I am not a natural host, as the domestic arts are usually not my strong suit. It takes work for me to meal plan and to clean our home beyond our usual surface cleaning. I usually work myself up into a bit of a tizzy before guests come, as my husband and children will attest. However, all the preparation and planning are always worth it once the guests arrive.

Hosting guests in your home has inherent duties and delights. The invitation of the other interrupts regular routines and rhythms which is simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating. Having new sets of eyes in our homes and cities, in addition to helping us see the dust and dings in our houses, gives us permission to see the ordinary in new light. We become tourists in our own cities, enjoying its unique beauty and noticing its particular brokenness anew.

The ordinary is infused with perspective and the overly-crowded table encourages fresh conversations. However, the hosts or hostesses must give focused attention to their guests, interrupt their normal routines, and limit their own activity to best serve their guests.

Perhaps because we host quite often, or perhaps because it was written so poetically, a short eight lines from Emily Dickinson offered fresh perspective for my soul this morning.

“The Soul that has a Guest,
Doth seldom go abroad,
Diviner Crowd at home
Obliterate the need,
And courtesy forbid
A host’s departure, when
Upon Himself be visiting
The Emperor of Men!”

Every believer is a constant host to the Lord of hosts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Such a reality should shock and stir us, keeping us preoccupied with desire to make our guest most comfortable and at home within us. It should rearrange our desires and reprioritize our time just as much as and even more than having a human guest within our physical walls. It should give us permission to live differently than those around us who are not hosting such a divine dignitary. Such constant divine presence should give us pause when we are tempted to sin as much and even more than having extra sets of eyes around us keeps us on our best behavior.

Zacchaeus was shocked enough to nearly fall out his tree when the Messiah invited himself into his home  (Luke 19:1-6). After all, as a tax collector, he was hated by his own people whom he willingly stole from in the light of day and with Rome’s blessing. People avoided him like the plague, crossing streets to avoid him. Yet, the treasured rabbi chose to stay in his home, allowing him who was a parasite the dignity of being a host.

We ought be far more shocked than Zacchaeus by the fact that the Holy Spirit has chosen to make his abode within our crowded, cantankerous hearts. The disciples understandably did not understand what Jesus was hinting at in his final discourses with them before the Cross.

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my  word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). 

It had not fully clicked yet that Jesus was God come to pitch his tent among humanity (skenoo, the Greek word used in John 1:14, literally means “to pitch one’s tent among”). If they struggled to understand this reality, how were they to understand that the Helper, the One whom Jesus would send after his return to the Father, would literally live within them?

None of it made sense until the Spirit descended upon them and took lodging within them at Pentecost. Even then, it probably made no sense. Why would the very Trinity choose to dwell inside humans? How could this be? What an honor and a privilege that must have been to them initially, as it was in the early days of conversion to all who believe.

Sometimes, nay, often, I forget that my soul has a guest — not just any guest, but the dignitary of all dignitaries, the Spirit of the King of Kings and the Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16).

I pray that I would begin to treat this God-guest with exceedingly more care and concern than I approach human company. I pray that I would linger long in His company and gladly prioritize my day around His priorities until the day that we are physically at home and face-to-face with Christ, the forever host.

I did not know what dry was until we moved to San Diego in the middle of a multiple-year draught.  We came by way of South Carolina where we leaned to take for granted hikes under shady canopies of towering trees and thick grass growing in yards.  With the exception of the Pacific, we were underwhelmed. Dry and drab. Brown and browner.

However, the dry environment has trained my soul for dry spiritual seasons.  It has taught me to appreciate nuanced, subtle beauty. It has taught me to enjoy momentary slivers of shade on a sun-soaked, waterless trail.  Whereas I used to need gushing gallons to impress me,  even the slightest sound of trickling water makes my heart leap now.

In desserts like the Namib where there are some years with literally no rainfall and a soaking year brings in a mere four inches of  annual rain, minor components of the water system became major. Plants and animals learn to use the low-lying fog and the dew as their largest water intake.

