Seth Lewis's Blog, page 15

The Same Old Faces

My wife and I are planning to make some improvements to our garden this year, and one of the things we’d like to do is plant a new miniature apple tree. We like planting trees. It’s fun to anticipate what a newly planted tree will become in the years ahead. But there’s the rub: “years ahead.” Because if you want to eat the fruit from a tree, you need to give it time. A lot of time. You need to let it grow, put down roots, and become part of the ordinary, everyday scenery. It’s only after you look out of the window for years at the same old tree that you start to be able to reap the full harvest of fruit and shade and beauty and all that a tree can be in its maturity. By that time, the tree is nothing like new. The initial excitement of planting eventually gives way to a more settled appreciation and enjoyment of the tree as a part of everyday life.

Isn’t this true of friendships, as well? A new friendship is a wonderful beginning, fresh and exciting and full of potential, like the planting of a new tree. Don’t we all naturally long for relationship? To know and be truly known? To love and be truly loved, in spite of being truly known? Of course we do. But often we can get frustrated because our fresh new friendships aren’t giving us the depth we long for. How could they? A sapling can’t bear much fruit, or give much shade. Don’t blame the sapling. It needs time. There’s nothing wrong with fresh new friendships, but we have to recognise that the sweetest and most satisfying fruits of relationships (of any kind) can only come with time. There’s no substitute. Growing deep roots into each other’s hearts and lives can’t happen overnight.

If you really want deep community, you’ve got to stick around for it. You’ve got to keep leaning in after the excitement of the new has worn off, after the freshness of novelty is gone. You’ve got to keep seeing the same old people you saw yesterday, and last week, and you’ve got to keep enjoying them, and forgiving them, and choosing to love them no matter what. You’ve got to let your friendships grow and put down roots, like the trees in the garden. With time, and only with time, those same old people can become the deep community you long for. But it won’t happen until you’ve been around them long enough to be the same old you, with the same old them, for lots and lots of same old days. Eventually, you might just look around and see that those same old faces have become a rich community of your best old friends.

Peace And Rest

After the busy, noisy celebration of Christmas, the slower pace and restfulness of this week between Christmas and New Year’s is refreshing. But if the good news we just celebrated is true, then peace and rest mean much more than a temporary time of relief in our schedule. There is a peace and rest available to us that is deep enough to remain even in the most hectic times, and secure enough to withstand the most severe troubles. This peace and rest came to us because of Christmas, but they are not presents—they are found in a person. That’s what I’ve tried to capture in these two poems:

Peace

“A peace that passes understanding”
Sounds divine—can it be found in
Daily stress and heavy burdens?
In this life, can peace be known in
More than just a fleeting moment?

“Peace I leave—not as the world gives”
Said the man who died—yet lives
And now he overrides the fall
With “peace on earth, goodwill to all
On whom his favour rests”

Oh Lord you are the Prince of Peace
And when our minds on you are fixed
Then perfect peace comes flowing through
Because the peace you give

Is you

Rest

“Take my yoke,” He said to me
“And I will give you rest.”

“But yokes are made for work,” I said
“Your plan are backwards,” I contest

“Yet I am with you,” his reply
“And will you still be stressed?”

I bend my neck into the yoke
And find beside me, Rest

A Christmas Selection Box 2022

It’s traditional in Ireland to give chocolate selection boxes at Christmas, with a variety of different treats inside. Unfortunately, I can’t share that chocolate with you over the internet. I wish I could, because Irish chocolate really is some of the best in the world and I’m not the only one who thinks so. But I can’t give you that, so instead I’ve collected a few Christmas treats for you from around the internet. Enjoy!

First, here’s a Christmas song from Northern Ireland-based Rend Collective. I like the song, and I also like the scenery in this music video:Next, I’m sharing with you a Christmas quote from C.S. Lewis (who grew up in Ireland). This quote is taken from his book, Miracles:

“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.” – C.S. Lewis

Here’s some more Christmas music–this is a short instrumental version of a traditional Irish Christmas carol called Don Oiche Ud I Mbeithil (That Night In Bethlehem):Next up is an article: “Christmas Hope for the Brokenhearted” by Tim Challies, a Canadian blogger who recently lost his son. He writes about why we can still have hope, and still celebrate Christmas, even through grief. Tim also wrote a book about his experience of loss, called “Seasons of Sorrow” . It was the most moving book I read all year, heartbreaking and yet also intensely hopeful. You can buy it here.
You may be reading this from Ireland, or from anywhere, but either way you can enjoy a few photos from Christmastime in Ireland . The Christmas lights and occasional dustings of snow only highlight the beauty of this island even more.
Finally, here’s a throwback to one of my own poems about Christmas: Away In A Graveyard (A Poem For Christmas)

I hope you have a very happy Christmas, wherever you are!

