenkins and his co-writers haven’t hesitated in giving the audience what we need to see, not just exactly what we expect or think we want.

  #GetUsedToDifferent is exactly right; be prepared to hold your presuppositions loosely, and to reread the Gospels (and all of Scripture) over and over again, as we already should have been doing all along.  Things you would have sworn were one way or were said this or that way, actually weren’t, and incredible things you may not remember, or missed when they were said as an aside to a bigger event, actually WERE there, not even made up for the show.  Beautiful.

  Now yes, it is absolutely ture that things have been expanded, and backstories we don’t get to see in Scripture have been created, but they have been built, as Dallas has stated numerous times, out of what IS plausible, not out of thin air.
  Which is absolutely the best way to retell history: truthfully and honestly retell what IS there, and when adding anything, be sure it’s plausible, consistent, and doesn’t undermine what is actual history, while enriching what we’ve heard before and become jaded to.


  That brings me to a second thing I appreciate more than I know how to say.  Going with what’s consistent and probable and grounded in the grit of history, not keeping everything behind stained-glass and hung up high, out of reach, in the dimly-lit rafters, in an effort to somehow “preserve” what God has done in a way that feels unsoiled and “holy enough” to us.

  Our God is great enough to take care of that for Himself.  And He proved that He is unthreatened by our dirt, in exactly what The Chosen is about; God becoming Man, to “wrap our injured flesh around [Him], breathe our air and walk our dust”, as the familiar Christmas carol says it.  His becoming a Man, a man who got hungry, got tired, had sore muscles and injuries before the Cross ever happened, and living among broken, rough-around-the-edges disciples, from every background and trade, with all kinds of shortcomings and struggles...  None of that was clean, or necessarily seemed holy or great, or would sadly even be “good enough” to belong in most of our churches today.
  It was all very unceremonious.  All very dusty.  All fairly clumsy and ugly for our human sensibilities — but in reality, more beautiful and humble than we can fully grasp.

  This is is where I see really strange reactions to ‘The Chosen’ all over the place from people.  Lots of “Jesus wouldn’t do/say that”, or “you shouldn’t have the disciples act like this or that”, etc. etc.

  Yes, of course if what someone is objecting to goes against what is really in Scripture (not just what they learned from tradition or what they personally like to think), then well and good.  That should be corrected.  But I have yet to see even ONE of these comments that falls into that vein.
  Those objections appear out of people reacting to what doesn’t sit right with their preconceived ideas or understandings, or doesn’t feel “holy enough” for them.  How sad this is!  And what a misunderstanding of holiness.  If we insist on things looking and feeling clean and properly covered in hallowed stained-glass, and out of reach of grimy human hands, we miss out on so much of the shocking grandeur of what our truly Holy and perfect God actually did.  Stooping down to meet us on our level, and pulling us “out of the miry pit” the Psalmest described.  Walking the dirt in the hot sun, because He loves us.


  Well, ‘The Chosen’ is paying close attention to that, and showing clearly the state Jesus finds us in without the rose-colored glasses.

  It’s marvelous, respectful of Scripture, and honest.  And some people are certainly finding it difficult to see, which isn’t directly a bad thing — very like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day.  Some of them just couldn’t stand to think that God would “soil his hands” with the likes of this broken soul or that one.  But some, like Nicodemus, wrestled with what they saw and heard, and believed God was who He said, and then the scales fell off so they could see Him in the flesh.
  I definitely believe ‘The Chosen’ is helping us to see Him like that more clearly.  It’s been interesting to see how few people have ever thought about things like Jesus getting tired in His human body just like we do...but by the reactions from so many on the end of Se.2 Episode 3, it’s clearly a new concept for the majority of Christians, at least in America.  That has been somewhat of a surprise.  Books like John Eldridge’s ‘Beautiful Outlaw’ also speak to this topic beautifully.

  The third thing I’m really loving about ‘The Chosen’ is the fact that in using great storytelling and withholding some information until the last moment, till you actually need to know it, they are actively retraining us as the audience to think for ourselves, to be patient as things unfold, and not to expect things to be handed to us on a silver platter, with the explanation highlighted in red and spelled out for us.  We’ve lost so much critical thinking skill, so much imagination in the last many years; this retraining is so fantastic for entertainment as a whole.

