In His Sleep

In His Sleep.  In this new age called grandparenting, it is entertaining and somewhat enlightening to revisit newly remembered parts of the previous age we once called parenting. Twenty-seven and a half years ago, we didn’t have so many features on the simple, fold-away stroller as now exist on today’s strollers. Factoring the rate of change, tomorrow’s strollers may come equipped with cappuccino machines. When did car seats begin to have an expiration date? The wheels on the bus still go round and round, thankfully, but the classic melody isn’t played on a cassette tape player anymore; it streams on Spotify. Some baby monitors now need an app and tap water is no longer clean enough for rinsing off pacifiers.

A few sayings of babyhood still live on, however, such as: sleeping like a baby. But much like eating like a bird and swimming like a fish, sleeping like a baby is a seriously misplaced cliché. Who really thinks that sleeping like a baby is anything close to peaceful? The sleep of a baby lasts all of 20 minutes when we need her to sleep and 4 hours when we need her to wake up. Even when she is asleep, she punches the air and kicks the blanket, making faces and noises, half-way laughing or half-way crying. Although very cute, sleeping like a baby is a gamble at best.

The ones who really sleep well during babyhood are the parents, at least that is when they get a break from baby. Exhaustion is normal and anywhere is a potential napping zone. Baby wins the sleep war, as she should. Parents can sleep when they become grandparents.

The elusiveness of sleep combined with its essential nature is a detail that Solomon worked into one of his two recorded psalms (Psa. 72 and 127). Maybe he was observing infants in the palace nursery when he wrote Psalm 127. The English Standard Version translates verses 1-2, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Psa. 127:1-2). But the New American Standard Version better connects the eating and sleeping of verse 2 with the laboring and the watching of verse 1 by translating the end of verse 2 thusly, “For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.” It is vain to persist at laboring, watching, eating, and sleeping in one’s own strength without the understanding that “Unless the Lord builds … [and] watches … [and] gives” all that we need. It is impossible for us to provide for ourselves, even if we worked at it incessantly. It is easy, so to speak, for God to provide; he gives to us even while we are sleeping (i.e., unable to assist God in the work of provision). God doesn’t obliquely give sleep to insomniacs as much as he provides for us all things, even in our sleeping. We wake up and discover afresh that God has been at it all night.

A Pear Tree

A Pear Tree.  Considering C. S. Lewis (quote below), urged on by A. W. Tozer (quote below and a prayer), may we read again from the old books today. New classics in spiritual formation are undoubtedly being written today, but we will only know if they become classics in the next century. But St. Augustine’s Confessions (written 400 ad) has generated over sixteen centuries of relevance. So, without needing any additional commentary, drink deeply from his section which is often referenced by its simpler heading: A Pear Tree.

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period . . .  The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books” (C. S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” God in the Dock, p. 202).

“Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God . . .  The whole testimony of the worshipping, seeking, singing church [leads us into] the experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints” (A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, pp. 15, 16). “O God, I have tasted Your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want You; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Your glory, I pray, so I may know You indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen” (pg. 20).

“There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night–having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was–a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart–which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error–not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself” (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book II, Chapter 4, Section 9).

Plotted How to Entangle Him

Plotted How to Entangle Him.  On rainy days, if we could find all the pieces, we used to play a game called Mouse Trap® as children. However, playing that game was seldom because there were so many, very easily misplaced pieces: various slides, ladders, cups, funnels, a marble, and the little plastic net at the end to trap the little plastic mouse. Missing just one piece meant playing something else like Uno®, or far worse, Parcheesi®. But honestly, it wouldn’t have helped if we had played Mouse Trap® every day because it never made logical sense to me the order in which to build or deploy the mouse trap. The take-away, I guess, was that I was no mastermind. I resembled the mouse more than the trapper.

Not a game, but a real trap was built for Jesus. He was the prey. The Pharisees and Sadducees were the predators. In secret meetings and hushed voices, the evil schemers had attempted to snare Jesus several times, but could not mechanize the right combination of slides, ladders, cups, funnels, and marbles to drop the net over him. “Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words” (Matt. 22:15). The self-proclaimed masterminds were missing a piece until Judas gave it to them. Judas was the insider for hire, willing to identify Jesus at night when no one else that mattered was looking.