Hope > Optimism

I hope you have a happy Christmas, or a merry Christmas if you say it that way, and a happy New Year. I hope your celebrations this month are trouble-free and full of joy, and I hope 2023 is better for you than 2022. Of course there’s probably nothing I can do to actually make that happen for most of you, but I hope it for you anyway. We don’t know what’s around the next corner, so we might as well be optimistic about it. 

I’ve always been an optimist. I’ve got so much optimism I can be an optimist for you as well, if you want me to. I can believe all the best things about your future and mine. It comes naturally for me, so it’s no trouble. The only trouble with the whole thing is the trouble that keeps popping up and spoiling my optimistic outlooks. Sometimes everything doesn’t work out. Sometimes it’s not ok. Sometimes it’s not grand, it’s not good, and it’s not even fine. As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes my optimism is just plain wrong. So I still hope you have a happy Christmas, but I’m also painfully aware that my positive thoughts won’t be able to make that happen for you. 

Then again, isn’t that what Christmas is for?

God did not take on our humanity and make himself into one of us just so that he could wish us a happy Christmas, expressing his sincere hope that things would improve for us somehow in the years to come. That would have been a nice gesture, but it wouldn’t have been all that helpful. We can do that much ourselves. No, when Jesus came to earth he did not come to bring the “I hope so” kind of hope, but something else entirely. Yes, we use the same word for it—we still call it “hope”—but it’s not the same thing. It’s the difference between telling a starving man that you hope he gets dinner somehow and inviting him to a royal banquet. Jesus didn’t come to give us a friendly sentiment. He came to provide, in reality, for all our deepest needs for forgiveness, for peace, for joy, real love, and life that never ends. He came to invite us to his feast (Matthew 22:1-14). The invitation is not based on our status, goodness, or worthiness. It is based entirely on his generosity. His death is enough to provide full forgiveness to anyone who comes to him. His resurrection life is enough for any human, no matter how lost or broken or sinful or ashamed, to be fully restored. 

This is hope. The actual thing. The secure, firm, unshakable thing that doesn’t evaporate like my optimism does in the face of difficult realities. This hope is bigger than all the troubles of the world put together, more stable than the ground under our feet, and it lasts longer, too. It is based on God’s provision, so no human can steal it. It is given by a Saviour who has already defeated death, so nothing can destroy it. In Christ, “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19).

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year. But don’t count on my optimism to make it happen. Put your anchor down into the only fully secure hope this world has ever known: the hope that Jesus won for those who trust in him. This is the hope we celebrate at Christmas. 

The General

My brother and I shared a room growing up, and our closet held a few random pieces of military uniforms inherited from family members who had served in the armed forces. The most popular was the Air Force dress uniform hat. My brother wore it, mostly, because he was the oldest boy in the neighbourhood, so he was the general. The general was never short of orders for his loyal troops. He graciously helped us advance from lowly privates through rank after gratifying rank by having us climb walls, run obstacle courses, and complete drills. We obeyed enthusiastically, and proudly wore the rank pins we bought for ourselves from the Army surplus store. We dug trenches. We built hidden fortresses in the forest. We spent our days outside rearranging red clay and fallen trees, scraping our knees and conquering our fears, all for the general. We never questioned his authority. We never thought to ask him why he never had to earn his own rank. The sun was shining, morale was high, and there was always another challenge to work towards.

Years later, the general became a patrol leader in our Boy Scout troop. Our patrol was formed out of the newer, younger boys, without any of the star athletes or the guys who were into body building. When it came time for competitions, nobody expected much from us—except our patrol leader. He fully believed we could win, and he made us believe it, too. We pushed ourselves harder than we thought possible, and we did it willingly, enthusiastically, because our leader knew we could.

He was right. We did win. A lot. Even better, we discovered that we could do more, together, than we realised. And we could have a great time doing it, too. My brother showed us a vision of what was possible, and his confidence gave us the confidence to make it come true. I’ve heard that the best leaders bring out the best in others, and I believe that. Better yet, I’ve seen it in my brother, the general.

The Truth Is Not Mine

“What is truth?”

