Book Club Finale: An Interview with Luci Shaw

Have you noticed the regular postings this fall referencing Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones? If you didn’t catch it, this was our writing group’s pick for our first blog-based book club. And what a pick it was! We have enjoyed the reading, writing, discussing, pressing, and stretching of every chapter.

The deeper we got into this read, the more we grew to love the author. And we wanted to know more about her. So we contacted Mrs. Shaw and requested an interview to feature as the book club’s grand finale—and she agreed!

Here you will find excerpts from the wealth of Mrs. Shaw’s responses. Be sure to visit Rancho Ruperto for part two of the interview. You won’t want to miss it!

Many thanks to Luci Shaw for all we’ve learned from her, both in the book and in the interview.

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Book Club: How did the Lord lead you to attend Wheaton College, here in our state of Illinois? What do you treasure most from your days at Wheaton?

Luci Shaw

Luci Shaw: During a long convalescence from pneumonia in Toronto, my parents sent me to stay with friends in the town of Wheaton, Illinois. While I was there I sat in on some lectures and found them fascinating. I had finished high school with high honors and had no trouble with admission to the school, which I began to attend the following year. I tried out several majors, and finally settled on English Literature and N.T. Greek and graduated in 1953 with high honors again.

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Book Club: Do you set out to write on a particular topic or do you watch for themes to emerge from the pieces you’ve already written?

Luci Shaw: If I’m writing an essay or a piece of creative nonfiction, I usually work from the random thoughts that gather in my head, getting them into the computer and letting the writing grow “organically,” rather than devising an outline or system. Research helps me fill in the gaps and re-order the work, making sure that transitions between ideas move along rationally and naturally. With poetry, I often see a connection between the natural/physical world and the world of emotion/soul/spirit. I note it down in my journal, and later transfer it to my computer and play around with it (a lot of fun!) until it feels “settled” or complete. I have poet friends with whom I workshop on the Internet, and they often give invaluable insights.

At all times I try to avoid Christian jargon or buzz words. My hope is to reach a wider audience for whom such shorthand is incomprehensible.

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Book Club: Describe your friendship with Madeleine L’Engle.

Luci Shaw: I’ve written extensively* about my friendship with Madeleine, which ended in her death in 1997. We met in the ’70s as speakers at a Wheaton College literary conference, exchanged books, affirmed each other as kindred spirits, and started a correspondence. Her first book of poetry, Lines Scribbled on an Envelope, had recently gone out of print, and since my husband Harold and I had recently started our publishing house, I asked her “Why don’t we reprint the volume in a new edition, along with some of your more recent poems?” Madeleine jumped at the idea, and next year The Weather of the Heart was released and later, newer poems in A Cry Like a Bell. After the publication of her poetry, I asked her to write a book for Shaw Publishers about her philosophy of creativity. It became Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith.

Of course, as we worked through manuscripts we often had disagreements. As her editor, I wanted her books to command the widest attention and truly represent her fresh thoughts and ideas without unduly provoking those with divergent convictions. We never actually fought, but we regularly entered into vigorous differences of opinion. Sometimes one of us would win, sometimes the other, but we both considered our differing viewpoints as a great advantage in our friendship, growing as it did out of a working editorial bond.

As wordsmiths, Madeleine and I both loved to trace words back to their derivations. The etymological dictionary in her study gave us one of our most enjoyable ways of working with language and verbal expressions. We’d both learned other languages when we were in school—French for Madeleine, Latin and Greek for me.

WinterSong, our first book compiled together, mingled our poems, essays, stories, and journal entries that reflected light into the dark period of the year weather-wise. We then assembled A Prayer Book for Spiritual Friends, a collection of prayers “in two voices” that friends can pray together. Often our prayers together over the phone spanned the gulf of time and space as East and West coasts met each other in God’s presence. Finally came Friends for the Journey. We called this a “Trinitarian” friendship book, reflecting the way our three-way friendship with Barbara, our fellow pilgrim to Iona and in faith, had enriched all our lives.

