God Be Merciful to Me, a Racist

JESUS MAFA. The Pharisee and the Publican, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48268 [retrieved November 6, 2021]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector resonates in the ears of most Church-goers, and even some non-church-goers. Look it up in Luke 18:9-14 and refresh your memory. Jesus contrasts two church goers of his time, one who thanked God that he was not “like other men.” He was a good ol’ boy, and he knew it. But he looked good to people, not to God. He trusted in himself, that he “was righteous,” better than other people.

The tax collector collaborated with the occupying army to wring taxes out of his fellow-Jews. He betrayed his people daily, and he knew it. Worse, he knew that he betrayed God, who made them and him. He knew he deserved eternal death and pled with God for mercy. He looked bad on the outside, but his inside looked good to God. That’s where God looks.

We became Christians by realizing that we’ve been secretly despising God, and by begging him for his mercy, like that tax collector. Our treatment of others will change only as God changes our loves and fears from God-hating to mercy-craving; we come to hate our own sins more than we hate other people’s sins, like the tax collector did. He noticed God first, so he went to him first.

Even if I never spoke like a racist (I suppress my prejudices fairly well), how could I thank God that I am enough better than my favorite despised minority, or even than white supremacists, that God should like me better? What about my church-going friends? All of us Jesus-followers love people better than we could without him, but enough better to congratulate ourselves? To expect God to congratulate us too?

Even enlightened progressives and moralists, for all their tolerance and inclusiveness, fall in behind the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable. Can a racist God-hater be saved? Can a moralist, or a progressive God-hater be saved? Who else is there? God offers mercy to everyone who turns to him and asks. So ask!

Then come back to church, and smile at all the repentant racists and moralists around you, seeking God’s mercy together, and finding it.

David A Covington

Evacuation Retrospective

Penned July 30, 2021

Lightning sparked a fire near our place last summer. When the Bear Fire (later The North Complex Fire) threatened homes just south of ours, some friends were forced to flee. They came—three people, a cat, and a dog in heat—and stayed in our trailer, as the virus closed the house to guests. We shared meals outside in sweet fellowship, but when the smoke became unbreathable, we moved to our indoor spaces. As the fire crept closer, they helped us prepare to evacuate in our own turn. With smoke and candling trees on the mountains opposite the house, terror dulled my wits, slowed my work. Then the wind changed driving death and destruction away from us, downwind. Firefighters defended and saved our friends’ home. We didn’t evacuate.

Since then, we’ve renewed our efforts to harden our home against wildfire, and especially last month, when lightning started fires in the forest just a few miles downwind (the Beckworth Complex).

Then a small fire appeared upwind—the Dixie. As it grew and approached, I cleared more combustibles away from buildings, and we packed up underwear, passports, photos and guitars.

I neared the end of my planned debris clearing Thursday afternoon, 7/22, watching the smoke clouds rise and gauging the fire’s approach by watching the treetops to see wind speed and direction. I wondered if finishing meant we were going. Minutes later, a pickup pulled in, last summer’s evacuee guest, asking “How can I help?” I had barely hugged him when my phone screamed our evacuation order, urgently bypassing the usual warning. Two more friends appeared right behind, ready to help us pack and load.

Our granddaughters, renting our trailer, proved more ready than we, and joined in our scramble. Even with all this help, we needed an hour and a half to roll out, including a jump start to my truck. We rolled toward relative safety along our own dear road through two law-enforcement check points, helicopters whirling their dripping buckets just overhead: three vehicles, four adults, and three dogs.

A few days and three host families later, we’ve found refuge in the Bay Area. This is God’s kindness. We cling to what routines we can in this new, unfamiliar setting, wondering when we can go home, and what we may find. This is trouble, and God is with us: God gave me courage in recent weeks, delivering me from the terror paralysis that sandbagged me last year; he gave me strength to finish the cleanup.

Thank God, too, for his promises. Sharon and the two granddaughters staying with us have been memorizing a Scripture passage fitting this moment:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings,

knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character,

and character produces hope,

and hope does not put us to shame,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

(Rom 5:1-6 ESV)

This is the right time. We are weak; God has given us strength through others. We were in danger; God has brought us to safety.