That was Pilate’s question to Jesus, after Jesus told him that he had come into the world “to testify to the truth.” The question was a good one, but Pilate didn’t wait for the answer. Probably it was less of a genuine question and more of a cynical—possibly bitter?—statement of the shifting realities of political life and Pilate’s role in it. This was a man who had given up on the idea of firm principles. He had seen how changeable the crowds could be, and how precarious his position and power were. He could not afford to care about what was really, foundationally, true—he could only respond to the immediate situation in front of him and try to make the best of it for himself. Or so he thought.

What is truth? The question is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. People are still people, and crowds still change their minds just as quickly, if not more so. Today’s heroes are tomorrow’s villains, last month’s reason for widespread anger is already forgotten, and some of the things you can be cancelled for saying today are the same things that politicians had to say to get elected a decade ago. What is truth? Whatever it is, it seems to move quickly. It seems hard to keep up with.

The dictionary defines “truth” as “that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.” This sounds objective, impartial, immovable. And most people still use it that way, at least sometimes. But there are also times when objective truth can become objectionable. What happens when reality includes objective limits to our subjective choices? What if we can’t make our lives, or our nations, or our world, or the people around us, or even our own bodies, everything that we wish them to be? What if we can’t make God what we wish him to be?

When the truth became an obstacle to what he wanted, Pilate abandoned it and made his own way. The truth could not be tolerated, so it was ignored. Killed. And he is not alone: there is far more encouragement today to live and declare “my” truth than to discover “the” truth about myself. And the same applies to God: does anyone actually want to know what God is really like? Or are we more interested in making him fit into our ideas of what he ought to be?

When our current politicians and news sources adjust the facts to suit themselves (like Pilate before them), we cry foul. Fake news is a real problem, because it is fake. It is untrue, unaligned with the real facts of the real world. We hate fake news because we know that the truth about the world is not subjective.

But then—what if the truth about God is also not subjective? What if it is greater and more satisfying and awe-inspiring than we could imagine? And what if the truth about us is not subjective, either? What if it is richer and better than any personal truth we could manufacture for ourselves?

What if the man who said “I am the way, the truth, and the life” really is, himself, the foundation of truth? What if he meant it when he said that “the truth will set you free”?

What is truth? The question is a good one.

What if we waited for the answer?

Two Powerful Skills You Already Have

Walking and eating are two of the most fundamentally basic human skills—the kind of things we learn in infancy. But I have found that walking and eating are also two of the most powerful contexts for experiencing human connection. What do we suggest when we want to see someone? More often than not, it involves eating at some point. Or walking. Or both.

Somehow these two simple activities lend themselves brilliantly to relational growth—God himself walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, and Jesus was well known for eating with the “wrong” sorts of people. So it is that two of the most ordinary, most overlooked skills in the world—skills that even tiny children can master—are also some of the most useful for connecting with other people. Sometimes, you really don’t need to look past your own feet (or plate) to find what you need to grow your relationships with the people around you, or with God himself (walking outside has been a great benefit to my own prayer life). That’s what these two poems are about. I wrote the first one a couple of years ago. I wrote the second one yesterday, after lunch with a couple of friends.

The Garden Path

The best place for discussion
Is a pathway in a garden
For when our Maker made us
A garden’s what he gave us
And when he came to speak with us
He walked along the path

A Table For Three

Sandwiches and
Cups of coffee
Two faces
Across from me
A wooden bench
A simple lunch
I rise to leave
I am
Nourished

The Serious Business Of Laughing At Myself

“We need to talk,” she said, and as thick as my teenage skull was, I knew that phrase meant trouble. On the way home from work I stopped at her house so that she could break up with me. When she was done, I scraped together what little dignity I had left, held my head up, and walked away (controlling the urge to run). As my car came into view I began to realise that my hopes for a quick getaway were not going to materialise. While my girlfriend had been breaking my heart, my car had been simultaneously experiencing a similar, if more literal, fate. My now-ex-girlfriend’s mother had reversed into it, and now the driver’s side door resembled my insides. It wouldn’t open. And the car was parked beside a wall, so the door on the other side couldn’t open either. I ended up having to squeeze my broken spirit ignominiously through an open window. So much for a dignified exit.