Entanglement is a sanitized word; the original idea was baiting a trap. The Pharisees and Sadducees could not outsmart Jesus, so they attempted to lure him into a trick. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?” (Matt. 22:17). “In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be?” (Matt. 22:28). “Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36). Not only did Jesus evade their traps, but he also reversed their traps upon their own heads. Jesus was the true mastermind, yet he didn’t rely on traps.

Thankfully, the kingdom of heaven does not rely upon wits or staying one step ahead of evil. The kingdom of heaven relies solely upon believing/trusting in the King. It is God who delivers from entrapment, not our natural skills of logical deduction. Left to my own wits, I am still paralyzed between Proverbs 26:4 and 26:5—“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Which way is better? is the weaker question to ask. The stronger question is always: What is your will, Lord? We do not need an answer to what as much as we need a relationship to who. “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matt. 10:19-20).

Jesus was not anxious about evading his enemies’ conspiracy because he knew what the will of the Father was: “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him” (Isa. 53:10a). He would die, but not because they had outsmarted, overpowered, or outmaneuvered him. He died because his death was pleasing to the Father, a willing sacrifice for the sins of the world. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).

Broken to Pieces

Broken to Pieces.  Brokenness is hardly a desirable trait. When our children occasionally fell hard and cried out for comfort, “Is it broken?”, they sometimes received an overly Stoic and unhelpful response: “If it were broken, you would know it.” Brokenness is all-consuming. The universe ceases to exist when the stab of pain throbs through every synapse. Blood congeals, words disintegrate, digestion stops, cognition slows. In that sense, brokenness should be avoided at all costs because pain is downright awful. Therefore, to risk physical brokenness, or to snap back into action despite brokenness, is the rare exception to the rule.

In what has become known in soccer as “The Match of the Century,” West German footballer, Franz Beckenbauer, in the 1970 World Cup championship against Italy, dislocated his shoulder but could not exit the game. West Germany had used all its allotted substitutions. Heavily bandaged with an improvised sling, Beckenbauer played on at a high level.  Although West Germany lost, Beckenbauer’s endurance through brokenness is remembered more than Italy’s title.

Carrying on is not what we normally do when we are broken. Though few can tap into it, there is a plane higher than brokenness. Pain is never inconsequential, but sometimes an outside power lifts us up above pain. Brokenness does not get the last word in pain.

Spiritually, Jesus spoke of brokenness in ironically positive terms. The larger context is about repentance and the importance it has in the kingdom of God. The religious rulers saw repentance as a weakness to be avoided at all costs, but the tax collectors and prostitutes who met Jesus’ mercy repented of their sin and believed the gospel in full view of everyone. In that way, they were willingly, openly broken, showing courage in the face of otherwise debilitating spiritual pain that the religious rulers could not understand and dismissed as ludicrous. To those opposite attitudes to brokenness, Jesus declares an apparent paradox: “And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (Matt. 21:43-44). It is better to be broken toward Jesus than to mask brokenness toward everyone else. Brokenness is not an end, but the beginning.

“Broken to pieces” at the foot of the cross of Jesus is the most positive, most secure, most elusive situation in all time. “Broken to pieces” is the fruit of repentance. “Broken to pieces” finds unlooked-for help. “Broken to pieces” leads to faith, hope, and love, “but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). “Broken to pieces” brings healing; it becomes life. “Broken to pieces” is something that the proud boy, the religious expert, the social architect, the moral policeman will not, cannot admit. “Broken to pieces” is the fork in the road. “Broken to pieces” at the foot of the cross of Jesus is happiness: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (Matt. 5:3). God’s true people are truly repentant people.

Repentant people look to God for mercy, because they know that they need a Savior, reaching out by faith for the nail-scarred hands of Jesus as their only hope for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Regretful people look to self for relief, because they cannot trust anyone else for help, reaching out for any degree of escape from their misery through the lesser saviors of Run Away or Try Harder. Falling apart toward Jesus is forward; it is a homecoming.