We have run out of cope; God has sent help—through family, medical workers, friends, and especially these two fine young women who have evacuated with us. We’ve accepted lots of help that we need very much.

God loves evacuees who are far from home. Our home, as we continually peruse the fire reports, still stood. Some did not.

What are we to make of those displaced families’ losses? We must hope farther out: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:14) How? The Gospel of Jesus Christ stands as an outpost of that city, an evacuation center. John the Baptist, as he sounded the alarm, challenged some tourists, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” You’re only rubbernecking, assured you’ll sleep tonight in your warm bed in the city. It’ll burn there. All who come here in earnest prove it by staying. Pass out water bottles and blankets. Here alone can you find refuge. Search your hearts, but hurry!

Death and loss, seen downwind, are no less sure than flames, death and loss closing in upwind. We have time to pack. Like John’s earnest evacuees, we don’t deserve it. Whenever Sharon and I get back to our place in Quincy, it will be different. More importantly, we’ll treasure it more as an outpost of the city that is to come. Even now, Christ alone is our evacuation center.

David A Covington

Nearer Now

I like to imagine that Friday, February 5, dawned center between last year’s Winter Solstice and next month’s Spring Equinox. Daylight is even now seeping deeper into the pre-dawn sky, and seems in less of a hurry to leave the evening dusk than two weeks ago.

Winter, for all its brilliance, is a long pull. More work—tarping, shoveling, chaining up, clearing drainage ditches, hauling firewood, even boiling water—in less daylight. And darkness seeps into our very bones, smudging everything with the soot of futility. “Hang on,” God seems to whisper, “to me. I held you through last winter, and I’m holding you today. So wait patiently; I’ll bring the light and the darkness exactly suited for my good purposes. I’m here.”

Infection cases have diminished in our region, perhaps in yours, too. Are we half-way over this virus? God knows. “Hang on to me; I’ll bring the sickness, death and recovery exactly suited to my good purposes. I’m here.” We don’t like this. God knows. He has set his sights on sunrise still out of our sight, over the horizon.

Yes, better than back to normal, even if we can open our businesses, hug each other, and sing together indoors first. Even if death hasn’t passed close enough to smudge you lately, your thoughts might incline, like mine, to “How soon for me?” God may give us enough heads-up time to get our house in order; or not. You’ve heard stories, perhaps told some, of friends or family who disappeared over the horizon well-prepared, or unready.

One such, better prepared than most, wrote his last words in a letter to his best friend from his jail cell, knowing the warden’s desk wouldn’t see a reprieve from the governor.

“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

 Do your best to come to me soon.”  (2 Tim 4:6-9 ESV)

Paul still had a little time left, but none to waste on pious musings. “I’d love to see you again before they take me outdoors for the last time. Don’t worry, though,” he seems to say, “I’ll be alright. In fact, I have a lot to look forward to. Still, come while you can.”

No one can train his field glasses over the horizon and locate his moment. But we can look back at an earlier sunrise, and say with this hopeful one, “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” (Rom 13:11 ESV)

Spring is coming. The virus and restrictions cannot conquer forever. “Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luk 21:28 ESV)

Nearer now.

We’ll be off line for a week or so. The loggers have come to make our place safer from wildfires, and the 150’ plus pine tree that’s long doubled as our internet tower will head for the mill. We’ve got great support from Christian friends until our fiberoptic cable can be installed. So you might have to wait for us to approve your comments and responses here. Thanks for hanging in with us!

                                                                                                By David A. Covington

Seed Catalogs

I recommend reading seed catalogs this week. National news explains why. One can take comfort in imagining that the early peas will come up, mostly, by the time our nation’s new leadership gets settled. The sweetcorn will probably be a foot high by June, whether the new President has shown he can unify America or not. The beans will need weeding, unless they get killed by a late frost. If frost spares them, bugs have been waiting all winter to chew them off at the ground.

