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brighten the corner where you are

Do you seek great things for yourself?
Seek them not.
Jeremiah 45:5

Jeremiah’s sidekick, Baruch, is plotting his next move.

He’s stood faithfully beside Judah’s wildly unsuccessful prophet, but now he’s tiring of unpopular ministry. Compounding his misery, he’s got a brother playing for the other side, faring well among the ruling class. That brother, also a scribe, hitched his wagon to a star, but Baruch, to a whipping post.

It’s not hard to imagine Baruch eyeballing the other side of the fence to contemplate a change. An upgrade, perhaps. Maybe his brother will give him a palace gig.

So God said,

“What’s bothering you, Baruch? Are you tired of living righteous in an unrighteous world? Are you envious of the other side? Don’t be. The other side is marked for destruction. Seek Me, not worldly greatness. I am enough. Stay faithful and you will live.”

Baruch was the scribal secretary to the saddest and loneliest man in Judah. His boss was a pariah prophet, a truth-teller to a culture of therapeutic deists. Jeremiah refused to play the game so he got himself banned from the temple.

But the Word of God will not be chained!

God told Jeremiah to dictate his entire catalogue of sermons (23 years’ worth!) to get to Jehoiakim. The puppet-king didn’t take too kindly to the prophet’s hot takes. He proceeded to hack the scroll into ribbons and tossed them into the fire.

This was a bridge too far for Jehoiakim. Insurrection! Treason! Sedition! If Jeremiah won’t shut up, he’ll just have to shut him up — permanently — both he and his errand boy.

It was about then Baruch started weighing his options.

I read about a woman who was planning for ministry among the Chautauqua tribe of Native Americans. This was her surrender, the ache in her soul, her single-minded passion.

Ina Mae Ogdon never realized her dream because she was called back home to nurse her ailing father. Did she resent her father? Even worse, did she resent God?

Some years later Ina Mae, already a prolific writer of hymns and poems, looked back on that unexpected detour in the words of a song, “Brighten The Corner Where You Are.” It’s clear she made peace with the path God chose for her.

Could you be content in being a foot instead of a hand? Would you submit to being a footnote instead of a headline? Might you light a candle in a closet when you would prefer a spot on the dais?

Who’s to say greatness is measured by whether or not you are a published author? Are you a failure if your church can’t break fifty…or a hundred? Are you a success if you boast 100,000 followers on social media? Or if your home is a magazine ad?

Hear me out … What if greatness is measured in eternity by “humble and sacrificial servanthood, and not in any pursuit promising a rise to power, position, or prestige…”? (Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1, 206) Could you sign on to that?

Vance Havner said, “Too many of us aren’t big enough to be little enough to be used of God.”

Recently, before I met with God, I read aloud from the prayer book, “Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1” That day’s entry struck oil in the tender soil of my heart:

At a pastor’s retreat one of the ministers noticed how a woman joyfully cleaned each of the rooms every day. On the final day of the weeklong retreat he found her in the bathroom and made a point to ask her the question he’d been wanting to ask since the second morning.

There she was, on her knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, humming a familiar tune.

“How do you do such degrading work so happily?” he asked.

“Its not degrading to me,” she replied with a noticeable brightness. “I just remind myself I don’t have to do this, I get to do this!”

That dear woman sought only one thing in her life: to shine in whatever corner Jesus put her, no questions asked. She turned a bathroom floor into a cathedral of worship.

Sandy recently volunteered for the children’s ministry at our church. She explained to the director how she felt drawn to the nursery. In her words she said, “I want to whisper ‘Jesus loves you’ to those babies in a way they’ll never forget it.” Instead, she was assigned a K-2nd grade class.

I met her after the service and was greeted with her warm smile. That’s my Sandy. Her heart is an abiding ‘amen’ to Jesus.

While she’d prefer holding newborns (since she’ll never hold her own grandchild), she brightened her corner. She didn’t fuss or complain. She just shined where Jesus needed her.

All that matters in the end is,

“Were you faithful?”

“Did you love people or use people?”

“Did you crave the spotlight or did you make Jesus big?”

“Did you brighten your corner?”