*Some of the material in this [response] appeared earlier in my foreword to Madeleine L’Engle’s collected poems, The Ordering of Love (Waterbrook/Shaw Books, 2005), and in a memorial article in Books & Culture, January 2008. It also contains parts of the memorial address at her funeral “for close friends” in Goshen, Conn., in September 2007.

 

Creative Stretch #6: Ignoring the Forest to See a Tree

Creative Stretch posts encourage “the care and feeding of the imagination and the spirit” (Luci Shaw, Breath for the Bones).

We’re a think-outside-of-the-box society. It’s all about the big picture. It’s considered detrimental if you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Inside-the-box-thinking, small picture living, and tree observation supposedly get you nowhere.

I beg to differ.

Many are the treasures to be found in small places, in common places, even in scornful places. It is the artist’s job to search for these treasures and bring them to light through whatever medium that artist employs—writing, painting, singing, welding. The artist knows that outside-of-the-box-thinking doesn’t require you to get out of the box to have inspired thought. That’s what imagination is for.

Luci Shaw confirms this in Breath for the Bones, saying, “The poem is the little lens through which we can examine at close range the ‘insignificant’ details of the universe, which then provide us with a miniature window on the world” (174).

So from the box you are in—even this universe that contains us—what miniature world is begging for notice? Do you hear the story of the weathered bricks of your fireplace? Do you see the curled edges of a plant’s stem and leaf structure? Does the light bounce playfully off your water glass? Do have an encounter with a Twiddlebug or Who to share with us?

In this Creative Stretch, let’s think small in order to think big. Focus the lens of your creative eye to zoom in on a minute portion of this world, then give it light and life through your creative touch.

After you’ve explored previously overlooked wonders, be sure to share! Post it on your blog, and then paste the link in the comments here. And if you don’t have a blog, let me know—and I’ll feature your observation here at filling my patch of sky, in your very own post.

 

I’m Dreaming of a New Year

It’s not yet Christmas, but I’m already thinking ahead to a new year. I always get reflective toward the end of December, and this year is no different. Dreaming goes hand-in-hand with reflection for me, so then I start to turn from the past 12 months to the next 12 months.

So I’m in this strange state of flux in which I am looking back while also looking ahead. Looking ahead is necessary for surviving these first painful weeks of winter that make me wonder if I will ever be warm again (dramatic, I know!). And since I often think of a new year as a pretty, clean slate, and this positive perspective buoys my spirits in the dreary, non-color Midwest December days of white-gray-frigid (Crayola should make that an official color in their crayon palette).

Two things in particular will be on my slate for 2010.

Stretching My Brain’s Capacity
The first item added to my slate is another edition of Mega Memory Month (MMM) hosted by Ann Kroeker. I’ve participated a few times previously, with varying results (see posts describing my results for MMM1, MMM2, and MMM3). Although I have yet to wrap a MMM with all my goals accomplished, I am pleased to say that the mental focus exercised and gained, as well as the residue that has stuck has been well worth the effort—and this keeps me coming back for more.

I’ve not yet determined what I will be putting my mind to this time around . . . in the past I’ve worked on Scripture, states and capitals, and a poem. Scripture is a given, but I would also like to give something else a go. I’ll have my final goals outlined and posted after Christmas.

If you have never participated in a MMM, don’t miss out! It really is worth the effort.

Stretching My Heart’s Capacity
The second item to be added to the slate is something new called the Social Justice Challenge. As quoted from the site:

The Social Justice challenge was founded on the idea that reading can change the world. Each month we will focus on a different area of social injustice in the world and encourage participants to learn about the issues through reading and other media and take action steps towards making a difference.

12 months. 12 themes. Countless lives changed.

The SJC offers a variety of ways to be involved through reading, viewing, and action. I’m not sure how my involvement will unfold, but I am curious and excited about what is ahead. I hope you will join me in tightening your grip on social justice issues throughout 2010.

