God is My Portion

Lamentations 3:22-24

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,^[a]
    his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

My wife and I used to struggle with this phrase, “the Lord is my portion.” 

The Lord is my portion.  What does that mean?

I heard her pose that question, and it occurred to me that I wondered the same thing.  I had heard singers in worship services testify with significant emotion, “the Lord is my portion.”  What was the worship leader saying, exactly?

I think the answer, at least just a bit of the answer, came to me in my time of prayer this morning.  And it comes in what is quickly becoming one of the scriptures I appreciate most – Lamentations 3.

Lamentation is a series of poems from exile.  These are poems sung by a defeated people.  This is the voice of shame, defeat, guilt, and loss.  Judah, and more specifically Jerusalem, has been overrun by Babylon.  The people are in exile – slaves forced to live far from the land of milk and honey God had promised to Abraham.  They are suffering this indignity due to their own sins.  This has to be the worst part.  All this is happening because God brought it about after they ignored the warning of generations of divinely appointed prophets. 

Now that the punishment has come, from God, all that is left for the chosen people (besides the hard labor imposed by Babylonian taskmasters) is to wail and grieve in defeated songs of lament.  For the most part, that is what is found in Lamentations 1-2.  But then, we come to Lamentations 3:22-24.  How in the middle of such misery, can those who suffer pray words of such appreciation?  From where does this faith come?

In reading it this morning, I thought about the prayer, and the situation in which the prayer was born.  I made it my prayer, practicing Lectio Divina.

First, I read these verses, Lamentations 2:22-24 several times, out loud.  After each reading, I took four intentional, deep, slow breaths. 

Next, I entered into mediation.  I selected one phrase, the Lord is my portion.  I went over and over it in my mind.  My portion.  This is what came to me.  The Lord is all I get.  The Lord is my serving.  When life around me feels chaotic, I get no more solution than the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is with me, carrying me.  When I know I have disappointed people with my words or my temper or my decisions, the Lord is right there.  As low as I feel, the Lord stays with me.  And the Lord is not a passive presence, but is constantly goading, stroking, reminding, uplifting, pushing, catching, whispering, shouting, kicking, holding, hugging; all of this and more.  The Lord is the all the portion need and all I could want.

I thought about N.T. Wright, the English Bible historian.  When he talks about a section of scripture or theology, he says in his British way, the “bit” about this, or the “bit” about that.  The Lord is my “bit.”  I don’t need or want one bit more.

All this revelation came to me a 21^st century Bible-reading Christ follower from the poems of lament of a 6^th century BC Jew enslaved in Babylon.  That’s how big (and how small) God is.  God is present.  God is my portion. 

After meditation, I prayed allowed, interceding for people I know here and for my family and for people I know in Africa.  I finished up in silence, trying to quiet myself so God could speak some more.  God had already been speaking through the word and through the Spirit’s guidance, showing me my portion.  I finished in silence, creating space so I would be ready to hear God. 

One afterthought is why don’t I do this every day?  But, I leave that afterthought as I gratefully bask in the blessings of doing it today.  Thank you, God, for meeting me and for being my portion.

AMEN

Lovingkindness

As I sat to pray this morning, I continued my reading through the book of Joshua.  Most days, I read a chapter in Joshua and write a couple of paragraphs of reflection in my journal.  Then, I spend time doing lectio divina.  I read a passage several times out loud.  I then spend a few moments going over in my mind whatever word or phrase in that passage God highlights for me.  Following the reading and the meditating, I then pray through my words.  Whether out lout or silently, I speak to God.  Finally, I end in several minutes of silence, listening as God speaks to me.

I am doing my lectio divina in Lamentations.  Why not Joshua, the book I am reflecting on in journal entries?  I have no good answer.  I have done what I am doing in Joshua dating back to 2003.  I read through a book and jot down a few comments and responses.  I have very little structure other than what is provided by the Bible, the pen, and the notebook I happen to be using.  I just started lectio divina recently.

I was already a few weeks into Joshua and I added lectio divina to my routine.  Why begin in Lamentations?  Well, I think my experiences in Atlanta this summer influenced my decision.  I did not want to start with "favorites" (Psalm 23; Matthew 11:28-30; etc).  I wanted to start in a harder place because I had been to a hard place and spent a week with children who live their lives in hard places.  So, Lamentations.

But, what I read this morning is the highlight of Lamentations.

Lamentations 3:22-24

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,[a]
    his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

The word I chose for lectio divina prayer was "Steadfast Love," translated "lovingkindness," in the version I had this morning, The New American Standard Bible.  


The hard place for me this morning was Joshua.  

