Tag Archives: Isaiah

The God Who Trades

...to comfort all who mourn...to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning... (from Isaiah 61:2-3)

God is no good at trading. In this last section of Isaiah, God trades the hardship of the Israelites for renewed hope. “Let me carry your mourning,” God offers, “while you hold the gladness.”

What an uneven trade, Lord! Everyone knows mourning is heavier than gladness. And sins weigh more than forgiveness, another one of God’s uneven trades.

God is unfathomably generous. God’s ways do not align with our human, even-trading, fairness-focused, transactional look at life. We do not give this in order for God to do that. This is not a balanced relationship.

Which is nice.

When the dark winter days come with heavy human sadness, it is good to know that Christ will carry his share of the pain and yours. “Sit down, take a load off,” you hear Jesus whisper. “I will take care of things and when you are ready, you can follow me through the darkness. You are looking a bit broken today. I will gather the pieces and trade you for the peace only I can give you.”

Thank you, Lord, for uneven trades, a mark of your light-bearing grace.

Photo by Joshua Rodriguez on Unsplash

The Best Things in Life Are Free Croutons

I have found the new love of my life and its name is Croutons.

Long ago, I met Fake-Croutons at the bar, the salad bar, of course! They were tiny blocks I’m told had once been bread. We were not meant to be. They were too crunchy and made it a job to enjoy a salad. Goodbye, Fake-Croutons.

Then Croutons came along. My husband (the actual love of my life) has become a sourdough bread baker. He has become quite good at this craft, but even so we cannot eat all the bread, which turns out to be the best thing ever. I made my first batch of Croutons earlier this week. What’s not to love when you roll stale bread around in oil and seasoning? Bread, oil, salt, pepper, a dash of Italian Seasoning and there you have it. Love.

“The best things in life are free,” wrote Buddy DeSylva and Lew Brown back in 1927. Right now, one of the best delights in my life are these silly croutons. They took zero money and no more effort than slicing up and baking bread I didn’t know what to do with anyway.

There is an abundance of complicated factors in your life today. Relationships, work, your health, your family member’s health…What might happen if you look around your kitchen, your living room, your backyard, or your nearest park to find something simple and free like the new love of my life?

This verse has been rolling around in my brain, like breadcrumbs in oil. 

"The Lord will guide you continually, 
and satisfy your needs in parched places, 
and make your bones strong; 
and you shall be like a watered garden, 
like a spring of water, 
whose waters never fail." 
Isaiah 58:11


What you need, the Lord prescribes in this verse, is water. How simple. How free. All you need is water, a restoring powerhouse that for most of us is as easy as turning a faucet, which happens to be as easy as making your own croutons.

God desires meet you in the simplest of ways: water, bread, breath, the words in a very old book. Find your Crouton and smile.

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

An American Advent: New Things I Now Declare

New traditions are a bugger. Early in our marriage, I had no idea. I imagined my husband and I would start some of our own traditions. Perhaps weekly movie nights would be our thing, and a predictable and seamless sharing of holidays with our families of origin. Each Fourth of July, host our friends and serve our own unique meal, and each night share highs and lows with our kids.

Why are new traditions such a bugger? Because human beings are creatures of habit and practitioners of patterns. It’s why long-term diets are next to impossible and saving or spending money differently only gets harder with age. We learn one way and tend to stick with it.

Family patterns are no different. If you spend time with your family of origin (the family in which you grew up) this Christmas, you will notice patterns if you are willing to pay attention. Arguments begin the very same way. The same person will exasperate you and you will react in the same way you always do. Family patterns are the deep ruts of country roads.

This weekend’s Narrative Lectionary reading for the third Sunday in Advent has to do with patterns. God’s relationship with God’s people had developed a deep rut kind of pattern. God loved the people, the people turned against God, God opened God’s arms and they returned to God. God loved the people, the people turned against God…wash, rinse and repeat.

Into this old, endless pattern, the prophet Isaiah breathed a new one. Speaking for the Lord, Isaiah said, “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

The new pattern emerged several hundred years later with the birth of the one for whom we wait this Advent. The Messiah dared to break the pattern. God’s people could not turn away from a God who needed holding, needed feeding, needed loving. God stepped out of God’s power to step into your life for good. The pattern of humanity turning away from God was broken, not by God’s people finally getting it right, but by God declaring a new pattern.

If God can change the pattern of God’s relationship with God’s people, why in tarnation is it so hard to stick with a new tradition?

I’ll tell you why. Because the forces at work in our families of origin are powerful beyond measure. The traditions of our family and the habits that then become our own are forever our default. Like an addiction, those old habits take over the wheel whenever we feel too tired to steer ourselves.