 

When Twiddlebugs and Whos Come for a Visit

Breath for the Bones Book Club: Thoughts on Chapter 12

The New Twiddlebugs

The Original Twiddlebugs

Do you remember the Twiddlebugs from Sesame Street? They lived in Ernie’s window-box planter, in homes made from milk cartons. (My search for the site link enlightened me to the Twiddlebugs of this generation—all CGI!) When I was a kid, this microcosm fascinated me, spurring on my imagination of what other miniature worlds might be hidden about—at the base of a tree, perhaps, or at river’s edge.

The Twiddlebugs came to mind during this week’s Breath for the Bones read, chapter 12 titled “Tracing the Process of Poets and Poems.” Author Luci Shaw wrote mostly of the writing life as it germinates and blooms and flourishes year after year—at least, how this has happened in her own life. An accomplished poet and writer, Shaw’s body of work is vast, rich, deep.

At this point, the fruit of my own writing life is as inconspicuous as the Twiddlebug society. My “body of work” has no shape yet, exuding only a faint whisper.

Horton hears—even a Who.

And here I think of another world in miniature, the one found by Dr. Seuss’s dear Horton. My work, almost imperceptible, whispers to those who take time to hear (thank you, dear family and friends); my work is a mere speck atop a clover flower puff.

Shaw’s insights to the writing life of a poet were lovely and encouraging for those of us writing in diminutive, whispery tones. Here’s the section that brought these tiny worlds to visit in my memory this week:

A poem begins often as a close-up of one small detail within a much larger picture. Imagine a landscape painting. You may take a magnifying glass and minutely examine the artist’s brushwork in the lower right-hand corner, where no direct image of the sky or distance appears and where there perhaps is only a faint gleam or shadow to indicate the existence of the sun elsewhere in the landscape. But the dark corner is just as true, artistically and spiritually, as the center of the painting with its brilliantly painted fields. (Shaw 173–174)

I am reminded that the finished work would be incomplete without the time and attention spent on the fringes. The fringes matter; they give the work boundaries with bleeding edges that speak of more just off the canvas, just off the page, that couldn’t fit in the space—they speak of the unseen certainty of more . . . of eternity, if you will. If a painting represents my body of work, I would say that I am as of yet working on the edge pieces—sort of like the process of bordering up a puzzle. But those edges brush-up most against the eternal, and that’s a wonderful place to be.

It is overwhelming for me to consider painting an entire picture, a whole masterpiece, with my words. I find comfort if I approach it as I do my blog—I am filling my patch of sky, I am filling one part of the canvas at a time. I don’t have to know what words and phrases go into each square inch; I just need to fill the section at-hand, working to bring God’s name fame in this space, in this moment. One day, when all the pieces are viewed together, they will tell a bigger story. But for now, I can tell the few lines of the story I have, and that is enough.

This is both reassuring and exciting, for as Shaw shares, “The poem is the little lens through which we can examine at close range the ‘insignificant’ details of the universe, which then provide us with a miniature window on the world” (174).

Opening a “miniature window on the world” . . . I like that. How exciting to think that every day I could collect fragments of truth from the world I see, from the small things that come to visit—Twiddlebugs, Whos, and dear Horton. I don’t know where the conversation is going, but please join us! There are many little windows to uncover, peek through, and open wide.

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Meet the Club! Read Other Breath for the Bones Chapter 12 Posts
Queenie at Rancho Ruperto

Stop back next Thursday for our book club finale: an interview with Luci Shaw!

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Photo Sources
Horton Photo: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451079/mediaindex
Original Twiddlebugs Photo: http://www.sesamestreet.org/onair/characters/twiddlebugs
New Twiddlebugs Photo: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Twiddlebugs

 

A Western (as in Cowboy) Christmas

Howdy, partners! Gather ’round—I got a tale to tell.

It’s all about a madcap aunt (yours truly) and three little tykes (Miss HM, the Jedi, and Mr. Happy Feet) and some cowboy-boot-wearing snowmen. Here’s what happened:

I wanted to throw a little Christmas shindig for my sister’s kids. For months it has been at the back of my mind. But a planner I am not, so those ponderings didn’t turn into action until . . . well, until the morning of the party.

