May 4--What Happens When You Make Much Ado About Everything--Except What Matters

When life is escalating and you're spiraling, where do you go to get your bearings?  Today's passages say we go back to what matters most: Judges 19-20, John 3:22-36, Psalm 102, Proverbs 14:21-22.

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Eve reads her Bible journal aloud on this episode.

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Transcript

Judges 19-20

John 3:22-36

Psalm 102, Prayer, Proverbs 14:21-22

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May 4. What happens when you make much ado about everything except what matters? I won't be reading the scripture references. For those, please check the written post. I'm leaving tomorrow for a beach trip with six college friends. I've pushed pause more times than I want to count this morning, interrupting my usual routine with this, that, and the other, so that I'm ready when it's go time. I was praying when I remembered that I hadn't watered my plants yet, and I've got a lot of them. I tried to resume praying afterwards when I thought of feeding the sourdough starter, and then the laundry needed folding, a mess on my desk wanted straightening, the dishwasher needed emptying. You know how it goes. I determined to knuckle down and pray harder after that, but texts began coming in about who was flying in and needed picking up when, and who would make a cheesecake, and who would make our grocery shopping list for Harris Teeter. I volunteered to bake bread, and then there were the sourdough crackers I offered, so I had to bump up my starter to accommodate bread and crackers. I split it into four parts and then had to feed all of them. I gave up on my prayer list altogether after what came next. The cats needed feeding, but first I had to disentangle little Jumper from my dry cleaning plastic, which was just before I tossed him outside and saw him eyeing mamma bird who happened to fly out of her porch nest at that very moment. He'd attacked a nest in that same spot last spring, and I can't bear to watch any more bird babies languishing. He's named Little Jumper for a reason. So back inside he came to exit from a different door this time. I filled three bowls of kibbles and determined to at least do my reading. By now my head was swimming with other details that were clamoring and competing. I started to make a list, but the items kept multiplying like my starter, which was by fours, so I laid it all down and lamented Lord, have mercy. When your life rises up and swamps your best intentions, it's easy to drown in the wake of it. How much better my morning would have been if I'd just opened my Bible and ignored everything around me. Because what I found in today's passages speaks to what happens when you make much ado about everything except what matters, which was just what I needed. The Old Testament chapters are Judges nineteen to twenty. To me, these are two of the three most shocking chapters in all the Bible. An unnamed man in his unnamed concubine quarrel, and she leaves him to return to her father. After four months the man decides to get her back, and when he shows up, her father is overjoyed, and likely because he doesn't want to keep supporting this daughter who will never find another husband since she's no longer a virgin. He wines and dines his pseudo son in law for days, hoping he'll follow through with his plan to take his daughter away. Clearly neither of them love the woman, they treat her as something to go after and collect like your missing collie, or worse, like an inconvenience. She's mentioned after the donkeys as the last thing he takes when he leaves. It's late. They arrive at Gibea of Benjamin and an old man takes them in for the night. He doesn't care about the woman or about women in general either, because when sex crazed hoodlums come calling for the man, the old man offers them another choice instead, his own virgin daughter or the man's concubine. But the man takes matters into his own hands, and rather than defend his concubine, he pushes her outside for their pleasure all night. She's dead by morning, with a hand on the threshold of the door. It's a poignant picture, her lifeless hand grasping at what she will never have in that home from the old man, and worse, never have from her own husband either, which is safety and protection, love and respect. The husband's heartlessness couldn't be made any clearer. When he opens the door and sees her lying there, rather than falling down in sorrow and sympathy, he says to her get up. When he sees that she's dead, he loads her like a sack of grain onto his donkey and heads home. And when he gets there, he butchers her body into twelve pieces and sends those pieces to the tribes of Israel, asking everyone who learns of it what they will do about this outrage. After all, it took place in the tribe of Benjamin among their own people and cannot be tolerated. That he could cut her up at all, but especially on the day she dies, and maybe even as soon as possible when he gets home is inhuman. The source of their quarreling had to be in large part because of his hard heartedness. When the twelve tribes of Israel gather to decide what to do about this injustice, the husband talks like he's above reproach, though we know he's the coward who shoved her outside. He's the one who heartlessly said get up the morning after. He's the one who cut up her body in twelve pieces. Even if his motive was to let his fellow countrymen experience the outrage of this evil against her, cutting up her body is equally outrageous in my book. Since Benjamin wouldn't hand over the murderers for payback, the rest of the tribes agreed to gang up against them and kill everyone in it, including the animals, though six hundred Benjamite men