  But it's also important for our understanding of events and people and struggles in Scripture itself.   It’s far too easy at this point to just be frustrated or confused with, or even disparaging of, the people we read about in in the pages of the Bible (or even general world history), because we have so much more finished Scripture than they ever had.  We know how Jesus’s time on earth would play out.  We know the ending and the Resurrection.  The Disciples had no idea.  When Jesus taught, and walked and lived life with them, they had to dig deep and really chew on the things Jesus said; no one had ever (or has ever since) spoken the way He did.
  So we get to experience it at the speed through which the disciples are living it; wondering what on earth Jesus could possibly be up to.  What an incredible perspective, an incredible view to get a peek from.  One of our pastors said the same kind of thing this past Sunday:

“Think about it — you know more about God’s character today

than Abraham ever knew. And yet, he believed God,

and so it was credited to his as righteousness.”

  That really reminds me of this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson,

‘All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator

for all I have not seen.’

  And lastly for now, a brief appreciation gush for Season 2’s Episode 2.

  Oh. my. goodness. me.  I needed this episode, and all the cool water it brought to my soul.  This quickly became my favorite episode, and some of the deepest encouragement I’ve heard...I think ever.  So much happened in this episode.  So much was hilarious, so much was weighty food for thought, and so much was said, unsaid, and shown about trusting God’s heart.  I’m afraid to give anything away by saying too much...but it was my favorite. I needed it. And I’m so thankful for it.

  So wrapping up for now...  If you haven’t yet gotten in ‘The Chosen’ boat, what are you waiting for??  #ComeAndSee  #TheChosenSeason2

'Grant Me Peace'

  It has been one looooong chunk of time since I've shared one of these.  This (very freeform) poem, heavily inspired by Scripture, came out of all the insanity, uncertainty, and anxiety we have all been dealing with this past year.  My heart was heavy and anxiously needing joy when I started it, and much, much more hopeful and...maybe quiet... when I was finishing it.

  As per usual with this for me, I feel like I'll probably do some adjusting and smoothing on it in the future, but I'm just going to share it now as it is.

'Grant Me Peace'

Bree M. M. -- written 12/2/20, 1/3/21, 3/31/21

  Restorer of my soul,

O Lord, grant me peace,

that I may shelter in You.

O Lord, grant me joy,

that I made dance up on the mountains.

  I will not be afraid, though I find

that I am fearful… But I know the One in Whom I have trusted.

  I am anxious—

Hide me under Your wings,

oh my only steadfast Safety!

Grant for me that peace You promise 

to those You love.

  In Your walls, I cannot 

be shaken;

and will never want for hope. 

You are not surprised

or made anxious. 

  You treasure my every moment,

and fill me with Your own Spirit. 

and with life. 

  Be my Fount of every blessing,

O Healer 

of my heart.  You have never 

been far from me, O my Comfort,

the Voice of my song in the night. 

  What shall you fear, O my soul,

walking beside Him

who sees the end from the beginning?

  My trust, my hope

shall be in Him,

who alone is my Deliverer. 

  And He who watches over Israel

-and over me-

neither slumbers, nor sleeps. 

~     ~     ~

The Lord is my light and my salvation-- whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the stronghold of my life-- of whom shall I be afraid?

...Hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me

and answer me.  My heart says of You, "Seek His face!"

Your face, Lord, I will seek.

Psalm 27:1,7-8

(Poem, picture, and thoughts are my own -- please do not share without permission.)

N.D. Wilson, on Stories as food for souls

  So many things have happened over the last months.  I hope to write out some reflection of it in how I’ve been thinking of the situations, of the season I've just come out of...but that’s going to take some time.

  Right now I wanted to share something that deeply watered my soul today.  Something that was talking about the fact that our souls need food just the same as our bodies do, or they’ll starve. 

  I listened to the inaugural podcast in a new series just today, and oh my GOODNESS.  I just about cried and shouted hallelujah.  I don’t know if it would mean nearly as much to you as it did to me, (and I hope it’ll stay up on the platform a long, long time so you can at least listen!), but there’s so much meaty TRUTH in it for absolutely anyone to glean from. 

Here’s the link to the inaugural episode of the 

      Stories Are Soul Food podcast, Episode 1 

                                               with Brian Cole and N.D. Wilson

  I wish I could find the words to summarize all of what was said, and just gush over all that I appreciated, how each bit encouraged me, how I’ve tried to express it in the past, and on and on and.....  But I’m still thrilling over how much it encourages me, and I just done feel like I have the words.  Plus, it meant what I needed and what I’ve spent so many years mulling over, so maybe I could touch that and explain a bit... but I’m not sure I could ever really pin it all down in even a series of posts. 

  So I'll just say that it felt like all the difficult gardening of convictions and understanding I’ve been building since I started writing stories back in my early teens, all the conversations I’ve had with people over the years, all the storytelling worldview I’ve come to and shared with others, all the ways the uses the storyteller in me throughout my life.....was all just said so beautifully in this episode. 

