When Old is New

“Doroga vroseeyoo. This means ‘Road to Russia.’” My tutor pointed to the textbook cover. “To know Russia, you must know Russian language.” 

And I also must know it to communicate in Moldova.

The first Russian person I ever met was my middle school piano teacher. A prolific musician, she fascinated me as much with her musical virtuosity as with her cultural background, and for the first time, I wanted to learn to speak Russian. I remember looking at the Cyrillic alphabet one day in hopes of learning to write to my teacher and turning away in dismay, daunted by symbols I had never seen. Now, ten years later, I try again, with mounting confidence.

Only sometimes I think I have too much confidence. That is, in attempting to speak Russian after having studied it for only six months.

I’ve learned quite a bit in those six months. I learned that I keep using the term of endearment for a man when I am trying to say the word another. I also keep mixing up the words next and last, which confuses my hearers considerably when I’m referencing days of the week. Once, I meant to tell my Russian teacher that I drink tea at cafés, but I ended up telling her that I’m an alcoholic. Another time, I meant to ask people to pray, but I ended up saying, “Let’s wash ourselves!” And another time, I meant to tell a friend that I understood what she told me about herself, but I ended up saying, “I’m sorry you’re fat.” 

Don’t ask.  

It’s incredible, the grace people show me up here.

From these snapshots of my journey on the “Road to Russia,” you can now see why I grow considerably overjoyed in the moments when I can communicate meaningfully. My excitement at these new linguistic connections is justified. And since they are few and far between, yes, they are still “new” to me.

Living in Moldova, I feel that I have plunged into a world of newness. But almost as soon as the sense of newness settles over me, truth breaks in, reminding me that all this is new only to me.

In America, my sense of “old” as pertains to buildings, streets, and traditions is circa 1776. But over here, “old” goes back into the AD 1000s. Even the city of Chişinău, where I live, was founded in 1436—that’s 340 years before the United States. It’s staggering for me to think that America’s been around about three centuries less than Chişinău has. 

The language, too, is nothing new.

Russian is ancient. Though it has undergone many variations, a form of Russian was recorded as early as 880 AD, when Old East Slavic was established as the official language uniting the ethnic groups in what are now Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Slavic gave way to Church Slavonic, which led to mediaeval Russian and eventually to the literary and conversational Russian used today. All in all, I’m not discovering anything truly “new” when I study Russian. It’s only new to me. 

Yet all too soon, newness wears off.  Enter familiarity. 

I am slowly growing accustomed to the pace of life in Moldova. Things that used to baffle me I can now pass by with a muted smile, or sometimes with no additional attention at all. And the Russian language, with its curlique-d alphabet, all too soon told me that its letters formed words which formed sentences which obeyed rules of grammar which are as foreign to me as their country of origin.    

The difficulty didn’t wane with the newness. Instead of remaining new and challenging, it morphed into being old and challenging.

And so I slipped into the delusion of thinking that to solve the depressing feeling of waning newness, I need something else that is new. 

When I first realized that studying Russian retained (nay, increased) a high level of difficulty, I had unvocalized urges to find some quick method of language-learning or begin afresh with a different language. Yes, I’ve studied second-language acquisition and the interaction of language and culture, both leading me to understand the process I’m undergoing, but sometimes the thing itself feels different in context than it sounds in academia.

Initially my thoughts were at odds as I struggled with the duality of systematically pressing on while still wanting a quick fix. When I wax languid, the last thing I want to hear is some version of “keep hanging in there!” All the quotes, rhymes, and ancient proverbs about trying harder that I can recall I can recite until I’m blue in the face, but when I’m trudging through difficulty, I crave something that will re-spark my passion—or at least lessen the load. And  when I reach that point, my tendency is to assume that I need something new.

Proof of this is what transpired during my recent Russian lesson. 

In February, I worked on a reading exercise in my Russian textbook which included a children’s story. I checked the cover of the book again. No, this book was definitely compiled for university students, not for younger kids. Why are we having ‘story time’? (Later I realized that a children’s story was chosen as a means of introducing learners to aspects of Russian culture while keeping the grammar simple.) 

After reading through the story, my tutor spoke again.

“You know zis story?” “Nyet.” “In our culture, very important part of life is story. We tell children story, and all children know. Zis is Russian story. You studied French, da?” “Da.” “Then you know story of frogs? Children’s story?” “Nyet.” “You not know? It is very famous, very interesting story. It is old, from Aesop, I sink. My parents tell me when I was little. I tell you.”  

Inwardly I chuckled: I’m twenty-three and my teacher wants to tell me a children’s story? 