Joshua 11:8-9

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

8 And the Lord handed them over to Israel, who attacked them and chased them as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastward as far as the valley of Mizpeh. They struck them down, until they had left no one remaining. 9 And Joshua did to them as the Lord commanded him; he hamstrung their horses, and burned their chariots with fire.

In case it is missed, note the phrase at end of verse 8.  "Until they had left no one remaining" means the Israelite warriors killed everyone, combatants and noncombatants alike.  It was divinely commanded genocide and it happens over and over in Joshua.  What a bloody book!!  My journal entries are often pleas for understanding.  "Why, God, why?  Why did your story have to go this way?  Had I lived then, would I have been wiped out along with the other non-Jews?" I'll write questions of this sort.

It's odd to find relief from such woe in a book of poems about woe - Lamentations.  But, even though I know the prayer in Lamentations 3:22-24 comes on the heels of sorrowful statements of pain and loss that are brought about by God as punishment, still faith not only in God, but in God's goodness dominates these verses.  "The lovingkindnesses of the Lord never end."

I was at a point of moving from prayer into silence, listening to God.  I was sitting on my back porch.  It was a beautiful September morning, 8AM, the birds singing a concert of praise. With each new note of birdsong, I felt uplifted and I felt reminded of God's lovingkindness.  All of a sudden, above me, I got a different and even happier reminder of it.

Our boys were off to school and our preschool aged daughters who stays home Fridays was in our bedroom drying off after her bath.  Our room is directly above the porch where I was sitting.  Unbeknownst to me, she was right above me, wrapped in a towel, appreciating the same bird concert.  She decided to join.  She began saying quite loudly, "tweet, tweet, tweet."  I was filled with happiness for God and for my daughter - thankful for both.  I decided God was telling me, through her, that I did not need the silence this morning.

So, I shouted "tweet."  She did not know I was on the porch below the window.  She thought it was her and the birds.  "Who said that?"  She asked smiling.  I stepped back a bit and she saw me.  That was the start of a wonderful morning with her.  I take Fridays off and I take my daughter.  With the boys in school, it is the one day my wife has time for herself.  She goes to a Bible study.  She shops.  Today she had a lot of tasks, chores.  She certainly was not at all pampered.  But I was lucky - lucky to have a day with my beautiful daughter; a day in which I basked in God's lovingkindness.

A Heart Poured Out

I have been in the process of trying to rediscover a truly deep and rich prayer life.  I have practiced the method of Lectio Divina.  First, a passage is read, preferably out loud, several times.  Then you identify a word or phrase and work it over in your mind.  Why did that phrase stand out in your reading?  You think of all the meanings of the phrase and the ways it is used. After reading and pondering with a focus on a phrase, a third step is to pray through your own speech to God.  With the word/phrase and the scripture as a guide, you talk to God.  The fourth and final stage is to be silent for God so God can talk to you.  God should, after all, have the last word.

My rough summary here my seem insufficient and maybe even an offense to those well-practiced in lectio divina.  But right, now this approach is drawing me into a place where the scripture and my prayer life are coming together.  I am grateful.  

I have chosen what might sound to some like an odd starting point - the book of Lamentations.  Today is Friday, the day I typically take with my daughter.  My boys are back in school, and if i take several hours with her, it frees my wife up to do whatever she needs or wants to do.  And, it deepens my relationship with my little girl.  Before my time with M__ today,  I went for a walk and did my reading in Lamentations.

It was Lamentations chapter 2, a sorrow-filled word of acknowledgement.  Zion has suffered terribly and the misery is from God and is deserved for Zion has sinned and God hates sin.  "How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger."  That is the opening line of chapter 2 (as rendered in the New American Standard Version).  It goes downhill from there.  How can this chapter be an inspiration to me as I try to revitalize my prayer life?  I'll tell you how.

Following lectio divina, I narrowed my focus to one line in one verse, verse 19.  "Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the night watches; pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord."  I zoomed in on the phrase "pour out your heart like water."  When do I do that?  When am I so emotionally exposed that I pour out my heart like water?  I did last year watching my beloved Detroit Tigers get swept in the World Series.  I have done it many times thinking about my kids or talking about them.  I felt "poured out" on my wedding day.  Sometimes when I preach about God's call to the wealthy on behalf of the poor, I feel poured out.

I went through these times and then thought about how I want my prayer life to be more emotionally charged more often.  I should be as emotional as Jesus was when he groaned and sighed and prayed until he sweat drops of blood.  God should get more of my hear than the Michigan Wolverines.  The verse served as a jolting call to me to give more in my prayer life.

