Today when you hear his voice,

don't harden your hearts.

Hebrews 3:7-8

Hebrews 3:15

Hebrews 4:7

Three times in twenty verses. Three promises I'll hear his voice. Three instructions to listen, to accept, to respond. Three reminders that I probably wasn't paying attention the first time anyway.

There are startling similarities to an eighth grade class. I walk around the room as my students work. "Read the instructions," I tell them. "Be sure you're modeling your answers." "I see lots of answers but not many models." Then, as I collect the papers, I hear, "Oh, were we supposed to draw models?"

I did manage to refrain from running screaming down the hall, but after all, it was only second hour. This scene would be repeated every forty-five minutes for the rest of the day.

So what do I tell my students? Desks cleared, sit up straight, eyes on the teacher. Take notes, ask questions, try every problem.

How much better would I listen, how much more would I hear if I cleared off all distractions, sat up straight with my eyes on God, and tackled every challenge?

You will be ever hearing but never understanding,

you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

For this people's heart has become calloused;

they hardly hear with their ears,

and they have closed their eyes.

Matthew 13: 14-15a

It's progress report day. The first tangible evidence of the new year's efforts, anticipated and feared, the promise of a new beginning and the hope of change. The very air feels frozen with tension as I begin to lay out the pages near hands suddenly uninterested in the day's notebook quiz.

The are muffled giggles of delight and gasps of horror. There are frantically raised hands and rustling papers determined to prove that every assignment had been completed after all.

The most desparate, the most shocked, are those students who certain they already know all I have to teach. The question comes daily, from one student or another, the words slightly different, yet so much the same. "We learned this last year." "Why do we have to do this again." I don't do it like that, can't I do it my way?" Ears stopped, eyes closed, beyond learning because they all ready know it all. Sometimes that first report is shock enough to bring a child back to focus, sometimes nothing ever is.

How often am I that stubborn child? Closed to God's leading, sure I know the way, appearing to listen, but silently charting my own divergent path? Open eyes, soft heart, and ever listening ears, the only hope to live the truth.

Wisdom has built her house;

she has hewn out its seven pillars.

She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine;

she has also set her table.

Proverbs 9:1-2

The woman Folly is loud;

she is undisciplined and without knowledge.

Proverbs 9:13

Wisdom and Folly side by side, calling from the hills, promising gifts to all who respond.

There's effort in wisdom; hewn pillars, prepared meats and wine, a table set and ready. Focus and learning, with the hope of understanding, inspire the wise to greater heights.

Loud is easier. Attention without effort, words without thought. It captures the mob and flames their passions, increasing the roar of uninformed voices insisting they alone are right.

It's time to hew pillars, to stop, to study, to think; to find and honor wisdom before bursting into undisciplined action.

I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence;

I possess knowledge and discretion.

Proverbs 8:12

Knowledge with discretion. We're packed with knowledge. At a click of the mouse, the awe of a newly discovered comet battles for attention with the best country artist of the last twenty five years. Tar balls travel to the Florida coast, and elections results are predicted before they close the polls. And that's just today. The knowledge pounds from internet screens, radio announcers, constantly scrolling bars across ever present televisions. Does it make us any smarter, any better, any more compassionate, or effective?

I'm not sure there's a lot of discretion to go with that knowledge. Does everything anyone knows really need to be announced to the world? Is everyone's opinion on every comment box adding value to important discussions?

Where do we gain the wisdom? The marriage of knowledge and discretion that lifts the dialogue from gossip to enlightenment, from anger and destruction to the construction of solutions.

There's no easy button, no website of answers, just deep thought, study, and prayer to seek the wisdom of God.

At the window of my house

I looked out through the lattice.

I saw among the simple,

I noticed among the young men,

a youth who lacked judgment.

He was going down the street near her corner,

walking along in the direction of her house

at twilight, as the day was fading,

as the dark of night set in.

Proverbs 7:6-9

Near, in the direction, as the dark of night set in. Where does temptation really begin? It's easy to claim a total ambush; a shock of never considered, carried away, happened in the heat of the moment before I knew where I was.

But there we were walking, eyeing the house, moving a little closer, cozy in the deepening shadows that allow no one to see. Choices begin in the daylight. A simple turn for just a little look, determines a destiny never consciously planned.

Teenagers enthralled with broccoli, proudly comparing pineapples, and lugging enormous watermelons. It's hilarious to watch them so excited about food they wouldn't touch in the cafeteria or glance at twice in a grocery store. So why the sudden charm at a sprawling busy farmer's market?

Autonomy has something to do with it I suppose. It's really a lot of freedom we give them, to wander the market with friends and make their own choices. They check back in surprisingly often. They show off their purchases with pride, but also, I think, feel some security in knowing we're still there, still aware of where they are, still focused what they're doing.

