| Volatile |
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For me, the new season started two weeks before the November elections.
When seasons change in the natural realm, we don't all experience it or notice it at the same moment. But give or take a few weeks, everyone in a large geographical region simultaneously exits, say, summer and enters fall. In the spiritual realm, lots of indicators tell me I'm not the only one experiencing a seasonal shift.
Some seasons pad in like kittens, entering so quietly, so gently, you don't notice the change until it's well underway. This season entered like a souped-up muscle car careening into town. Highly volatile, it evokes volatility.
Unsettling word, volatile. Thesaurus.com lists a mishmash of synonyms: airy, capricious, changeable, effervescent, elusive, erratic, expansive, explosive, fickle, fleeting, flighty, gay, giddy, impermanent, inconsistent, inconstant, light, lively, momentary, playful, short-lived, sprightly, subtle, temperamental, uncertain, unpredictable, unstable, unsteady, up-and-down, vaporous, variable.
A volatile substance vaporizes rapidly. A volatile person displays erratic behavior. A volatile world threatens to erupt into violence. Volatile market conditions fluctuate sharply and regularly.
In a volatile environment, you can have high hopes - that suddenly go boom. You can feel playful and giddy one day, rash and moody the next. You can enjoy an effervescent moment, only to watch the bubble burst. Your heart can move permanently to your throat.
After all, you used to live on a merry-go-round - predictable and calm, boring but familiar, routine and seemingly endless. Without warning, you now barrel who-knows-where on a runaway roller coaster. Economies and relationships flail wildly. Things that seemed immovable sway violently. Whole nations heave. Some days, you may feel like heaving, too.
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| Ludicrous? |
A few days into my new season, God told me how to approach it. He brought to mind a phrase describing the Proverbs 31 woman, though he clearly intends the approach for men, as well as women: "She smiles at the future" (v. 25 NASU).
Here's where logic fails me. Logic tells me smiling is good, so far as it goes. It's winsome, healthy and great for PR. Yet the Proverbs writer attested, not that this woman smiles at people, but that she smiles at the future.
Further, the verb rendered "smiles" in one translation literally means "to laugh." The New International Version says, "she can laugh at the days to come." New Living Translation declares, "She laughs with no fear of the future."
Laughter is fun. Fun is frivolous. Frivolous, by definition, lacks seriousness or sense, weight or worth. Thus, though laughter does refresh, we rank it as a luxury, not a necessity and definitely not a strategy for victory in a volatile season.
Imagine yourself standing mid-street with a souped-up muscle car careening toward you. Imagine yourself hurtling forward on a runaway mine car, like the characters in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Imagine someone calling out to you: "Just smile! Better yet, laugh."
Ridiculous? Irresponsible? Smacking of denial? Inviting disaster? Surely, volatile times call for decisive, not frivolous, measures.
Surely, this season calls for fervent prayer and intercession, reading and obeying God's Word, forsaking evil and embracing genuine righteousness, worship, fasting and doing good deeds. Surely, this season calls for --
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| Valuable |
"She smiles at the future."
The Proverbs 31 woman doesn't live in la-la land. She doesn't sit around from morning till night smiling. Nor does she frantically rush about, as if the future of the world (or her family or her church or her own life) depended on her efforts. Moment by moment, she does what God puts before her to do. As she takes the decisive measures he has assigned her, she smiles.
Don't assume this woman acts so calmly because she lives in a calm season. Rather, assume the opposite. Anyone can smile when a rosy future looks quite assured.
But "worth far more than rubies" (Prov. 31:10) is a woman who, when facing an uncertain future, a volatile future, doesn't succumb to confusion, despair or fear.
She smiles - and not just a Mona Lisa, maybe it is, maybe it's not, smile. Thinking about the days to come, she laughs. |
| Future? |
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"Ah, she's looking forward to eternity," we say, "the 'sweet bye and bye' 'when we all get to heaven.'"
No. And yes.
After Mary and Martha's brother Lazarus died, grieving Martha learned that Jesus was coming. She hurried out to meet him.
"'Lord,' Martha said to Jesus, 'if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.'
"Jesus said to her, 'Your brother will rise again.'
"Martha answered, 'I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day'" (John 11:21-24).
Will Lazarus rise in the resurrection at the last day? Yes! Ah, but did Jesus also intend and accomplish a more immediate resurrection? Yes!
In terms of bright futures, we Christians tend to make two mistakes: (1) We look only at the world to come. (2) We look only at this world.
I grew up in the camp that intones, "This world is just going to get worse and worse." Thus armed with fatalism, rather than faith, we accept every downward spiral as inevitable, believing the only future we can smile about is the heavenly one. Another camp teaches, "We can expect all God's rewards, blessings and fulfilled promises in this life. Oh, and heaven will be nice, too."
Jesus taught Martha that smiling at the future means staying between those two ditches.
Our Lord wants us to expect him to show up in our day, in his perfect timing, as he did in Bethany, as he's done throughout history, to transform whole communities and nations, to restore and redeem individuals and families, to fulfill promises and work miracles. Our Lord also wants us to expect an eternal future so glorious we cannot fathom it, when we experience the consummation of everything we've tasted, when our Father brings "all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Eph. 1:10). |
| Fear! |
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In volatile times, what can keep us smiling at the future in such a way that our laughter actually ushers in the good we anticipate?