She began speaking in Russian. My smirk fell and I began listening intently because I was afraid she was going to check for comprehension when she finished. I’ll include my own re-telling here (embellished with more words than I know in Russian):

One day, two frogs hopped through a farmyard. They vaulted all around the farm, joyously chasing one another. As they sailed through the air on a particularly big leap, they noticed a large milk pail ahead of them. Unable to slow down or speed up, they landed with a splash in the milk. The pail was deep, and the frogs could not jump high enough to get out. They kicked and kicked, but to no avail. When they stopped kicking, they sunk into the milk, unable to breathe. One frog said to the other, “I can’t kick anymore. And it’s no use. The pail’s too tall and the milk’s too deep. We’ll never get out.” “Don’t give up! Keep trying!” Exhorted the other frog, but his words were spent in vain: in his exhaustion, the first frog gave up, stopped kicking, and surrendered to death by suffocation. The other frog, seeing his friend’s death, shouted to himself, “I will not give up! I will not stop trying!” With labored breathing and tired legs, the frog continued moving. His kicking slowed to a snail’s pace, but he didn’t stop; he reasoned that some motion was better than no motion, in this case. Soon paddling became harder; he wasn’t sure if his legs were giving up or if the milk were becoming firmer. Soon, he knew that both were true: his legs were tiring, but the milk was definitely hardening. He was no longer swirling water as much as he was pressing his feet into a viscous substance. Then, the thing itself: he had churned the milk into butter! He marveled at the work of his feet and walked to the top of the butter heap. He turned round to take one last look at his friend, lamenting his preventable end. Then, he leapt with liberation out of the pail and into the world of the farmyard.     

And that was it. I sat there, staring at my tutor, wet-eyed and grinning. It wasn’t just the feat of translation my brain accomplished that filled me with ecstasy. 

It was the message of the story itself. What may have been a children’s bedtime story had spoken profoundly and directly to my situation.

I sit here, weeks later, pondering why that story had such a penetrating impact on me that day. Reflecting on those moments fills me with wonder but also with a sense of the ironic because everything about the situation was “old.” Old lesson format, old story, old moral. The language was a “new” package, granted, but underneath was the same message I have heard since childhood. As I sought “newness” as a solution, what really revived me was a returning to the old.

My tutor didn’t ask me comprehension questions that day. She knew by my reactions I had understood. She probably didn’t realize the profundity it carried for me, though, because I could tell by the look on her face that she was surprised at how well her re-telling was received.

And that’s okay.

-  -  -  -  -  

The day I heard the “Frog and the Milk Pail” story, I realized that I often mistakenly equate hearing a message with taking it to heart. And those are two entirely different things.

Sometimes we can hear a message for so long that our senses become deadened to the truth it carries. Maybe when we first heard it we had no frame of reference for its implications, so we misinterpreted it, or with the best of intentions we set it aside for a later time when we thought it would be more applicable. And then when areas of our lives need reviving, we search for a new message because the potency of the old has long faded. 

Sometimes what we need isn’t something new: it’s something old. The Israelites, our Scriptural model for God’s dealings with His people today, learned many a time about the potency of “old” words and concepts. The prophet Jeremiah sharply illustrates this lesson for God’s chosen people in the 35^th chapter of his book. The events in this chapter took place during the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, only a few years before Judah was invaded by the Babylonians. Throughout Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry, the people and leaders of Israel persisted in idolatry as God repeatedly warned them through his prophets that a time of judgment was coming. Jeremiah prophesied for around 40 years to his countrymen, filling up the longest book in the Bible with many of the same messages: the need for repentance, the threat of coming judgment, and the promise of restoration. In chapter 35, God contrasts the Rechabites’ obedience with Judah’s reticence to obey the messages they’d already been given.

The Rechabites, though not Israelites, were a nomadic people group on friendly terms with God’s chosen people, and many Rechabites lived with or at least near them. The Rechabites traced their lineage through Rechab, a Kenite (who came from Moses’ father-in-law). Rechab was the father of Jonadab, a pious man who aided King Jehu in destroying Baal worship in Israel. Zealous for the God of Israel, he laid out several injunctions for his people group, one of which was abstinence from wine.

God told Jeremiah to bring the Rechabites into the house of the Lord and give them wine to drink. The Rechabite men came, saw the wine pitchers, and refused Jeremiah’s offer, citing Jonadab’s words as their reason:

                “We will not drink wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, ‘You shall not drink wine, you or your sons, forever’” (Jeremiah 35:6).

In verses seven through eleven, the Rechabites go on to explain other rules they observe because they “obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, [their] Father” and “ha[d] done according to all [he] commanded them” (vv. 8a, 11b). 