They beg for ten minutes at playground, squealing and jumping like ten years olds, then stagger back to the bus burdened with flowers for their moms, bulging bags full of vegetables, and jaunty plastic sunglasses.

The last few days of eighth grade innocence, nudging at the edge of the chasm of high school.

a voice of one calling in the desert,

Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.

Mark 1: 3

A voice of comfort, a promise of end to oppression,

A voice of terror, the unimaginable power of God.

I imagine the Jews of Jesus day were well familiar with these words from Isaiah, clinging to the hope of freedom from Rome and the vindication of the coming kingdom of God. But what did they mean to the gentiles Mark is believed to be writing to here? A brief history lesson, an authentication through prophecy, a context of Jesus' place and time?

John is prepared in the desert for the ministry he leads.

He prepares in the desert the way for Jesus.

Jesus too, retreats to the desert, to prepare for the ministry that changes the world.

In the desert of life, a voice is calling, what will I do to prepare for the Lord?

I hear bullfrogs croak

I hear crickets murmur,

I hear a chorus of birds from tree to tree.

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I see a cardinal darting between the brush,

I see lacy towers of green and purple and pink,

I see the swollen swirling river rushing between steep banks.

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I feel soft warm breezes,

I feel fingers numb on handlebars,

I feel the splash of a puddle beneath my tires.

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And I touch the hand of God

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Ephesians 4:1

I mistyped as I wrote that verse. It read at first, "as a prisoner of the Lord". That's a pretty big difference really, although I've always thought of it that way. So what does it mean to be a prisoner for the Lord. "For" sounds much more voluntary. It sounds even like a joyous choice made to give honor to God. A choice to restrain yourself from the way you might otherwise live in order to celebrate a life in Him.

A life worthy of your calling. A life that honors He who called you. Paul gives hints at what that might look like; humble, gentle, patient, and loving. A portrait of the life of Jesus, a living image of He who issues the call.

Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
Ephesians 5:14

The first warm day, of sunshine, soft breezes, and geese on the river. Couples walking friendly, bright-eyed dogs along the trail, while children take to the streets on wobbling, over sized bikes.

It feels like waking up, to soak in the sun again. It feels like the euphoria of summer in Alaska, when the oppressive darkness finally gives way to glorious unending light.

Wake up to spring, wake up to sunshine, wake up to the enduring promise of walking in the light of God.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

In one more week, my boy will be gone. Off to start his life, to make his own way, a young airman with all his future before him.

I can say all the right things. It's time for him to make this leap, it's the right choice, it will be a good life. It makes it no easier to watch him go.

He's a strong young man, Godly and focused and centered. He longs for direction and a life of meaning. Through his quiet, steadfast faith, he'll find what he was created for, he'll enter the good works prepared for him. All I can do now is pray for him and let him go.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1 :18-19a

Paul praises the Ephesians for their faith and their love. He prays for their wisdom and knowledge of God. Then he prays that they know all that He has called them to, all the full riches of what they have inherited.

What would it mean to truly understand that? Is there anyone who ever really has? The Ephesians were gentiles. The Hebrew God unknown, even forbidden to them throughout their lives. Now they find that he included them too. That they are sons of the inheritance, fully accepted by a Father they had never before acknowledged. How much history did they know? Were they eager to study and know this God, to explore his promises and gifts to his people?

I wonder how they could be anything but, and yet how much do we really know? Where is the eager impatience to know all we can of the gift we have been given, to know all God has done for us, to rest in the hope of "his incomparably great power"? And how would our lives change if we ever did truly understand?

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease. Genesis 8:22

Seedtime and harvest; the work of sowing, the anxiety of waiting, the joyous celebration of plenty. All to do it again the next year. An endless cycle of focus and meaning and growth; of learning, and changing, and redirecting.

It seems like I should have my life figured out by now. Four grown kids, a mid-term career, and yet the constant question of where do I belong, what should I be doing, where do I go from here? It's an incredible comfort somehow, through the all the uncertainty, to see this time as a natural cycle, as a prerequisite to a new harvest, a new celebration of what God will provide.

I Corinthians 13. Love as a gift. A gift of God, a gift for service. The love chapter, the wedding theme, the greatest commandment as narrative poem. I've known of it nearly as long as I can remember, but somehow never noticed its context. It falls in the midst of teachings on spiritual gifts. Paul coaxes his readers to use their gifts as a fluid, functioning body, to honor and accept the differences that allow them to work together for the good of the church and to take their position as members of that body. Desire the greatest gifts he tells them, then immediately explains how meaningless they all are without a wellspring of love. It's the backdrop of marriage, of family, of all of Christian living. It directs the use of the gifts in chapter 14 as Paul continues his teaching on the power of gifts to lead and teach those who are without the love of God.