WRITING PEOPLE ~ 3/11/10

I’ve been reading a book lately about how to write. Hey, it could be worse; I could be writing a book on how to read. Anyway, there was this chapter about character development that talked about how the direction a story takes is markedly affected by the development of the characters in the story. The author said that the more time the writer spends with his or her characters, the more he’ll get to know them, laugh at them, understand them, love them. When you ‘write people,’ when you develop the characters in your story, you’re actually forming a relationship, you’re bonding— with an imaginary person. And the degree to which you understand your characters often determines the quality of your story.

The author said lots of interesting things about these little people you’re creating. Like how protecting them from hard stuff, or how not pushing them out of their comfort zones, how not exploring their backgrounds, how all of this stuff will not only make for an incredibly boring story, but will also keep you and the rest of your readers from a potentially satisfying and life-changing relationship. Fascinating.

Then the thought came to me in the shower this morning (as odd thoughts often do)—the same principles apply to real people. The difference is, I’m not making them up; they’re flesh and blood, walking around me every day. The eerie similarity is that each of us, often unknowingly, act as goddish demi-authors all the time, because we’re the ones who get to choose how much we’re going to poke and prod and push and understand the other characters in our life story. At home, we interact with characters. At work, other characters, church—more characters. They’re human beings, but in a very real sense they’re also characters in a Story, moving on and off the landscape of what most of us ego-centric people consider the stage of our lives. The sun is revolving around us, it rises and sets around us. In this universe of ours, other people move out of the shadows as we approach and recede into darkness as we pass. How well do we know them? It’s startling to realize that’s mostly up to you.

I was not born knowing this fact. My mother and probably your mother too, often said that if I wanted friends, I needed to what?—to be a friend. This helped. What also helped was watching a missions trip team leader engage other people. She had a magic touch. I often watched in amazement as she would approach the meanest or most serious or most prestigious person in the room, male or female, and have them laughing and joking within minutes. She was fearless. But I came to see that her secret was a mindset to take the initiative, to make the first move, to be vulnerable first. This is fantastic advice for writing. Unless the writer gets off his/her behind and takes the initiative to put his fingers to the keyboard, the story will not write itself, because there are no characters, and the characters will not write themselves because, A. that would prove evolution and B. you are only a demi-god and cannot will beings or stories into existence ex-nihilo. Sorry.

But this is also fantastic advice for getting to know more about the characters God has written into and around your own life. Now chances are, unless they’re reading this too, other people won’t be the ones to pray for the sun to stand still in their universe so you don’t recede into darkness as they pass— so stop waiting for your relationships to write themselves. Make the first move. Investigate. Ask people questions about themselves, ask about what they love, about what inspires them, what are their dreams? Pick a character from your life story and risk, take the initiative to get to know them—because the more time you spend with these characters, talking with them, listening to them, laughing and crying with them— the more you’ll understand them, and the greater the odds you’ll be able love them as well. Oh, and your life story will probably get more interesting, too.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

BECAUSE WE CAN. PERIOD.

A typical Sunday morning in The Outpost parking lot.

WHEN GOD PULLS A FAST ONE ~ 3/5/10

I’m a good Evangelical Christian. ‘The word of the Lord’ is the Bible, before it is anything else. This is not only the most authoritative “word,” this is The Standard by which all other ‘words’ must be measured. The Bible defines what is rational, what is ‘orthodox.’ The Bible defines the rules. I remember asking my Dad once, several years ago, ‘What is the secret of confidence?’ His answer seemed overly simplistic at the time, but I now see it as astoundingly true—“Read the Bible, know the Bible” he said; “Be sure of what God has said, and you will be a confident person.” I still believe this with my whole being. The Bible is the bedrock of confident Christian living and godly ministry. Period.

So what are we good, Evangelical Christians to do about all the ‘words from the Lord’ and ‘words of knowledge’ that seem to be floating around with alarming frequency these days? I think you know I’m not talking about the ‘word’ as brought by the preacher on a Sunday morning. I’m talking about the ‘word’ brought by Joe Christian in the local coffee shop, without any prior provocation. What gives? It’s just too easy to roll our eyes and call these people strange. It’s too easy, and it’s too convenient. I think we Evangelicals too often resemble the religiously clenched Pharisees more than we do the newly healed, former cripples. “I’m not sure what the rules are,” these humbly healed say, “I just know I once was blind but now I see.” Do we see? Maybe we’re not as blind as the Pharisees were, but… are we willing to see? I think sometimes we roll our eyes at charismatic types so we don’t have to see, so we don’t have to risk making eye contact. I think we live afraid of being spiritually manipulated, just by looking. But no spirit has any claims to me except the Holy Spirit. I live in the sovereignty of God, not the sovereignty of Satan, so I feel confident God can keep me from being spiritually harmed in some way while I investigate charismatic claims. When I say ‘investigate,’ I mean listening, looking, reading— then comparing what I experience to Scripture. Does it line up? Or is it deception and distraction?

