Were Not Our Hearts Burning Within Us?

God’s mysterious work of consolation and concealment.

Stream in the Woods. Oil on Canvas. 2023

One thing I love about the Bible is its tendency to simultaneously shed light and to obscure, to comfort and confound. We find this unique dynamic at play on the very day that Jesus rises from the dead, when the Gospel of Luke points our attention toward the road to Emmaus. Catching two of Jesus’ unnamed disciples in the middle of a conversation, Luke describes them as being in a state of bewilderment, as they have started to hear rumors of Jesus’ resurrection. As they walk along the road, the two process the heavy events of the last three days and the strange possibilities these new reports contain. Though they were not part of the original Twelve, they seemed to have been close enough to the inner circle to catch wind of the impossible news that Jesus was alive.

Then, things get interesting: “While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them” (Luke 24:15, ESV throughout). The resurrected Jesus interrupts their discussion—but they don’t recognize him. Luke attributes their blindness to a divine intention; Jesus doesn’t reveal himself. He simply walks with them on their long journey, incognito, discussing what’s on their minds.

It would have been a long conversation over the span of the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. On average, people walk at a pace of three miles per hour, which means Jesus traveled with them for about two and a half hours. He ends up guiding the dialogue into a long, thorough Bible lesson. He makes a case from Scripture for why they were not mistaken about who they hoped Jesus would be. At some point on the journey, a light began to crack in the hearts of this somber pair.

Suddenly, Jesus’ revelation occurs in the blink of an eye—summed up in only two short verses. When they finally arrive in Emmaus, Jesus pretends like he’s going on farther, but they insist he stays, and he does. The three of them sit down at a table, and Jesus takes bread and blesses it. He breaks the bread and gives it to them. Then they see. And then he vanishes.

Jesus vanishes at the exact moment the two disciples recognize him—it is a sweet, fleeting consolation. They’re so overcome with joy that they decide to make the seven mile walk back to Jerusalem then and there, in the dark of night and in the light of faith.

What are we to make of this story? Note the two sad disciples. When they leave Jerusalem, they are disoriented and disappointed, carrying the heavy burden of abandonment. While a larger gathered group waits to see whether Jesus’ resurrection is a reality, Jesus first reveals himself to those who feel alone, discouraged, and hopeless.

And yet, in certain ways, God is still in the business of concealing himself. “Truly you are a God who hides himself,” says the prophet Isaiah (45:15). Perhaps some grace only works in secret. Perhaps some realities and wounds cause us to become so brittle that anything more than the patient, hidden care of God would crumble us like a dried-out leaf, returning us to the dust that we are. Whatever the reasons, we can trust that our Savior is close. The Great Physician is tending to us with gentle attentiveness and precision, and with the slow patience that allows our deepest healing.

Here, I believe we are given a vision of our own story. In this passage, we are given a God’s-eye view of the situation—we know what’s really happening, even as the disciples don’t. Though we don’t have the privilege of this perspective in our day-to-day lives, we do know something now that they didn’t know then. The two disciples thought they were on the road to Emmaus, but they were actually on the road to a table: A table where the living Jesus fed their hungry hearts, healed their deepest wounds, and lit them ablaze in the confounding comfort of the Resurrection. That table is waiting for us too.

Jon Guerra is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, TX. He writes devotional music, composes for films, and has released two albums.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Jon Guerra

Christianity Today Gave One Woman Space to See Where God Wanted Her

“CT meets needs in the culture by being a lighthouse, this beacon people can look to for guidance and thought-provoking dialogue and discussion without being prescriptive.”

Caitlin Edwards

Bri Andrini

Elisabeth Armstrong grew up in a family of spiritual giants. Her parents and grandparents were living examples of God’s love and grace—people who had devoted their lives to beautiful and authentic faith. She also was homeschooled and attended a Christian private school, which helped solidify her foundation.

But growing up in the late ’90s and early ’00s with “purity culture” in full swing was confusing. While she was deeply passionate about God and the church, Elisabeth never felt the prescriptions she was hearing—how women should show up in the church, with their families, or in the workplace—resonate.

