Life Together

Ever since I’ve been a Christian, I’ve asked God for lots of things He hasn’t given. There have been times I’ve begged God for clear guidance on how to handle messy relationships or on what direction to move in a confusing situation, and it never came. I could name a dozen nasty spots in my life, probably more, when I’ve felt desperate to hear from God yet heard only silence.

David: I hope I have not embarrassed you by introducing you as Ate Thelma, but hearing you addressed in this way in your culture, I sense that spirituality remains more central to your culture than is true in the secularized West. You have lived in both worlds, completing some of your training in the U.S.A. Does this generalization seem true to you?

I have a particular appreciation for Conversations, not only because I am enriched by each issue, but also because I owe so much to one of its originators. David Benner’s precious trilogy Surrender to Love, The Gift of Being Yourself, and Desiring God’s Will—has been a great vehicle of grace for me. The first of these three books came to me in a particularly dark period, and it effectively invited me to turn to my prodigal Father and experience his affirming love, to climb up in the lap of Jesus as a child and experience the kind of love a child knows when he is securely settled in the lap of his father. With these experiences, the darkness gave way to dawn and a new day in the journey. As I moved along, I was fed also by Benner’s second and third volumes. With the third, another significant breakthrough came as I realized how much God desires me. I sit now in that desire and seek to respond to it with the whole of my being. It’s the first great commandment, isn’t it: to love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength.

The rich young ruler in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10:17–22) came running to Jesus, running to engage him, running to ask his most important questions. No wonder “Jesus looking upon him loved him” (v. 21, RSV). Yet the young man walked sadly away. And Jesus let him go.

It seems that often when we seek direction from the Lord, what we get instead is advice from others—pastors, friends, or counselors. The advice may actually be very good, but it is not what we are seeking and is not what we need. Instead what we long to hear is what Elijah heard—the gentle whisper from the Lord that came after the great and powerful wind, after the earth shattering earthquake and after the blazing fire (1 Kings 19:11–12).

Rabbi Eliezer was the first to speak. “If a man really wants to understand a word in the Scriptures,” he said, “he has to enter into it with his whole being.”

“But isn’t it impossible for a grown-up man to enter into a small word?” one of his disciples objected.

“I did not speak about men who think they are bigger than words,” the Rabbi answered.

For years I’ve been practicing and teaching the familiar styles of Scripture meditation, but it seems that only recently I’ve begun to grasp this basic point: each time I approach the Scripture, I need to deliberately and submissively give God permission to speak to me through those Holy Spirit-breathed words. It’s actually a prayer of request: Veni, Spiritus Sancte (Come, Holy Spirit). Maybe because I’ve let my mind wander so often, I now understand I need to preface any meditative interaction with Scripture by asking with a sincere, searching heart for the Holy Spirit to speak to me today. I don’t find this to be a formality or a checklist task, but a moment filled with the dearness of an older couple who have asked each other the same question every day of their lives: How was your day? They still mean it when they ask, and each still listens for the other’s answer.

I am intrigued by how often in recent years I have heard the phrase “communal discernment.” I hear it in congregational settings, on retreats, and at regional church gatherings. Sometimes the phrase arises with great hope. A year ago I attended a three-day conference for leaders from ten different Christian denominations. To a person, communal discernment excited them. “When we practice communal discernment in our committees, relationships grow stronger,” said one seasoned leader. “We begin to see possibilities we never thought of before,” affirmed another.

“It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves” (Acts 15:28,29, JB 1). This is how it was put in a letter from the apostles and elders in Jerusalem to settle a controversy at Antioch. This biblical statement affirms the remarkable reality that our decisions can be made conjointly with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has been given to us as a gift (Acts 15:8,9, JB). Our belief that we can rely on the Spirit’s guidance in making life choices grounds the Christian practice of discernment.

When my mother died a year and a half ago, my siblings and I went through her things and found her diaries. She had kept diaries for years and years—those diaries with four lines for each day and three years in one book. All my nieces and nephews, my brother and sisters, looked up their birthdays and noted my mother’s record of their births and their weight and length and gender. “Bob called this morning and said that Sharon gave birth to a baby girl early this morning. She is 7 lb. 8 oz. Mother and daughter doing fine. They named her Suzanne Lea. Gray, cloudy day today again.” My mother never hid those diaries, nor did she need to because while she faithfully recorded events and the weather, she never wrote about her personal reactions or her feelings around events and circumstances that happened. We all tried to read those diaries, but soon lost interest.