God pulled a fast one on me today. I mean, He was really sneaky. On Friday mornings I take my leave of the Main Street office where I normally work to read in an undisclosed location. On this particular morning I happened to read something about ‘words of knowledge.’ I don’t know exactly who is reading this but, if you’re at all like me, you have assumptions you make in your head despite your best intentions, mostly about people, their beliefs and their practices. When I hear someone say “I was given a word of knowledge from the Lord,” for instance, I usually assume bad and sinister things. Like commands to go bathe a chicken in the Sacramento river as a sign of Redding’s need for repentance. Or something like that. I know that’s not fair, and I’m working on it; sorry. The author of the book in question described ‘words of knowledge’ as the Holy Spirit revealing to human beings certain insights about a person or situation in an ‘on the spot’ kind of way. Now honestly, does that definition sound so bad? Don’t we hear stories all the time about God doing that kind of thing for our friends and in the lives of missionaries? But just to be safe, I run this definition through my own spiritual grid—“Why do you need some ‘other’ word from the Lord when He’s got a bunch of ‘em already written down? Just go read the Bible for a while. Soak it up. Then when you need to minister, the Holy Spirit will speak in some way through those words.” I still believe this. Without doing this, you’ll be a sucker for whatever spiritual breeze happens to be blowing by that day. But I also believe that if I’m doing this already, I’ve got more leeway to get a little risky. “Holy Spirit,” I prayed in my heart this morning, “You alone have rights to me. If You want to give me on the spot “insights” into a person or their situation today, I’m willing to receive it. But you know I’ll test it. Just no chickens please (nervous laughter). Amen.” Then I forgot all about it.

I was back in my office working later this afternoon when a friend came in for a quick cup of coffee and a ‘hello.’ We chatted for a few minutes about trivial things, and as he was preparing to leave, I asked him about how a friend of his was doing. Only I couldn’t remember his friend’s name. So I squinted real hard and voiced the name that suddenly popped into my head—“Emma. How’s Emma doing?” I knew it was the wrong name the moment his face fell ten stories to the carpet. He looked at me like I was holding a chicken in one hand and a map to the Sacramento River in the other. “What?” I said with more than a little alarm. “No,” he said very slowly, “that’s not my friend’s name. But Emma—she’s a whole ‘nother story.” And with that, he sat back down and proceeded to share a hidden burden with me that would never have otherwise seen the light of day in that casual encounter. And talking led to prayer. And prayer led to a visible strengthening in my friend’s posture and composure, a visible change of hope and encouragement in his countenance. He gave me a big hug before he left, and with that, a quick ‘hello’ was transformed into a moment of healing. I sat down at my desk, shaking my head in quiet wonder, when out of the blue, the memory of that morning’s prayer came back to me like a burp of raspberry chocolate. “Wait a minute,” I said out loud to God, leaning back heavily in my chair; “did you just—?!?” I hadn’t even seen it coming.

I think a lot of the time, we just get hung up on a name, or a title, or a phrase. Hearing “a word of knowledge” sends off all sorts of alarms in our heads, so we throw up a wall. Honestly though, I think this kind of thing, like the story I just shared, happens to us Evangelicals all the time, we just don’t recognize it. Or we call it something else. “I felt like God was saying,” or, “It was impressed upon me that,” or, “ I just had a sense that,”—all these are good examples of ways I think we’re saying the same thing. Now look, there’s a couple really simple ways to test if this is from God or not, whether you’re the one who’s giving the ‘word’ or the one deciding whether or not to ‘receive’ it: 1) Does it line up/agree with what God has already said in the Bible? That’s a no-brainer. If no, = NOT FROM GOD. 2) Is it true??!! If not, it’s not from God, period. But if it is true, and it leads to healing and hope and His glory, it's from God. Did coincidence lead to a time of prayer for this broken situation that visibly touched and encouraged my friend? Or did God? I vote God. Did this simple intervention—literally one ‘word’— contradict or overstep the boundaries of Scriptural authority in any way? No. Was it “true?” Did it touch on something in my friend’s life that led to healing and a chance to glorify God? Yes.

