It only took a year! Buried in the heart of all our furniture, books and belongings, Elise and I had packed a boxing heavy bag on our 20 foot container. Because of my knees, running is not a great exercise option but I’m painfully aware I need all the help I can get to stay in shape (or is it get in shape…).
Maybe it’s the fact that I see the top of this middle-age hill from here, or that somehow I’m closer to 50 than 20 now, but it’s clear that Father Time has been in cahoots with my vanishing metabolism for some time now. Over the past decade I was busy like every one else in the rat race of life, searching for meaning, hungry for success and busy laboring for significance.
It’s been wonderful passing on to our kids more and more of the wisdom my father taught me as a child. Somehow, however, it took me nearly four decades to realize the old adage, “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt,” wasn’t so much directed at the rambunctious roughhousing kids but the dad who gets down on the floor to box and wrestle with them. (I’m still not sure how that boxing lesson turned into a mauy thai free-for-all with me buried under four kids!)
So, finally after all the construction and unpacking, moving and removing, we’ve got the punching bag up and boxing gloves out. Time to get back in the fight. But as hungry for health and energy we may be, hurry and quick results aren’t the answer we need. It’s not quick fixes or yo-yoing scale readings. We can’t rush new habits.
But what a hurry we’re in today! Hardly out of a global lockdown and we’ve come bursting out like a prize fighter at the ding of the bell, with a bust lip and swollen eye. We’ve hardly given ourselves time to come to grips with the punches dealt in the last round to register the sheer amount of damage we’ve taken before we’re jumping back out of the corner in a mad rush for our opponent.
It’s important to realize, like that prizefighter, our motivations maybe right and righteous, our pursuit for victory and success laudable; but in our unfettered hurry we only invite carnage to our intentions and misdirection to our purpose.
A Misdirected Unity
Between the days of Joshua and the reign of David, the people of Israel stumbled across the generations, adrift in the river of time, floating from one defeat to another. Turning away from God, the people found themselves bruised and bloody from their sin at the oppression of the surrounding nations. Suffering and disenfranchised they would turn their faces toward God and He would faithfully raise up a judge among them to set things right. Reading the book of Judges is like leafing through a Sears-Roebuck catalogue of failures; it’s like watching the carnage of a merciless boxing matches go round after round.
Reflecting on the final round of Judges, Tokunboh Adeyemo wrote, “Though the period of Judges was marked by religious apostasy, moral atrocity and general political anarchy, there was still a pervading national sense of justice and unity.” Unlike the others’ rounds the final battle recorded in Judges was not against a foreign power or outside opposition. It was an internal struggle that led to civil war. These chapters show a sinful and shattered group roused by injustice.
Eleven of the twelve tribes swiftly set out in righteous indignation to right the wrongs of Benjamin. But rather than start in a slow, careful and concerted search for God’s plan, they hurried into battle only asking God who should go first rather than if or how they should proceed. Although their motivations were right, they suffered severe causalities as brother fought brother. They hurried their coalition of fury into war and got burned in the conflict. Only when they slowed down, humbled themselves and expressed their angst before the Lord did they find a clear answer and the path to a bittersweet victory.
A Redirected Approach
Today, we are surrounded by injustice, overwhelmed by the rabbit punches assailing us from every angle. All around the world men, women and children are suffering abuse and disenfranchisement. Newspapers and television channels are replete with all kinds of horrors. We have become busy with outrage and overcome with fury. In the next round we are poised for a great moment of victory, but only if we can clear our head enough to remember why we stepped into the ring in the first place.
As the days move faster and the world spins out of control we must, in the words of Dallas Willard, “ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives.” As the sons and daughters of God we must excise the busy-ness from our witness.
Looking across this world, our rushing to judgment is robbing us of clear vision as we shadowbox with our own opinions. Our hunger for quick results have come at too steep price as we’ve left the Church out of shape, overweight and bankrupt to serve people in pain. Our striving for success has left us bloody and bruised and alone. Friend, I fear our passion to draw battle lines is leaving a generation lost and cold in the trenches of our warfare.
In our fury we’ve lost the altar. Holding spears and shouting taunts back and forth we’ve lost our earnest prayer for revival and restoration. I look at our world and the nation of my birth and I weep because now more than ever I see people who need Jesus but have no access to Him. Can they see Christ in our harried lives, our sound-byte words, our unexplained actions? Even more, can they see His cross on our shoulders?
If my heart swells with hatred at the sight of broken men and women, hurting from a pain I don’t understand, I must urgently make space and time to see them as Christ sees them and find the Father’s love for them. If I don’t I’m only shadowboxing with false narratives of my own creation while the men and women created in the image of God await the good news of Jesus Christ! Beloved Friend, we have been made with a purpose. We have been made, not in the image of earthly ideologies or political slogans, but in the image of God.
The next generation is watching.