Then, I realized this verse comes in the midst of a string of miserable laments.  The singer/poet is defeated, an exiled Israelite for whom the halcyon days of Solomon's glory are but a fading memory.  At the point of despair, when it has already been acknowledged that the pain is from God and is deserved, the singer tells Israel to turn to the very God who punishes.  The defeated one stubbornly turns to faith in the face of the seeming failure of faith.  When all is lost, pour our your heart.  

Does this make any sense?  Don't we (and here by "we" I mean Christians who have the privilege of education and financial means) have the responsibility to use all at our disposal to solve the world's problems?  Did not God privilege America and its Western allies to be the vicarious saviors of the world?  Shouldn't I give as much as I can, and thinking creatively, achieve the solution to the problems of war and poverty and spiritual depravity that afflict so many in the world?  

Clearly my questions in the last paragraph are soaked in arrogance that is the unique purview of the privileged.  Western, white, male, educated, wealthy (by the standards of 99% of the world), I lose site of how desperately weak I am.  Nothing about my life in smallest way resembles the pain that inspired the prayer of Lamentations.  But that prayer, born in pain, was also inspired by the Spirit of God.  Thus it has force beyond its original context.  I may not be afflicted as the singer was, but I am just as weak, and at times, just as lost.  I fail.  Oh, I fail in so many ways, great and small.

And I tackle challenges that have little chance of success.  Who has the audacity to think that my week of volunteering in Atlanta will make a difference in the lives of kids who are beat up every day?  How can I think that the project my wife and I with our friends the Davids and the Laughners and all our Hope Chest sponsors can really make a difference for 180 Ethiopian kids?  How can we believe that these kids will actually grow in Christ and be empowered to make significant positive changes in their country and in their town?  Do Candy and I really think we can be agents of the Gospel in our neighborhood in Chapel Hill, where so many people are uncertain about God or indifferent as if that were an option?  And the hardest of all - changing my own sinful heart; why even try?

The truth is I can do none of it.  I am powerless.  But I can pour out my heart, in all its sinfulness.  The singer in Lamentations stopped in the midst of the desperate woes and implored any person of faith who suffers to do just that. Deep beneath the guilt and pain and shame is the unshakable sense that God still listens and still loves us.  That is not stated in Lamentations 2.  God is not called a God of love.  Such a direct declaration does not come until 1st John.  But, the hope that God hears is this sad singer's song.  Also in Job, with all Job has endured, there is the hope that God hears and will respond.  

The worst we can do is ignore God, act as if God does not see and is uninterested in us.  The best we can do is turn to him when we are at our very worst.  I don't think this season is among the worst of seasons in my life.  I think it is among the best.  I have an awesome wife, great kids, and a fantastic job.  However, I have good days and bad.  Sometimes staring at my own sin is hard because I realize I cannot do better.  I repeat mistakes.  But in the dirtiest parts, I know I must pour out my heart like water before the Lord.  I don't know what God will do when I do that.  But I can trust God.  

However, I am not in the act of trusting and the condition of trusting until I pour out my heart - all the time.  I don't mean I am an emotional basket case 24/7.  I just mean God gets all of me, even when it feels exposing.  I pour out myself like water before God because there is no better way to live.

AMEN

The Roads to Zion Mourn

Bring on the day you have announced,
    and let them be as I am.

22 Let all their evil doing come before you;
    and deal with them
as you have dealt with me
    because of all my transgressions;
for my groans are many
    and my heart is faint.

Not much of a prayer, is it?  I copied it from Biblegateway.com.  It is Lamentations 1:21c-22.  The title of this post comes from Lamentations 1:3.

Why am I lamenting, spending my prayer time in such blue verses, clouds of doom hanging low, swallowing me?

My wife and I are reading a book about Lectio Divina, praying the scriptures. To put into practice what I have read and to bring new life to my prayer life, I have practiced Lectio Divina.  I have read the passage over and over (a month ago Lamentations 1:1-5 and today Lamentations 1:21-22).  I have read each aloud, over and over.  In between readings, I do deep breathing.

Then, I listen for a word given, and pour over it in my mind.  I think about it, uses of it, where it comes from, what it could mean.  

After reading and thinking, I pray directly to God.  In terms of "the roads to Zion mourn," I thought about cities.  This first came home to me in doing missions back in July in Atlanta.  The inner city kids we tutored in the literacy camp took a lot out of me.  While we there, the news came that Detroit was bankrupt.  My is from Detroit, born and raised until young adulthood on 7 Mile Road.  She studied at Wayne State University and taught at Mumford High School.  My mom was Detroit.  