It was like someone just opened a window that has been stuck shut, and the air  really /is/ fresh and wild, the sky really /is/ blue, and the trees really /are/ tall and varied and green like I knew they just had to be. 

  I’m so excited and thankful for more of this podcast to come. 

  And follow it up with a couple quotes from the podcast;

“Souls need food.  Imaginations need food.  Especially young ones.”

~~~~~

“Any human, and any child, is going to eat.  And they are going to eat with their imaginations as well as with their bodies.  Or they’re going to cease to be.  If you don’t feed your kids, they stop being your children; they stop being, period.  But the same thing exists with their imaginations, with their souls; you HAVE to tell them stories.  If you don’t, someone will.  They’re going to feed somewhere. 

...They’re going to consume whatever they find.  ...They just are an indiscriminate vacuum cleaner.  ...They’re looking for food; they’re looking for food that challenges their imaginations. That shapes and molds their imaginations.  ...They WILL be filled [from somewhere].”

~~~~~

“Christians shouldn’t be the sort of people to just open any book or go into any theater and just settle down and go, ‘Oooo, I love it.’  That’s not really our attitude. ...[So] what is our attitude when we approach a new book? ...How does one go about culturing our palate?”

~~~~~

“We understand this when it comes to other things.  So if somebody told you, ‘I love food. I love ALL food.’  And you said, ‘Well, I’ve got this lousy 3-year-old TV dinner’, and they’re like, ‘HIT me; I love it! As long as I’m eating, as long as I’m putting stuff in my mouth, I’m happy.’  We all know to be deeply concerned. 

...But if somebody says, ‘I love reading’, those alarms don’t go off.  We don’t wait and say, ‘Reading what?’ before we pass judgment. 

...So, as we try to develop palates, we have to realize that it’s going to ruin a lot of stuff for you.  And so, the reason that parents and readers don’t do this a lot is, it takes the buzz away.  Because you have to stop being an alcoholic and start actually being a connoisseur. You have to start tasting and seeing, then passing judgment on stuff. 

So if you’re just, ‘I love reading’ or ‘my kids will engulf any stuff...ever’, that’s a problem.  You have to train them to throw a book away.  You have to stop reading, show them where the breaks are; teach them how to throw a book across the room. 

And also to say ‘Why?’  As they’re reading, they have to be thinking to themselves, ‘What is this saying? What is this doing to me? What is this food doing to my imagination? Where is it taking me? And is it true, good, and beautiful?’  And if not, spit it out, stop now.”

~~~~~

Living in the City of Ember

The prudent sees danger and hides himself,

but the simple go on and suffer for it. 

                                            Proverbs 27:12 

“The other night

I had a dream;

It was a world full of kings and queens

But it was cold,

Dark as the night;

We were the fire on the moonlit skies.

We weren't divided,

We were the same,

And we were free

But we all wore chains.

We couldn't see it,

But we created

A place between truth and overrated.

If I could just see it all

Just like a fly on the wall

Would I be able to accept what I can't control?

And would I share what I saw?

Or just sit back and ignore
Like nothing ever happened...

"...We had a plan to build a wall;

A great divide that would never fall,

To separate us

From all the pain,

And keep our skeletons locked away.

And brick by brick

We built it so thick

That it blacked out the sky and all the sunlight,

And one by one

We all became numb —

We were making the bullets to a broken gun.

If I could just see it all,

Just like a fly on the wall,

Would I be able to accept what I can't control?

And would I share what I saw?

Or just sit back and ignore,

Like nothing never happened,

And I haven't seen you before?

I'm on the run from a thief

I let into my head. 

...I don't think I need you anymore;

Take your words, and your lies and just beat it.

...I wanna live, I wanna be the change;

We can all be kings and queens

If we can just learn to believe,

If we can just learn to believe."

                                (‘Fly On The Wall’ — Thousand Foot Krutch)

  Years ago, a dear friend of mine introduced me to the movie City of Ember.  I did remember seeing the trailer for it way back when one of the Narnia movies was coming out, but the trailer wasn’t super fantastic...and I honestly didn’t care much about anything but watching my all-time favorite books coming to life on screen, however imperfectly, so I wasn’t paying much attention to any trailers. Ha.