As I drove away, I didn’t laugh. But when I think about the situation today, laughing is all I can do. I laugh at the pure absurdity of it, at the perfection of comedic timing, and at the over-dramatics of love and loss in the late teens. I had lost more than a girlfriend that day: my car was damaged, my pride was damaged, and my reputation with my peers was damaged. For someone in their late teens, these are the unfathomable depths of darkness. But a few thousand sunrises later, I see clearly that my car, my pride, and my reputation weren’t nearly as important as I thought they were at the time. Looking back, it was good for me that they all took a beating that day. There’s no question I had been taking myself far too seriously for my own good.

I thought I looked silly climbing through the car window to leave, but how silly did my proud little heart look to the God of the universe when I arrived? He knew that the blessing I needed most that day was a strong reminder that no matter what I thought of myself, I was still human, still small and dependent, and the best of my plans for myself could crumble as quickly as the door of my car. There are times to be serious, I know, and plenty of things to be serious about. But if I see my own plans and sense of self-importance as the serious centre of all things, then I’ve gone off course.

I see the humour of that day now, and I laugh. I also see how God’s plans for me have worked out to be far better than my own. Sometimes laughing and seeing go together that way: If I can’t embrace my own smallness, my own humiliations, and my total dependence on the God who made me, then my pride has grown out of control. That’s a serious problem. And sometimes the solution is as simple as having a good, long laugh at my own little self.

Love Is A Skill

Love is a big deal. People talk about it all the time—usually romantic love these days, but the broader concept of love for others in general gets plenty of airtime as well. We seem to agree that love is fundamental to what it means to live well as a human. It’s part of who we are, built in to the human heart. Which is exactly right: love is the image of God shining out, crying out to the world around us that the something or someone we love is worthy of valuing and treasuring. In that sense, love is natural. It is one of the deepest realities of who we are, of who God made us to be.

Then again, anyone who has tried very hard to love other people well will know that love doesn’t always feel very natural. A lot of times it feels more like hard work. “Love your neighbour as yourself” sounds straightforward—until your neighbour hurts you. Ignores you. Uses you for their own purposes. Belittles. Betrays. And I’m supposed to love them?? I’d rather do unto them as they did unto me. They don’t deserve my love.

When someone asked Jesus what to do about this, he responded by telling a parable about a man who was robbed and beaten and thrown down beside a road. As he lay dying, several of his fellow countrymen walked by him and ignored him. Eventually someone did stop—the Good Samaritan, as we call him today. This man was a foreigner, a natural enemy of the man on the road, yet he saw his needs and chose to stop. He dressed the man’s wounds, carried him to help, and paid for his recovery. Jesus said that this is what it means to “love your neighbour as yourself”.

It’s interesting that Jesus never mentioned how the Good Samaritan felt about the man on the road. He only tells us what he did for him. Evidently, Jesus does not consider love to be primarily about how we feel, but more importantly about what we do. Is Jesus telling me that I am supposed to actually, tangibly put the interests of others ahead of my own even when I don’t feel any kind of love for them? Yes. Yes he is.

This has implications. If love is primarily an action, and only after that a feeling, then love is not something we are doomed to fall in and out of without any rhyme or reason or control. If it is an action, then it is a decision. This is why God speaks of his own love for us as a “covenant”—an unbreakable promise—not just a feeling (although he is clear about his feelings for us as well). If love begins and ends with a feeling, it will begin and end a lot. It is only when love rests on commitment and faithful action that it can grow steady and strong and reach its full potential. Even as our feelings ebb and flow, the reality of love can grow stronger with time if we choose relentlessly, like Jesus, like the Good Samaritan, to put the interests of others ahead of our own. In this sense, love is a skill. It is something we can grow in, something we can improve at. With experience and practice, we can learn to embed more actions of love for others into the habits of our daily lives. We can learn to rest more fully in God’s love for us, understand more clearly how he sees others, and find more joy in serving them like he does.

If love is an action, then love is a skill. This is good news, because we all have many opportunities to practice our love for others every day. It’s good news because it means that we are not stuck where we are; we can always get better at loving others. It means that we don’t have to wait and try hard to work up a feeling first, before we can choose to act in love. We can act now. Our feelings will follow, eventually, on the path laid down by our actions. Over time, those choices to love, and those actions of love, will grow and take root in our lives and bloom into the same kind of joyful, confident generosity we see in our Saviour.

How will you practice love today?

Dream Small Audiobook Is Now Available

I’m happy to announce that the audiobook version of Dream Small is now available, read by yours truly. It’s only three and a half hours long, less than 25 minutes a chapter. Put me in your ears—I’d like to talk with you about what really matters in life.

Here are the Amazon product pages:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

And these are the links to it on Audible’s website:

Audible UK

Audible US