But there is hope! In Isaiah 42, the Lord named the new pattern, which I think is the hardest step. Naming a new pattern challenges not only the existing pattern but everyone who has a stake in it. If you decide to host Christmas and cook lasagna when your family of origin has only EVER eaten ham, then you are in for it. But you’ve named the new pattern; you have the steering wheel: lasagna, baby!

New patterns are magnets for resistors. But if your new pattern matters to you, and you sincerely explain it to your family, then please keep driving. You must know the way, and eventually the others may come along. If they don’t because they insist on ham and only ham everlasting for Christmas, then more lasagna for you. You’ve created a new pattern because it matters to you, and although you would prefer that your family of origin enjoy it with you, not every new pattern continues that way.

The pattern God declared in Jesus Christ, however, cannot be discontinued. The pattern of God’s love wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger smooths out the old ruts of our lives. No new tradition, or old and worn tradition can undo God’s desire to be with you.

Photo Credit: Marlin Clark on Unsplash

Parenting is Both Loving and Not Caring

(Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash)

Kid: “Mom, blah blah blah.”

Mom: “I don’t care. But I do love you!”

Doesn’t that feel good? Not caring can feel so dang good! I don’t care about a lot of things. I don’t care if if I catch the news every day or if I’m a few minutes late for some things. Okay, for several things! And it’s not just me. My husband doesn’t care about the laundry on the floor or if the bed never ever ever gets made again.

I don’t care if my kids earn perfect grades or become impressive athletes. I don’t care if they stop going to church or never leisurely read another book. I will never stop loving these three young humans, but I will never care about absolutely everything they do or do not do.

Like two sides of the same coin, love and not caring go together. You could also say love and letting go, if that sits better. Or, parenting is as much hands off as it is hands on. No matter the words, this work is not for the faint of heart! It may be easy to love our own kid (most of the time), but it is a great challenge to know when not to care.

Straight up, here is the importance of not caring: you will not rest if you 100% care for every single detail of your kid’s life every moment of every day. You cannot be you, a full self, a healthy human, if all you do is care about your kid. Sometimes, it is best not to care.

Let me be clear. There are parents who literally do not care an iota, which is often related to mental health or trauma or addiction. I’m not advocating for that. Do not stop caring for your kid’s basic needs. That is not cool. This is what I mean: I am learning to care less and at times not at all when the timing is right.

Let’s start at the beginning. When a doctor hands a parent a brand new baby, or you receive a child through adoption, you do not promise to protect this child from every possible problem. You do not promise to raise that child to perfection, or become the most remarkable caregiver. Before and after becoming a parent, you are as human as ever. The writer of Ecclesiastes, perhaps the world’s first life coach, assured us there is a time for every season under heaven. I agree. There is a time to care and a time to not care.

I am slowly learning this complex parenting wisdom, which grows more complex as my kids add years to their ages. I feel it in their schoolwork, which I hope they do well and work hard and I will support them as best I can. However, as much as I love for them to do their best, it is perfectly fine that I do not care so much for the end result. I can point out their grades, but not take their work personally. I can remind them and be clear with my concerns, and after that I need to know where my own parental responsibility starts and stops. Their future is completely out of my hands, unlike when they were little.

When they were little, I chose my kids’ day cares and babysitters and often even their friends. Now, none of that is true. They will choose their post-high school path, just as they will choose their own friends. They will choose their hobbies and whether they care that they wear dirty-looking work jeans to school every dang day, making it appear that our family shops for clothes out of the trash bin outside the thrift store. Again, out of my hands.

I love them so much, and I refuse to care for all the details that shape their lives. If parenting is raising small humans to grow into independent and helpful adult humans, then at some point, I have to hand over the burden of caring so much.

Perhaps this is God’s way of loving us, too. In Isaiah 43, God loves us and we belong to God. This chapter is the only moment in the entirely of the Bible when God explicitly states: “I love you.” But like the stoic parent who does not say the words out loud every single day, you know it’s true. The absence of the words do not make the parent’s love for you any less, only quieter. From the first page of Genesis to the last page of Revelation, God’s love for you sings from each chapter.

I will fiercely love my kids as long as I live, and sometimes my love will be elevator music they can hardly hear as they learn to do life on their own. It will be there, my love for them, at times by way of quiet background noise, yet still they will know it is there. Lingering and steady; that I both love and do not care because fierce love risks stifling both our lives. The poet Rainer Rilke puts it this way: “We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go, for holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”