You Are a Mist

You Are a Mist.  The Bible, often in concert with our own hearts, assigns humanity a full spectrum of names, stretching from debasement to exaltation. “I am a worm” (Psa. 22:6). “Wretched man that I am” (Rom. 7:24). “You have … crowned him with glory and honor” (Psa. 8:5). “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).

Yet, somewhere in the middle zone of those extremely negative or positive names rests another description that could be negative and positive at the same time. “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:13-14). You are a mist, is hardly the punchline in any valedictorian’s speech or slick advertisement campaign. It is the advice of wisdom to youth: Don’t blink! It’s gone before you know it!

Smoke, vapor, breath, mist—the imagery is vivid. Whichever translation is used, the point is clear: transience. Saying to humankind, You are a mist, is a great equalizer. Men, women, rich, poor, high, low, You are more than nothing yet less than something. A brief fog rolled off the river yesterday morning at dawn, filling the low-lying areas with a wispy veil. It was beautiful. It gave the thirsty forest a taste of moisture. It caused motorists to turn on their low beam headlights and ease off the accelerator. A few minutes later, the sun burned through the fog and the temperature started rising through the 70s and 80s into the 90s by 2:00 pm. The mist was not nothing, but it was not something. It was briefly undeniable and unavoidable, but inconsequential outside the narrow task that God designed it to complete, whether it was meant for brief beauty, slight alleviation of drought, or forcing hurried people to slow down and pay closer attention at the junction where Pecan Road meets Arrington Bridge Road.

James makes a solid point for all humans considering the transience of all humans, but he wasn’t the first. Job knew it, “My life is a breath” (Job 7:7). Moses knew it, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psa. 90:12). David knew it, “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psa. 39:4). Jesus knew it, “One's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. (Luke 12:15). James gleans practical advice from accepting his limits. Instead of making firm plans as if the future depended solely upon a master plan or work ethic, wisdom should leave margin for what is unknown. “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15). This instruction is not meant to be a mantra, that if we say these words formulaically, then we are in the clear. This instruction is meant to be a worldview that makes plans with baked-in reverence and pre-planned flexibility to defer to God’s pleasure.

The Sum of Your Word Is Truth

The Sum of Your Word Is Truth.  The Bible was in world news again this week. The media intake of the 21^st century is dominated by tweets, swipes, memes, and watching other people play video games, yet this ancient Book, originally written in foreign languages, is still making news. That is remarkable, especially considering the centuries of opposition to the Bible.

For instance, during the height of the Enlightenment era, French philosopher and humanist, Voltaire (1694-1778), who might have been remembered for his excellent fiction, such as Candide (1759), became more known for his disbelief in Christianity, calling it “infamous superstition.” Voltaire vehemently opposed the Scriptures in his writings. “The Bible,” he wrote in his Philosophical Dictionary (1764), “that is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart.” Two years before his death, Voltaire made a foolish prediction, “A hundred years from my death the Bible will be a museum piece.” However, God in his providence, within fifty years after Voltaire’s death, made Voltaire a museum piece, his house used by the Evangelical Society of Geneva, his own printing press used to print the Bible and gospel tracts. “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever” (Psa. 119:160).

By itself, the new news that the Bible made this week is miniscule. Even still, if a pebble adds to the mountain of evidence that biblical archeology provides, then it is another net increase. A New Testament manuscript from the 6^th century, known as Codex H, was “lost to history when it was disassembled … in the 13^th century. Its pages were re-inked and reused as binding material and flyleaves for multiple other manuscripts” (biblearcheology.org). Like a sophisticated version of using Silly Putty® to pick up a reverse image of the Sunday funnies, researchers from Glasgow University used multispectral imagining to recover 42 pages of “ghost text” of Paul’s letters under layers of ink and dye of other old books.

Nothing new was gleaned about the biblical text from Codex H, but that is the most remarkable part of biblical archeology. Each new archeological finding continues to confirm and affirm what we already have is credible and complete. At Glasgow, the “ghost text” mainly showed how the biblical text has been divided into chapters and verses over the years by the scholars, functionally scribal notes in the margins of the manuscript evidence. “The recovered text provides the earliest known examples of chapters for Paul’s epistles, which differ from modern chapter divisions.” No other book has yielded such bounty while enduring such scrutiny; even its margins further marginalize its scoffers.

Like a Weaned Child with its Mother

 

Like a Weaned Child with its Mother.  Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May, a national holiday since 1914 (five full years before the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote in 1919). Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June, a national holiday since 1972. The establishments of these two holidays curiously follow the date that Hallmark® opened for business, January 10, 1910, fueling speculation that businesses caused a sympathetic itch in the American psyche which they then offered to scratch for a fee. Regardless of the endless loop of conspiracy theories, motherhood (and fatherhood) is sacred. Long before Hallmark® cards and federal holidays, God fundamentally shocked the ancient world when he wrote with his own finger (Exo. 31:18) the fourth commandment which demanded: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exo. 20:12). Fathers were ever esteemed, but God afforded equal status to mothers in the institution of family. This was nothing less than scandalous in an otherwise overtly patriarchal world.

But appreciating the softer side of motherhood does not require a rule etched in stone. Children usually, naturally, reach for Mommy long before they call out for Daddy. God, of course, is the supreme example for both genders being the direct Creator of each. While he intentionally and consistently assigns himself with the masculine pronoun and squarely takes the Father role in Scripture, he nevertheless exhibits all the tenderness we normally associate with motherhood, too. It is theologically imprecise and morally unwise to say that gender doesn’t matter to God since it was he who established the genders as distinct yet harmonious in his ideal created order, “Male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). This fact Jesus reaffirmed by quoting Genesis 1:27 in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6. Even when Paul instructed that gender, social class, economic status, and ethnicity no longer apply to acceptance into the kingdom or unity with one another, “There is neither male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), gender distinction was never unilaterally scrubbed from God’s ideal plan. Paul in the same passage continued to refer directly to distinctly female roles: “woman” (Gal. 4:4), “women” (Gal. 4:24), “mother,” (Gal. 4:26), and “wife” (Gal. 4:27).

However, David draws upon the honorable ministry of motherhood in instructing Israel to be content in the Lord. “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore” (Psa. 131:1-3). Notably, within David’s image, he calms and quiets his own soul as an expression of spiritual maturity and self-control. In life, the mother usually calms and quiets the weaned child, not through feeding but through relational bonding. The child does not want anything more than to be with Mommy, mirroring the mother’s calm and quiet temperament. The Lord is happy and unhurried; when we are content in the Lord, we resemble and reflect his nature in our nature.