escape. It's a merciless plan, and it's ruthlessly executed. As a result, a new problem arises. There's a very real possibility that the tribe of Benjamin faces extinction since they've lost over twenty seven thousand men, not to mention their women and children, and all because in a moment of rash bravado, the Israelites vowed two things not to give Benjamin their own daughters to Mary, and to wipe them all out. The beginning of chapter nineteen says that in those days Israel had no king. The same thing is written earlier in this book of Judges. It's repeated again in the last chapter, the last verse, but an interesting commentary is added, quote, in those days Israel had no king, everyone did as he saw fit, end quote. I'm wondering who in their right mind would see any of this as fit. It's interesting to note that no one asked God what to do about it. While he's still with them, is King of Kings among them, no one consulted him. He's not mentioned in chapter nineteen at all. Once their plans are made in chapter twenty, they only think to include him by asking which tribe should start the fighting against Benjamin and if they should keep fighting once they seemed to be losing. But no one asked God what to do before this whole revenge business got started, and because they decided to resolve it without his input, the survivors of the tribe of Benjamin are left without women to bear their children, and no other wives will be given from the rest of Israel. These were God's very own covenantally loved people. These were those whose grandparents had been Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, and Rahab. In just two generations they've forgotten not only what God said about how to live, they've forgotten God Himself. I'm astonished that a decline of this magnitude happens so quickly. They live in a world where they do quote whatever they feel like doing, end quote, and from where I'm sitting, it looks an awful lot like Crazy Town. But this is what happens when people make much ado about everything except what matters most. And what matters most? God's already told them what's most important in the first commandment, to worship God only, to put him first, to love him best. In the case of the concubine it would mean to check in with him first and to do what he tells them. Certainly Israel didn't start their wandering away from God by shoving their wives out the door for the delight of criminals or carving up their victims, but they ignored God and his word long enough that eventually the choices of this husband became acceptable. No one reprimanded him for what he did. I'm uncomfortably reminded of my mourning. When I let myself get distracted from prayer and Bible reading, I stop putting God first and find myself doing everything else, and when I do, I move in a continuous loop of cuckoo until I finally lay down my doing and ask for his help. What matters most is doing what God says, putting him first by worshiping him only, and when you don't, asking him for help to repent and start over. The New Testament passage is John three, twenty two to thirty six. John the Baptist disciples get wind that Jesus is baptizing more people than John is. They're jealous for him and come to ask him what's going on since John endorsed Jesus, but John gets it about who Jesus is, that he's the long awaited Messiah in a league of his own, far above him in every way. John isn't jealous, he's glad to be the one who got people ready for Jesus, and he's genuinely happy to make way for him. He tells his disciples that it's time for Jesus to take center stage while he slips off in the wings. How can John be glad to watch Jesus take over his ministry? Because he knows that God himself has turned everything he has over to Jesus. If even God Almighty has done it and done it gladly, how can John do any less? And how can he be jealous of God's plan to bring everything good to humankind through Jesus? When you make much ado about everything, like John's disciples did, you miss the Savior standing right in front of you. John told them it's not time to mourn, it's time to celebrate, because Jesus has come to bring God's goodness to everyone, themselves included. The Father turned everything over to him so he could give it away, a lavish distribution of gifts. That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever. What matters most is making Jesus your big deal because God has exalted him to his right hand, and Jesus offers both hands to you from Psalm 102. Which is worse. The psalmist is sick and burning up with fever. He's also being taunted and cursed by his enemies, but here's his resounding anthem that pulls him through it. He remembers who God's been for his people. He remembers who God still is. He's the compassionate one who helps and hears prayers, who's glorious and worthy of worship. These truths ground the suffering psalmist when his life is rocking, so he writes this psalm for the next generation. God lives in a high and holy place, but he also listens to quote the groans of the doomed and opens the doors of their death cells, end quote. The psalmist writes up the story because it's everyone's story, so that it can be sung in the streets, and everywhere people gather, they'll worship. When life is wonky and you're tempted to make much ado about everything that's wrong around you, hang on to your sovereign God who rules and overrules and hasn't forgotten you. Make much ado about him so you can sing too. In Jesus' name, so be it. From Proverbs 14, 21 to 22. Don't ignore someone in need. Helping him will bless both of you. Here's a statement of the obvious wicked planners lose while good hearted planners win trust and love. Passages in Judges, John, Psalms, and Proverbs are selected for today in the yearly Bible. This is Eve de Bartleaban, Roebuck.