Likewise, those who have traveled long in their journey with Jesus know that in dry soul seasons, the same rings true.  When one cannot rely on downpours, one grows accustomed to drinking the dew, much like God’s people learned to rise early to gather their flakey sustenance. If they did not adapt to deep dependence upon God’s just-enough daily provision, they would starve.

The Dew Drinkers

Dwellers in draught-ridden lands
Grow accustomed to drinking dew,
Greeting dawn with gathering hands,
Mastering the art of trusting you.

Rising early,  they realize
The subtleties of sustenance.
Daily, desperate dependence:
The source of soul revival.  

Dew-drinkers dance for joy
At even  the slightest rain.
Yet they know His provision,
In seasons of loss and gain. 

In their circuits of the badlands
they know nuanced nourishing.
His presence is their portion;
His favor is their flourishing. 

Dwelling in the desert develops in us dependence upon the Lord so that if and when seasons of spiritual abundance arrive, we will enjoy them but not feel entitled to them.

Hear, O my people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me! There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it! Psalm 81:8-9. 

May we learn to be dew drinkers whose mouths are open wide for the Lord’s mysterious daily provision even in the driest lands.

It’s been a week, a week that feels like a year. A week since helicopters hovered all night over our little town. A week since protesting feet marched on the highway to say,  “Enough is enough.”

It’s June. The school work is petering out as the shelter-in-place orders are beginning to lift. While I feel like the heaviness in my soul and the souls of my community ought be lifting, it isn’t and it shouldn’t. Heaviness doesn’t follow the calendar year, and summer still has room for sadness.

I am thankful my soul can’t pluck up and stand up right now, because my friends who have more melanin than me can’t simply move on to the next vacation or backyard project. The grapevine is predicting some KKK demonstrations just a few towns over, and people I love are legitimately fearful for their lives.

This is the first year I am thankful for the strange San Diego reality called June gloom. Out here, our early summer is marked by a foggy haze, a result of the marine layer that gathers and stubbornly refuses to lift. Sometimes this wall of clouds won’t let the sun peak through until late in the afternoon.

As such, the weather outside is giving me permission to let the weather inside my soul be strange and stubborn.

Weather, Within & Without

The moody marine layer
Gives me the permission
To let heaviness hover in
Semi-permanent position. 

At time, even the radiant rays
Of the closest star can’t pierce
A culmination of clouds
Carrying a load so fierce. 

If June Gloom is expected,
Even in a temperate town,
Then lamenting can linger
Without holding hope down.

For as certain as the sun
Will eventually break the bleak,
God’s justice will reign in
Jesus, the king of the meek.

Sometimes, as believers, we tend to prematurely collapse tensions that are intended to instruct and encourage change. After all, we know the truth. We know who wins. We know the outcome of those three days in the borrowed grace. We know Jesus gets up, folds up the death linens clinging closely to his blood-stained skin, and walks out.

But that reality doesn’t make tombs smell less like death. And the reality that Jesus will return to usher in the perfect city doesn’t erase the tensions of our broken cities here. While we have the answer, we are asked to apply our living hope in a way that does not belittle or truncate the heaviness caused by the compound interest of a curse-ridden globe.

Our hope will rise, for our Christ shall return. But it is still right to weep and mourn and let lamenting and heaviness linger. It is right to feel the tension caused by our callousness. Our days experiencing the gloom rather than pretending like everything is sunshine and rainbows will only make the rising of the Son that much more anticipated and celebrated. One day, we will sing the following in His presence, as we stand in the fullness of peace He purchased to redeem us from the curse and its ripple effects.

“O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure…For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress; a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place…It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”  Isaiah 25:1, 4 & 9

To my friends who are people of color,

I hate that it takes cell phone footage for me to begin to see and weep. I wish I would have seen it through the fear in your eyes or felt it through the heaviness in your hearts before evidence was presented.

Thank you for your patience with me. It reflects the long-suffering and gracious nature of the God in whose image you were made (see Psalm 103:8-14).

The stamp of the image of God
Permeates from soul to skin.
Marks of being fearfully made-
features, frames, and further in. 

We ought kneel before this image-
To acknowledge, to affirm in awe-
Instead, we stand and watch
As His image is rubbed raw. 

