Hello Friend,
I’m working on my next book, which is actually the FIRST book in a series of FOUR different books (I think? Things change, so you never know. HA!). The books are about the Gospels …
Matthew.
Mark.
Luke.
John.
… and each book will focus on a different Gospel and the stories of Jesus as told by that Gospel writer.
The objective of each book is to give the reader a look into the original audience of the Gospel (the original readers or listeners) and a taste of …
What they were experiencing.
What problems they were facing.
What struggles were in front of them.
… so that we can (then) look at various stories of Jesus from that Gospel through the lens of its background and context.
We want to let each Gospel and each Gospel writer speak for itself/himself.
AND THEN.
(This is the fun part.)
We want to let our imaginations run WILD as we wonder why each Gospel writer would have included the stories they did AND what those stories might have to speak to us today.
Each book will open with a chapter about what we know of the original audience along with some of what we know of them and their circumstances and then will contain anywhere from 20-30 different chapters/reflections/entries/whatever you want to call them on various stories from the Gospel; AND each entry will end with a couple of reflection questions and plenty of space for you to journal your own thoughts and reflections.
Maybe you’ll read one entry a day.
Or one a week.
Or 10 a day.
Maybe you’ll read the book devotionally.
Or maybe you’ll read it in one sitting.
Or return to it again and again and again.
How you read it is totally up to you, but I’m REALLY excited about this project because I feel like it’s stemming from my sweet spot and my deepest passion (Jesus and the Gospels) along with what I’ve learned from my friend Alexander John Shaia and his lifelong work with the 4 Gospels. I was trained in Biblical studies back in seminary and love to dig into and reflect on the stories we find in the Bible, especially in the Gospels … and that’s what these books are shaping up to be.
All of that to say, today I want to share with you the ENTIRETY of (unedited!) chapter 8 - a reflection on Jesus’ command to NOT worry.
Enjoy, and thanks for supporting my work!
Glenn || MY BOOK || PATREON || BUY ME A COFFEE
PS - I’ve been sending one of these excerpts a month, but since I already gave one earlier this month AND I’m giving you a whole chapter now AND the holidays are coming … this will be the last excerpt until after the New Year. Cool? Cool. Enjoy and feel free to reply with any thoughts you may have.
Background and Context
Before I share the chapter with you, a little context for Matthew’s Gospel (which will be the focus of chapter 1) would be helpful.
Matthew was writing to the Jewish Christians / Messianic Jews who were living in the wake of Rome’s destruction of the temple, the center of their universe. They would have witnessed the deaths of …
Their family.
Their friends.
And their teachers.
ALONG WITH.
The destruction of their temple and much of Jerusalem.
They relocated to a place called Antioch where they were tasked with rebuilding, starting over again, and (in a sense) separating from their Mother faith (Judaism) so that they could follow the way of Jesus The Christ (who they believed to be the Messiah), which much of their family and circles of friends didn’t understand or approve of.
And so, Matthew’s Jesus tells these readers not to worry …
Matthew 6:25-30
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Universe-Imploding-Moments
I don’t think I was ever more worried than the night my wife and I had a miscarriage. It was the most horrible experience of my life and a season that I will never, ever forget as questions and doubts and worries and fear flooded my mind 24/7.
“Is Dana (my wife) going to be OK?”
“Will we recover from this?”
“Will the pain ever go away?”
“How will we ever get out of bed again?”
“Will we be able to get pregnant again?”
It was one worry and one question and one doubt after another all day, every day for what seemed like weeks and months and years and decades … an eternity.
Yeah.
It felt like an eternity of lying in a pile of rubble, buried beneath the pain of our imploded universe.
Universe-Imploding-Moments do this to us, don’t they? They have the ability to stop us in our tracks, cripple us from being able to move through our everyday lives, and consume our minds with an infestation of fearful, doubt-filled worry that feels as if that particular moment in that particular season will never ever pass.
I imagine that this is the way Matthew’s readers felt.
I mean, how could they feel anything other than worry? Here was a group of people who were forced out of their homeland and abandoned by their family, friends, and mother faith all after watching the center of their universe crash to the ground.
How would they go forward?
Where would they live?
Could they go on without their loved ones?
Without their Rabbis?
Without their home?
… And do so while being despised by the family, friends, and community that survived the Roman massacre?
We Are Seen
When we had our miscarriage nothing was able to ease my worry, nothing had to the power to distract me from it.
Ice Cream?
Pizza?
Shopping?
Reading?
TV?
Work?
… Nothing worked. Sure, I might “forget” about the event for a little bit, but eventually it would stick it’s foot in the doorway of my heart and kick down the door with a force that would cause tears to erupt out of nowhere.
