We can live here for the rest of our lives…

Beth

As episode 4.10 ("Inmates") of The Walking Dead opens, we see two of our favorite characters   - Beth and Daryl - desperately making their way through the woods, having to fight and run from zombies for their lives. Overlaying these intense scenes is a narration from Beth's diary, where she wrote about how they had finally found a place she felt safe. You see, in this world after a zombie apocalypse, the few people left are always on the run, always trying to find a way to survive the danger and death that constantly surrounds them. But not too long ago, Beth's group had found a prison where they could settle down, grow crops, and begin to feel safe.

But it all was shattered in an instant, and now they were on the run again. So the show simultaneously shows how their fragile state of security is gone (visually) while reminding us of the illusion with the audio voiceover. Powerful. And as Beth and Daryl collapse in exhaustion and look up at vultures circling overhead, we hear the final words of her diary entry:

We can live here…we can live here for the rest of our lives.

But they couldn't. And neither can we.

I look at my life and I see how easy it is for us to convince ourselves of the same lie Beth believed...

• When I was a child, I had a routine of playing with my friends, coming home to dinner with family, going to bed and start it over again the next day. It was never going to end. And then I grew up and everything changed.
• In high school, I had a group of friends and we were almost inseparable. What great times we had. And then, we graduated. I seldom see any of them anymore.
• As a young adult, I was blessed to be close to my family as we all stayed in our hometown.  I bought a house next door to my sister and her family, and it seemed like I would grow old hanging out with them. And then a tragic accident claimed her life. Nothing would ever be the same.

On and on I could go, and so could you. Jobs are lost. Friends move away. Kids grow up and leave home. Loved ones die. People disappoint us. Whenever we get to thinking like Beth that we can live like this forever, we can be sure that we are wrong.

Life is good. I like the way things are. But I'd better not be putting my security in the way things are, because it won't last forever. I need something bigger. Something that will.

____________________

Later in that same episode, a different group of characters from the prison is on the run like Beth and Darryl. Carol and Tyrese encounter a man who is dying from a zombie attack, and he tells them to follow the railroad tracks. Carol thinks it's safer to travel in the cover of the woods. But the man's last words to them are this:

No, you don't understand. There's a place…up the tracks…it's safe. You can take the children there.Trust me…please. Follow the tracks.

 As we begin Holy Week, the death and resurrection of Jesus tells us that there is a place of safely. There is something that we can put our trust in that won't change, that won't fail us. If our hope is in the comfort of our surroundings - in our present circumstances - we will be disappointed. But if we look, so to speak, down the tracks, we can see a place of safety. The Messiah came and was proclaimed KIng, and he will come back again, bringing the world we long for every time we are rocked by life circumstances.

No, we can't live here for the rest of our lives. We have got to keep moving, keep living, keep fighting. But one day there will be such a place.

Trust me, please. Follow the tracks.

Smaller buildings, nets, and other bandaids

Near where I live there's viaduct
Where people jump when they're out of luck
Raining down on the cars and trucks below.
They've put a net there to catch their fall
Like that'll stop anyone at all
What they don't know is when nature calls, you go.

- War on Drugs, Steven Page/Ed Robertson, 2003

These forms form the heart of a very powerful song, one that moved me the first time I hear BNL perform it. It is a ballad packed with meaning, calling attention to the despair, hopelessness, and desperation of so many in our society. Feelings that we all experience from time to time, but seems to overwhelm some...even to the point of suicide. The song is, in my opinion, essentially dedicated to those people.

I thought of the song, and this verse in particular, as I was reading again today from When Helping Hurts, a book on poverty alleviation by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. I already had been struck by the importance of motives, and just a couple of days later this book cut me to the quick again. In this case, it was through a story:

There was an incident in the housing projects of Chicago where two boys about 10 years old killed a five-year-old by dropping him out of a 14th floor window. Apparently the kid has refused to steal candy for them. There are all sorts of influences that led to this tragedy, all borne of the brokenness of our world since The Fall. Distorted worldviews, shame, hopelessness - broken people and broken systems. But the thing that struck me - and reminded me of the song - were the comments of a pair of teenagers from that neighborhood: 

Now they're talking about tearing down all the high-rises and putting everyone in low-rise buildings as the solution [to children dropping other children out of high-rise windows]. True, it's a start. But "Tyrone" and "Johnny" could have thrown Eric out of a vacant apartment in the low-rises and he could have fallen and broken his neck. So what are you going to do - make the low-rise homes lower? It's more than just the buildings. You don't know how it is to take a life until you value life itself. Those boys didn't value life. Those boys didn't have too much reason to value life. Now they killed someone and part of them is dead too. (LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman with David Isay, Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago)

See why I thought of the song? It's the same mentality. Let's stop all these suicides by building a net to catch their fall.  In the meantime, the lyrics cry out about the brokenness that make the size of buildings or the height of viaducts irrelevant. Listen to the whole song:



We are all so broken. Poverty - material, emotional, and spiritual - is the manifestation of that brokenness. Page and Robertson write of how it will be "dull" when we rid ourselves of those demons. But those words radiate longing and an almost sarcastic use of the word "dull." Dull, sure - but in a marvelous way. A world where despair is a thing of the past.

This - whether they realize it or not - is what the kingdom of God is all about. We are to work every day to rid ourselves and our neighbors of " all these demons haunting us," driving them away with love  and a mutual effort to make our relationships right. And then one day, the longed-for dullness will be complete, when Jesus comes again to make everything right.

What a marvelously "dull" day that will be! But in the meantime, let's not be about building smaller buildings and nets to stop people from jumping. Let's be about healing, restoration and reconciliation. Not because some of us have all the answers, but because all of us need each other and need the creative power of the resurrection.

"Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."

A hope and a future

One of my favorite verses is Jeremiah 29:11:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

 It proclaims a wonderful truth. The Lord - the God of Israel, the Creator of the universe, our Father - has a master plan for all of us, one that gives us hope in any circumstance and a future of mercy from him.

But I must confess that most of the times I have read this verse, I have lifted it out of context. Big time. Reading it alone, without looking the context of the passage leading up to it (and without the historical context) can give a false sense of what the Lord is saying through his prophet Jeremiah. I know it has for me. Out of context, we could easily conclude that God is promising bounty, riches, and worldly success for me. And sooner rather than later. But this is not the promise at all.

You see, this chapter comes on the heels of 28 chapters where Jeremiah is sharing some tough news with God's people. He is telling them that they have turned from his ways, and that as a result, the empire of Babylon is going to invade their land, kill many of them, take the rest of them into captivity, destroy their sacred Temple, and impose their false religion on them. It is going to be 70 years of misery.

(Side note: God loved these people; so did Jeremiah. Sometimes love means delivering a hard message that needs to be heard - quite different from one definition of love floating around social media these days.)

So, after delivering this hard message born of love, Jeremiah turns to the promise. The promise that there is hope. There is hope when God's people turn back to him. Hope and a future. That future is 70 years away. It's not coming now...or next year...or even this decade. Seventy years from now. Hear verses 10 and then 11:

This is what the Lord says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

A little different, isn't it? Will there be hard times? Yes. Does God promise an easy life or easy success? No.

He promises that, no matter what you're going through, there is a future. He has a plan, and if we will put our lives in his hands he will bring about a glorious end. It may be a long, long time from now. But he is an eternal God and the big picture is what matters, not our momentary happiness.

That is a hope and a future! Not immediate happiness. Not something I can see with my mortal eyes. But a plan I cannot even fathom, where God's eternal purposes are for my good.

And that's so much better!