Roughly 250 years before Jeremiah prophesied, the pious Jonadab had set forth these guidelines. Jonadab was no longer living when Jeremiah brought the Rechabite men into the house of the Lord. His words? Pretty old.  

The Rechabites were obeying the words of a leader they had never met, but the Israelites were repeatedly rebelling against the words of the Lord their God who daily intersected their reality?

And that was God’s point. 

The age of the words doesn’t matter. The concepts they embody are still relevant and applicable.

Whether a truth-statement was spoken two millenniums ago or is uttered first today, truth is truth and remains as such. God’s words are not tainted with time. His meaning is not altered simply because we live in cultures that are worlds apart from those in which the writers of Scripture were inspired.

Though the message the Lord spoke to me through a children’s story and the message the Lord spoke to the people of Judah through Jeremiah are unalike, the uniting factor is their “oldness.” Their words encase truth that does not fade with time.

So instead of asking, What else are You saying, God? Why don’t we ask, What have You been saying already that we’ve missed?

Sometimes we need the old-new. Sometimes our hearts have to be chiseled-on by disappointment and difficulty until enough hardness has been chipped away, allowing for a renewed receptivity to the message we needed to hear all along. 

And when our hearts are moved and softened by the words of the Lord, even when they are words we’ve heard countless times before, new life springs up. Sometimes it takes dying to pride. Sometimes it takes a willingness to admit that the understanding we previously derived from a biblical passage was at best patchy, and that it deserves another and more thorough run-through. 

May we not search for newness any more ardently than we scour the Scriptures for His “old” words. May we ask the Lord to search our hearts and illumine them to understand “old” truths in new ways.  

This is, if you will, a different type of new. 

And when old is new, we discover that those things we desired from something “new” are actually the effects of taking “old” truths to heart.

When old is new, we realize that the truth God spoke from of old, He still speaks within our realm of time and space and distance.

When old is new, the Holy Spirit has not only illumined our understanding but empowered us with the reviving direction and motivation we so desperately need. 

As for now, you’ll find me back to the books—specifically, the Bible. And that Russian textbook.

Relishing old newness,

Renée

Wet-On-Wet

Today I’m imagining the time I spend each day analyzed on a pie chart. Maybe that’s because I have over-analytical tendencies. Or because I’m hungry and thinking of pie.

If how I spend my time in Moldova was pie-charted, more than half of it would be belong to one partition: school. Each weekday I spend time with the Raatz daughters, three wells of endless creativity, as they pummel through elementary, middle-, and high school.

Now if only that pie-chart were real pie.

With the girls, I am challenged and stretched. I go from evaluating the geographical features of South America to considering the repercussions of Old Testament battles to chugging formulas for the nth term in mathematical sequences.

Because I spend so much time in the classroom, much of my growing comes from my experiences there. And while I’m quantitatively giving, I am qualitatively receiving.

Let me share with you the most painful lesson I have learned yet: an art lesson.

It is also the most beautiful lesson I have learned in the classroom.

Lauren, the youngest, is currently in an art class, and earlier this month, she was watercolor painting. On the first day of school of this semester, she pulled out two fresh boxes of watercolor paints. We humoredly marveled at all the synonyms paint companies can come up with for primary colors. As we looked at names, I turned one of the boxes over to read about two watercolor techniques: wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet.

For the wet-on-dry, I read that people “use this style of painting when sharp edges are desired.” I thought back to all my past art classes, recalling that I chose to do most if not all my watercolor paintings in the wet-on-dry method. I like it best that way. Growing up, I always wanted my art to look as close as possible to reality. With wet-on-dry, the shapes appear clearer, and the product looks less like Impressionistic art. The colors don’t bleed or run farther along the page than I intend. Well, except when I use too much water. And then I unintentionally turn my sharp-edged masterpiece into a wet-on-wet. 

And a wet-on-wet, I read, is when “colors will spread easily and will appear fuzzy.”As soon as I read that description, I recalled my “failed” paintings, the ones that were too wet for my taste, the ones that did not look as lifelike as my mind’s eye imagined, the ones in which the paper was rippled and almost torn through because of the weight of the water and the thinning of the paper due to my relentless brushing, my attempts to darken the color in places where the paper was too wet to retain the shapes I painted. 

Watercolor paints run on wet paper, but when the paper dries, the color remains. The bright veins and splotches that have spread all over the page don’t recollect; remain as dehydrated, silent testaments to what the power of water can do. The color applied to the paper will have the widest spread—the most influence, you could say—when the paper is wet. 

And I heard God whisper, “That’s what I’m doing in you right now. I’m painting on your life in this way.” 

Because lately I’ve felt like wet paper.