Does this catalog offer a bush bean so fast that we can replant and still mature a crop before fall frosts end the season? Would the drip tape offered here deliver more water to the carrot bed than the easily clogged quarter-inch line that matured only a tiny handful of carrots last year? “Hope… springs eternal….”

If hope can distract us, even briefly, from, well, distraction, we may find something, anything other than our brows to furrow—a welcome relief! For a while. Garden seed catalogs can do more than distract the harrowed heart. Gardening, especially kitchen vegetables, teaches patience and humility that we need in every other aspect of life.

My wife and I will, once again, plan a garden; we’ll amend last year’s failed experiments, try to repeat some successes, rotate the corn with the beans, transplant the rhubarb root to a new bed (somewhere, ask me later) free (we hope) of the bacterial infection that blighted the crop last year. We’ll set gopher traps. We’ll try to defend our little sprouts from earwigs, cutworms, sowbugs and slugs. Some efforts will succeed, others fail. We’ll try to fix our failures with another plan, about this time next year.

We could wish gardening involved cause-and-effect control; every seed we plant would come up looking like these scrumptious photos! But all our plans and work depend on God. He causes the growth. He also brings setbacks—a late frost, a gopher that finds our buried treasures one day before we do, a misbehaving irrigation timer (or programmer).

God in the garden reminds us that he rules everything, every outcome, the favorable and the unfavorable: a neighbor drops off a month’s supply of walnuts from his abundance; a fifteen-foot string of early pea vines yields only a few handfuls of snow-peas; a long-dead blueberry shows a green shoot, after all; a half-dozen raspberry plants didn’t survive the transplant. This garden drives us to humility, to patience. God does what he will, and he is good, so we can work in the garden with humility and hope.

From the garden to politics. Patience and humility belong here, too. You want good government, and you do your best; you campaign and vote as wisely and effectively as you can; God gives the result. He’s good. Those who insist on cause-and-effect politics want outcomes, not the system that produces them, might even storm the Capital Building. Bugs bothering your corn? Napalm! Sure. Use it to show you value results, and despise the system, horticultural or political, that with a little humility, can sustain them. You also show that you underestimate God, who alone controls results, in the little dirt patch out back, and in Washington.

If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. But this is gain for a land in every way: a king committed to cultivated fields.

(Eccl 5:8-9 ESV)

Now, where did I leave that catalog?

David Covington

A Song for the Choir in Exile

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” groans the Psalmist (137:4). He groans for his friends, too. They remember every note of those songs they sang in Jerusalem, and even hiking up that hill for festivals. The Lord had brought their people to Jerusalem, and then moved in himself, to a special house where he set his name, where he met with them. 

Now they were far from home, and God’s special house was a pile of burned rubble. Now, the bullies who killed their neighbors and trashed their hometown ordered, “Put down those water buckets and entertain us. Sing! Look, if you don’t know any of our favorites, sing something you know.” God’s people remembered with great pain the songs of the Lord, but how can they sing God’s songs like a nightclub act? Time to hang up our lyres on the willow trees and sit down weeping (vv.1-2). The Psalmist longs for the great, great day to come—regime change. Want to hear us sing? Just wait!

God’s people have been singing for generations, first, to celebrate victorious battles, and then in group worship. Like the groaning worshiper in Psalm 137, we long for the overthrow of the enemy culture around us. Like this exiled psalmist, we know that a great day is coming. God’s people sing still for joy, for duty, for loyalty, for encouragement, for teaching, for sorrow, for healing, for successful battles. We also remember a great battle victory—the day Jesus said, “It is finished,” died, and rose again. The church he built has been singing ever since, remembering and hoping. Finally, Jesus Christ will liberate us not only from a culture following other gods, but from our great, oppressive enemy, our sin. Jesus bore the penalty, but the evil still clings like the smell of smoke in a fire damaged kitchen. One day he’ll put it utterly to death. What a dance party we’ll have on its grave!

Many Christians can no longer sing in our churches, restrained by health concerns, government mandate, or both. Some churches sing on. Others adapt their music, though all these adaptations are losses. We sing, and we groan, praying God will speedily end this exile, so we can sing together again. This trouble will pass!

