Seth Lewis's Blog, page 3

Easter Isn’t Over

Easter Sunday was a few days ago now, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. The effects of what we celebrated last Sunday continue to grow, slowly, like the buds of spring continue to open all around us and the fresh green continues to deepen into maturity and the apple blossoms transform themselves, somehow, into delicious fruit. Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Then he died—for us. Now, 2,000 years later, his resurrection is still bearing fruit—transforming the cold, dead hearts of sinful, proud, selfish people who trust in his forgiveness and salvation into living, loving, new creations—a transformation that is every bit as glorious and surprising as the growth of a tiny, dull little sunflower seed into a towering, thriving wonder of nature. This is how God works. He does nothing by half-measures. He doesn’t ease off once he’s done enough to get by. He goes on, and on, and on—working wonders far beyond anything we could ask or imagine, and glories no mind has conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9). That’s why, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses seeds as an illustration of the resurrection of God’s people:

“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body….So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

Jesus did not merely win his people a bonus extension on our current kind of living. That would have been good—certainly better than dying—but he went much further. He won us an entirely new reality—imperishable, glorious, and full to bursting with his own resurrection power and life. The life Jesus won for his children is so far beyond our present reality that you might as well be comparing sunflower seeds to full-grown sunflowers. There is no comparison. And yet there is a connection—the seed is the beginning of the glories to come. And here, today, God has already planted the seed of his resurrection life in the hearts of those who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Here, today, that seed is already taking root and growing, slowly—budding and opening, blooming and bearing fruit in the lives of those who die to sin with Jesus and rise to new life by the power of his resurrection.

Easter isn’t over. It’s only just begun.

If you’d like to think more about the ways that God’s creation points us to our Creator, my new book “The Language of Rivers and Stars” is releasing in a few days on the first of May. It is now available for preorder.

Transplanted

There’s an old Regency manor house near us that has been preserved as a heritage site, beautifully surrounded by manicured gardens that are faithfully tended by volunteers and open to the public. The gardens were planted and arranged over successive generations in the old English style—which means that the plants and trees were imported from all across the globe. This worked particularly well on the Fota estate because of its sheltered conditions. Even its name, Fota, is derived from the Irish “Fód te”, meaning “warm soil”. The arboretum is particularly impressive, boasting some of the finest specimens of pine, cypress and sequoia in Europe. There are also acers and eucalyptus, tasmanian tree ferns, acacia and magnolias that burst open with enormous flowers before the leaves even begin to appear. A walk through Fota gardens is a walk around the world, with the sights, smells, and colours of the Himalayas, Japan, Chile, China, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.

Sometimes I’ve wondered how trees from California and Australia can grow so well in Ireland. I suppose they don’t have much of a choice in the matter, but they’ve certainly made the best of it. Their roots are deep in the fód te, and I have to strain my eyes to see some of their towering tops. They have not simply survived in a foreign land. They have made it their home, and thrived. When I wander among them, I am encouraged.

I, too, am a transplant. I came from North America, like the sequoias, and have put down new roots in the warm, welcoming soil of Ireland. Although my instincts and assumptions were trained in a different cultural climate, I have gradually acclimatised to the cooler days, the subtler humour, and the slower movement of time. The air and soil, the rain and wind of this place have crept through my foreign skin and become a vital part of who I am. I’m not sure when that happened, or how. I just know that it did, and I feel it even when I travel beyond these shores. I feel strangely changed—as if some of the fód te of Ireland clings to me anywhere I go. But of course it does. Soil always clings to roots.

Changing The Question

Under the cover of darkness, a prominent religious leader sought out the controversial Nazarene that was dividing opinion across the nation. Nicodemus was intrigued by the miracles that Jesus was performing, and wanted to hear more of his teaching. Jesus received him but immediately redirected him, showing Nicodemus that more teaching was not what he needed. What he needed was new life—new birth by God’s Spirit, into life that lasts forever. Nicodemus did not come to Jesus looking for new birth. Jesus did not answer the questions Nicodemus came to ask—he answered the question Nicodemus should have asked. All through the gospels Jesus redirects people’s questions in surprising ways, not only changing the answer from what they expected, but changing the question itself. For example:

A rich young ruler asked Jesus, “What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ answer cut to the heart: What do you love most? God or your money? (Mark 10).An expert in the law asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered with the parable of the good Samaritan, changing the question: Are you a good neighbour? (Luke 10).The woman at the well asked Jesus why he would cross cultural boundaries to ask her for a drink. Jesus prompted her to ask him for living water, welling up to eternal life (John 4).

Throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus took the questions people asked him and redirected them to different answers that they needed far more than the questions they came with. In doing so, he fit the pattern of God’s work throughout history, as we see displayed in both the Old and New Testaments. For example:

Moses asked God at the burning bush, “Who am I that I should speak to Pharaoh? God redirected his focus away from himself and on to God: “I will be with you” (Exodus 3).Job brought God a host of questions about his own suffering. God overwhelmed those questions with a revelation of his own glory, power, and wisdom—teaching Job, and us, that knowing God will always be more important than knowing all his reasons (Job 38-42).Jonah asked why God didn’t judge his enemies. God asked why Jonah didn’t have compassion on them (Jonah 4).Paul pleaded with God three times: “Will you remove this thorn in my flesh?” God gave him strength instead, teaching Paul to boast in his weakness—and in the all-sufficient power of God (2 Corinthians 12).

If this is the pattern of God’s dealings with people throughout scripture, then we ought to recognise that God may do the same with us, as well. When God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we think or expect, perhaps he’s answering a different question—a deeper question, a question we need to learn to ask, an answer we need to learn to receive. It’s always good to bring our questions to God. Will we also let him change them?

A Poem About Life

I sat down to write a poem about life
The roof is leaking.
I began to think about the happy and
The dryer’s squeaking.

I got up and sat again and thought
Of mysteries
And things I ought
To have done yesterday.

Life is full of joy and
I’d better fold the clothes.
How it goes so fast
Nobody knows.

Again, it’s full of joy and
Interruption
Moments of construction
Of this messy
Happy gift of

What was I saying?
Oh yes the gift I love—

Life

Seedlings Need The Weather (repost)

It’s the time of year when fresh green leaves are unfolding and Jessica is preparing trays of seedlings for our garden. A few years ago I wrote about what I learned from our seedlings, and I’ve been thinking a lot about those lessons recently, so I decided to repost this post for you today. If you look closely, you’ll see that God is constantly communicating many valuable truths to us through the world he made for us. That’s what my forthcoming book is about— “The Language of Rivers and Stars”.

There’s a small square of earth behind our house that belongs to us. Which is strange, because it was here a long time before we were and will be here a long time after we’re gone. But there’s a deed in an office somewhere that has our names on it, so the ground is ours. And with that ground comes the responsibility to care for it—a responsibility that didn’t come from an office, but from Heaven.

We do our best. And when I say “we”, I really mean my wife, Jessica. She’s the one who does most of the caring and tending and planting. I made the raised beds around the edges of the garden, but she’s the one that filled them with roses and blueberries, mint and strawberries, pineapple sage and climbing jasmine and passion flowers. This year, she brought home packets of seeds for dahlias, zinnias, and cornflowers as well, because she wants to have flowers to cut for our dinner table throughout the spring, summer, and autumn. She sowed the seeds in trays of compost and found the perfect spot inside our glass door where our seedlings could have ideal conditions: plenty of sun (by Irish standards), warmth inside the house, protection from cold and storms and slugs, and regular watering. We babied our little baby plants, and we were delighted to see them grow, and grow fast. In fact they grew so fast that their stems became long and thin and too weak to hold up their own new leaves. One by one me they began to fall over. What went wrong? How could our seedlings be so weak when we protected them from every difficulty and obstacle? What more could we do for them? 

When we asked a gardener friend, he told us that the absence of difficulty was not the solution to their problem. It was the problem. The trouble for our seedlings—the trouble that made them weak—was that they had no trouble. Without at least some exposure to the elements, they would never grow strong. 

It feels backwards, but our friend was right. Now that we’ve been putting the seedlings outside in the wind and the weather during the day, they are sturdier, stronger, and a lot healthier. They aren’t falling over anymore. Of course, there is a limit—they are still weak and fragile and can’t handle the cold air at night yet—but we see now that the way to make them stronger is to let them face some adversity, not to keep them completely free from it. Soon, we will plant them in the garden. When we do, they need to be strong enough to handle the weather. The more troubles they are able to face and overcome now, the more prepared they will be to face and overcome the troubles that will come then.

There have been times when our children have had to deal with various kinds of relational difficulties, and all I wanted to do was fix it for them as quickly as possible by any means necessary. And fixing it is good, of course, but it’s not the only good. There’s another good that grows best in the process of learning to stand up for yourself and others, discovering the security that depends on God instead of people, and learning what it means to overcome evil with good. If I always try to step in right away with a fix for every problem my children face (as if that were even possible), how would they grow? Yes, I need to be mindful of their limits, but sometimes the way to expand those limits is to give them support and encouragement—and the chance to face a storm.

Isn’t that what God, our Heavenly Father, does for his children? Jesus said in John 15 that God is a gardener to us, actively pruning the branches he loves so that they will bear even more fruit. In other words, his priority for his people is to help us grow firm and strong, into the people he made us to be. As Isaiah said,

“They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendour.” – Isaiah 61:3

God knows how to grow saplings into oaks. In this world, for plants and for people, that process involves some adversity. Yes, he knows our limits—and he knows what it will take to expand them. He knows what he is growing. He is carefully tending his seedlings towards an end result that we cannot even imagine. Who could imagine a mature oak, just by looking at a sapling?

I don’t know what is coming in my life in the days ahead. I’m sure some of it will be hard. Some of it already is. But when I look at our seedlings, and remember my Gardener, I don’t mind so much if it rains.

The Gardener

When we moved in to our house, the garden was undeveloped. It was a small patch of grass, with a shed. And those things are still there, but they’ve been joined now by a row of roses at the back, with jasmine and passion flowers growing against the wall. Blueberry bushes bloom on one side, with strawberries and grapes beside them. On the other side is an apple tree, a plum tree, and a collection of pots growing a collection of colourful flowers that Jessica cuts and gives away or brings inside for us to enjoy. This year, we’re expanding our window boxes to hold even more flowers. As I write today there are rows of seedlings on the back stoop, reaching up and acclimatising, being prepared for planting—because none of this growth happens overnight. We’ve lived here seven years now, and the progress has been slow. It is measured in months and seasons and years, not hours and days. It was my wife, Jessica, who saw what our undeveloped little plot could become and patiently worked over the years to bring that vision to life. As I go outside to look at the buds forming and opening this spring, I see the fruit of her careful attention and I rise up and bless her for bringing such abundance and beauty to our home.

Then I turn back to the house, and as I enter it I see that the gardener has been busy here, as well. I don’t just mean the thriving house plants—we do have those, and they are beautiful. Those plants are only part of the life growing here, a part that I think of as a sign and a symbol of the little garden that is our family, our life here together. I see the fruit of the gardener’s labour everywhere. It is not a work measured in hours and days but in months and seasons and years and decades. Patiently, Jessica has planted and watered with the love of God in our marriage, in our children, and in so many other people who pass through these walls and through it all our home and our lives have grown and bloomed in ways I could have hardly believed when we started out with the undeveloped plot of our life together. I’m not saying it’s all been easy—not at all. There have been times we foolishly worked against each other and there were storms and droughts to deal with, dark nights and long winters, times we wondered if anything good could ever bloom again. But it did. And through it all the gardener kept going, kept tending and weeding and watering, even if it was with her tears, praying always for the growth that only God can give and recognising the privilege of planting his love in the people he put around her.

Our garden, our house, and our family are all small—but there is a growing abundance in all of them that would never have been possible without Jessica’s determined perseverance and steadfast refusal to give up no matter how hard it was. I see the steady growth of the years building up in the garden behind the house, and I see it in our family, too. The seedlings planted years ago are becoming sturdy, thriving plants, and the fruit of the gardener’s hard work is making our days together sweeter and sweeter with time.

Happy birthday, Jessica. I have grown so much because of you—and my whole life has bloomed in ways I never imagined possible because of your patient care and commitment. I love gardening with you.

Unthinkable (a poem)

If there was ever a doubt that God can take the evil of this world and turn it into good greater than we can imagine, that doubt was laid to rest when Jesus walked out of the tomb where he had been laid to rest. Humanity killed him for spite, and he died willingly—and rose again to save us. Now he promises that the troubles of his children who trust and follow him will also “work together for good” (Romans 8:28)—but of course that’s not how it feels in the moment when we face the unthinkable. 

Unthinkable

Sometimes God allows
The unthinkable
Unbelievable
Thing
To happen

Sometimes God does
Not explain

Sometimes God throws
Us back
In shock
On the silent foundation
Of his name

And we shake
In the darkness
And writhe
In the pain
And despair
Of seeing
Good again

And there
While we wait
In the cold
And the silence
And there
While we ache
In the echoing distance
And there
In the quiet
A stone is shaped
And placed on another
With infinite skill
And the work
Carries on
In the shadows
Until
The light of the morning
Breaks through
And it falls
On a palace
Of precious
And shimmering walls
Made of treasures
Brought up
From the depths
And refined
In a glory
That really
Must be described as

Unthinkable

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

– 2 Corinthians 4:17

Realism And Resurrection

Perhaps it’s a product of growing up, but I do feel that the passing years have tarnished the old optimism I remember from the world of my childhood. There were always deep problems in the world—even I knew this growing up—but there was also a general sense of progress in the air, at least as I remember it. There was a hopeful feeling back then that our problems were not insurmountable, and better days were ahead. Science was supposed to solve some of our challenges, politics would solve others, and culture and civilisation would inevitably advance, even if the process was slow and bumpy. Those were the days when the unified, peaceful vision of a harmonious humanity depicted in shows like Star Trek felt like it could be a real possibility someday—minus the teleporters, of course.

