Readings:
1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Devotional:
The easiest part of storytelling is conflict. Play pretend with your kids, and conflict emerges almost immediately. Your “guy” can’t do something because their “guy” said so or it’s suddenly a violation of a rule you weren’t informed of. (Oh, the games I’ve lost due to newly invented rules…) Superheroes, underdogs, romcoms—pick the genre, and we can prototype the conflict. It’s that predictable of a feature. Even in our news, conflict sells, as we noted a couple weeks ago. If you’ve ever tried stand-up comedy, the fastest impromptu skit is one of disagreement and argument, because it’s the default narrative everyone knows.
But it’s the worst formula for funny. In fact, in stand-up comedy, you actually need to overcome conflict to get to the livelier scene. If I ask, “Did you like the birthday cake I made?” but you answer “no,” our scene just died. There’s nowhere to go except to start all over again. But if you answer, “Yes, and the pickles were an unexpected filling,” now we have energy to move forward. Accepting the premise as true and building on it leads to the better outcome.
It’s easier for us to just evaluate the premise than accept it. We’re conditioned to assess. Advertisers tell us that this product outperforms that one by x percent, and we evaluate. Reviewers tell us that this movie or book or restaurant excelled or failed on these points, and we evaluate. We learn to discriminate between genres, cultivate a palate, become known for our sense of taste or style. We practice making sound decisions, assessing situations, and being aware of our surroundings. The idea of evaluating what is presented to us saturates our environment. Even reading this, I bet you thought, “But those aren’t bad things. It’s good to have emotional intelligence and situation awareness.”
Which is precisely the point. We can’t help ourselves but consider the premise and if it’s good or bad. Should we accept it or reject it? Which things are good and which things are bad? Our post-enlightenment, industrial-revolutionized culture rewards the effort of evaluation, and so we spend more and more time investing into “this versus that.”
While there may be benefits to getting good at identifying good or bad, what if we considered that the whole evaluating effort might be a concession? That we might be spending more time and energy than we ever needed to or were meant to in assessing? What if a wider world of livelier imagination stands before us, asking us to accept a different premise and build on that?
Let’s start with Solomon. We all know his story: becomes a king as a very young man (likely between 12 and 20 years old), and famously asks for wisdom, which is granted to him. We then hear the decisive story of his sage ability in his judgement of death to the contested infant, revealing the true mother. But look closer at what Solomon asks for, and what he accepts.
Solomon asks for an understanding heart to judge; he wants to be able to intelligently listen in order to govern. Solomon acknowledges that he is young. He doesn’t even know how to command a room (going in and coming out) or to capture attention. He accepts that there are so many of God’s chosen people to lead, too many to count. Side note: this is a specific kind of counting, where you would weigh them out, to measure or allot or tally. God’s people are not something to weigh out and categorize. From the get-go, Solomon asks for help to hear, that he might skillfully guide the whole of God’s people. He’s not asking to get good at determining which of God’s people are good; Solomon accepts that they are all chosen without need for tallying.
God accepts the premise and builds on it. It’s pleasing for Solomon to want to discern how He sees justice! Indeed, lead His people in seeking His ways of mercy. Yes, He will gift that to Solomon, and in the verses that follow, He also gifts all that Solomon didn’t ask: riches, honor, and long life in His presence. How like God to show us exactly what it’s like to work all things together for our good, accepting our premises (even young or unpracticed or naive) and building on them in ways we can’t yet imagine. The truly life-giving outcome.
Solomon learns to see God’s justice and to have a listening, understanding heart, not to cast a tally of good or bad against God’s people. What if the imagination that overcomes evaluating is to have a listening heart that applies God’s justice of mercy first? What if the energy we would spend assessing were redirected into hearing the hurts of the whole and helping unfold the kindness of God to each?
Unfolding really is the right word for it, as the Psalmist uses. It’s like a map or an instruction manual, in the olden times of paper, where it’s mechanically, tidily folded into a very specific rectangle. From just that view, you can see perhaps the name of the places you might go or what item you may get guidance on. But until the folded book is unfolded, the full form and contents can’t be understood. I might never learn about a path I could take or a component that was designed to help me. Or to push the metaphor, I might never recognize that there is another language and set of tools to work with. God’s commandments, the things He speaks that write the evident laws of the universe, are graciously unfolded to us, showing us His form and quality of being.
We have to be shown the path more than once to remember the turns by heart, but once the map is refolded (if you even can), you still have expanded understanding of what is within. The Psalmist says establish my footsteps, but it’s the same picture: he has seen glimpses of light and recognizes the miracle, and he wants to repeat the experience. What God says carries the weight of governing and shows us the actual path to the life-endowed outcome. Where iniquity would try to fraudulently rule over God’s soil through force, deceit or exploitation, God’s redemptive power claims the land that was always His. The soil is His. The garden is His. What if the imagination has never been about trying to determine what is a bad fish, but accepting his predetermined stance of loving us, His children? Accepting what He finds to be powerful, what He finds to be of value, and building on that.
That’s what Paul seems to think. After all, what amount of deciding the good or bad is going to cancel out God’s intention toward us? Where do we find the record of God who, when we approach Him, doesn’t meet us with His face turned toward us, accepting us and building us? It’s not going to be our lacking that keeps us from His love: not the pressure of tribulation where we lack escape, not confining distress where lack space, not persecution’s lack of security, nor famine’s lack of provision, nor nudity’s lack of protection. His love won’t be held back by the lack of safety, respite, or exoneration.
In fact, it’s the opposite, quite literally. Hamartia, the Greek word for sin, means missing the mark. But the word for intercede is the exact opposite in Greek; it means to hit the bulls-eye. So, yes, in our weakness and lack, the Father’s intercession will overcome all the personal, communal, societal, and national places where we lack. We leave the effort of evaluating with the only One who can actually deal with it, knowing He's been in our midst all the while.
And it gets more beautiful than that. Of course we expected God to conquer the harmful things. We have no problem accepting the premise that God would overcome bad on our behalf. But do we have the imagination that God’s love surpasses our ideas of good too? Paul lists them at the end. It’s not just death that can not separate us from His love. It’s life, all our ideas of good: God’s messengers, our origins and beginnings, all that we have now, all that we anticipate and look forward to, the power to do miracles, high honorable things, deep mysterious things. All the philosophies and ideologies and motivators, the good things that move us. His interceding love surpasses those, too. We are the inescapable objects of His affection, a premise He predetermined and guaranteed with Jesus’s own life.
We could spend our time chasing the duality of good or bad, but the all-encompassing, surpassing greatness of God’s love is actually unfolding before our eyes. We could evaluate the structures and ideologies and tally up the records to take the side of good. But oh that we could hear His words of love moving us to become word workers of His mercy, dedicating our time, labor, and space toward His beloved, uncountable children. Oh that our imagination would expand to accept the premise of God’s love—His tree of life—and that we would realize His kingdom growing from it.
A Prayer for Each Moment
God of Imagination,
You invite us to share Your image, Your likeness, and way of seeing. Capture our interests and attention as we practically learn to love through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory, now and forever.
Amen
A Prayer for Each Other
Our Father,
You unfold love before us that we might see worth and growth where we never before imagined it. Move us toward our world, that we would hear its groaning, embrace it as beloved, and offer back Your mercy.
Amen
Blessing
May we find His words filling us, His patterns of love inspiring us, and His compassion toward His people working through us.
Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash
1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Devotional:
The easiest part of storytelling is conflict. Play pretend with your kids, and conflict emerges almost immediately. Your “guy” can’t do something because their “guy” said so or it’s suddenly a violation of a rule you weren’t informed of. (Oh, the games I’ve lost due to newly invented rules…) Superheroes, underdogs, romcoms—pick the genre, and we can prototype the conflict. It’s that predictable of a feature. Even in our news, conflict sells, as we noted a couple weeks ago. If you’ve ever tried stand-up comedy, the fastest impromptu skit is one of disagreement and argument, because it’s the default narrative everyone knows.
But it’s the worst formula for funny. In fact, in stand-up comedy, you actually need to overcome conflict to get to the livelier scene. If I ask, “Did you like the birthday cake I made?” but you answer “no,” our scene just died. There’s nowhere to go except to start all over again. But if you answer, “Yes, and the pickles were an unexpected filling,” now we have energy to move forward. Accepting the premise as true and building on it leads to the better outcome.
It’s easier for us to just evaluate the premise than accept it. We’re conditioned to assess. Advertisers tell us that this product outperforms that one by x percent, and we evaluate. Reviewers tell us that this movie or book or restaurant excelled or failed on these points, and we evaluate. We learn to discriminate between genres, cultivate a palate, become known for our sense of taste or style. We practice making sound decisions, assessing situations, and being aware of our surroundings. The idea of evaluating what is presented to us saturates our environment. Even reading this, I bet you thought, “But those aren’t bad things. It’s good to have emotional intelligence and situation awareness.”
Which is precisely the point. We can’t help ourselves but consider the premise and if it’s good or bad. Should we accept it or reject it? Which things are good and which things are bad? Our post-enlightenment, industrial-revolutionized culture rewards the effort of evaluation, and so we spend more and more time investing into “this versus that.”
While there may be benefits to getting good at identifying good or bad, what if we considered that the whole evaluating effort might be a concession? That we might be spending more time and energy than we ever needed to or were meant to in assessing? What if a wider world of livelier imagination stands before us, asking us to accept a different premise and build on that?
Let’s start with Solomon. We all know his story: becomes a king as a very young man (likely between 12 and 20 years old), and famously asks for wisdom, which is granted to him. We then hear the decisive story of his sage ability in his judgement of death to the contested infant, revealing the true mother. But look closer at what Solomon asks for, and what he accepts.