With six hours until party time, I needed my ideas to come to life—pronto. So I headed off to Hobby Lobby, thinking it would have everything a poor-party-planner would need, all in one stop.

First, I gathered all the supplies for our craft. (Yes, a craft. Me. You readers who know me are likely giggling yourselves silly. Just wait till you see what we did though . . .) After reading the nifty instructions and seeing the adorable sample provided by Artsy Fartsy, I thought I could tackle this (forgetting that there would be three.children.needing.help).

Then I browsed the Christmas party aisles, and I fell in love with some 40-percent-off snowmen plates and mugs . . . cowboy snowmen, with hats, boots, and spurs. Too cute! Who doesn’t love a Western-cowboy-snowmen Christmas theme? (Only party poopers, and they wouldn’t be invited anyhow.)

Now the visions of sugarplums were doing a crazy dance in my head. How I wish I had done some of this supply gathering the previous day! I had too many ideas and not enough time to do them. I had to focus and keep it simple. That’s when I saw Christmas M-n-M’s and Rainblo bubble gum—little treats to dress-up the table. Perfect. And done.

All my findings in tow, I raced home to wash the mugs and plates and search out the Goo B Gone for the stickers (why? why must price tags be made of industrial-grade adhesive?). I set the table, organized the craft, located my Bible, and made some cookies.

The kids arrived and chose their favorite snowman cowboy scene. Miss HM chose the guitar-playing snowman (“just like Hannah Montana!”). The Jedi chose the happy snowman holding the Howdy sign. Mr. Happy Feet chose the sheriff snowman with the star badge. I didn’t know which set would appeal to which child, but after all was settled, it seemed just right.

Mr. Happy Feet

the Jedi

Miss HM

As I let the kids get jazzed up on sugar, I read to them from John chapter 1, and we discussed how Jesus came, taking on flesh. We had some sweet conversation about what Jesus’ birth (and death and resurrection) mean for us and why we remember and celebrate. The lively discussion was brought to a close by Miss HM, who had just noticed my fiber optic snowman and excitedly proclaimed him. (See—everyone likes a fiber optic snowman.)

This seemed like a good transition to craft time. So I cleared the plates and mugs and brought out the supplies and instructions.

Trio times two.

The end result of the craft was good (see the smiling faces and the happy little snowman trio?)—the process was typical, I’m sure, just not what I am accustomed to. There was a lot of gleeful commentary (translation: demand for help). It was an overload to my senses, but fun.

My happy snowgal.

I finished my own little snowman this morning, when I could hear myself think and have all the time I needed to be really particular about a baby-sock-turned-snowman. (Not too bad for one as craft-challenged as I am!)

So that’s the tale of my Western Christmas. Now I’m off to drift along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

Merry Christmas, y’all.

 

A Longing Too Large to Name

Breath for the Bones Book Club: Thoughts on Chapter 11

As I write, the wind is whistling, howling around the edges of my house, announcing the certain arrival of the Midwestern winter. Typically the season’s first dusting of snow fills me with giddy pleasure, sparking within me a childlike anticipation for Christmas and baked goods and glittery ornaments.

Not this day though. Today, as I hear the wind, it sounds angry, and it seems to have riled-up the snow into mini tornadoes of frenzy, unable to find rest. All this has poked on my inner–Eeyore—and now I want to mope about, groaning of the cold and the noise.

I trust my Eeyore–melancholy will give way to Winnie-the-Pooh–optimism in time; perhaps even tomorrow. But for now, I am not shooing poor Eeyore away, for a shadowy perspective has a treasure all its own.

How glad I was to find author Luci Shaw in agreement in this week’s Breath for the Bones reading, chapter 11 titled “Understanding the Shadow Side of Creativity.” She says:

Christians who practice art must not always feel bound to produce sweetness and light. We have to recognize the darkness and shadow as well as the light, and realize that God allows shadows into our lives. (161)

What relief! I do not need to paste on a plastic smile, pretending that all of life is a merry-go-round. Conflict and resolution, chaos and order, faith and reason, mystery and manifest, longing and fulfillment—all are needed and necessary to gain the full spectrum of life this side of eternity. It is not all “sweetness and light” nor is it all “darkness and shadow.” How my insides prickle when I encounter a dear soul who tries to force all of life into only one of these containers, rewriting life to be all sweet or all sour.

