Where Things Stand
how it might be like to look out over the promised land and think back on your whole life
I am writing from the edge of a Sunday afternoon, as it curves slowly past nap time and turns the corner toward dinner making. We had a full morning of worship and then lunch together over noodles, and now I sit with coffee that will probably keep me up later than I want to be, thinking over the past few weeks and the state of things as they are.
We traveled the past two weekends. Once for a soccer tournament, the last sporting event of the year and the last for our family as a part of this international school (sob). Then this weekend we went back to the city we lived in the longest here in China, the one where our kids did the bulk of their growing years and where Josh became a high school principal and then a head principal, the one that had the apartment we most loved and the friends we knew best.
I didn’t do much thinking ahead of time about either of these short trips. They came up as opportunities and we said, yes, of course, let’s go. But not surprisingly, these trips were sweeter than I expected, and made me reflect on so much that we have had here that is good. And as bittersweet feelings go, I was struck by the good that will remain here, the good work that is happening, the seeds that are still small and growing, the people whose lives we’ve known and who have affirmed what I often whisper fervently when I come upon that line in Psalm 90, “Let your work be shown to your servants…” They affirm that God is at work in the world. Here, and there, and where we are going, and where we are leaving.
One old friend, who taught our daughter ten years ago, was telling me the story of how she came to faith. The questions she had, the wrestling she went through, the relentless love of a friend. We talked about the paths our lives had taken these past ten years, and the leaving and returning that had taken place. And how here we are again, at another parting.
She asked, as almost everyone does, how we’re doing with the leaving. I told her, and I have told several people since, that Psalm 90 is and has been and will be a clarion call for me in this swirl of bittersweetness. I’m not like Moses, but I like to think that he would understand what any of us experience as we move from one known place to another, uncertainty looming, knowing only that we sense in some hard to explain way that we are being led elsewhere.
The Psalm begins: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”
Moses wrote those words, and he earned them. A man whose dwelling place was uprooted and undefined except by the One who called him. The rest of the Psalm is a tribute to the actual reality of following hard after God, and it too instructs me as it leaves no room for a soft, cushy life of following Jesus. It doesn’t give a picture of promised prosperity, but accepts that the perspective we have on our lives— how short they are, and how difficult— is limited.
And yet. And yet. He ends the song, the prayer, the tribute to the God who had called him and carried him through all his days, with a request. It is a beautiful ending. The word that comes to mind for the final stanza is yearning. He yearns for the presence of God. He yearns to see God’s work in the world. In his own way he prays, Your kingdom come. And finally, he practically begs for a blessing.
These three things I think are reflected in any of us who pray like Moses, wherever we are in the world, whatever decade or century we find ourselves in:
Lord, you are our true home.
Lord, show us how you are at work in the world.
Lord, make the work of our hands meaningful.
I think I’ve felt this way in every place I have lived. I think I will feel this way again, as we make our way to Massachusetts six weeks from now.
When I feel this way, I want to remember my friends who let us into their lives for these few years. Sometimes we work in the dark, pray in the dark, believe in the dark, and sometimes we get to see a shaft of light. I think of Moses standing on that hilltop, looking out over the promised land. Bittersweet for him, it must have been. I get it, Moses, at least a little bit. The longing, the grateful tears, the looking back and seeing all the provision, the wondering how it’s going to go from here.
That’s the long version. As usual, I am trekking through these final days feeling everything and thinking too hard about almost everything.
The short version is: We traveled the past two weeks. We saw friends. We’re getting ready to go. Lord, help us.