To understand, journey back with me into the schoolroom so that we can have a science lesson. About paper.

Paper is made of wood pulp. The two main compounds in the cell walls of trees, lignin and cellulose, are separated through chemical or mechanical processes, and the cellulose is preserved in long fibers. These fibers are layered in thin sheets to create paper. Cellulose fibers are hygroscopic, meaning they absorb moisture. When paper comes in contact with water, its fibers naturally absorb water and they are plasticized, or weakened, because the bonds between fibers relax.

I feel that my fibers have been weakened recently.

I experienced a marvelous visit to the U.S. after my first four months in Moldova. Goodbyes were hard, but the Eastern European welcomes were sweet this month, as is the knowledge that my steps are ordered of the Lord (Psalm 37:23). Cultivating relationships, forging new ones, and seeking direction for both types are ever-pressing matters. Living boldly for the Lord during my last five months in Moldova is crucial. Seeking the will of the Lord for my short summer visit to the States and then for my year in Russia is imperative. I feel the pain of missing, the excitement of the present, and the anticipation of the unknown all at the same time. These factors pour over me like water as I seek to balance these concerns in order focus fully on my present.

And this water hasn’t trickled; it has dumped. And sometimes the weight of the water feels like it’s not only weakening those fibers but breaking them.

Back to the science lesson: what determines the behavior and strength of paper is how it was manufactured, not the source of the fibers. 

And the same is true spiritually: ultimately, our strength is determined by our Source--our God. He did not construct us faultily. The fibers of our beings are sourced in Him. Our Source is not weak when we are weak. The one who created our fibers also, at one time, was composed of them.

The author of Hebrews explains that Jesus identifies with us: “Since the children share in blood and flesh, he too shared in them, in just the same way” (2:14)[.] New Testament scholar and theologian N.T. Wright, in his book Hebrews for Everyone, comments on how crucial this is for our understanding of Jesus’ identification with us: “The point of [this] passage is that Jesus…could and did come to where [we] were[.] He identified with [us][.] […]He is no distant older brother, unable to cross the gulf to rescue his siblings. He shared in flesh and blood, and even death itself (v. 14). There is nothing we face, today or tomorrow or the next day, in which Jesus cannot sympathize, help and rescue us, and through which he cannot forge a way to God’s new world.”¹  

He was once paper, too.

He wore our paper skin, held people with our paper hands. His paper heart throbbed with excitement. It dropped with despair. He experienced the limitations of the finite when he had one of our paper minds. He knows how we are made.

Psalm 103:14 says that “He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.”

Dust. Fraglity. Paper. Fragility. Humanity. Fragility.

Recalling our Lord’s intimate identification with our humanity bolsters my trust in His sovereignty. It steadies me when I realize that He is sovereign over the water that soaks my paper. He controls its flow. 

Regarding the Lord’s understanding of us, Isaiah presents a beautiful word picture of God's character shining forth through in fragility: “A bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice” (42:3).

Exegetists Karl Keil and Franz Delitzsch, in their Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, note that the Hebrew words for bruised reed and dimly burning wick aren’t referencing Jews versus Gentiles so much as they are making a general reference to people “whose inner and outer life is only hanging by a slender thread. In the statement that in such a case as this He does not completely break or extinguish, there is more implied than is really expressed. Not only will He not destroy the life that is dying out, but He will actually save it; His course is not to destroy, but to save.”²

Our paper's not going to break through.

The Apostle Paul, after he had been given surpassingly great revelations, was given his ever-mystifying thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7). After pleading with the Lord to take it away, the Lord spoke to Paul in a way that communicates a timeless truth to us.

“[The Lord] said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When Paul was weak, the power and influence of God in his life was strong. And yet again the truths of Scripture break into the world of art: The colors have the farthest spread when the paper is at its weakest.

In watercolor painting, the purpose of the water is to extend the influence of the color. Sometimes we, in our pain-sensitive short-sightedness, become so concerned with the water that we miss its point: the color. The water is a medium for the color; it’s not an end in itself. The artist does not apply water to paper without having a goal for the finish and a plan for the process.  

Water weakens cellulose fibers, but it also makes the color spread farthest. Our times of weakness enable the work God is doing in our lives to have the most powerful effect and the most influence.

It’s more about Him than it is about us, anyway: we’re just the papers. He’s the Artist.

It’s not so much about the water as it is about what the painting looks like when it dries. And it will dry.

And the color, in a sense, leaves a fortifying layer. Although water has been applied and threatened to break down the paper, the substance of color remains through the drying and bonds to the paper. It serves to strengthen, to define, and to characterize in an undeniable way.