Unrealistic optimism or unfounded pessimism—both are inaccurate, incomplete. We must acknowledge the presence of light and dark in this life, two sides of the same coin, for “light shows the darkness for what it is, and the dark shows the light for what it is” (Shaw 161).

It is the call of the Christian—especially the Christian artist—to speak the Truth, the full Truth, of this life that holds both joys and sorrows. “And poet Christians, if they are to reflect Creator and creation, must write the whole cycle into their work—the anguish as well as the celebration” (Shaw 168).

Today, with wind whipping and gray skies looming, I write of the anguish—not just the anguish of winter’s icy fingers creeping across the Midwest. It’s not that simple, not so shallow.

The anguish is of something deeper.

It’s what the weather represents. This is the anguish of the dark cycle of life, when everything freezes over, cold, motionless, mean. This is the time suspended—such as between crucifixion and resurrection—when all is still and quiet and dark, with gathering fear like storm clouds that whispers everything has changed (but, oddly, isn’t likely to change again). Here, life is covered over in darkness and frost, waiting for the spring that seems uncertain.

No, this is not merely melancholy gripping my heart. This is Truth, the cycle spinning round as it was meant to be. It is lovely in form, yet hard to swallow.

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Meet the Club! Read Other Breath for the Bones Chapter 11 Posts
Queenie at Rancho Ruperto

Join our book club discussion each Thursday.

 

An Ode to My Fiber Optic Snowman

Even with three writing topics to choose from, this writer is having difficulty writing.

It should have been easy: Choose one of the writing prompts (courtesy of Creative Stretch #5) and write for 15 minutes. My problem is that I want every entry to be spectacular . . . and that standard paralyzes.

So I’m shunning my delusions of grandeur and getting busy with prompt 2: Free-write for 15 minutes about your favorite whatever (food, coffee, landscape, shirt, animal).

Get ready, people. Here is a 15-minute ode to my fiber optic snowman.

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You know what I love about decorating for Christmas? It provides the annual opportunity to deck the halls with all manner of sparkle and tinsel and twinkle lights aplenty. It’s the one time of year that trinkets and tchotchkes don’t make me feel antsy.

My fiber optic snowman. Isn't he cute?!

And there is one piece in particular that has a place of honor on my fireplace mantle. It’s not a treasured family heirloom or a precious nativity scene. It’s an 18-inch resin snowman with fiber optic dazzle on his scarf and hat. (This is proof that I am not always a serious, brooding writer.)

Mr. Snowman followed me home from Target a few years ago. Better than a puppy, this little guy is quiet, stationary, and doesn’t make messes—he’s a keeper!

Each year, as I unload the Christmas decorations, Mr. Snowman is the first to get unpacked. His sparkle and light show spur me on to great decorating feats. (By feat I mean that I get it done.) And every year, I am grinning with joy when I plug him in and his little fiber-optic strands do their thing. I love the marketing fluff on the box: “changes color before your eyes” . . . like it’s magic. And it just may be.

The best way to appreciate Mr. Snowman is in a darkened room—which I make a point of doing each Christmas.

The changing colors bounce off the walls like a kaleidoscope, ever changing, like a sunset painted across a summer sky. Sunsets are enjoyed in the moment, for they cannot be captured and held. And so it is with Mr. Snowman—he comes out each year for just a little while, but he—and time—cannot be captured and kept. All must be enjoyed in the moment, savored and appreciated before time slips away.

Mr. Snowman’s happy countenance reminds me to take pleasure in little things, in pretty things. He reminds me to stop and enjoy the sparkle and tinsel and twinkle lights aplenty. After the decorating hubbub, it is such a shame not to stop and drink it all in. Sadly, Christmas is often busier than any other time of year, leaving but a few moments to be overwhelmed by the splendor.