Now we’re not so sure. The world feels different. Maybe our new technologies haven’t been all that we hoped they would be. Maybe our political leaders have burned us too many times and left us disillusioned with the system. Wars have continued relentlessly, as have human trafficking and slavery and corruption. Selfishness, injustice, and cruelty still plague our cultures and institutions, and they can pop up unexpectedly in our own hearts, too. Things are still moving quickly, but it’s become clear that movement isn’t necessarily progress. The old optimism of my memory has given way to a tired realism that doesn’t expect as much, hope as much, or feel as disappointed when everything goes sideways—isn’t the whole world constantly spinning sideways anyway?

The world is still going around the same circles. The same old problems persist in the same old ways, and in creative new ways, too. If you limit your gaze to this worn out planet, then realism makes a lot more sense than optimism. But in spite of it all, I’m still optimistic. Better yet, I’m hopeful about the future, and entirely confident in my hope. I don’t say this because I’m a realism-denier. I see and feel and recognise and mourn all the same kinds of realities as everyone else, and there are times I feel like the weight of reality could nearly crush me. Yet I remain hopeful. Why? Because there’s more to reality than this world alone.

Our world was invaded by the King of heaven 2,000 years ago, and when Jesus came he broke the power of our sin and the curse it brought—the curse that made everything spiral down into disorder and death—and now he planted his resurrection power here in my heart and like the flowers coming up this spring his life is rising in me as well and I know that the winter is passing. Beyond the awful realism of death is the greater realism of resurrection life for those who put their trust in Christ. This changes everything. It turns reality on its head—from inevitable loss to secure hope.

The world is still a disaster. That is reality. It’s no use pretending otherwise. But for the children of God, there is far more to reality. Even now, God is raising dead, sinful hearts like mine, breathing life into hopeless situations, bringing good out of evil, and building his eternal kingdom on our dying, rebellious planet. Nothing and no one is too dead for him to raise—and I belong to him. That is reality. And that’s why I have hope, even when the other realities around me look dire. Because of Jesus, I can be a hope-filled realist. Because of Jesus, resurrection is my reality.

The Indispensable Inefficiency of Prayer

The to-do list is long—it’s always long—and the day only has so many hours. If we want to maximise our time on this planet, we have to prioritise. We can’t do everything, and it’s important to “make the most of every opportunity”, as the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:16. But what does this mean? How does it look?

For a Christian, one of the most effective uses of our time is an activity that looks to most people—and maybe quite often to ourselves—like one of the most inefficient. And yet, if we really believe what we say we believe, and if we really trust our Saviour to guide us, then it is indispensable:

Prayer.

Prayer looks inefficient. There’s no getting around that. Spending time bringing our praise and thanks and needs to God feels like a delay. After an hour of prayer, you still won’t be able to tick any items off your list, or progress your agenda for the day. Then again, is your agenda really as good as the plans and promises of your Creator? Will a whole day—or a year, or a decade, or even a whole lifetime of effort and strain with your own little arms and mind and powers—be able to accomplish even a tiny fraction of what the Maker of heaven and earth can do with just one simple command? No. He tells us he loves to answer the requests of his children. He invites us to come before his throne of grace and promises to act on behalf of those who trust him and wait for his salvation. When you think about it that way, there is nothing in the whole world as powerful as bringing our needs, our desires, and ourselves to the One who alone can change everything. If prayer looks inefficient to us, it’s only because we’ve forgotten how small we are, and how big God is.

If you skip time with God and dive straight into your list today, you might get more done in the time and strength that you have. The question is: more of what? Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing that really lasts, anyway. Nothing that ultimately matters. Of course you can do things—the world is always busy, doing things. So many things! And most of those things fade away, quickly or slowly, and most of those things end up being as limited as the people who did them, as finite and bound to time and decay as mortal humanity. But Jesus invites us to join his work—to receive his life, like a branch in a vine, and overflow with it, bearing the fruit that can only come from his power, remaking us from the inside out and remaking the world from the bottom to the top. If you’re a branch, staying close to the vine is never a waste of time. It’s the only way to bear fruit.

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater works; prayer is the greater work.” – Oswald Chambers

Perspicuity (a poem)

They tell me
Perspicuity
Means “clarity”
But if that’s so
What’s the
Proposed utility
Of saying it this way?

Perhaps the pride of
Sounding smart
By using Latin
Works of art
To prove to
Educated classes
You’re above the
Unwashed masses
Who insist on using
Simple language
(Such as “clear”)
Where gilded words
Perspicuous
Could raise themselves
Conspicuous
Above the tired landscape
Of all clear
Communication