I’m up to my neck in a Jeremiah study this fall.
There’s a Bible study in Kentucky of which I am an honorary, if distant, member. When I lived in Nashville, I drove up once a week to pore over this or that book in the Old Testament with these people, and six years later, I’ve kept at least loosely up as they’ve plowed through the major prophets. The understanding these long-distance studies have opened in my heart cannot be measured. Take, for instance, the spring of Isaiah
One blustery spring Saturday about three years ago, my dear friend (the teacher) came over during one of my Kentucky visits just so I could spill my hundred and three questions about our current Isaiah study. Rain light poured in a bay window over the table where we sat with coffee, Bibles open, notebooks spread, pens in hand. For three hours–three hours, mind you–we talked our way through Isaiah. At the end of it, I remember sitting back in my spindle-legged chair, that pure, grey light in my eyes and a light just as serene in my spirit. Finally, that day, I grasped that God’s judgment is part of his love
I saw mercy in those epic books of judgment. I never thought I would. My walk with God has often been marred by my fear of him. Not a holy reverence, but a cringing, slave-like terror that I would never be enough to please the God I serve. For a while, this fear so shaped my eyes I could barely open the Bible without finding some new thing to worry about, some new evidence of my own perpetual inadequacy and God’s resulting frown.
I came to my quiet time one day, Bible in hand, and told God I really didn’t want to open it. I was not strong enough, I felt, for the challenge of Scripture. Obviously, I failed to grasp whatever it was that set everyone else rejoicing. But I did pray. I begged to know God’s love and in the silence that followed, God spoke so clearly in my heart it startled me. I must open my Bible. He could, he said, hold me safe through this fear, teach me the truth about himself. But only if I would engage again. Only if I would open that Bible in my hands, plunge into the battle and let him fight for me. I sighed and resigned myself to my task. My study of Isaiah began in sheer obedience. I remember this now as I delve into Jeremiah, because each day I find myself awed.
I keep on finding mercy, right there in the judgment. Mercy so epic in story and scope, my soul is wide with it, and my faith finally has air to breathe. The thing I ached to know and am finally touching as I study the prophets is simply God’s grace. But this is key, I have realized that grace has many faces. There is the tender, father-hearted face. I’ve seen this clear as water in Jeremiah. This is the face that weeps when his children go astray, crying out for the lost ones to return. There is the strong, kingly face of kindly rule. The benevolent Master offering rain and gladness and wine and feasts if his people will only acknowledge his name. There is the Lover who yearns over the wife of his youth, lamenting her beauty, her lost faith.
But when those faces of goodness fail to move the hearts of a dark-spirited people, a new face appears. There is the face of the Maker, the keeper of all power who wields lightning and wind and forms the mountains. There is the frown of the holy-hearted Spirit who cannot bear to see his people turn from goodness to worship idols and destroy their children. And there is the final face of judgment, the stern, stone-set gaze that brings pain on the children he made.
But every one of those faces is mercy. Every one of those faces is rooted in love, begun and ended in grace. What would happen if God didn’t judge his people? What if he left them to go about their merry, idolatrous way and said not a thing? What if God left me to the vagaries of my own sinful self? Judgment is what happens when tenderness and tears are not enough. If we will not have the personal God, the Lover, then we shall be left with the elemental God, the Maker of the the mighty heavens and the pathless earth. And every force of his holy, creative power will run through us as a purging fire.
But the fire, the pain, is mercy. It is destruction with the goal of redemption. Over and over throughout the prophets, God states the goal of his judgment: a people who no longer need law or rod because goodness is etched on their very hearts, formed in their very souls. The goal of judgment is annihilation only of our sin. We, ourselves, come through cleansed. We may be broken apart, but it is only so that the dirt drops off and God can craft us beautiful again.
The miracle is that God sticks around to see it through. Any other god would just zap the sinful lot of us and be done. To bring nations and peoples through the process of a judgment that leads to full redemption is a true, everlasting love. It is a faithful love that is not willing to leave us in sin, nor finish us in anger. Love is the only force I know that works throughout every change to bring about the goodness, restore the beauty of the beloved. I used to be afraid of the prophets in all their bluster. Now, I know, they are just expressing the storm of God’s grand and many-faced mercy.
