This New Spring Day

Laced with frost, the morning welcomes the sun in bejeweled gladness.

Barb Harwood

Forgiveness: Having It!

In Luke chapter seven, Jesus explains to the Pharisees that “he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

He said this in the context of the Pharisees’ negative judgement of Jesus for letting a woman of questionable morals weep upon, kiss and pour perfume on His feet, and wipe those tears with her hair.

The Pharisees were aghast. 

But again, as we’ve seen elsewhere, Jesus knew their thoughts—specifically the thoughts of Simon, the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to have dinner in his house—and it is those unspoken thoughts to which Jesus responds:

“‘…Simon, I have something to tell you.’”

‘Tell me, teacher,’ he said.

‘Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?’

Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who who had the bigger debt canceled.’

‘You have judged correctly,’ Jesus said” (Luke 7:40-43).

The woman, who had been forgiven so very much, lovingly responds much to her Savior. 

I believe her tears were the tears of a repentant woman, along with the tears of a woman joyful in Christ’s purification of her. Her adoration was gratefulness in action.

Here is a woman who is forgiven not because she is any worse than the rest of us, or because she needs forgiveness more, but because, perhaps for the very first time, she becomes aware that she needs forgiveness. Once aware, she accepts forgiveness. 

No stiff upper lip. 

No haughty mocking of Christ. 

No self-protective playing of the self-esteem card or intellectual credence to “at heart being a good person.” 

No running in fear from the never-before experience of utter inner conviction that confirmed this man to be Lord of Lords and King of Kings. 

No.

The seed Christ planted in the woman takes, watered into life by His Spirit.

Have we ever tried to reconcile with someone via mutual apology who simply isn’t having it?

. 

Their reaction is often one of stoic stubbornness: nothing we say or do will ever permeate their thick fibrous core. For whatever reason, they want to hold onto their grudge, their victimhood, and their ‘being in the right.” 

Forgiveness, for them, gets in the way of all that. 

When someone comes to them showing a willingness to reconcile and move on, that doesn’t sit well with them because in their minds, the wrong was too egregious, or their point of view and “having been one hundred percent in the right” has not yet been conceded. They are not going to budge an ounce of ground towards forgiveness because it makes them feel uncomfortably vulnerable to be transparent or to accept someone else’s transparency. They squirm at the very idea of acknowledging that they have been mistaken, not just in this particular instance, but in many others as well. 

They refuse to admit what the woman in the Luke passage contritely admitted: they don’t believe they have anything to be forgiven for. 

I’m talking about forgiveness in the context of daily interactions, not acts of abuse and crime inflicted on innocents. That requires a much different process of forgiveness.

For the woman at Jesus’ feet, it is her honest acknowledgement before Him of her unfiltered past that leads to her unspeakable joy that she is now finally and absolutely free from it. She suddenly owns a fresh vista in which to go forward, made possible by the confession of her brokenness to Christ and His redeeming full acceptance, enabling her to become new.

In other words, when it came to forgiveness, the forgiveness Christ offered, she was, indeed, having it!

“Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47).

This isn’t because Jesus forgives little or not at all. It’s because the person I described earlier, the one who cannot own up to their own inner lostness and error, cuts themselves off from forgiveness—either the receipt of it or the ability to give it. 

“Then Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’

The other guests began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’

Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace’” (Luke 7:48-50).

Copyright Barb Harwood

Prayer for the Day

Lord, let me seize the insights this time provides:

what to change about myself and life,

what to prioritize,

what to ease up on or forgo altogether—

how to be, really, in such a way as not to regret—

and what to appreciate that I did not before.

Let the cream of this crisis rise to the top for me to skim and absorb, 

never to forget or return to a previous normal.  

copyright Barb Harwood

Mind and Heart

I find it notable that, in Luke 5:20-22, when asking the teachers and leaders of the law who were questioning His right to forgive sins, Jesus says, 

“Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?”

Jesus did not say, 

“Why are you thinking these things?” 

or even, 

“Why are you thinking these things with your mind?” 

He traces their thoughts to the heart. 

As I read this, one of two things come to mind:

Either the teachers and leaders of the law understood perfectly well with their minds what Jesus was doing, but couldn’t stand the thought so they let their hearts accuse and question Christ, 

or

The teachers and the leaders did not understand because the condition of their hearts did not allow them to. Objective reality was denied by subjective presuppositions and predispositions.

The heart is signaled out, not because God does not also know the mind, but because the heart is the source of motivation. 