Nothing could take away the worry, nothing could distract me from it. What helped, though, was being reminded (and reminding myself) that God hadn’t forgotten about us, that we weren’t alone in the smoking pile of rubble … that we were seen, that God had his eye on us and his arm around us.
To be honest, it was this event that really started to unravel my faith because I couldn’t (for the life of me) wrap my mind around how a perfect and good and all-powerful God could let our baby die.
How?
Why?
There was no answer and the churchy answers of “God’s ways are not our ways” and “God is sovereign” and “God needed an angel in heaven” and “one day you’ll hold your baby again” … although I had said those things to people in the past and although I had believed them at one point, it all sounded like a load of BS to me as I walked out of the hospital with the weight of the universe on my shoulders.
I remember walking out of the emergency room to get the car so I could take my wife home, and I remember getting in the car and screaming at God – “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? HOW COULD YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN? YOU’RE NOT A GOOD, GOOD FATHER – YOU ARE A LOUSY, ROTTEN, GOOD FOR NOTHING, DEADBEAT DAD … and I’m done.”
My faith unraveled at a fast pace after that and although I no longer felt like I could rely on (what I was taught regarding) God’s omnipotence and greatness and power … I was still able to hold on to God’s omnipresence and trust that my wife and I weren’t alone.
Could God have prevented our baby from dying? I had no answer for that (I still don’t, honestly). What I did trust, though, and what I did hold on to with all of my being was that when …
We grieved, God grieved.
We cried, God cried.
We wept, God wept.
We felt loss, God felt loss.
Yes, our universe had imploded and we sat in a pile of smoking rubble … but we didn’t sit there alone – God was there, God was present, and our pain was God’s pain.
What If / Even If
I think this is why Matthew included these words from Jesus about worry – so that his readers would know that they weren’t alone in their pain, that they weren’t forgotten about in their misery, that they weren’t abandoned by an all-powerful God.
We tend to read these verses and focus on Jesus’ command to not worry (in verse 25), but it’s important to realize that following that command is a beautiful reminder that the reason Matthew’s readers could abandon their worry about their tomorrows was because …
God sees that the birds are hungry, and he feeds them.
God sees the flowers of the field and the grass of the earth, and he clothes them.
God sees that you need to eat and drink and have a place to live.
… Yes: God sees.
Right?
“Just as God sees the birds”, Matthew’s Jesus is saying, “and just as God sees the flowers and just as God sees that you need to eat and drink and have a place to live … just as God sees all of that, so God sees you right here and right now in this horrible, terrible moment in time. You are not alone. You have not been abandoned. You have not been ditched. You have not been given up on. God is here with you and so rather than worry about what tomorrow may or may not hold, you can rest in this moment knowing full well that you are seen, you are loved, and you will never be alone.”
Perhaps it was an invitation of sorts for Matthew’s readers to exchange their worrisome “what-if-scenarios” for a trust-filled “even-if-mentality”.
Right?
“Instead of worrying about what tomorrow might hold”, I imagine Matthew saying, “and wondering ‘what if we aren’t able to move forward, what if nothing is ever the same again’, Jesus is inviting you to know that even if you can’t move forward and even if nothing is ever the same again and even if you feel too weak or too defeated or too unmotivated … you aren’t alone, you are seen and you are loved.”
God Sees You
I wanted to tell you today that God sees you, my friend.
Yes:
God.
Sees.
You.
And so whatever part of your universe has recently imploded and whatever pile of smoking rubble you find yourself buried in today – may you know that you aren’t buried in it alone. I honestly don’t know if God could have prevented your temple from falling in on itself, but I do know that you aren’t alone as you try to move forward and pick up the pieces.
And so.
For that reason.
And that reason alone.
… I believe you can loosen your grip on the worries of tomorrow and make some room in the palms of your hands for the hand of your Creator who is reaching out to hold your hand, to remind you that you are seen and aren’t alone.
Yes.
Like Matthew’s readers, may we exchange our worrisome what-if-scenarios for a trust-filled even-if-mentality.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!
I love this Glenn. I’m so looking forward to your book. I had a miscarriage too, and the churchy comments and comments from people outside church which were meant well tore me apart. It was the sincere “I’m so sorry” and a hug from those who allowed me to feel all the pain and shared in the pain with me that helped. Maybe that was God.
Love this! And can relate in many ways. We too, had a miscarriage. Then a full term still birth. It's been a long time ago (26-27 years) and I don't recall knowing what we felt then, but we knew God was there. I don't remember hearing the standard church verses in that time. We then had Grace. Another miscarriage a couple of years later, then a couple of years after that we had Megan and Landon. Life.... is tough some times. But we never felt alone.