The Maker of Melanin was
Horribly marred on the tree.
In His love, He suffered
To set all humanity free. 

If our mouths speak of his graces,
But we divert eyes from their faces,
We are complicit in hate that effaces
His image by dividing the races. 

Let us no longer be timid, 
But overturn tables in our hearts.
Let us look for blindness within us
For that is where redemption starts. 

You have seen the depths of hatred,
You drank the cup of wrath on the cross.
Now, may we apply your salvation,
As you refine and remove the dross.

“It is not enough to remember. We must hear it again. Prayer is the act in which we hear it again. It is not enough to carry memory verses around with us; we need daily encounters with the resonant voice of God. Prayer is that encounter…We pray, we listen. God speaks his word again and we are restored and renewed in our commitment.”

–Eugene Peterson, To Run With Horses

I know John 15. I have some of it memorized. I have studied it countless times. I could tell you all about the Greek word meno, which means to abide.

That being said, I need to hear it again and again, not from my own voice or even an excellent book, but from the gentle whisper of God himself. I need His Spirit to knead the same truth into my same heart that keeps forgetting. Poetry helps me to hear the same thing more deeply, forces my heart to lean into old truths in new ways.

This week the Lord brought my soul back to John 15, the vine and the branches, in a personal way that revived my quickly shriveling, straining heart. I am so thankful the vine is patient with His branches, gently telling His truth again to twigs.

My little, fretting branch,
What is bothering you?
As others look so green,
Worry taints you blue.

My nervous little twig,
To you the xylem flows.
From my roots it climbs,
Enriching as it goes.

 Tired from your straining,
You are bristled and bent;
Remember to rest again
In grace that won’t relent.

Beautiful bough, you are fed,
Life sap floods these veins.
I promise it will reach you.
My living hope remains.

There, there, little branch,
Your color has returned.
I in thou and thou in me,
As abiding is relearned.

Strangely enough, our kids were most excited to find toilet paper among their few Easter prizes at the end of our egg hunt this morning. If you would have told me last year or even two months ago that our kids would genuinely be excited to receive a 4-pack of soft Cottonelle toilet paper to replace the scratchy cheap kind we found the day the quarantine began, I would have laughed aloud.  Yet here we are!

The month of COVID-19’s reign created quite a strangely appropriate setting for us to better comprehend the meaning of Jesus’s Resurrection.

This Easter weekend, it did not take as much imagination for us to join the 11 disciples and the throngs of faithful women in their heaviness, powerlessness, confusion, and fear at the death of Christ.

As we read John’s account of the Resurrection this morning, the grave clothes stood out to me. The joy of Jesus unfurling the linens that had been wrapped about his mangled body by the hands of weeping loved ones captured my imagination. He knew they would never weep the same kind of hopeless tears again. While they would weep and grieve, as he had promised they would, they would do so under the light of the living hope that rose with him.

Because His body which was literally crushed on the cross for our sin took conquering steps out of the tomb, death cannot crush us, not even in a pandemic. We dry our tears in  the linens he left in the tomb!

Now we can say in our grief and confusion with the Apostle Paul, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

We are not destroyed by death because Jesus destroyed death in His rising, infusing grief with a surpassing glory.

This morning I discovered a short poem by George Herbert which I have somehow missed in my reading before. What a timely gift from God to me! A special little Easter surprise that lifted my soul, as I hope it does yours.

From The Dawning, by George Herbert

Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
    Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth; 
Unfold thy forehead gather’d into frowns;
    Thy Savior comes, and with him mirth:
                  Awake, awake;….

                 Arise, arise; 
And with his burial linen dry thine eyes:
     Christ left his graveclothes, that we might, when grief
     Draws tears, or blood, not want an handkerchief.

That we can now dry our tears with God’s loosed grave clothes is such good news. It is the news that every human heart hungers to hear always, but especially in a season when death is dealing heavy blows globally.

In the Resurrection of Christ we have been given gospel hope and the happiest handkerchief. He is risen, indeed! Dry your eyes with his linens this morning! Death has not won; life in God has the last word!