This fiber optic wonder has quite a job each year: decorating cheerleader, sage, mood enhancer. He handles the pressure quite well. I think it’s due to his annual 11-month hibernation.

Mr. Snowman will be available for viewing through December if you’d like to meet him.

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Read Other Creative Stretch #5 Posts
Leah at practicing joy

What did your 15 minutes of writing produce? Do share! Leave a link to your blog post in the comments—if you are a blog-less writer, I can feature your post here (free of charge). Watch for the next Creative Stretch—coming soon!

 

Creative Stretch #5: A Writing Prompt

Creative Stretch posts encourage “the care and feeding of the imagination and the spirit” (Luci Shaw, Breath for the Bones).

You’ve heard it before: Writers write—always.

This adage can either inspire or haunt. I think writers find it mostly haunting, for the very thing that writers love is the very thing that we find difficult to do. (Do I hear any amens?)

Sometimes we writers need a little nudge. Sometimes we need a big push.

This Creative Stretch is merely a gentle prod. We will, however, give that old adage the benefit of the doubt and call it inspirational.

So let’s be inspired. To write. But only for 15 minutes. It’s short, sweet, noncommittal even. I survived my first attempt and thought it worthy of another go. Want to join the fun?

Take 15 minutes to write about one of the following topics:

• Free-write for 15 minutes about something “small but significant” about yourself. (Exercise courtesy of Luci Shaw, Breath for the Bones)
• Free-write for 15 minutes about your favorite whatever (food, coffee, landscape, shirt, animal).
• Free-write for 15 minutes about something that makes your heart sing.

After you’ve proven the old adage partway true and have 15 minutes of writing to show for it, be sure to share it! Post it on your blog, and then paste the link in the comments here. And if you don’t have a blog, let me know—I’ll feature your written masterpiece here at filling my patch of sky, in your very own post.

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Join our book club discussions on Breath for the Bones each Thursday.

 

The Making of a Creative Life

Breath for the Bones Book Club: Thoughts on Chapter 10

Are artists made or born?

My opinion is that they are born, for children are naturally creative, taking risks by following their ideas without thought of the end result. In Breath for the Bones chapter 10 (“Cultivating Creativity”), Luci Shaw says, “Everybody is born with the ability to create in one form or the other” (138).

Creativity is in us. Sometimes it just gets covered over and stuffed down and squelched. It is our responsibility—our gift of thanks to our Creator—to nurture and cultivate it, to mimic the creative heart of the One who created us. This is no easy work.

Shaw quotes Stephen Spender: “Everything in poetry is work except inspiration.” I believe this is also true of writing as a whole (and all art)—inspiration comes as a flicker, a spark. It is small, bright against my darkened mind; it is a mere spark that must be tended to if it would grow up into a roaring flame.

That stoking is the work of time, thought, research, writing, scrapping, rewriting. And creativity is the accelerant required to take an idea to its full potential.

But how does one become more creative? How do we nurture what lies dormant inside? Shaw shares from her own life how creativity is bolstered. As I marked each of these inputs in my book, a listing emerged, almost like a recipe, an ingredient list. These inputs, these ingredients make for a more creative life:

1) Acknowledge the Gift
“There are no short-cuts to becoming good at one’s craft. Where to begin? First of all, with a sense that you have a gift, an understanding for words, a feeling for rhythm in language.” (140)

2) Read Aloud
“Reading aloud and hearing language in its most dynamic form . . . fed something in us that quickened the imagination.” (140)

3) Write, and Write, and Write
“You learn to write by writing. . . . it’s one of those gifts you can’t develop without doing it.” (140–141)

4) Follow the Burning Spark
“There has to be something that springs from within you that burns in you and wants to be alive, and expressed.” (141)

5) Read in Your Artistic Field
“Always watching for new trends, new techniques, different poetic styles, experimentation.” (141)