We read the Bible and we ask the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our day, to empower our living, and then we walk by faith. We expect Him to comfort through us, touch lives through us, all of it. And He does. Am I saying you have to go out today and squint, to concentrate really hard before you talk to anyone, waiting for the magic words to come? Well let me ask you—did I have to “try” to “do” anything? Did I have to draw attention to myself to get this ‘word’ across, or proclaim with a wild look in my eye that God had a message for my friend while announcing it in trembling vibrato? Are you kidding me? “All” I did was spend time in the Bible and in prayer this morning. God didn’t even give me the chance to mess it up. God pulled a fast one on me today, and I'm grateful. Are you willing to let Him pull a fast one on you?

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

WORDS OF LIFE ~ 2/26/10

I have a new favorite commercial. It involves a man, a boat, diamonds and a horse. Yes, I’m aware this sounds exactly like that joke you heard once in high school. Except this isn’t that joke, because I’m pretty sure the commercial was about Old Spice. Anyway, it’s completely ridiculous and also ridiculously funny, and every time I see it I find myself wishing I could keep a straight face like the guy in the commercial while declaring, “The tickets are now DIAMONDS--! – I guess you’d have to see it. The point of all this is to mention the challenging tag-line at the end of the commercial: “Be a man, man.” I like that.

In Colossians 4:6, Paul instructs the believers-^6"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person."

Now it's true, by the simple fact of a Christian presence in the neighborhoods and communities and workplaces and spheres-of-influence God has placed us in, we act as "salt"-- we are a spiritual preservative. When we're around, the Holy Spirit brings unsolicited conviction that in turn, affects the behavior of the people around us. This is a good thing! But obviously, we‘re also to intentionally act as salt by the way we live and serve while in the world. We function as salt by the way we handle disappointments or respond to pain in a righteous way. We function as salt by the way we live out compassion and patience and forgiveness and by putting others first. These are readily embraced and traditionally accepted ways of being salt in the world. But then there’s that other way we're salt, the way referred to in Colossians, that way that gets downplayed a lot these days. It's that way that's fallen out of vogue and lost popularity because it's seen as being offensively intolerant, or because it's seen as having an agenda, or because on the surface it appears to be shallow. In reality, it is earth-shatteringly powerful. I’m referring to being salt by the words we speak.

I love words, although I prefer writing them to speaking them. And yet, so often I’ve found that it’s really, really easy to say a lot without helping at all. Those are the horrible moments when you finish expounding the profound and look up to see a blank stare from the other side of the table. Those are the awful moments when you’re talking into a microphone and suddenly you’re looking down at yourself from above and you can’t quite make out what you’re saying, and that’s troubling, because… you’re still talking. Why won’t you stop talking? “STOP TALKING!” you try to scream at yourself from your vantage point somewhere in the rafters, but it’s like you just had an asthma attack and all that comes out is one of those tickling wheezes that makes you want to cough. And the idiot with the mic keeps talking. When you don’t know what to say, where do you go to mine the words that will comfort or proclaim or counsel?

I love words, but sometimes they just seem to get me into trouble, and sometimes, they can seem so hollow. My knee-jerk reaction when I'm embarrased by my words is to throw the baby out with the bath water. This looks like me concluding that 'talk is cheap,' and going to the opposite extreme where I'm willing to do many redemptive things without ever speaking The Redeeming Message. I become satisfied with feeding people salt tablets and neglect to show them the water! Maybe you don’t have a microphone. Maybe you don’t have conversations with hurting people across tables on a regular basis. But I’m willing to bet there have been lots of times you’ve hesitated to speak words of Life to people because you’ve felt inadequate or foolish or because your words, like mine, have too often felt hollow, tasteless. And when you get to that point, like me, you're tempted to just shut your mouth for good so you don’t have to feel vulnerable or so you can avoid the risk of offending others. Whenever I get to that point, I’m reminded of Peter in John chapter 6. Jesus has just spoken some hard truth, and many of his disciples have simply walked away. So he turns to his closest companions and asks, "Do you want to go away as well?"— To which 68”Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life…”

I’m hungry for those words. I need them, not just to minister, but to make it through my day! I need those words to renew and regenerate me regularly, to work the supernatural, moment-by-moment mini-resurrections in my body, mind and spirit that foreshadow that final resurrection when my Savior will come in the clouds and in glory and with the sound of the roaring, triumphant trumpets. When that day comes, I’ll meet my Jesus in the air, but for now, I meet Him in His Word. When that day comes, I’ll see my Jesus face-to-face, and He’ll speak to me the words I live my whole life to hear—“Well done, good and faithful servant.” But for now, I see Him by faith, not by sight, and I build my confidence and my hope on the words of life He speaks to me daily from the pages of His living word.