What are the colors He is applying to your life? A broader perspective? Freedom from fear? Deeply-rooted peace? Fresh direction?

He is not a breaker of bruised reeds. He is not an extinguisher of fading wicks. And he is not a shredder of wet paper.

Let the Reed-Strengthener, let the Flame-Fanner, let the Color-Maker have His way. For when you strengthen, when you burn brightly, when you dry, you will shine His work more gloriously.

Thank You, God, for bringing me to a schoolroom in Moldova to give me an art lesson.

Soaked and Colored,

Renée

Notes: ¹ Wright, N. T. Hebrews for Everyone. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: London, 2003.

²Keil, Karl and Franz Delitzsch. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody, 2006.

From Story to Song

As a child, I loved bedtime stories. After donning my pajamas, I thumbed through rows of colorful books lining my bookshelves and picked as many exciting tales as my parents would agree to read before bed—usually one, but two or three at most. My imagination was sparked as rhyming plotlines weaved their way through faraway adventures and framed lifelike illustrations. But today I realize another more-obvious reason why I loved my bedtime stories: aside from being filled with the stuff of dreams, they were written in English. And that’s the only language I understood for most of my life. I mean, if you tell an American kid a bedtime story in Russian, things just don’t fly.

It works in the reverse, too: when you tell a Russian girl a bedtime story in English, she doesn’t like it so well.

I speak from experience.

- - - - -

Three weeks ago this past December, I spent a night at Freedom Home, a place of restoration for those who have been rescued from human trafficking. I visit weekly to teach English and spend time with the women and children, and I had been looking forward to spending the night for quite some time.  

The evening, which followed the annual Christmas party of that afternoon, was marked with merriment and conversation. As usual, I understood bits and pieces of what was said and communicated slowly in broken Russian. I am overwhelmingly grateful for the grace and friendship extended by these women when even simple questions are a struggle for me. Thankfully, my presence nearly always induces laughter because my language mistakes, which are almost a given in my interactions, are quite humorous. 

Relatively early in the night, the children were put to bed so that the women could have a time of prayer and sharing. This time was even more special than usual, however, because a woman from Ukraine had come for the weekend to tell her story of restoration after human trafficking. This was going to be a late, powerful night for all except the children.

 I said goodnight to a beautiful two-year-old girl with whom I weekly play as I listened to her mom tell her a bedtime story; it was in Russian, of course, so I didn’t understand most of it, although I could tell that it rhymed. One of the staff workers came into the room shortly afterward and said that the Ukrainian woman was about to share her story. Both staff worker and mother looked at me. “Can you tell her a bedtime story? You only have to stay with her until she falls asleep.” “Sure!” I responded. They looked grateful, kissed the little girl goodnight, and went downstairs. 

I moved to the chair next to the little bed and started answering in Russian to cries of, “Momma! Where’s Momma?” I explained that she was downstairs, that she loves her, and that she would be back. 

That didn’t help. 

So, faithful to my assignment, I started making up a story in Russian. Since I can probably count the number of Russian words I know at this point, the story wasn’t that interesting. Or that long. But it quieted her for a few seconds. As soon as I began hesitating for words, though, she chimed back into her pleas for her mom to come back upstairs. I tried for a few more minutes, but gave up when she only grew louder. 

Then I switched to English. I placed more emphasis on a steady, upbeat voice than on picking an interesting story. And it worked—for a few minutes. But then the Russian cries rang out louder from the little body, and I was afraid that the other sleeping children in adjacent rooms would wake. As soon as I started thinking about the possibility of calling her mother back in, I stopped because this was a special time of healing for the women with a woman that had traveled to Moldova to spend one night for this very purpose. 

I turned back to the screaming child, who had now added crying to her nighttime repertoire. A good twenty or thirty minutes had passed since I had been alone with this girl, lights off to help her sleep, in the second-story of a Moldovan house on a lonely street. The sun had set hours ago and I turned toward the window to see the falling snow as the cries in the room grew louder. I tried to keep talking, in both Russian and English, but nothing was working, and she seemed more awake than ever. I didn’t know what to do. God, I don’t know what to do. I—

Sing. 

What? Sing to her, I heard God say. Um, God? No. I’m not singing, I retorted. 

Sing. It came again. Never.

Why was I so obstinate? Because this was the third time I was called upon to sing in the past few weeks. 

Confused? Allow me to digress briefly. This is necessary for understanding my frustration.  

I’m not the best singer. I can do it, but I don’t consider it one of my strengths. As far as strengths go, I’d much rather write something or perform a classical piano piece or teach grammar. You see, if I’m going to do something in public, I want to do it well. Those things I do well are my strengths, and I prefer to operate in them when people are watching.

