Dear one,
“Rhythm and routine”: within the past five years these three words have become very important to me: they bespeak a path that is secure and orderly. Admittedly, “security” and “order” can be viewed negatively, but that isn’t my intent here. No: whether I think Biblically and theologically (e.g. Genesis 1 fully underscores a natural rhythm and routine), or in terms of human development (e.g., infant to child to adult), security and order are essential to life and growth.
Without question, seemingly the coronavirus and now George Floyd’s death have catapulted us into a world bereft of those moorings, those foundational footings we deemed sure and immovable. Emotionally, it feels as though the old terrain has been swept away in a floodtide yet to recede, yet to reveal a new, reconfigured landscape.
I make these observations in this regard: for the ancient Israelites the Law was a good, heartfelt gift. Having been emancipated from Egyptian slavery, but uncertain how to live within their newly gained freedoms—particularly as they wandered desert wastes—the commands, statutes, and ordinances provided needed rhythm and routine. However, as their later experience indicates, they forgot the Law- and Gift-giver: they soon believed and lived as though their security rested within the Law and its fulfillment, rather than in the One who gave, in order to relate freely.
In a similar regard, in the heady but tumultuous turning of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, Charles Sheldon wrote his immensely popular, In His Steps. This fictionalized portrait rightly suggests that great good is possible, when people ask: What would Jesus do? However, this question, if not set within the context of a believing and praying community, will encourage the ancient Israelites’ misstep: seeking to fulfill the Law without the Law-giver—seeking to deify the Law.
Moreover, this question suggests that we lack clarity as to what He would do—which we do not. Repeatedly the New Testament offers: He suffered. That is, given the love of His Father, He entered into the relational quagmires, the sinful messes of others, seeking to provide the rhythm and routines of faith, hope, and love. As the writer of 1Peter wrote:
“For to this [grace] you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:2).
In these days of the virus and of un-civil unrest, may I/we step where He steps: seeking a rhythm and routine that suffers with and for the sake of others.
Stepping,
Stan