How Long?

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on March 27, 2011.

Spring break is coming – lots of family vacations, road trips, and that universal refrain: “How long until we get there?”

College graduation is coming too, with the deeper refrain: “How long until I find a job?” “How long until I feel really settled, ready to get on with my life?”

“How long” is a phrase that seems to be part of who we are. We live so much of our lives in that painful in-between time. The journey is started, the destination is in mind, but that time in between seems impossibly long. To quote T.S. Eliot: “ridiculous the waste sad time, stretching before and after.”

This post was prompted by a sermon focused on Abraham in Exodus 12 and Romans 4. Chris Hall, professor, parishioner, author, Bible scholar, wound his way through those two lectionary texts to end with Nicodemus in John 3. It was a challenging, encouraging sermon. 

But I confess, somewhere in the middle of it, I found myself caught in the amazing “how long” of Abraham’s life. I had gone two days earlier to pray for Emily, a girl struck by lightening almost three years before. I went to pray again this week, now almost six years into the continuing story. God has done miraculous things in her life, and healing continues, slowly, almost imperceptibly, but there is a long way yet to go, and her family, and those of us who pray, find ourselves asking “how long?”

So Abraham’s “how long” drew me in. And yes, I still heard every word of the sermon, but I was multitasking as I flipped back and forth between Exodus and Romans.

Abraham was 75 when God promised to make him “a great nation” and showed him the land He would give his offspring. He was 86 when he had a son by Hagar, the servant, rather than by Sarah, his wife. He was 100 when God told him to have his clan circumcised, and said he would have a son by Sarah, not Hagar. And 101 when Isaac was finally born.

That’s a long “how long,” with some serious missteps along the way. What seemed improbable at 75 by 100 was beyond impossible. Yet in Romans 4 Paul says this:

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed. . .  being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”

Am I fully persuaded God has power to do what He’s promised? How long am I willing to wait in hope? And how do I demonstrate that hope, while I wait?

It’s a good question for Lent, this in-between time, these days of waiting, and listening, and longing for resurrection.

That refrain, “how long,” is echoed throughout scripture. Sometimes it’s God’s people, crying to him “how long”:

My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? 

Throughout the psalms the cry goes on:

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? 
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

 How long will the enemy mock you, God?

How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever?

How long must your servant wait?

The question continues on through the prophets:

How long will the land lie parched and the grass in every field be withered?

 How long,Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?

Even in John’s Revelation, the cry continues: “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 

We ask “how long,” and yet, God asks the same of us:

How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?”

 How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? 

How long?

As I’ve been thinking about how much of our lives we spend in waiting, I’ve been struck with how, despite the waiting, the time goes flying by. It’s one of those baffling mysteries: we ride along asking “how long?” and then, suddenly, the ride is over, and we realize we missed it.

We are prisoners of time. We can’t make it move faster, no matter how we tinker with technology, trying to save time, speed time, rearrange time. And we can’t make it move slower. There’s a line from Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill that comes back to me now and then:

Time held me green and dying,
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Time holds me green and dying, and as I wait, to see justice on the earth, to see promises fulfilled, the challenge is to fill the moments as they fly by, to live as someone who “against all hope, in hope believes.”  

The service I'm remembering ended with Al Gordon’s amazing anthem, “How Long.” It’s a powerful expression of longing, waiting, and affirmation. Cruising the internet for a faithful rendition of it, I came across a powerful Tearfund video that captures my hope: to live each day as if justice is on its way, to redeem each minute because the promises are true. To wake up each day to the opportunities and challenges of that day, and to work at whatever I’m given as an offering toward the day that’s coming.

Yet, I confess, part of the recording doesn't resonate with me: too triumphant? Too exuberant? The longing is easy to sing, the confidence much harder. 

Chris Hall talks often about the “music” of scripture, the song that sings through it we’re often too tone-deaf to hear. The “how long” song we sing is part of that music, and the song has contrapuntal parts. Repeated, again and again, “how long”: until questions are answered, until healing comes, until justice appears, until we sing the victory song. 

And then, for those who hope and believe, there’s the answering refrain:

Yes I know, you will come.
Yes I know, you’ve already won.
Yes I know, my redeemer lives.
My redeemer lives.

Woven through both the longing and the hope is the prayer:

Come, Lord Jesus, we are desperate for you here.
Come, Lord Jesus, all creation crying out.

Take a few minutes to listen and watch. Can you pray or sing along? As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome; look for the __ comments link below to leave your comments. 

Leaning into Lent

As part of my Lenten observation this year, I'm taking a break from writing new blog posts and updating and re-posting earlier material. Today's post was first shared on February 19, 2012.

My childhood church tradition had no interest in Ash Wednesday, or Lent, or any of the seasons of the liturgical calendar. The idea of giving up something as a spiritual practice seemed superstitious: does God care if I eat chocolate or not?

Elijah icon, 

Yet, in a dry, thirsty time of my life, I was deeply fed by my encounter with a deeper liturgical practice, and after thirty years now in the Anglican tradition, I look forward to Lent the way I look forward to an hour of quiet at the end of a long, hard day.