When you don’t know what to say, where do you go to mine the 'gracious words, seasoned with salt,' that will comfort or proclaim or counsel? Do you wander away down tentative rabbit trails of hunch, down bland foot paths of common sense and personal experience, or do you first run to Jesus in a desperate appeal for wisdom? Jesus has the words of eternal life. His words have the power, His words form the promises, His are the words that dying, hurting people most need to hear. They are the most salty, preserving, evil-eradicating force on the face of the earth. Jesus’ words heal bodies, hearts and souls. His words bind demonic forces and release blessing. His words instruct, rebuke and reprove. His words command and inspire. His words heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free, His words. And we speak them most easily, most naturally, when we have them stored up in our hearts. When His written word is alive there, the Holy Spirit is alive there. His words become stored up in our hearts when we read them, and meditate on them. And we read them, we find these words of eternal life, in the Bible. ‘You are the salt of the earth,’ Jesus said-- and your saltiness comes from Him. He has said something to you in the Bible, so that He can say it again through you to someone else later on. I don't have a boat, I'm not on a horse, and I've got no diamonds to speak of, but I do have a challenging tag-line: Be salty, salt!

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh

FINALLY STARTING THAT BOOK...

After wondering where to begin for about five years, and after enough prodding to qualify me as a harassed cow in dire need of a P.E.T.A. intervention, I think I've found my start. I'm talking, of course, about the book I've always wanted to write. Yeah, one of those. I'm sure you understand. Now I just need you to feign interest too.

With that, here is a rough draft portion of Chap. 1. Enjoy.

THE LIMESTONE STAIR

The staircase was green with age, limestone and mortar encrusted with moss, ancient steps, dropping down into the mouth of a dark jungle. Two boys, standing motionless atop a natural threshold of wild grass, looked intently at the place where the steps disappeared into the trees. After a long pause they glanced at each other, almost simultaneously. One of the boys nodded his head. A decision had been made in the silence, a pact of quiet courage. Without the need for further discussion, they turned back to the discovery before them and began their descent into a graduating gloom...

For the rest of the sneak peak, check out my writing blog here.

Thanks!

Josh

CONSPIRACY THEORY #3: Toothpaste CAUSES Cavities ~ 2/11/10

Think about it. Who pushes toothpaste on parents and kids? The dentists. And who benefits the most from the cavities that form in the mouths of parents and kids? The dentists. From as far back as I can remember, I have been suspicious of ‘the dentists.’ Suspicious of their perfect smiles. Suspicious of their meticulous waiting rooms stocked with jarringly outdated reading materials. Suspicious of the brightly-hued-new-toothbrush-that-changes-color-under-the-faucet bribes they sent home with my mother. The whole thing smelled of bubble-gum flavored trickery. It reeked of cool-mint subterfuge.

I remember one dentist who, after the routine and ritual torture treatment in ‘the back room,’ would give me a tube of toothpaste wrapped in a dollar bill as a parting gift. Because I was never sure if the dollar was a bribe designed to keep me ingesting his toothpaste or a favor designed to further indebt me to him, I always received the back-handed token with fear.

When I was a bit older there was another dentist who, in addition to the usual mind tricks and guilt-therapy, actually tried to convince me I had negatively affected the physiology of my face by breathing through my mouth as I slept at night. No, it’s true—he told me this seemingly innocuous habit had worked to narrow my nasal passages over time, thus producing a thin and pointy nose. As you can imagine, I couldn’t thank him enough for his helpful and clearly relevant observations.

My gnawing suspicions about dentists finally chewed their way to the surface like so many Trojan cavities when my five-year-old son, who eats nothing but celery sticks, carrots and organic apples (why is my nose suddenly getting longer and thinner…?), was diagnosed with as many rotting teeth as years he’s been alive. That’s five, in case you weren’t paying attention. And yet I had carefully brushed his tiny teeth every night! This left me with only one possible culprit. In a flash of insight so obvious it was shocking I’d never seen the connection before, I realized with horror-- the toothpaste was causing the cavities. This, my friends, is the grinning face of white-collar job security. This is the denture-bearing sneer of dishonest dentistry. Here’s my theory:

Smoke-screen tactics ‘The Dentists’ use to hide the real purpose of toothpaste:

Tactic #1: Use big words.