And Jesus, God incarnate, knowing hearts as He does (Psalm 44:21; Jeremiah 17:9-10; Luke 16:15; Acts 15:8; Romans 8:27) warns in Luke and Matthew how it can lead to duplicity:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. So you blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also” (Matthew 23:25-26).

“…Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness” (Luke 11:39).

That is why we pray:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). 

and 

“So teach us to number our days,

That we may present to You a heart of wisdom” Psalm 90:12.

We pray this because, as I have learned personally, I cannot cleanse my own heart (Psalm 19:12). 

I also cannot direct and train my own mind (Romans 8:5-8). Perhaps through sheer willpower or determination I can do it for a while. But if my heart isn’t cleansed, and my mind is not increasingly pre-disposed to the wisdom of God in Christ, then the “room swept clean” in Matthew chapter twelve and Luke chapter eleven will once again become polluted by self-will, perhaps even worse than before. 

Jesus says we are to be of heart and mind, but under the Spirit’s guidance and direction, because a heart left unchecked does not just lead to sentimentalism, infatuation, people-pleasing, enabling, false flattery and covetousness, it also leads to killing, hurting, stealing, selfishness, self-promotion, grudges, resentment, revenge and cheating. 

And a mind left to itself will not develop into the mind of Christ:

"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:8-9).

“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins” (2 Peter 1:2-9, italics mine).

In this way, as Paul reinforces in First Corinthians chapter two, we will have the mind of Christ.

Together, a mind free of over-bearing logic, and a heart loosed from excessive or idealistic affection and sinister jealousy, body and soul can work in concert, directed and guided into right action and right living in Christ.

Copyright Barb Harwood

Waiting, Cowering or Living?

The days go by. Just as they always have. Just as they always will.

But in this pandemic, some of us are jettisoning “normal life,” voluntarily or involuntarily, in what I perceive to be three major ways: 

Some of us wait in a “finding things to do to kill time” mode, aimlessly pulling up the internet, re-watching old movies, snacking, and incessantly keeping up with the news. I'm not gonna lie, life taking a pause is sometimes a good thing. I hope some of the family-time and slowing down of daily life continues on into infinity. But over time, what will replace the attitude of waiting, of "killing time," if the "new normal" persists? 

Others cower, afraid when they have to go out, but also extrapolating heightened anxieties well into the future. They focus—obsess really—on the negative side of everything and everyone, growing increasingly pessimistic and morbid, in spite of the fact that this state of mind solves nothing. They allow the unique circumstances of national stress to morph into home stress. Interactions with those they are sequestered with become tinged with easy irritation and frustration, displacing anxiety or being bored onto them. 

Or, some of us wake up, as we would have woken up on any other day before the pandemic, and live, just like we would have chosen to live before the pandemic. Purpose, faith, family, relationships, professional development and commitments, artistic endeavors, cleaning the house, washing the car…whatever made up life then, makes up life now, regardless of tweaks in the details.

This choosing to live on the opposite side of catastrophe doesn’t mean we are callous. It doesn’t mean we lack compassion for what so many around the world are going through, just as our choosing to live life before the pandemic didn’t mean we were less compassionate about the tragedies and struggles people were going through then.

It means we can’t help anyone—whether they have the virus or not—by being constantly morose and dramatic, feeding 24/7 on media pandemic coverage, and putting life “on hold” in the mis-guided attitude that “this is what life requires right now.”

No.

Especially if there are children and youth present, for them a 24/7 intake of general conversation and hyperbolic pontificating, along with an unceasing drumbeat of background media voices spewing minute-by-minute “updates” and speculative worst case scenarios is not exactly a great way to observe and learn resilience, calm or level-headedness, and could implant lasting trauma.

It’s easy to get pulled in to the pandemic fray. I know that I, for one, was talking about it fast and furiously from numerous angles early on. I mean, there were and continue to be so many questions. All the “what-ifs” and “why can’t they’s?” I consulted the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus map three or four times a day. 

And then my husband and I decided enough is enough. We took a two-day sabbatical and didn’t look at our computers. We read. We cooked together. We went for a walk outside. We took time to discover new music on Spotify. We laughed with some fun comedians on the internet. We went for a drive.

That sabbatical from the onslaught, for the most part, continues.

My husband pursues work from home, I continue to write, and we both carry on in our commitment to learn and grow in our faith. In this way, life feels like life again. We feel like we are living. 

What I’ve learned from this time is, life happens. It always has. It always will. 

Pandemics of nature, illness, war, and technology—personal and national, national and global, will come and go. 

They are the pandemics of a broken world. 

And so, since that world is our abode, and because of its persistent and encroaching not-always-controllable-nature, today—whatever day it is, in pandemic or out—today is no less urgent than any other to live in a progressive manner. 

And if we feel that we honestly haven’t been doing that all along—even in the “good” days, then like with anything positive that moves us forward, now is a perfect time to begin. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

What Does it Mean to Fear the Lord?

The phrase about fearing the Lord gets thrown around a lot, without much attendant Biblical definition. 

But in a reading of Proverbs this morning, I came across one of the Bible’s fairly straightforward takes on what it means to fear the Lord:

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil;” (Proverbs 8:13a).

There it is, in a way we can all get our heads around. 

The verse goes on to delineate exactly what this evil is that we are to hate:

“I hate pride and arrogance,

evil behavior and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 b).

In its entirety, the verse reads thus:

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil;

I hate pride and arrogance,

evil behavior and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13)

I guess we all know now why it is so easy to balk at having a fear of the LORD! It means we can no longer justify our pride, the source of evil behavior and perverse speech! 

Proverbs eight, in its entirety, is about gaining prudence, understanding, discernment and wisdom. 

Those qualities are the opposite of pride and arrogance. We cannot increase in prudence, understanding, discernment and wisdom as long as pride rules the roost, and this includes spiritual and religious pride.

So to fear God is a beautiful thing, because that’s where the ability to hate pride and arrogance begins. 

God in Christ is the antidote. 

Christ, who, just like He did for the woman at the well (John 4:29), tells us everything we ever did and in doing so, opens our eyes to our pride and arrogance. 

Knowing that He knows what we have tried to keep hidden or are in denial of or blinded to, is the beginning of the end of the dysfunctional cycle within ourselves (a cycle which manifests itself in various ways, but is always an outworking of inner pride. Even inner-woundedness and a refusal or reluctance to heal from it emanates from pride). 

Jesus comes to us and reveals what He finds there, imbuing us with His hope of what can replace it. 

That is how we are enabled to step out in a healthy and life-giving fear of Him—life giving because it arrives inside of us with a willing shared expectation that, like the woman at the well, this fear of Him will become our “fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27). 

In other words, we want what Christ wants: the end of the cycle of dysfunction within us.

This positive fear of God through Christ delivers us, over time, from every negative fear (Psalm 34:4). 

It is the seeding of Christ's Spirit that allows us this first taste of the Lord: that He is good, and we are blessed to take refuge in Him (Psalm 34:8). 

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

This is “fear” as applied to “fear of the Lord.”

And it is in this fear of the Lord in which no self-pride, and therefore no evil, can be found.

Copyright Barb Harwood

Days of Solitude and Rest

This quote of Dallas Willard, from his book Renovation of the Heart, beautifully articulates the opportunity we all have right now in this time of staying put and spending more time alone:

"The Christian philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal commented, 'I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.' This remark, though somewhat of an exaggeration, contains a deep insight. The capacity to simply be, to rest, would remove one from most of the striving that leads to misery. This is a capacity that comes to fullness only when it reaches our body. Peace is a condition of the body, and until it has enveloped our body it has not enveloped us. Peace comes to our body when it is at home in the rightness and power of God. 
Sabbath fulfilled in human life is really celebration of God. Sabbath is inseparable from worship, and, indeed, genuine worship is Sabbath. As the fourth commandment, Sabbath is the fulfillment in practice of the first three (commandments). When we come to the place where we can joyously 'do no work' it will be because God is so exalted in our minds and bodies that we can trust him with our life and our world and can take our hands off of them.
Now, for most of us Sabbath is first to be achieved in the practice of solitude and silence. These must be carefully sought, cultivated, and dwelt in. When they become established in our soul and our body, they can be practiced in company with others. But the body must be weaned away from its tendencies to always take control, to run the world, to achieve and produce, to attain gratification. These are its habitual tendencies learned in a fallen world. Progress in the opposite direction can only be made in solitude and silence, for they 'take our hands off our world' as nothing else does. And that is the meaning of Sabbath. 
Rest is one primary mark of the condition of Sabbath in the body, as unrest is a primary mark of its absence. So if we really intend to submit our bodies as living sacrifices to God, our first step well might be to start getting enough sleep. Sleep is a good first use of solitude and silence. It is also a good indicator of how thoroughly we trust in God. 
The psalmist, who knew danger and uncertainty well, also slept well: 'I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the LORD sustains me' (3:5-6), he said, and 'In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for Thou alone, O LORD, dost make me to dwell in safety' (4:8)."
Dallas Willard, writing in his book, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