I’m fairly certain Baruch got the smallest chapter in Jeremiah because “seeking great things for yourself” is the petty desire of small people.

Don’t live for this world’s applause. Brennan Manning said, “Do the Truth quietly without display.”

The word to Baruch was, “A great shaking is coming and those who are living on flow’ry beds of ease now will die in their luxury. But if you can praise me from your corner I will bless you with abundant life, far greater than you can possibly imagine.”

We don’t really know what happened to Baruch. I’d like to think he chose life. I choose that too. If you’re reading this, I pray you will also.

May we brighten the corner where we are until the great and glorious day when Christ says, “It’s time to move. I have prepared a new place for you. Come and see.” It’ll be worth every corner, detour, sideline, back seat, bathroom floor, hidden place, and anonymous season we’ve ever known.

Selah, beloved.

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guest post: david on david

David, like his namesake, is an unashamed worshipper of Jesus

David Illidge is one of several young men I’m privileged to mentor. I often give my guys homework each time we meet and David’s recent assignment was to do a brief character study on – who else? – David of the Bible.

Not gonna lie, he blew the old professor away. Naturally, I asked if I could post it because I thought you might be encouraged by another up-and-comer from the next generation.

My name is David.

I guess my parents had high hopes for me. There has never been anyone quite like the king of Israel and I pale in comparison. He was the slayer of ten thousands, and I get nervous when I talk to girls. But I could never be jealous of him. If I were born in an earlier time and in a different part of the world, I would gladly serve under a man like David. I would study him every time he was in the room and pray, “God, teach me to be like him.”

As a matter of fact, I pray it anyway.

Here’s why. David took down a lion and bear with just his hands before anyone heard of him. Then there was the time he killed a giant with a slingshot. And he just kept on going being unstoppable. Consider this. David had three monstrous men directly under him in his military. The first, Joshebbasshebeth, once killed 800 men in a single battle. Eleazer fought one battle for so long that his sword became attached to his hand. And Shammah once stayed on the battlefield after all his men left and won the battle himself. But these men stopped and listened whenever David spoke. He was one bad dude.

On top of being unconquerable, David was God’s anointed. It’d be easy to let it go to his head. Saul chased David out of the kingdom for fear he would take it by force. David does the unthinkable and bowed his head to Saul when he was caught. David was the “better man” by any measure. He asked Saul why he would chase after a “dead dog, a flea.” Could you bow your face to the literal dirt and talk about yourself like that? Could you do it knowing God had chosen you to replace a man like Saul? I couldn’t.

Speaking of being on the run from Saul, there’s a story about David that doesn’t get talked about enough. David and his men were running for so long that they couldn’t go on any farther. David began to look for food. He found the priest and did something outrageous. He asked for the only food around, the Bread of the Presence. Only priests could eat that bread, and people died for violations of God’s temple. This was equivalent to what Esther did by entering the king’s chamber unannounced. But David knew Yahweh better than anyone else. He took the bread and fed his men. They lived, and Jesus even commends David for his actions. David knew that God’s rules were meant to sustain men, not to tear them down.

But as great a fighter he was, sometimes he chose not to. One day David was forced from his throne by Absalom, his son. On the way out, a member of Saul’s family began to curse David and throw rocks at him like he was on the playground. David’s men were ready to end the man’s life, but David said no. “If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’” David trusted God enough to bear the humiliation and let him handle the situation instead of his very capable men.

David was astoundingly ready to forgive, too. Absalom eventually caught up to David. He was ready to take his father’s life. David’s men are ready to spill the young upstart’s blood. They’re gearing up for the battle when David says to deal gently with Absalom for David’s sake. I can see their shoulders slump. “Deal gently? Are you kidding me?” One of his less faithful men does end up killing Absalom, though. David is distraught when he hears the news. He cries, “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

David was more man than anyone I’ve personally met. But he would challenge our idea of being man, too. He wrote poetry, and he was good at it. He didn’t see it as a waste of his time or something that “those artsy types” do. His poems are still around, filling up the Psalms.