In the past few weeks, however, I’ve been called on to operate in areas that are not my strengths—namely, singing. I’ve shown up for worship practice, been given new songs, and then been asked to lead them for the congregation only a few minutes later. With a head cold. I’ve been asked to sing with a duet roughly half an hour before they performed. In other areas outside the musical arena I have recently needed to do things with and for people that put me in pride-swallowing mode as I stepped out, knowing I had little to give. 

Being asked to operate in my not-strengths—and without ample preparation time—has been stretching for me. Common sense tells me that people will benefit more when I do something that I’ve practiced, something that I have confidence in doing. I was shocked the first couple times that God asked me to do something more or less “in public” that was a stretch for me. Several times after that, I was a bit confused. And this final time, I was worn out. 

Just for clarification, though: singing to a toddler? Not on my top-5-fears list. Or even on my top 500.

(But I don’t actually have a top-500 list, just so you know.)

I wasn’t afraid, and I knew I didn’t have a listening, critical audience. It’s just that this was like the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

Still, I knew was that something had to be done to stifle the shrieks of the beleaguered child, and all I could do was what God told me. Her cries begged immediate action. And so I sang.

“Jesus loves me, this I know / For the Bible tells me so—” I had to clear my throat and cough before getting to “Little ones to Him belong.” My throat’s sore, and I’m just getting over a cold. I can’t sing. I tried this Sunday. Remember, God? But I dared not interrupt the flow of sound too long lest my silence be interpreted as permission for “Momma!” cries to resume. 

Well, we duked it out with our words—mine in raspy song, hers in high-pitched wails, interspersed with whimpering sentences. I’ve never encountered a worse reaction to my singing.

By the time I reached the end of the song, significant gaps existed between her cries, so I moved onto the next song that came to my mind: “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” My voice was really starting to crack. Oh, God, just help me keep going so she falls asleep! I don’t care how it sounds anymore! I started in a key too low for my voice. I modulated up. I wheezed. She was still awake, but she was less noisy, less agitated. I sang it four or five times.

After that, she was out. Her mouth was silent, and her body turned from side to side every so often in the beginning stages of sleep. But as I sang, I realized something: the fact that I was nervous to sing in front of a little child who does not understand English showed me that my qualm is not with who is listening so much as it is with what I have to give. I grow uncomfortable when I’m not putting my best foot forward. My reluctance indicated that I had been willing to sacrifice meeting the needs of the moment for my own personal comfort. I was making ministry more about me than about God and others. And that’s a serious problem.

The child was asleep, and I was free to leave. But I was not moving. Conviction welling, I knew that I had to compose my own hymn of praise. 

I began to sing my own song.  I suddenly grew tired of using others’ words from worn-out choruses, during which I oftentimes focus more on the sound of my voice than the alignment of my heart with the words I utter. All at once I was fed up with trite melodies learned by rote and sung by rote while my brain went on autopilot. I had a song I needed to sing from within my heart, so I began to tell God what He meant to me. What came out of me wasn’t ground-breakingly original or poetic. A modest, hymnlike melody and chorus coalesced rather quickly in my mind, and I kept singing them, each time inserting fresh words with my croaking voice. I told God how thankful I am that He fights for His children. I told Him how grateful I am to know that I am never alone. I told Him that I will tell His story all over the world. All over—wherever that takes me and whatever that costs me. Because I am His.

As I sang from my heart, something inside of me broke. And at that point, it wasn’t about who was listening. I could have opened the windows, could have stood on the roof, could have shouted down the stairs. But it wasn’t about who heard; it was about Who heard. 

And in a darkened room on the top-floor of a Moldovan home on a snowy night, I found freedom.

As I write this, I hum in vain, trying to recover the lost melody. I probably will never hit upon it again, but the reality of that cold Moldovan night still rings out.

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I had a revelation that night. God wants to stretch us out of our comfort zones even when that includes doing something that is not our best work.

Sometimes we get the idea that God’s going to use us only in our strengths. I beg to differ. And so does the Apostle Paul. Second Corinthians 12:7 says that to “keep him from being conceited,” Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh” that ultimately resulted in weakness. We are not told what this thorn is, although many plausible suggestions abound. But the fact that the “thorn” is not further described makes me think that its type and size is not as important as its result; so many things can render us weak. Even singing in a nursery.

Paul asked the Lord three times to take it away. Huh. I also had three instances, singing-specific, in which I asked God to remove me from or change the situation. And, true to His timeless nature, the Lord’s response to Paul was His same response to me: “Each time He said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness,’” (v. 9). 

Upon hearing that, Paul turned glad. He realized that his weaknesses were disguised opportunities for the power of Christ to rest on, work through, dwell in, and reside within him (v. 9). 