The following quote was lifted, verbatim, off the tube of toothpaste in my bathroom:

“Crest has been shown to be an effective decay-preventative dentifrice (??? -- Emphasis mine) that can be of significant value when used as directed in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.” – Council on Scientific Affairs/ American Dental Association"

Okay… do I even have to say it? “Dentifrice?” Really? That word has to be made up. I know I’ve never heard it. I’m mostly sure you haven’t either. Seriously? How would that even be used in a normal sentence? “Hey Bob, your teeth look dentifrific!” Puh-lease. I looked it up on my laptop’s built-in dictionary and it told me the word didn’t exist. Just in case my computer doesn’t know everything, I Googled it. The result? “DENTIFRICE: A substance for cleaning the teeth; toothpaste.” So, basically, it’s a made up word that sounds more fancy than ‘toothpaste,’ but actually means… toothpaste. Shameless trickery.

Tactic #2: List complicated chemical ingredients.

Active Ingredient: Sodium fluoride- 0.243%

Fair enough; sodium fluoride has indeed been shown “to enhance the strength of teeth by the formation of fluorapatite, a naturally occurring component of tooth enamel” (wikipedia). But I have to ask, if that’s the ‘active’ ingredient, what’s making up the rest of the percentage? I mean, doesn’t that leave like, I don't know… 99.757% ‘inactive’ ingredients making up the difference? Now I’m no scientist, but ‘inactive’ ingredients don’t sound very helpful. My hunch? Ninety-nine odd percent of that toothpaste is made up of sugary sweet stuff so that the dentifri—er, I mean the toothpaste-- is even remotely palatable. Oh, and so it can cause the cavities it’s supposed to be preventing.

Tactic #3: Manipulate with threats and shameless fear mongering.

“If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.”

Do you know why they say this? I think there was a CSI episode a while back where a lady died, frothing at the mouth, after being force-fed too much toothpaste. My guess? The idea behind this tactic is an ‘a fortiori’ argument—that if half a tube of accidentally swallowed toothpaste can poison a child, just think how much more damage “a pea-sized dollop (the suggested dosage)’ can do to a cavity! The parent, now equally terrified and convinced of toothpaste’s magical powers, dares not consider other alternatives. Sickening subterfuge.

Tactic #4: Deflect close scrutiny by adding superfluous, distracting and otherwise demeaning product instructions.

The following advice is boldly emblazoned on my toothpaste tube in bright red letters:

“For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.”

Feeling humiliated and oddly empowered at the same time, I quickly avert my eyes every time I see this clever suggestion. Which has always kept me from reading everything else on the tube... until today.

I’m officially convinced toothpaste causes, instead of prevents, cavities. It’s a diabolical conspiracy that targets and manipulates some of the most helpless among us. Anyway that’s what I think. You?

BLESSING IN THE VALLEY OF BACA (Part 2) ~ 2/4/10

*(THIS IS PART 2. SEE POST BELOW THIS FOR PART 1)

Maybe you’ve never felt this way before but… I’ve often envied the saints of old who are already Home. Those Christian men and women who’ve run the race ahead of us and have already crossed the finish line. Their work is done. Their tests are passed and in the past. Their home is now where their hearts always were, in the presence of their King. The author of this Psalm longed to be in the place of blessing. So do I. But then he mentions another blessing, one not just for those who ‘have arrived,’ but for those still on the journey--! And while there’s much more to this Psalm than these few verses, the next full stanza is the one that impacted me the most today…

5Blessed are those whose strength is in you,


in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

Here’s what I notice:

1) There’s an available blessing.

2) It doesn’t belong to the comfortable homebody, the independent, the self-sufficient, or the self-strong.

3) It does belong to the deliberate traveler, to the desperate, the humbled, the dependant, the self-weak & the weary.

4) It’s not a blessing based on geography but on cardiology—on the condition of the heart. The qualifying inner condition is a heart tattooed with God’s roadmap home.