We’re not the first to have our public worship cramped. Those who sang Psalm 137 at home in Babylon still loved God and their homeland. They remembered Jerusalem, their lost city of songs, their highest joy. Far from home, they sang, and groaned. The church has long adapted its worship to surges of oppression and plague. Early Christians sang even in jail (Acts 16:25), and in catacombs. They sang together from their doorways and windows, when, in plague-ridden 17^th century Milan, church meetings were too dangerous. Churches keep singing, adapting to health risks and suspension of liberties. Christians are singing still, but we could use some help.

God helps. The singer who grieves in Psalm 137 pioneered an answer for us. In private, he grieved, remembered, and hoped (vv1-2, 7-9); in public, he responded to danger and oppression with a clear conscience (vv.3-4). At home, he kept right on singing. We can profit from a closer look at what he did at home, in the micro-community of the household, even for a household of one.

• He plays “songs of Zion” on a musical instrument (v 5)
• He sings “songs of Zion” (v 6)
• He writes and publishes a new “song of Zion” for his fellow-exiles to sing, and they learn it (vv 1-9)

God’s people have been singing at home for generations, before the virus, before the Babylonian exile (Ps 118:15-16). The songs they sang together, they had learned and practiced at home. Congregational singing flows from many tributaries of singing from house to house. Believers in Babylon kept singing at home, looking forward to their renewal of congregational singing when the exile was over. Few of the exiles returned, but those who returned sang songs they learned at home from their parents and extended family.

How have Christian homes been doing with singing? Although Christians these days can assemble a playlist of worship favorites to hear, we’re singing at home less than our forebears did  a century ago. But when the combined stresses of pandemic, government-mandated public health restrictions, and cold winter weather drive us indoors, we can rediscover the great duty and our delight of singing at home. When at last the plague has past, our congregational singing will be the richer for it.

Can you sing to God at home? These exiles did. One of them wrote a song and passed it around to his oppressed countrymen. God asked him to. God also had in mind future generations, from the returnees all the way down to us, inspiring and preserving Psalm 137, along with all the Psalms. Present-day exiles don’t need an adaptation of Ps 137; pick something so easy and familiar you can tackle without internet accompaniment. Think of the “Doxology,” or “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.” Ask God for help. Ask a trusted friend or church leader to suggest a song. In this household, we sing a lovely a cappella adaptation of Ps 137:1, taught to us by a beloved seminary prof. It suits this part of the choir in exile! We’ll be glad to teach it to you. We’ve lived long enough to know a boatload of simple Scripture songs we’d be glad to teach. Send us an email, OK? Don’t phone; we might be singing. David Covington

We’re OK, and We’re Not OK

The view from our home. Use the slide…..

Many dear ones have contacted us recently, asking how we’re doing. They know we’re isolating to preserve the public health, and they also have heard of the wildfires and smoke that threaten our community. How can we answer? Can we enjoy blessings during multiple crises? My sweetheart and I are finding out.

Twelve dark days ago, we relished a bright morning as we harvested strawberries, raspberries, beans, lettuce, cucumbers, and squash in our kitchen garden. I saw us through the telescope of years, standing in God’s rich fulfillment of our early dreams, holding baskets of tasty produce. We stopped for a moment to hug and rejoice and thank God together. We also prayed for a speedy end to the Covid pandemic that is strangling churches, businesses, community gatherings, and hospitality—especially music. Thank you, Lord, how long?

Lately, these contrasting threads were woven very tightly indeed. A beloved large family came out to our blackberry vineyard a few days later to help with the harvest. The berries are ripening fast, and no grandkid pickers could come this summer on account of the virus. But this local family came, staying safe, getting out of their backyard homeschool for a few hours. They brought buckets full to the freezer. The thunder didn’t drive them indoors, but the rain did. They returned home with hearts refreshed and a couple gallons of ripe blackberries. I slipped the mom and dad a bottle of our very own blackberry wine, made from a similar harvest two years back.