So, this is my weakness-boast. And it’s not about my singing; it’s about Christ’s power being displayed through me. 

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul also connected weakness and power. He reflected on the first time he visited the church in Corinth and noted that he didn’t come with “superiority of speech or of wisdom” but “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” (1 Cor. 2:1,3). Robin Dowling and Stephen Dray, in the Baker Bible Guide to 1 Corinthians, note that upon his first visit to Corinth, Paul “decided to do without the…philosophical flourishes of Greek ‘wisdom’ [and instead] proclaim[ed] the most scandalous of all truths to the Greek thinker, the humiliating crucifixion of Christ.” In sum, Paul “felt vulnerable and even the message itself seems to have caused him anxiety, making him feel inadequate to preach it” (Robin Dowling and Stephen Dray, 1 Corinthians: Free to Grow [Baker Books], 34-35).

 Paul says himself that his message was “plain” and “without persuasive words of wisdom” (v. 4), but somehow, Paul’s message was still effective. This effectiveness came from outside himself.  His message and preaching did not reflect on his own skill as much as it demonstrated the Spirit’s power (v. 4). Why this pairing of personal privation with spiritual power? “So that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (v. 5). 

May God shake our misplaced faith in us and rightly rest it on His power.

Are we okay with being used by God when it stretches us out of our comfort zones? Even if we know that we are being called upon to give something that’s not drawn from our reserve of well-polished abilities? 

He’s okay with it. 

We must trust God enough to allow Him to bend us in initially uncomfortable ways if He so chooses. This is not always His method, but such actions do not conflict with His character. He has more in mind than keeping us comfortable and happy. He desires to display His power through us, engendering joys vaster than any happinesses contained in a passing moment.

What a deep love—to look into the caverns of our soul and grapple with our insecurities, to lead us to an understanding of His activity which extends far beyond our self-stuck views, to call for vulnerability in order to foster in us a self-trumping desire to see Him glorified. God, “grant [us] a willing spirit, to sustain [us]” (Psalm 51:12b). 

As we enter this new year, may we ask ourselves whose story is at the forefront of our lives. And whose song. May God’s pen write bolder and God’s melody ring louder than ours.

Still singing,

Renée

Counted Up

The joke goes that there are two seasons in Montana: winter and road construction. Being from Montana, I laugh at this joke’s truth—especially because snow started falling months ago in Montana and also because the main road in my hometown was dug up twice this summer. 

With a little tweaking, I may be able to apply this joke to Moldova, too: change “road construction” to plain “construction,” and you’ll have it just about right.

From almost any vantage point in Chişinău, one can view multiple buildings under construction. I have never taken a car ride during which I did not see unfinished shells of houses or churches. From vineyard homes to apartment complexes to Orthodox basilicas, stone-and-mortar skeletons protrude from the cityscape like vertebrae on backbones.

On several occasions the Raatzes have pointed out uncompleted homes, churches, and businesses and have said, “This was under construction when we moved here ten years ago; who knows how long it’s been ‘in progress.’” Some of these buildings have been worked on little by little, but others have been left alone indefinitely, untouched and unimproved, with apparently no builders’ intentions to finish it. 

This is a house that is being built on the edge of the vineyards in the village of Durlești, where I live.

After hearing short background stories, I look at these buildings with sadness and think, These builders have not counted the cost. 

 This phrase-turned-cliché ("count the cost") has its roots in the book of Luke. 

In Luke 14:28, Jesus says, "But don't begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it?” Rhetorical question. In many translations of Luke’s gospel, this verse is in the middle of a paragraph which extends from verses 25-33. In the NLT and the NIV, biblical scholars have added the heading “The Cost of Being a Disciple” to this paragraph, and nearly all translations commonly used in the U.S. today which title this section include the words cost and disciple.   

In this passage, Jesus is testing the discipleship of the “large crowds that were going along with Him” (Luke 14:25). Disciples are not mere believers. They’re not just good-intentioned people. They are people with follow-through. Jesus’ words here speak not only to the moment in which the decision to follow Him is made; His words here are more about the following that ensues once that decision has been made. And disciples aren’t reckless, headlong launchers; they are careful counters.

The Greek verb rendered in English as counts in Luke 14:28 is transliterated pséphizó and means to reckon, to compute, or to calculate (Strong’s Concordance). The act of counting as illustrated in verse 28 is not only a mathematical tallying. This counting is also qualitative in nature. This act of counting is a cognitive grasping of what Jesus requires of us as disciples. Jesus asks us to recognize the ramifications of discipleship; this isn’t just a day job. This is a life-job.