It makes me wonder… did the Psalmist still have birds on his mind as he wrote about the passing pilgrims? To me, ‘highways in the heart’ conjures up images of the geese I see flying over my in-law’s house in the late fall, following some mysterious internal compass Southward, towards more amiable country. Like giant arrows in the sky, they pass overhead, a formation with purpose, pointing the way home; aerial pilgrims, sojourning towards the tug of some silent call. We’re not Home yet, but the setting of our hearts is telling. Are we aimless and stationary or deliberately heading for something? Objects are either in motion or not; the same is true for hearts. Here, the Psalmist seems to be saying that a heart which trusts in God for all strength is a heart on a journey ever closer to Him. And if the terrestrial pilgrims of psalm 84 meet this qualification? What exactly is the blessing made available to them?

6As they go through the Valley of Baca


 they make it a place of springs;

the early rain also covers it with pools.


7They go from strength to strength;


each one appears before God in Zion.

Remember, this part is a promise for the journey (6As they go), and for the pilgrim on his or her way to Jerusalem, tiring of the road-trip as they passed through the desolate Valley of Baca, this stanza announces a blessing of reprieve, a blessing of respite and relief in the midst of pain. Reprieve was a welcome thing in ‘the Valley of Baca;’ after consulting several commentaries, most translate this name to mean ‘the Valley of weeping,’ or ‘the Valley of tears.’ Several others said the word “Baca” actually refers to a thorny Balsam or Mulberry-type of shrub that grew with great abundance in dry places like this valley, hence the name. Still another tried reconciling the two by suggesting that weeping was the logical result of walking through a large quantity of thorny shrubs…! As much comic relief as this brings my sophomoric imagination, I believe the basic idea is that this was a particularly dry, difficult and dangerous valley that could not be avoided on the way to the blessings that awaited in Jerusalem. The reprieve for these Zion-bound pilgrims was that, though their route passed through an unavoidable and desolate valley of tears, it was nevertheless a trail dotted with wells, dug in advance for those who would come. Who dug the wells? Previous pilgrims, perhaps, or maybe the permanent dwellers nearby. The point was that even during the journey towards blessing there were blessings of reprieve waiting to be found.

Reprieve is a welcome thing in our Valley of Baca as well. Life can be a valley of tears. And yet-- “’they make it a place of springs’ …is a classic statement of the faith which dares to dig blessings out of hardships,” says Derek Kidner. There are waters of reprieve waiting for you if your trust for strength is in God. Always, we have to dig for it—in the Scriptures, on our knees in prayer, in the company of other pilgrims in progress— but the promise is that reprieve will be there waiting, like the water of a spring, waiting to be uncovered so it can bubble up from below! “Also,” however, ‘in addition’-- we can expect to receive downpours of reprieve from above, like low spots of land receive and gather the rain, unmerited and effortless blessings that shower down. What does this look like in our lives? “Some manifestation of his gracious presence, some promise coming with power to the soul, some testimony of saving interest in the love and blood of Jesus, some smile from his countenance, some word from his lips, some encouraging testimony that the feet are upon the Rock, is given” (J. C. Philpot). These are but a few raindrop examples plucked out from potential showers of God’s blessing.

When your hope for strength is in the LORD of hosts, though you feel weak day-to-day, yet you will “go from strength to strength (v.7a)…!” “We grow as we advance if heaven be our goal,” says Spurgeon of this phrase—“If we spend our strength in God's ways we shall find it increase.” Though the world sees only a valley of tears, from desert oasis to desert oasis you can travel, ever encountering the provision of God. We cannot avoid the Valley of Weeping; Jesus Himself told us that "In this world you will have trouble" (Jn. 16:33). And yet, never will you be left resourceless or powerless in the pilgrimage Home, and ever will you be increasingly strengthened," strength to strength," "glory to glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18)—to such a degree that the valley of Baca(weeping) will become the valley of Beracah (blessing). And as if that wasn't enough, here is the wonderful side-effect of a heart that seeks His strength—your passage leaves an impression filled with Life for those who can’t find a well on their own. When you lean on God, He guides you from pool to pool through the valley of tears, and where two walk, a trail is more easily followed.

Dear Saint of God, the blessing of Psalm 84 is the promise of water in barren places, life in the valley of the shadow of death, wellsprings of reprieve in the valley of tears. This is a blessing that benefits you now. Yes, blessings await you upon arrival, both in heaven and, as a foretaste, every Sunday among the assembled pilgrims of God. But blessings are also waiting for you on the way, right now, to be dug up and received, enough for each day between Sundays and eternity. And then, one day, you’ll be Home.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh