Month: September 2021

Posted on

Fear vs. Fear

Fear is a verb and a noun, and in both forms it’s usually negative. Fear can be useful when it prevents us from stupid actions, but even then it doesn’t feel good, or build character, or add value. It just keeps us alive to fear another day.

Fear (the noun) is the default response to trying something new (They’re gonna laugh at me), or standing up against injustice (They’re gonna turn on me) or just crossing the yard to meet the neighbors (They’re not gonna like me). In more extreme cases,  it can prod us into battle or cliff diving if we fear the scorn of our buddies even more than the risk to our persons.

Fear guards our fragile self-image like a sentry marching back and forth with a shouldered rifle, starting at every sound. The treasure it’s protecting is Me—precious little Me, with the persona I’ve pieced together over the years that can be so casually ripped open by one mean word.

That kind of fear I can do without.

This kind of fear draws us toward, not away.

There’s another kind of fear. It guards nothing. It’s deliberate and cultivated. It breaks down gates and strides through the world arm-in-arm with a self-image no longer fragile, because it fears (verb) the one thing worth fearing.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pr. 1:7), deliverance (Ps. 34:4), blessing (Ps. 115:19), fulfillment (Ps. 145:19), honor (Pro. 22:4), provision (Ps. 111:5) goodness (Ps. 31:19)—and much, much more. We have the Lord’s own word on that. Then why is it so hard to fear the Lord?

It might have been easier for earlier generations raised on hellfire sermons, but even that was often the wrong kind of fear (if it didn’t progress to the right kind): trembling, shame-filled, run-and-hide fear like Adam who called out form the bush: “We heard you coming, and we were afraid.” The paired image of God used to run to him. Now they run away, as humans have done ever since.

Godly fear causes us to run toward him once again. It’s an emotion literally out of this world, though C. S. Lewis found something like it in a scene from Wind and the Willows, where Mole and Rat encounter the demigod Pan. [Mole]  found breath to whisper, shaking, ‘Are you afraid?’  ‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.  ‘Afraid? Of Him? O, never, never.  And yet – and yet – O Mole, I am afraid.’”

“Unutterable love,” of something wholly outside ourselves yet wholly intimate, is fear like nothing else. It—that is, He—could kill us with a glance—but he won’t. He could unmake us with a word, but his desire is to remake us. Everything that ever made a human heart sing, be it a literal song or a magnificent landscape or the road-hugging sweep of a perfectly-tuned racecar, leads back to him who made the human heart. Whatever pulls us out of ourselves, even for a moment, is meant to find fulfillment in him.  

If you fear God rightly, the saying goes, you need fear nothing else. “Fear not,” or the equivalent, is said to occur in the Bible 365 times—one for every day of the year. If I’ve lost myself in him, I don’t need a sentry. Little Me has found perfect protection.

But if I don’t fear him rightly, or at all, well: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31). In the end it comes down to two choices: Shelter in his love, or face his wrath.

Posted on

Naaman the Syrian

This is such a well-worn Sunday-school staple we easily overlook its relevance for grownups. And that may be the point: a little girl suggests a solution, a great man’s diseased skin becomes as clear as a child’s. Unless we become as little children we can’t be cleaned. We can’t come into the kingdom whose gates the Syrian captain almost passed by.

To begin with, it’s a little gem of storytelling: like Ruth, an almost ahistorical tale set between historical records of faithless kings and ruthless usurpers. It has the outlines of a folk tale: neither of the kings of Israel or Syria are named, and Naaman is not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. Gehazi, a nobody, emerges as a kind of trickster character who gets his comeuppance. None of this means that the story is untrue, but that (again, like Ruth) it has redemptive echoes fulfilled in the New Testament.

The setup is the “mighty man of valor,” a successful and respected commander who is nevertheless brought low by a shameful disease. A humble servant girl, captured in a raid against Israel, suggests Elisha the prophet, well known for his miraculous powers. It’s worth a try, and Naaman’s king, who values him greatly, loads him up with gifts for the prophet and the prophet’s sovereign. In their world, you pay for what you get: the greater the goods, the greater the recompense.

A bit of comic relief when the king of Israel, Naaman’s first stop, misunderstands the request. “Am I God? I can’t cure this man—it’s a trap!” Elisha, hearing of this melodramatic display, probably rolls his eyes before setting the King straight.

So Naaman, with all his pomp and pathetic skin, stands outside the prophet’s house expecting . . . what? A personal audience at least, given his station. And probably an elaborate healing ritual with chants and offerings and ceremonial smoke and mirrors, all of which might even work. Instead, he gets a curt message by Elisha’s servant Gehazi.

The medium and the message seem not only demeaning but carless, as if the prophet had just tossed out his first though. No wonder Naaman is insulted and upset. His fuming seems perfectly natural: I came all this way with all this gold, and this is my answer? I should have just stayed home and taken a bath.

His servants intervene. We might infer here that Naaman was a just man as well as a great commander, as his servants seem genuinely concerned for him. “My father” might have been a common form of address from servant to master, but it implies a warmth that “Sir” or “My Lord” do not. Anyway, they make an interesting argument.

Most translations put it this way: “If the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it?” That is, “You were prepared for a grand task; would it hurt to perform a simple one?”

The ESV, alone of the major translations, reads like this: “It is a great word that the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash and be clean’?”

I can’t say which translation is more correct, but I like the ESV’s because the focus is not on the procedure, but the reward. Not on what Naaman does, but what God will do. “Master Naaman, didn’t you hear what he promised you? ‘Wash and be clean’? That’s a great thing—just do it, already!”

So he does. He “goes down,” or humbles himself to wade into the dirty water, dips himself to the number of completeness, and comes out as a little child—clean.

Now his gold is a gift of gratitude, not payment, but Elisha (meeting him face to face this time) won’t take it. Cleansing is free. Redemption is literally priceless. Gehazi doesn’t see that—all he sees is carnal opportunity. What he does seems harmless, and even clever; he’s just taking the opportunity to skim a little off the top. But his crime is similar to that of Simon Magus in Acts 8:29: seeking to turn God’s grace to his own advantage.

Elisha rebukes him: “Did not my heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments?” There may be a time for remuneration, when a worker is worthy of his hire, but this isn’t it. Grace can’t be hired, because no one has the means to pay for it.

Except Jesus. He mentioned Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:27) as an example of his Father’s sovereign grace: lavish, unexpected, and absolutely free. It’s a gift only he could purchase, only he could give. And it’s a great thing. Will you not unfold your stubborn arms, uncurl your clenched fist, and receive it?

Posted on

So, How Did It Go?

Not too bad!

That’s corn, pole beans, and corn on the left, sunflowers on the right, basil and melons in the foreground.

Big fails were tomatoes, 1/3 of which succumbed to blight (I’m never getting that variety again). The Romas and Lemon Boys did all right, and I was able to get about 14 pints’ worth of spaghetti sauce out of them, but they got pretty sad-looking by August. They’re beginning to green up again, but we’ll see if there’s enough season left for them to produce.

I got my strawberries too late (I’m never ordering from Burgess again); out of twenty plants, only three survived. They’re now spawning baby plants, so maybe I can get a row out of them for next season. All the blackberry plants died (same company–boo!). But the asparagus looks okay. Except for basil, the herbs were hit-and-miss: some parsley, chives, and cilantro, no dill or oregano. I was really looking forward to the fresh dill, too. All that stuff needs to be planted nearer the house, anyway.

Moderate success with the corn. The first row was probably planted too soon during a very rainy spring, and always looked puny. The second row went in three weeks later and did much better, though not many of the ears filled out well. Still, I got about 2 dozen substantial enough to eat, and good eating, too.

The pole beans (Blue Lake) came in with a rush: 4 lbs. in 3 days, amounting to 7 pints canned. There’s more okra than I do what to do with, which is usually the case, as I understand. But the big success: melons! I wasn’t too hopeful, as I’ve never had much success with them–never really tried, honestly. I set aside one raised bed for cantaloupe and stuck a few watermelon seeds in a vacant space. Somebody gave them to me, so why not?

The cantaloupe did great! I got at least two dozen, including this beauty:

Not all of them were uniformly sweet, but most were at least passable. It was a joy to watch them turn yellow and sunny and tumble happily off the vine.

And much to my surprise, six little watermelons made their appearance. I cut two of them too soon, while the flesh was still white–watermelons are notoriously coy about letting you know when they’re ready. But then, there was this little guy:

Sweet, crisp, delicious

Overall, the successes more than balanced out the failures. We got too much rain at the beginning, but mostly adequate rainfall thereafter. I only had to water for two weeks or so. Lots of work: my one hour in the morning often stretched to 90 minutes, and my back is still sore. Definitely put more money in than I got out, but that’s not the point. Nobody I know, besides farmers, plants a garden to save money on food. There are other rewards, which I tried to express in my spring post. My views still stand, but I’ve learned a few things:

What I’ve Learned:

  • Corn has to be fertilized throughout the season. I knew that, but it just got away from me.
  • Tomatoes need a lot of prep and careful watching. But they can be worth it.
  • Don’t mess with bush beans after June. The beetles always get ’em in July. Plant pole beans early in June and by the time the bushes are done the poles are getting their mojo.
  • I worried about critters (the furry kind, not the six-legged kind) getting into the melons and corn, but several websites recommended blood meal as a possible deterrent, and it seemed to work.
  • Another thing that probably worked: I got a free packet of “vine peach” seed and poked them into an open space. Because why not? Vine peach is a small lemon-colored melon, about the size of a mango, and they don’t taste like much. One of those okay-if-you-re-starving kind of plants. The vines took up lots of room and I was ready to pull them up when I read that some gardeners use them as a decoy plant to distract four-legged foragers from the melons you want to harvest. And so far, it seems to work! I’ve found several hollowed-out vine peaches while my cantaloupe and watermelon are left alone to do their own thing.
  • Plant the okra all at once, not staggered, and one row is plenty.
  • But I might try this next year: two rows of okra with bush beans in between. In mid-July, pull up the bush beans. In mid-August, plant lettuce where the beans were. The okra might provide enough shade for the lettuce to get a start, and when it gets too cool for okra, the lettuce will be happy to keep growing.
  • Try to keep ahead of the bugs, instead of cleaning up after them. I say that every year.

The work isn’t done. I need to tighten up the fence and bring in some topsoil to fill in the low spots and haul a scoop or two of horse manure to season over the winter and maybe turn the mulch over . . . but you notice the references to “next year”? Next year could be a total bust–you never know. Gardening is not something you can predict, but neither can you lay back and coast.