“I never fit into that box, and I felt so ‘othered’ by the messaging I was hearing in the church,” Elisabeth lamented. “That was tough because I knew I was the way God created me to be, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to fit in.”

Elisabeth is grateful for the way theology was poured into her life, but even with this firm foundation, she still felt lost in church culture.

“I didn’t have the maturity yet to separate how church culture was different from my faith journey or what’s biblical,” Elisabeth recalled. “They may overlap, but they aren’t the same thing.”

In 2015, Elisabeth started working as a journalist. It was an exciting time: Being on the morning shift, there were many fun and joyful stories to tell. However, Elisabeth was more often covering elections or politics—which she saw dividing communities and the country: “I observed the perception of local journalists go from being trusted members of the community to being painted as its enemies. We were often harassed by people from both sides of the aisle who believed we were biased or pushing an agenda.”

She also found herself present for the worst moments of society: mass shootings, crime, abuse, and poverty. As she worked to make sense of what she was seeing, she experienced churches not addressing the issues. “Both churches and church members were often talking about these issues in a really dehumanizing way,” she said. “And I was out interviewing folks who truly needed hope and healing. I needed it myself.”

Elisabeth moved around a lot—three new cities in as many years—which made it hard to be integrated into a church community. She began to feel disconnected. “I felt as though I really didn’t have any faith at that point,” Elisabeth stated. “Despite having this beautiful foundation, I was overwhelmed by my disappointment at how the church showed up in those moments…It was hard for me. I started living in unhealthy ways and stopped investing in my relationships. I wasn’t treating myself or others very well.”

Around this time, Elisabeth returned to Denver and joined Wellspring Church. Wellspring nurtured her as she rediscovered her faith and explored what it meant to live with integrity as a Christian, and it helped her to find a place within the community.

When she stumbled onto CT’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, Elisabeth found more restoration: nuanced conversations around topics she had been exploring since her youth. She realized that beyond her church, there were cultural beacons advising Christians to ask questions and have difficult conversations about important topics.

“I feel like that podcast and having Christianity Today—which is a sort of lighthouse of Christian culture saying, We really need to scrutinize and consider what went on here and what went wrong, particularly when it came to things like gender and marriage, which are so foundational to both the church and God’s plans for how he created us—it was so massive for me.”

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill gave Elisabeth a path for scrutinizing her history with the church, a cathartic process for her. She realized she wanted that healing process for her friends and even for people she didn’t know who might have had similar experiences. She started donating to Christianity Today so other people her age could have resources to guide them through their questions of faith.

“CT has had a massive influence on my faith in terms of expanding the belief that we aren’t always perfect as a church, we aren’t always going to get it right. There is nuance involved, but God calls us to assess rot in the church, to celebrate beauty, to be wise and discerning,” Elisabeth said. “It made me feel like I could rejoin the capital-C church, not just the church where I went every Sunday.”

Elisabeth also was moving in a different career direction. While working as a journalist in Little Rock, Arkansas, she volunteered in the medical ICU at a university hospital. Elisabeth remembers how most people recovering in the ICU were alone because their loved ones couldn’t get off work or didn’t have the gas money to travel to the hospital.

She gained new eyes for the healthcare disparity across the country, noticing how her community grappled with different social determinants of health like air quality, food deserts, race, gender, language, and economic status. These issues and experiences drove her to study bioethics. She went back to school, earning multiple graduate degrees in medical ethics, drug development, and health policy.

“For me, within my faith journey, I think about how Jesus; wherever he went, would pray for people and then heal them,” Elisabeth said. “He would go to gatherings and teach, and people would be healed. It was a very tangible representation of what Jesus does in our hearts and what he does for us spiritually. It made me want to work in the space.”

After studying bioethics, Elisabeth began working for CommonSpirit Health, then for Meta Reality Labs on its brain-computer interface team, and at Eventide Asset Management as a bioethicist on its biotech team. But one of the best parts for Elisabeth was teaching at Colorado Christian University—which quickly became one of the greatest privileges of her life.

She teaches the capstone course for the premed track, meaning she works with seniors in their last semester. Most students have already had clinical or research experience and have seen firsthand what she discusses with them in the class. They understand how important it is for them to be able to address these issues—to develop a moral framework and a moral voice to advocate within their practices, as well as on a systems level.