And we would go back there every Christmas and throughout the year.  We lived in a suburb, Clawson, between 14 and 15 Mile Roads.  Then in 1982, I was 12, and we moved to Roanoke, Virginia. Still the trips back to Detroit were frequent.  

So in July of this year, a city was confronting me - Atlanta.  And my memory confronted me - Detroit.  (And none of this accounts for the many years I spent doing ministry with kids in inner city Washington DC).  When I returned home to Chapel Hill from the wonderful and draining and hard week in Atlanta, I got into the Lectio Divina, and began reflecting on cities - Zion, Atlanta, Detroit. Recent events have called other cities to mind - Damascus, Cairo, Terhan, and Pyong Yang.  And of course, there is the city that newly forced its way into my heart, the city of my middle son's birth, Addis Ababa.  

God loves cities.  I don't have any specific prayer.  I went before God on behalf of Detroit and on behalf of my kids in Atlanta.  And Addis.  And ...

But really, I had nothing to ask for (and everything to ask for).  I just sit with God, thinking about cities, trying to join my heart to his.  And I grieve.  

I know God sees.  God sees the injustice and there will be day of reckoning. Setting things right is my job.  I couldn't handle it.  I'd mess it up in an awful way.  But I can love those who hurt.  I can hug and cry.  I can rally people to educate or contribute $$$ to the education of children who would not get it without help.  I can care.  I can sit with.  I can pray.  I can go.  

Bring on the day, Lord.  Bring on the Day of the Lord.  Until then, I pray and I sit with you.

AMEN

In Favor of the Lament Prayer

The professor of Old Testament I studied under while in seminary, Sam Ballentine, wrote a book called Prayer in the Hebrew Bible. One of the forms of prayer he discusses is lament. It’s probably very unfamiliar to American readers. We praise. We confess. We ask for God’s help (in healing, in times of need, in times of duress). We seek God’s leadership and guidance. But, I believe lament is wholly unknown to the vast majority of American Christians.

Ballentine make a case for the importance of offering lamentations. Some of the books of the Bible where laments are heard most poignantly and pointedly are Job, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Habakkuk. However, lament is not restricted to these books. Even the Psalms, maybe the most beloved of OT readings for evangelicals, contains this form of prayer. In fact, there are more lament Psalms than praise Psalms.

Here, I offer some of Ballentine’s comments toward the conclusion section of his book. I hope you find Ballentine’s words edifying and challenging. I hope what he has to say will drive you to read Job and the other books I mentioned.



“God’s presence is witness to divine intention to reward faithful obedience, as the prophets proclaimed, but fidelity does not guarantee God’s presence. This is the hard lesson of the book of Job. God’s hiddenness does confirm the indissoluble linkage between sin and punishment. On this truth the entire Biblical witness is unequivocal. But the pain and hurt that sunders the soul claims as its victims the just as well as the unjust. This too is the hard lesson of the book of Job. The present God is the hidden God and the hidden God is still God.” (Sam Ballentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, p.287).



“When the church practices the ministry of lament, it proclaims the Biblical truth that life is finally open-ended, not settled or closed or bound. Even east of Eden, where limitations and impossibilities seem status quo, change, new beginnings, and surprise are possible. Questions are harbingers of change. In the practice of lament the church engages most daringly in the ministry of questioning. Whatever the reality of the institutions, the cultural forms, or the sacred dogmas that define life in the present, accurately placed questions can shatter their claim on people. Questions dare to imagine that things can change, that nothing, not even God, is locked into static, unalterable sacredness. In this sense questions always call for re-calculation, refiguring, rethinking, imagining that one has more than one way to comprehend to cope. For victims of grief and despair, the license to question is the key to hope that something different and better is still possible.” (Ballentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, p.289)



“It is the stuff of lament to address God with hard and accusing questions. The Biblical witness is that God does not resist such speech; indeed, God takes it seriously, and it is effective. But the Biblical record is equally clear that God seldom answers questions, at least not in the way they are asked. Often the dialogue between God and humanity is painfully one-sided. God is expected to hear, believed to be receptive, but when questions end, faith must bear the burden of the silence that follows. … Are we willing to rethink God’s power, God’s compassion, God’s justice? Let us not stop short of ultimate questions – Are we willing to rethink the very reality of God? … We must admit that to engage in such questioning is to risk losing one’s faith. When one loses faith, where can one turn? Perhaps the greatest irony of the Biblical witness and perhaps also its most impenetrable legacy of prayer is that when one loses faith in God, it is precisely to God that one turns.” (Ballentine, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, p.292, 294).