Solomon asks for an understanding heart to judge; he wants to be able to intelligently listen in order to govern. Solomon acknowledges that he is young. He doesn’t even know how to command a room (going in and coming out) or to capture attention. He accepts that there are so many of God’s chosen people to lead, too many to count. Side note: this is a specific kind of counting, where you would weigh them out, to measure or allot or tally. God’s people are not something to weigh out and categorize. From the get-go, Solomon asks for help to hear, that he might skillfully guide the whole of God’s people. He’s not asking to get good at determining which of God’s people are good; Solomon accepts that they are all chosen without need for tallying.
God accepts the premise and builds on it. It’s pleasing for Solomon to want to discern how He sees justice! Indeed, lead His people in seeking His ways of mercy. Yes, He will gift that to Solomon, and in the verses that follow, He also gifts all that Solomon didn’t ask: riches, honor, and long life in His presence. How like God to show us exactly what it’s like to work all things together for our good, accepting our premises (even young or unpracticed or naive) and building on them in ways we can’t yet imagine. The truly life-giving outcome.
Solomon learns to see God’s justice and to have a listening, understanding heart, not to cast a tally of good or bad against God’s people. What if the imagination that overcomes evaluating is to have a listening heart that applies God’s justice of mercy first? What if the energy we would spend assessing were redirected into hearing the hurts of the whole and helping unfold the kindness of God to each?
Unfolding really is the right word for it, as the Psalmist uses. It’s like a map or an instruction manual, in the olden times of paper, where it’s mechanically, tidily folded into a very specific rectangle. From just that view, you can see perhaps the name of the places you might go or what item you may get guidance on. But until the folded book is unfolded, the full form and contents can’t be understood. I might never learn about a path I could take or a component that was designed to help me. Or to push the metaphor, I might never recognize that there is another language and set of tools to work with. God’s commandments, the things He speaks that write the evident laws of the universe, are graciously unfolded to us, showing us His form and quality of being.
We have to be shown the path more than once to remember the turns by heart, but once the map is refolded (if you even can), you still have expanded understanding of what is within. The Psalmist says establish my footsteps, but it’s the same picture: he has seen glimpses of light and recognizes the miracle, and he wants to repeat the experience. What God says carries the weight of governing and shows us the actual path to the life-endowed outcome. Where iniquity would try to fraudulently rule over God’s soil through force, deceit or exploitation, God’s redemptive power claims the land that was always His. The soil is His. The garden is His. What if the imagination has never been about trying to determine what is a bad fish, but accepting his predetermined stance of loving us, His children? Accepting what He finds to be powerful, what He finds to be of value, and building on that.
That’s what Paul seems to think. After all, what amount of deciding the good or bad is going to cancel out God’s intention toward us? Where do we find the record of God who, when we approach Him, doesn’t meet us with His face turned toward us, accepting us and building us? It’s not going to be our lacking that keeps us from His love: not the pressure of tribulation where we lack escape, not confining distress where lack space, not persecution’s lack of security, nor famine’s lack of provision, nor nudity’s lack of protection. His love won’t be held back by the lack of safety, respite, or exoneration.
In fact, it’s the opposite, quite literally. Hamartia, the Greek word for sin, means missing the mark. But the word for intercede is the exact opposite in Greek; it means to hit the bulls-eye. So, yes, in our weakness and lack, the Father’s intercession will overcome all the personal, communal, societal, and national places where we lack. We leave the effort of evaluating with the only One who can actually deal with it, knowing He's been in our midst all the while.
And it gets more beautiful than that. Of course we expected God to conquer the harmful things. We have no problem accepting the premise that God would overcome bad on our behalf. But do we have the imagination that God’s love surpasses our ideas of good too? Paul lists them at the end. It’s not just death that can not separate us from His love. It’s life, all our ideas of good: God’s messengers, our origins and beginnings, all that we have now, all that we anticipate and look forward to, the power to do miracles, high honorable things, deep mysterious things. All the philosophies and ideologies and motivators, the good things that move us. His interceding love surpasses those, too. We are the inescapable objects of His affection, a premise He predetermined and guaranteed with Jesus’s own life.
We could spend our time chasing the duality of good or bad, but the all-encompassing, surpassing greatness of God’s love is actually unfolding before our eyes. We could evaluate the structures and ideologies and tally up the records to take the side of good. But oh that we could hear His words of love moving us to become word workers of His mercy, dedicating our time, labor, and space toward His beloved, uncountable children. Oh that our imagination would expand to accept the premise of God’s love—His tree of life—and that we would realize His kingdom growing from it.
A Prayer for Each Moment
God of Imagination,
You invite us to share Your image, Your likeness, and way of seeing. Capture our interests and attention as we practically learn to love through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory, now and forever.
Amen
A Prayer for Each Other
Our Father,
You unfold love before us that we might see worth and growth where we never before imagined it. Move us toward our world, that we would hear its groaning, embrace it as beloved, and offer back Your mercy.
Amen
Blessing
May we find His words filling us, His patterns of love inspiring us, and His compassion toward His people working through us.
Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash
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