Just after our pickers left, we saw smoke rising just over the ridge in the south-east. Lightning started many fires in the woods, and most still burn out of control. The Claremont Fire burned very close, and we watched, horrified, as trees exploded on the ridge above East Quincy. Less than a week later, East Quincy was evacuated. We housed in our trailer another family, forced to evacuate along with over a thousand others. We, too, packed for a fast get away, just in case. We also were doing chores, reading the Bible, singing and praying, cutting roses to brighten tables, picking blackberries during gaps in the smoke, and fixing suppers—the rich tapestry of normal life. Cautious about infection risk, we enjoyed suppers outdoors with our dear evacuee friends, but when the smoke got “too thick to breathe, too thin to chew,” trays went to the trailer and each family ate indoors alone.

We first noticed these contrasting threads—feeling bad while feeling good—at church, months ago when “shelter-in-place” was still in its infancy. After a few weeks of “virch church,” we started meeting on our church’s park-like lawn, setting camp chairs in widely spaced family groups. Some folks seemed casual about the virus, others very cautious. We visit a bit after service, but we may not see them for a while—no more small group Bible studies. We won’t see our firefighter friends at all until the fire season ends. Then, outdoor church was cancelled last week and this morning, on account of breathing hazard. We love to enjoy our church family and friends, but how do we love people now, when we can’t meet indoors for virus caution, and we can’t meet outdoors because of the smoke? Again, thank you, Lord, how long?

The suffering Psalmists, like David in Ps 13, sent me to suffering Paul: “…as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort, too.” Why? “…so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor 1:5, 4). God comforts us as we share Christ’s sufferings, so that we can comfort others in their suffering, with the same comfort.

Jesus sits now enthroned in glory at the Father’s right hand and Jesus also suffers, sharing his suffering with his people, and comforting them. Now, while we rejoice in his first coming and long for his return, Jesus is with us in this tapestry, leading his people flawlessly among dark and light threads, with a gleam of future glory in every row.

So, we can answer our friends and family, as long as this virus lasts, as long as these destructive wildfires last, as long as horrible smoke lasts, (add whatever you face today, and let’s say it together) “We’re OK, and we’re not OK—we’re in Christ.”

David Covington

Memorial

Yesterday our church met for the first time in a couple of months, for a drive-in service. The parking lot was arranged, six feet between cars, facing a slope on which those leading the service could be seen by all. Kiddos on the roofs of vans or pick-up trucks, individuals on top of cars, couples in their all-windows-open seats—all gathered to sing, pray and hear the Word of God preached. A very sweet time of distant joyful greetings, seeing much-loved faces not mediated by screens. While some were missing, I think attendance was about what it is on any Sunday.

Behind that slope is a cemetery—the one where our bodies may someday lie for a time—and many headstones shared the limelight with waving American flags: a touching reminder that someone had been there, placing those flags to honor folk who had served, and caring for those who grieve. On our drive home, the hospital’s flag was at half-mast, and I asked “Why?”

When I was a child, Memorial Day was a holiday of no school, a parade, and a barbeque. I remember asking my dad more than once the “Why?” of Memorial Day, to clarify the differences between Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, and to tell stories of The War. He did not fight, but served as the radio voice of the Merchant Marine, announcing and singing for broadcasts from Catalina Island, off Southern California. His memories were fresh, steeped in years. So I learned the rage, the fear, the tensions, the losses of that season through his eyes. I also saw his shame at not fighting, not suffering as much as others, though he had left young wife and home and was fully part of the war effort. And he had lost friends.

Today I woke with a fresh remembrance of our own time, and of my friends. A few years ago, a friend from high school did me the great honor of sending me his journal from years in Vietnam—full of horror and loss and pain. He, seriously injured, was the only one of his unit to survive, and has had sorrows and loss and nightmares to fill a life. Another friend from high school focuses his energies on helping those with enduring PTSD from Vietnam, Iraq, the Gulf, Afghanistan—other places of deeply scarring violence. I think of another dear friend whose service as a Ranger in the Gulf has left compromised health and deep sorrows. And a younger friend whose service as a medic in Afghanistan shapes his current life in medicine—but with haunting private memories. And a young woman friend who daily remembers watching, from her gunner’s turret, the tank where she was gunner the day before blown up with her best friend in her seat. Their trade had been ordered that day—and the grief doesn’t go away. And there are more. Blessedly, each of these know the comfort of a present Lord and Savior.

So as we note this day—for David and me the day we traditionally plant our garden—I am praying for my dear brothers and sisters who have given so much with so little thanks or relief. As we plant dead-looking little seeds, in hope of a crop, I’ll pray in hope of the resurrection. When facing his own tortured death in my place, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” (John 12:24-26) Today I pray for my friends that they’ll see in their service eternal meaning, the One in whose sufferings they share, and with that have both comfort and hope. Thank you.

Silence

“Let This Mortal Flesh Keep Silence….”

A five year retrospective

Sharon has been suffering a siege of recurrent laryngitis, making speech difficult and sometimes impossible. Speaking and singing normally fill our lives from morning Bible reading and song, to shared reading and conversation, to lives rich in friendship, community and church. Her current struggle drew me back to my own in a season of required silence, calling me to review and reflect.

The Fourth Day of my Silent Week, December 14, 2014:

 “Minimize speaking,” instructed my surgeon; “VOCAL REST, VOCAL REST, VOCAL REST” enjoined our dear friend, a knowing speech pathologist. I’m listening.

I long to sing again, after seven months of vocal brown-outs, and now a whole week of imitating (sort of) Harpo Marx. It’s hard. Still, silence is doing as much good for my soul as it is for my minimally-scarring left vocal cord, where that cyst used to hang, sounding like a knot of perpetual phlegm.

I wrote (not said) that this silence is hard. We do without. Sharon and I read the Bible together every morning, including responsive delectation of a Psalm. Starting last Thursday, her voice alone intones both parallel phrases. Ordinarily, I read aloud to Sharon in the kitchen while she prepares supper, usually a familiar novel. My mom and I have grown accustomed to a regular phone conversation, now temporarily replaced with email. (It’s not the same.) Then, just before the lights go out, I used to read aloud to Sharon from novel and Bible, then we pray, and sing “Lighten our darkness…,” a family prayer I set to melody. Not this week. Real losses, but temporary, and with restoration just around the calendar. Not bad, really.

Another loss, more obvious, is starting to look like a gain. I can scarcely hold up my end of a conversation, like at lunch yesterday, with two guests at table. I had pencil and paper, and someone staring over my shoulder at every jot. A reader! But after jotting a couple of remarks that necessarily rewound the topic by at least a minute, I started to “look them over,” as batters do pitches: is this observation worth the effort and delay of a written “swing”? I started letting nine out of ten go by. Before the bowls were cleared, I was listening only, trying to compensate by making eye contact. It was a great conversation!

Graham, who came to help repair our fence, also helped in the usual way to make that conversation pleasant. As he and I returned to our snowy labors, I reflected how singular was his help: few beside Graham could have worked with me, without speech. He needs no instructions, asked almost no questions, grasped my fumbling signs. I know how those little clips work (aren’t I important?), but he needs no pointers. Experienced and helpful, he can figure them out. He figured out a better way to brace that tricky end post. I listened, and we braced it together.

Although we won’t know until Tuesday’s follow up appointment what my voice can do after a week’s rest, I may renew my semi-vow of silence. God knows how my prayers may profit, how my friends and family may profit, from a second week of my silence. Later, God help me swing only at one pitch in ten.

David A. Covington

More: An Anniversary Poem

All this—
This daily opening of the eyes that bless the sight of you;
This squandering of minutes to transform a simple meal into a heavenly-leaning feast;
This daily plenitude of passion, service, beauty, joy and grace;
This ordinary so extraordinary—

And more!
More than confidence, than water-eyed gratitude,
More than lover’s soft rebuke, than sweet refreshment shared,
More than two exalted frames in one delight,
More than flash of fire at hearing distant humming.