  But once this friend shared the movie with me, I was attached.  This has seriously become one of my favorite movies ever.  I love the action adventure aspect, the costume and set design, the filming style, the fact that the filmmakers didn't turn the friendship of the main characters into a romance (whew!), the storyline, the soundtrack (which I weirdly love to listen to on repeat while gardening...), the adorable giant moth, that ending couple of sequences, the decrepit instruction sheet at the interlocking clear Generator key pieces...
  I wrote a quick post about it some years ago that you can find HERE.  (...please pardon the pictures that have disappeared... I need to go back and fix those...in all my spare time. Ha ha.)

  Well, as you're probably all aware, earlier this year, the world went...a lot more crazy than it already is.  And you probably thought, like I did, that as crazy as it was, we'd still be well past all of it in a month or two.  And...umm... Nope.  And so I'm guessing that you've been doing a lot of thinking and even more praying during these months, like I have.

  I'm not a dystopian fiction person, and I seriously dislike when people take whatever is currently beating down on the world and spin a doom-and-gloom, end-of-the-world tale of fear out of it.  Honestly, we can't even presume to say that it's "never been this bad before"; I mean really, remember the description of the days of Noah, when "the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5)?!  Yeah, mankind is always sinning and finding ways to turn from our Creator, but we can't be making crazy claims like that.  It may be the worst you've seen in your lifetime, and we absolutely DO need to get on our knees and repent and help our generations clean our hearts, but beyond that is God's call.  ...And that's really a thought process to follow for another time.

  All that said, I do believe that fiction (along with history itself) is one of the strongest methods of warning, with the most impactful wakeup calls available to us.

  Lately it’s been striking to me how very much living in our world looks unsettlingly like the way the City of Ember functions.  Organized to a fault, fearful, insisting that the state alone knows best, foolishly leaning on and looking for long-lost human pillars of society to save us from a fundamentally broken world, and from ourselves.
  Just think about that Pledge the school children in Ember recite by heart day in and day out:

"...Beyond Ember, the Darkness goes on forever in all directions.  

Ours is the only light in a dark world."

  How paralyzing that kind of fear-planting thought is! (and how close to "ours is the only light" is that terrible new age advice we hear all the time: "seek truth/wisdom inside yourself"...)

  Ember is waiting, half in the dark, for the clock to wind down.  Branding the only ones brave enough to venture out and take risks as “crazy”, labeling them the “rebels” and “zealots” and “lawbreakers” (inventing or twisting laws as they need to prove it) for acknowledging that human wisdom can only go so far, and that we have to find the way Out in order to live.  While we let the real troublemakers roam free, skulking in shadows, stealing and back-scratching for the elite who pretend to share and understand the plight of the common man. 

  Frequently it’s only the youth who take the chance on getting Out...with desperate hope of Somewhere better; uncommon wisdom and faith planted deep in young souls by parents and mentors, who've hinted and encourage them to find the Instructions and understand them for themselves.  And then to use them. 

  In our world, the way Out is very, very real and more than assured — provided we follow the Instructions and don’t presume to know better.  Jesus has provided us an actual, Forever-Exit from the once beautiful City of Ember that’s crumbling around us. 

  But we usually show masterful skill at ignorance instead — keeping our heads down and doing just the opposite.  Wearing our thousandth-time-patched threadbare clothes, trying to be important and to gain a few pitiful, desperately old and rusted cans of things we’ve never tasted to hoard a little comfort for ourselves.  What a sorry picture we make. 

  Let's watch or re-watch this insightful adventure story again, friends.  Yes, it's fiction.  But that just means it has a very real chance of sneaking past our blind spots and hardened corners in our hearts, and really telling us something.
  Then let's be sure we're spending real time in the Instructions (and really, the Love letter) we've been given by our very real Exit; let the Word of God prove that it so truly is "living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword" (Hebrews 4:12).

  We have answers.  And that nagging in our hearts is right; there IS something out there, something much greater than "Darkness [that] goes on forever in all directions".

  We escape to the sunrise, to the air and the light in the end, if we follow the Instructions.
  If we remember the Signs and do them in order.
  If we wake up that something Took-ish inside us, and push through the adventure.
  There's been a great Lion alongside us always, that half the time we do not remember, or see, or that we often fear.  But He's been between us and the edge the whole time.

  Here we follow what's been laid out for us, we push on and don't get distracted by trying to be comfortable in the crumbling City of Ember we were always meant to leave.  And then at the end, we come out into Sunrise, and actual Life in Eternity.  Not fear.  Enormous Hope.

“O the sweet air of Narnia!  

An hour's life there is better than a thousand years in Calorman.”

                                         (—C.S. Lewis, ‘The Horse and His Boy’)

(pictures and quotes always belong to their original owners.  They are only here to inspire.  All other thoughts are my own.)