Lent is an ancient practice – an attempt to approximate in some way the forty wilderness years of the Israelite people, the forty days in the desert of the prophet Elijah, and the forty days of fasting and temptation of Jesus at the start of his ministry. 

The examples of Moses, Elijah and of Jesus highlight the tension between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God. 

Moses and his people, newly escaped from slavery in Egypt, wandered in the desert – some wanting to go back to life under Pharoah, Moses insisting that God would provide. 

Elijah, after defying bloody King Ahab, and with Queen Jezebel on his trail, ran for his life to the desert, where he collapsed under a broom tree and begged God to take his life, then spent forty days traveling to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 

And Jesus himself, after forty days of fasting, was confronted with an offer of “all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor.”

Lent offers us a time to examine our own allegiances as we travel between kingdoms of earth and heaven. Small sacrifices are one way to help us focus, to shake free from what holds us. Some of my friends choose to fast one day a week, or give up Facebook, wine, dessert, coffee.

The point isn’t the small sacrifice. Rather, the sacrifice helps us set the time apart – a small, regular reminder of Christ’s sacrifice for us. 

But it’s also a reminder of our deep complicity in kingdoms we don’t understand, our hunger for the tastes of the old ways, our willingness to find comfort in material things rather than hunger and thirst for a deeper knowledge of God.

In Ephesians 4 Paul urged the church in Ephesus to “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

That work will never be done, but Lent is a time to pause, and to ask: What should I be putting off? Where have I given control to things, to habits? What have I been feeding myself? Where am I headed? 

detail from Christ in the Wilderness,
Briton Riviere, England, 1898

It’s a time to look more deeply at my own attitudes. I usually give up sugar, which also means I give up coffee. In the withdrawal from both sugar and caffeine, my underlying attitudes surface quickly: Irritation. Impatience. Discouragement. Self-protection.

Lent can sound depressing, but I don’t find that to be the case. As addictions and harmful attitudes surface, I can acknowledge them, address them, and set them aside, ready to put on something new.

It’s a bit like retooling a computer. Over time, unused files, dumb downloaded games, the backload of cached internet files slows the system down. It takes time to erase unused programs, delete files no longer needed, adjust the start menu, optimize disk storage. It takes time, but it feels good to get it done, and the system runs better freed from the weight of digital detritus.

That sounds a bit mechanical – an analogy, but not a good one.

Because Lent, while it’s a time to confront our evasions, our half-believed lies, our self-protective inner story, is even more a time to draw closer to God.

The Israelites, out in the wilderness, experienced God’s presence in manna, in cloud and pillar of fire, in the tent of meeting.

Elijah, on Mount Horeb, experienced God’s presence in a new way, and heard God’s word of encouragement and instruction. 

And we, setting aside distractions, distortions, determined to shed whatever deceives us, prepare to know God better – in the sacrifice of Good Friday, in the joy of Easter, in the countless little ways that God’s grace meets us in moments of hunger, or prayer, or waiting.

There are lots of ways to approach Lent.

Tearfund and the Church of England offer The Carbon Fast:

Consciously adopting carbon-saving behaviours is sacrificial and provides a wonderful way to engage with the Lenten concerns of temptation, denial and salvation. We are called to change the world, but cannot do so without the Spirit.

• We believe God is the Creator of the world and that we are entrusted with its care;
• Lent is a time for sacrifice as we prepare to celebrate life in Christ at Easter;
• Christians love the world and want to influence it for the good.

Christ in the Wilderness, Ivan Kramskoi, 1872, Moscow

Hearts and Minds Books offers an ambitious list of books for Lent, including On The Way to the Cross: 40 Days with the Church Fathers  and A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor by Chris Seay.

Many churches and organizations offer their own Lenten resources: daily readings, weekly videos. Mustard Seed Associates has put together an exhaustive list of ideas, resources, and other Lenten materials. 

My own Lent will be a little different this year. I'll be traveling more than usual, and busy in a strange mix of ways, so plans to give up sugar (my fall-back practice) won't work. 

An article about an eight hour daily fast from Facebook and email has encouraged me to limit computer time (aiming for two hours a day) while another article about fasting not just from, but to, has me thinking about ways to listen better, pay deeper attention, find more in less. 

In all of this, I'll be praying for a life deeper than the surfaces where we so often find ourselves living.

Looking for a way to move beyond the flood of words I often find myself washed along in.

Watching, and waiting, for something new.  

Lord, You searched me and You know,
   It is You Who know when I sit and I rise,
          You fathom my thoughts from afar.
   My path and my lair You winnow,
          and with all my ways are familiar.
   For there is no word on my tongue
          but that You, O Lord, wholly know it.
         .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
Search me, God, and know my heart,
         probe me and know my mind.
And see if a vexing way be in me,
         and lead me on the eternal way.
   (The Book of Psalms, 139, translated by Robert Alter)

What spiritual practices will you be exploring this Lent?

What resources would you recommend to others?

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