6) Work with What You Love
“We grow, too, by affirming our loves through craft. Much of my work is centered in natural creation.” (141)

7) Respond to the World Through Your Craft
“My writing is a connection with the world, my response to the world around me.” (142)

8) Friendship with Other Artists
“Formed with others who share a conviction of faith and a dedication to artistic process.” (143)

9) Uninterrupted Solitude
“The benefits of meditation, silence, and aloneness—of listening to the Spirit in these ways—are new discoveries for me.” (143–144)

10) Community
“In church and outside of it, Communion and community bond. Each small slice of life becomes sacramental as we acknowledge our humanity and pray together for God to be made flesh in us.” (145)

So tell me—do you find these riches flowing into your life? Do you have all the ingredients to cultivate creativity? I must admit: several of these are sorely lacking, and my creative life suffers. Adjustments are in order . . . seems like some good things to think through as the New Year approaches!

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Meet the Club! Read Other Breath for the Bones Chapter 10 Posts
Queenie at Rancho Ruperto

Join our book club discussion each Thursday.

 

The Tricky Theology of Success-Oriented Living (Part 1)

There is a strange phenomenon in Western Christianity that assumes stability and success in life are evidences of our obedience to God’s commands.

Sometimes this is the case. There is fruit to be savored in obedience to God, for He has lovingly shown us boundaries for life that we might be blessed.

But sometimes the fruit of obedience is sweet fellowship with the Lord even as we suffer outwardly for His name. Sometimes obedience brings a season of disruption and instability and trouble before it produces a harvest of peace. Such outcomes run against the grain of our success-oriented filters. We are quick to assign meaning to good and bad outcomes by assigning blame or accolades to our behavior.

While reading various Scripture passages this morning, I found a surprising connection between obedience and outcome. It speaks to the poor job we do in assessing the circumstances we find ourselves in. I saw it in the lives of both Moses and Job. Here I’ll sum up the account of Moses; in a later post, I’ll touch on what I see from Job’s heart-wrenching account. From both, I hope to wrestle with the outward success that we look to as God’s stamp of approval for how we live. And I hope that I might learn to live for God’s glory rather than my own comfort and success.
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God called Moses to go to Pharaoh in Egypt to seek release for the Israelite slaves. God told Moses that He would go with him. God told Moses what to say to Pharaoh. God even told Moses what to expect:

God said to Moses . . .“The king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except under compulsion. So I will stretch out My hand and strike Egypt with all My miracles which I shall do in the midst of it; and after that he will let you go.” —Exodus 3:19–20

So Moses knew going in: Obedience would not bring immediate success; Pharaoh would not immediately yield. Moses would do everything God asked, but that would not result in the Israelites’ automatic release from slavery. Moses knew this before he obeyed. What Moses didn’t know was that Pharaoh wouldn’t just deny their freedom . . . Pharaoh would also levy punishment for the request.

Due to Moses’ request, Pharaoh made sure the slaves work grew more difficult (Exod. 5:6–9). The Israelites had to meet their usual daily quota for brick production but would no longer have the straw for the bricks delivered to them. The Israelite slaves were also physically punished (Exod. 5:14). When quotas weren’t met, the Israelite foremen were beaten and abused by the Egyptians.

If we stopped the story here and used a success-oriented mindset, we would wonder if Moses had misunderstood what God wanted Him to do. We would possibly blame Moses for his poor negotiating skills. And we would eventually turn to question God’s ways. That’s exactly how the Israelites and Moses reacted:

They met Moses and Aaron as they were waiting for them. They said to them, “May the LORD look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Then Moses returned to the LORD and said, “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people? Why did You ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all.” —Exodus 5:20–23

The response is understandable. But this isn’t the end of the story. We know that eventually the Israelites were granted freedom. We know that God proved Himself powerful over Pharaoh and trustworthy as Almighty God. We know that God was authoring a story of redemption that outshines every difficulty.

But we are like the Israelites, like Moses: We call the end of the story a few pages too soon. And we assume obedience is only successful when the story goes our way.

Stop back later this week for part 2.