He could dance, too. David was the king of Israel and the king of dancing like nobody was watching – even if the whole nation was. When the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem, David danced with so much exuberance that he embarrassed his wife. She told him to stop and David spoke the immortal line, “I will become even more undignified than this.” If we’re honest, most guys don’t like to dance ‘cause they’re afraid they’ll look bad, no matter what excuse they give you. Not David. He knew no fear on the battlefield or the dance floor.

I could go on. But lowercase ‘d’ david has written enough. King David knew no fear because he knew Yahweh was on his side. People like to make him a kind of underdog. God never saw him that way. God has his eye on him the fields with the sheep long before he took down Goliath. He brought David up to be king of Israel because he knew who David’s heart followed. David was faithful with his sheep and a worshipper of God through writing and song. I pray that God teaches me to be the kind of man my namesake was and trust that if I’m faithful here God sees me too. I invite you to do the same.

the sixth estate of mary

But this is the one to whom I will look:
(s)he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word. Isaiah 66:2

The cries of ‘fake news’ co-opt the headlines and such affrontery to our nation’s fourth estate has them screaming to the hills and college coeds to their safe places.

It seems there’s no end nor coming out from under a hodgepodge of hot mess issues these days:

Collusion.

Sexual predation.

Tyranny.

Police brutality.

Virtue signaling hashtags.

Twitter rants.

Evergreen.

The fourth estate is in the middle of every one. We have the Europeans to thank for introducing the world to the idea of ‘estates’ (or powers) to divvy up the socio-cultural economy of the realm. As they saw it, clergy were the first estate [!], nobility came second, and commoners got slotted at the bottom. These were the people with varying degrees of power, from most to least.

Modern tweaking of the estates has added a fourth: a nation’s free press. Pardon me while I stifle a giggle to their being regarded as lower than the low. Now still a fifth estate has been added to accommodate for bloggers and such (yay me!).

Side note: I’m pretty sure clergy in this post-christian era are bound to get a rethink in the rankings.

That’s all well and good but there’s another estate few talk about – outside the Bible, that is. It’s a level so low it has to look up to see bottom. Even the dregs and dreck of social media score higher than these misfits.

Who are the sixth “estate”? Before I answer, let’s go back to the fourth and fifth estates where we find the press, the expanded media, and self-acclaimed journos. In the Christmas story these would include the lowly shepherds who first saw and reported the fair and balanced story of the Incarnation. (The priests, the puppet governor Herod, and upperclass of Israel had their moments in the story too)

The biblical ‘fourth and fifth estate-types’ were not congenial, gentle, cuddly guys, mind you. They were rough-and-tumble blue collar herdsman, branded unclean and unfit for public life. But kudos to them on this day: they got the story first and they got it right, which is why we love putting shepherds in our church plays.

But there’s yet a lower estate. Probably the most important figure in the nativity story other than Jesus puts herself in this category. Here’s how Mary self-identifies:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. (Luke 1:48)

“Humble estate.”

This is Mary’s place in the Kingdom. The word she uses, translated to Greek, means to be ‘(forcibly) bent,’ carrying about the weight of humiliation. Her world had pushed her down, a bent reed in the footpath of the self-absorbed.

“Why me?” indeed.

Young Mary was a nobody, underfoot, and flattened by oppression and injustice – first as a Jew, then as a woman, and finally with no estate but a Nazarene bloodline. All the other estates stood atop her, over her, apart from her. Even the fourth/fifth estate were dazzled by an angel choir and an audience. Mary was serenaded by the gentle lowing of farm animals. The shepherds rejoiced and told the news. Mary sat and “pondered.”

But may I suggest yet another estate? This one – and this one alone – belongs to Jesus. His is the seventh estate, for,

…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Selah, beloved. Even if you’re in the first through third estates, ‘tis nobler to share in the sixth with Mary, which is the spirit of Christmas faith, only made possible – and lifted up – by the Seventh.

IN RESPONSE

What do I do with this, I’m asking myself. How do I apply this? What is ‘this’ you ask? Put simply, identifying with Mary’s estate (Isa 66:2).

How must I walk it out? The answer beckons me to deep repentances and costlier amens than I’ve ever known. Will you pray for me? And, if you’ll ask, I’d be honored to pray for you.