As the Proverbs 31 woman demonstrates and as Isaiah and David teach: We fight fear with fear. The woman who "can laugh at the days to come" does so because she "fears the LORD" (Prov. 31: 25,30).
Isaiah said, "The LORD spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people. He said: 'Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread, and he will be a sanctuary . . .'" (Isa. 8:11-14).
David wrote, "The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them. . . . Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing" (Psalm 34:7,9).
I do not understand and cannot explain the fear of the LORD. However, it's not living in terror of God as you would of an abusive or authoritarian father - for people living in that kind of fear don't smile at the future. It's not the same as trusting God or loving God, yet is closely linked with both.
The fear of the LORD keeps us from buddying up to God, as if the two of us were peers. It keeps us from treating him like a servant - expecting him to come only when called, acting as if he exists solely to make our lives more comfortable.
The fear of the LORD at once distances us from God and draws us into him. It constantly, clearly, reminds us that he is entirely "other than" and infinitely "far above": He is eternally self-existent. He is Creator of a universe so vast and so infinitesimally complex that we cannot begin to comprehend it. He is the Righteous Judge, "the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:15-16).
All the satanic hordes inciting a world full of rebellious people cannot diminish the LORD one iota, nor thwart even one of his plans. According to Psalm 2:1-4, when entire nations plot together to vilify the Lord - referring to his rule as "chains" and "fetters" - and conspire to overthrow him, "the One enthroned in heaven laughs."
As we treat this LORD with the healthy awe and high honor that only he himself can teach us, something incredible happens. He encamps around us. He himself becomes "a sanctuary [a sacred and indestructible asylum to those who reverently fear and trust in Him]" (Isa. 8:14 AMP). |
| Undaunted |
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In John 16:33, Jesus told his disciples, "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (NKJV).
In essence, he said, "Even in volatile seasons, smile at the future. Laugh at the days to come."
Only when we see his words in context do we begin to grasp their significance. The night before his crucifixion, Jesus ate with the 12 in the upper room. Then, he walked with all but Judas to the Garden of Gethsemane. Along the way, Jesus told the 11 many things, preparing them for the new season careening in.
Immediately before he prayed the priestly prayer of John 17, then entered the garden where he would be betrayed and arrested, Jesus uttered these final words:
"I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.]" (John 16:33 AMP).
John 13:1-5 describes the scene just a few hours earlier:
"Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. . . . The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist."
Jesus lived in two worlds simultaneously. He walked and taught, healed people and washed feet, wept in agony and died on a cross in this world. At the same time, he saw and operated in another world, a Kingdom that already exists and, though unseen, rules over all.
Taking up the towel in the upper room, Jesus saw his Father handing him "complete charge of everything" (John 13:2 MSG). He saw the cross, the resurrection, the Spirit's coming - and the sweeping changes all that would bring in the earth and in eternity. Stooping to wash dirty feet, Jesus saw his Father standing in heaven's doorway, welcoming him triumphantly home.
Jesus knew what his followers would see as the next 24 hours unfolded. He deeply desired that they also see the greater reality unfolding. One last time before his death, he taught what he had been seeking to show them all along - what it looks like to live in two worlds.
"I am going to the Father." "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:28,18-20).
In the book When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson writes these words about another occasion when Jesus taught a similar lesson: "It was as though He said, 'If you don't change the way you perceive things, you'll live your whole life thinking that what you see in the natural is the superior reality. Without changing the way you think you'll never see the world that is right in front of you. It's My world, and it fulfills every dream you've ever had. And I brought it with me.'" |
| Sanctuary |
And so we enter a new and volatile season. Isaiah told us how to do it, "The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread, and he will be a sanctuary" (Isa. 8:13-14).
Isaiah wrote, "The LORD spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people" (v. 11). Incredibly, our LORD warns us, not about joining those who openly rebel against him, but about joining those who identify themselves as his, yet fear people and things in this world more than they fear him. "These people" name his name, but do not see his unseen world ruling, coming, in the here and now.
If we follow that way, we too become volatile. Misunderstanding people and circumstances, we fluctuate between giddy hope and despair, gaiety and dread. In our frenzy, we stumble and fall over the Sanctuary. Astoundingly, Christ himself becomes to us "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense . . . a trap and a snare" (Isa. 8:14 NKJV).
Ah, but if we let him, our Lord will teach us the fear of the LORD - for that fear dispels fear. That fear puts both worlds into perspective. That fear steadies and calms. It ushers in wisdom, deliverance, provision, laughter.
Day by day, we'll face the very real stuff that this new and volatile season brings. Our experiences - and emotions - will run the gamut. Often, we won't know what to think.
And yet, we'll abide in the Sanctuary, utterly enveloped by the One who fiercely protects both his people and his purposes. From this holy place where God himself encamps around us, we'll learn to see what's happening in the physical realm in light of what's happening in the Kingdom. We'll learn to do what God has created us to do, calmly, confidently, happily.
Drawn by our laughter, people hurtling who-knows-where on a runaway roller coaster, will cry, "The future - how can you smile just thinking about it?"
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from New International Version. Also quoted: New American Standard Updated (NASU), New King James Version (NKJV), New Living Testament (NLT), The Amplified Bible (AMP), and THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © (MSG) 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. volatile. Thesaurus.com. Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition. Philip Lief Group 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/volatile (accessed: November 24, 2008). Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth (Shippensburg, PA: Treasure House), © 2003, p. 38. | |
Deborah P. Brunt