Sarah Clarkson is the author of several books including the best-selling The Life-giving Home, which she co-authored with her mother, Sally Clarkson. Sarah is currently studying literature at Oxford University where she's not only a brilliant thinker and writer, but is also the president of the C. S. Lewis Society.
9 Comments
Becca
Thank you so much for this, Sarah. I’ve had so many of these same fears/feelings about God’s Word. It was a great comfort to hear your honesty.
‘Just last week I was feeling guilty that I couldn’t bound into morning devotionals all giddy and coiffed, armed with a cute pack of colored pencils and a steaming mug of hot tea. Some of my friends seem to revel in those moments. But I have been timid like you described. The Bible feels too alive for me to be casual with it… hot, heavy, and powerful. The words pierce and splay me. I feel sometimes like it might blind me if I open it unprepared.
It was helpful to hear that I am not alone. And it was good to see how the Lord has helped you process similar feelings. I am deeply encouraged by what you wrote. Thank you!
abeautifulordinary
Beautiful post, Sarah. It reminds me of one of my favorite books– A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. I would highly recommend it as a work of literature, and also as a chronicle of this same, very difficult concept: God’s love and mercy being revealed in His judgment. If you’ve read it, also, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Mike
I finally saw this in Romans One and in the story of the Prodigal. His mercy/judgment was turning them over to their own desires knowing full well that when we get to the end of US we will come home to Him. I have said this here before but I see His wrath much like I see mine when my young son plays too close to the road. It started out as kindness; teaching him the dangers of the road. STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN but the closer he played near the road the more severe my love became. Even to the point that I would have spanked him if necessary, which wouldn’t have felt like love/mercy at all.
Thanks Sarah, I’m thrilled that we are getting past the idea of a Shrek God. He is no longer the ogre I was taught that He was.
Cathy
I too worry that I am far too gone for God’s mercy to touch me. I have made so many mistakes in my life…divorced twice, though married again. My biggest mistake was not taking my kids to church often enough. We went when they were young, but life happened and church was not a priority. Now I see God missing in their lives, and I am for the most part out of their lives. When I married the third time, I moved to Sweden from Iowa. My youngest son and his wife have told me in no uncertain terms that they don’t want me to even send an email, and though I talk to my oldest son, we are not as close as I would like. I read the Bible daily now, and have for two years. I pray for God to touch my children, remind them that He is there. I reminded them last Christmas with the ESV Study Bible as a gift. All I can do is pray for them, their families, and hope that they do not have to go through what I have to get them back to God and His Loving Mercy. I feel that I don’t deserve it, but somehow I believe that it is there anyway, He loves ME, the least deserving person I know…and whenever I think of it I am amazed and brought to tears. Sorry for the long post..I just needed to vent and since I don’t know Swedish, and never will due to my handicap, it really is a lonely LONELY place…
Becca
praying for you, cathy. i’m so sorry it’s lonely there. sending a big, virtual bear hug.
Mike
Cathy, God specializes in messups. Invite Him to get down in the mire where you (we all) are and dare to be loved. He loves you children more than you ever could. Let Him have em. I’ve had to do it with my own.
Stay in One Peace
Sarah
Oh Cathy, amen to the above comments and I pray for you with all my heart too and am so sorry it’s lonely. I know God holds you and your kids in love that heals and makes beautiful all the broken places. Grace to you.
Cathy
Thank you guys all! You make me feel truly cared for, not only by God, but by humans. People that don’t HAVE to care, but I can feel that you do. God bless all of you with His mercy and may He love you even more for the way that you have shined His light on my life tonight. You are good people. Thank you does not begin to express my feelings reading your comments.
Tom
Thank you for writing this. It reminded me this morning that conviction is a gift and a mercy. As I struggle with my own personal sin, the kind with which each of us wrestles on a daily or hourly basis, I sometimes get tired its weight. The fight becomes, for lack of a better term, old. During my better days, I look forward to Heaven, when I won’t have to fight temptation anymore. On my worse days, I decide not to fight temptation anymore.
Every so often, the Holy Spirit reminds me that He is the one convicting me. As long as this voice speaks in my heart, I am not out of God’s reach, off His mind or out of His heart. The frightening prospect is the thought that I will let myself become so numb and dead to a sin that it won’t bother me. When I’m reminded of this, and I feel that fear in my periphery, my impulse is to thank God for His care and interest in me.
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