We believe the promised bliss is more than this.
It is the freshest, nearest filling-up of “A, and what’s more, B,”
A blessed eschatology
Of all that we have known and grown to be
In Christ, the pioneer of all our happy traffic
These thirty-seven years.

All this—how can the coming years compare?
All together they are merest seed and shadow
Of More, more to come from this same hand of grace,
From this same eye of holy love,
From this same distant glimmer that has warmed us near to burning
All these golden, glorious years.
God’s gift:
All this, and this, and this and this, and

More.

From your grateful and devoted fellow-servant and husband David, with all my love.

For Sharon, my darling wife, on our 37^th anniversary, March 21, 2007

A Gift of Christmas Oranges

In the week before last Christmas, a friend stopped by our place with a gift of fresh-picked California oranges from his family’s orchard. Thanks, Shane! (We seized the opportunity to send him home with a bottle of our just-released 2018 Blackberry wine.) As I peeled one the next morning, my thumbnail spurted that aromatic orange peel scent, with delicious whiff of memories of my early years.

Our orange orchard surrounded our home, right up to the back yard. We were contract growers for a major orange packing company in southern California. My sister and I made forts with the harvest boxes, climbed the trees, ate all the fruit we wanted. We learned to tell a Valencia from a Navel. We learned how to peel without a knife AND with dry fingers. Try it sometime. (I bet we could take lessons from Shane!)

That fragrant spurt also brought back Mom’s story of orange orchards during the Great Depression. When she was a little girl, the hoboes pilfered a lot of oranges. Growers couldn’t stop them. They pooled their money and posted a reward for tip-offs—who was stealing oranges, when and where.

The reward incentive worked: tips rolled in, rewards rolled out, orange-pilfering hoboes were arrested regularly. Each one spent the night in jail.

Police began to notice repeat offenders. Tipsters themselves were getting arrested for stealing oranges, and last week’s overnight guest was back, this time as the tipster. Payback? They wondered.

The clever hoboes, catching the drift, teamed up in pairs to squeeze the most juice out of this new opportunity. One would turn the other in and collect the cash; the other would get a meal of oranges, and then a meal in jail, and a cot for the night. Then, they’d trade roles, working the system the other way. Both get food, one even gets a bed. Everybody wins, except the busy police, and the disgruntled growers. Mom told me there were many such teams.

Can’t help admiring these creative souls, who turned threat into opportunity. Still, we see the same old story of human nature: self-interest motivates people more than righteousness does. Animals rise no higher than self-interest. My dog will obey—for a treat.

God made people to be different from animals: generous, like God himself. He drew Satan’s attention to Job’s righteousness, but Satan fired back: “But you bless him for it! Job’s loyalty to you doesn’t prove that you deserve it, only that he can be bought. As long as you have to buy your friends, they’ll never be more generous or righteous than animals. I perverted them so badly that you can’t fix them.”

Even God’s real friends—and He has many—can get squeezed into this bad bargain that Satan loves. One of them, Asaph, asked, “Why, when I walk in my integrity like Job, do I get stricken and rebuked every day? What about those blessings that are supposed to come to those with clean heart and innocent hands? And look at those arrogant abusers! They’re living it up! What’s up with that?” (Psalm 73:1-15, author’s paraphrase)

While Asaph reminds God about his earlier frustrations, other worshipers are listening in. We’re there, too. We get it. But Asaph, like Job, took his complaint to God, and God showed him that the wicked won’t get far. Even more, God showed Asaph that, by asking, “What am I doing this for?” he had accepted the terms of Satan’s accusation: “Does Job serve God for no reason?” (Job 1:9) “Will obey for treats.” “I was like a beast toward you.” (Ps 73:22)

We couldn’t obey for treats, no matter how hard we wag our tails. Our only hope to escape cycling between a fistful of stolen oranges and “three hots and a cot” is to follow Asaph toward Jesus Christ. Jesus was with Job (“I know that my Redeemer lives….” Job 19:25). He came to Asaph and stayed, to comfort and encourage him: “I am continually with you…. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” “But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.” Catch the scent of orange peel. Would you like a segment? Taste and see!

By David A. Covington