By talking about builders and their projects, Jesus is using a concrete example to explain his previous statement,  the truth recorded in verse 27: “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). He says this before carrying His own cross, but He had already counted the cost of being obedient to His God-given mission and was ready to follow through with it. 

During my time in Chişinău I have not yet met even one Moldovan builder, but I believe I am venturing validly when I say that it is possible that some of the builders here who have abandoned their projects simply did not count the cost before they started. Granted, there are far more completed buildings here than unfinished ones, but I have seen many more unfinished buildings here than in America. And this is due in part to the fact that in America, most buildings are built on demand. A church is bursting at the seams with new worshipers. A growing family keeps adding new members. A business is expanding its production line. And for reasons like these, construction ensues while the need is urgent. So in America, if a building takes a Moldovan length of time to be built, people question whether that building is necessary. If it were, it would have gone up right away. Or at least it would have gone up as quickly as it could have within the constraints imposed by size and money. No multi-year gaps. Unless the builders want to become a laughing stock. Laughter in such cases echoes those whom Jesus mentions in Luke 14:29: “[f]or if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him[.]”

However, in the past twelve weeks I have gained glimpses into the Moldovan mindset and Eastern European culture, and although I have only begun my journey of understanding the way of thinking on this side of the globe, I will offer a view of construction through cultural lenses. And this possibility presents a brighter view of the situation in Moldova. 

You see, I’ve asked people why so many building projects take so long. And the most frequent answer I receive is that people here build until they run out of money for supplies; then they leave their project to work for a while, even for years, to get enough money for materials, and they resume building. This initially didn’t make sense to me until I remembered that this is a third-world country and is the poorest country in Eastern Europe.

Due to lack of funding, this is the accepted—or perhaps only— cycle which people have to endure to complete their building project. They have counted the cost, and they are willing to take the time and work the years and halt and do whatever it takes for how long it takes to complete their project. 

So maybe the cost for them is alternating years of construction and years of working to garner enough money to purchase more construction materials. And maybe the cost also includes being misunderstood by foreigners from countries whose economies cause construction to be viewed in an entirely different way.  

When I first saw the unfinished buildings, I thought that people simply didn’t care enough to complete what they started. What I saw with outsider-eyes as neglect, perhaps those on the inside see as dedication. Some builders are dedicated enough to stay with a project even though it will take an exorbitant amount of time. 

To what is God calling you? It may be costly. It may cause you to be misunderstood. But is it worth it? 

Rend Collective Experiment, a group of worship artists from Northern Ireland, wrote a song about counting the cost of following Jesus. Instead of pasting all the verses here, I’ve selected the most pertinent: 

I’m saying "Yes" to You / And "No" to my desires / I’ll leave myself behind / And follow You

[…]

I’ll chase You through the pain / I’ll carry my cross / ‘Cause real love is / Not afraid to bleed

And the chorus:

I’ve counted up the cost / Oh, I’ve counted up the cost / Yes, I’ve counted up the cost / And You are worth it.

Once we “count up” the cost—to borrow UK phraseology—will we see the end from the beginning? In an ultimate sense, yes. The end-all goal of following Jesus in this life is living with Him in the next. But in a specific sense, no. Unless God gives us as individuals specific revelation, we cannot know in detail the ramifications of our choices to follow His call; that is not our burden to bear. The point is not to take everything into account once God has spoken and see if it is worth it; the point is, all things considered, to realize that God is worth it. Rend Collective got it right: I’ve counted up the cost / And You’re worth everything. 

How do we know that we have counted the cost correctly, or even that we have counted the cost at all? First, we can look for biblical patterns. God calls all people to relationship with Him. As daughters and sons of God, we have some universal, shared callings: we are called to follow Jesus. But in what ways we are called to do that—that is where the callings vary. Some are called to make very visible, inspirational sacrifices. Others are not. All callings are equally valid not because of their measurability but because of the One who calls. To use the metaphor of American-builders to Moldovan-builders: Same call (to build). Different means (of fulfilling the call). Equally valid methods (situationally speaking).

What is the cost you’re called to count? What if counting the cost looks different for you than it does for others—much different? Remember that your primary responsibility is to the One who calls, not to those who watch your calling play out. No matter what it looks like to others, be faithful to Christ’s call on your life, for “[He] is your life” (Colossians 3:4), and “[f]aithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). But this is jumping ahead. Just a little. Because none of this is possible without counting the cost—the cost of His call.

God, help us to finish what we start. Better yet, God, help us to count the cost before we start. And if we don’t count, then don’t let us start it. Because without counting the cost, we cannot finish.

Have you counted?

Having done my math,

Renée