Within the field of bioethics, “no one exactly has all the right answers,” Elisabeth said. “It’s very interdisciplinary, and people come to the table with different perspectives. My students have great thoughts, but it’s a journey of wisdom and discernment. So, as I am teaching, I also feel myself being taught by my students.”

For Elisabeth, recent Christianity Today articles often sit at the crux of bioethical issues as seen in the November 2023 cover story on immigration or the December 2023 cover story on embryos and embryo adoption. Elisabeth shared both stories with her students.

“These are really challenging issues,” Elisabeth said. “Having CT to bring into the classroom at a Christian college to give perspectives to parse through these challenging issues, in addition to academic literature, in addition to the Bible, in addition to our philosophical frameworks—it feels important.”

Elisabeth notes that on these types of issues, there can be firm lines drawn and picking sides as opposed to discussing the issues together. She hopes that everyone can instead deeply consider these issues, which she believes are at the heart of what it means to be human. And that’s what Elisabeth loves about CT: She believes that the articles in CT are an invitation to begin these conversations from a place of shared humanity.

“I’ve found CT can be a channel for framing bioethical topics,” Elisabeth said. “If I try to share a bioethics book, people aren’t always interested. But I can share CT articles with people of faith. They are more digestible, and it can start discussions.”

So many different aspects of CT’s coverage have played a pivotal role in Elisabeth’s life—from The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and Next Gen media (such as content on TikTok) that helped her feel understood and a part of the church to articles on faith and work that have been instructive in how she thinks about vocation. Also, resources around Christian education, like the Christian College Guide and the Higher Education topic section, help her understand the direction in which Christian education is moving.

“I know how CT has met needs in my life,” Elisabeth praised. “It’s played a massive role in who I am and how my faith has turned out, so I feel an enormous amount of gratitude to the folks in administration and the writers at CT. It’s so crazy to me that all these people who I have never met played this role in my life. I am sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people like me, who have been similarly blessed by CT.”

Church Life

Florence Li Tim-Oi: The First Woman Priest in the Anglican Communion

Huang Yuan Ren

The Western church regards her highly, but some Chinese Christians struggle with her affinity for socialist ideology and betrayal of coworkers in Mao’s era.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

There have been many devoted female missionaries and Bible teachers in the history of the Chinese church. But the ordaining of woman pastors is still opposed or viewed with reservation in many Chinese churches, both within China and overseas. Surprisingly, however, the first female priest ordained in the global Anglican Communion was Chinese—Florence Li Tim-Oi (1907–1992).

Li Tim-Oi was born in May 1907 in Shek Pai Wan, Hong Kong, during an era of social upheaval and gender bias. She was one of five siblings. Her father, who served as principal of an English government school for over 30 years, had once been invited by Sun Yat-sen to join the revolution to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Li’s father valued social reform and hoped one of his sons would become a pastor, but none showed interest. Li, however, developed a passion for the Christian faith and a desire to spread the gospel.

Li’s mother attended a girls’ school founded by Catholic nuns. Influenced by her parents, Li developed a strong sense of self-reliance and leadership from an early age. In 1931, she enrolled in Belilios Public School. During an Anglican church ordination ceremony for Hong Kong and Macau, the archdeacon asked if any of the girls were willing to commit to serving the Chinese church. Li immediately responded, “I am here, send me—but do I meet your requirements?”

After graduating from high school in January 1934, Li became the head of Li Shing School in Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong. That same year, she visited Union Theological College in Guangzhou, where the dean, John Kunkle, encouraged her to pursue theological training. After discussions with the pastor of St. Paul’s Church (her mentor), she left her teaching job to study theology in Guangzhou.

The Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937, and Guangzhou fell to Japanese occupation in 1938. In that year, Li graduated from seminary and began interning at All Saints’ Church in Kowloon, Hong Kong, serving as an assistant preacher for two years.

In 1940, Li was reassigned to Morrison Chapel of the Anglican Church in Macau, tasked with caring for refugees who had fled to Macau because of the Sino-Japanese War. After the outbreak of the Pacific War the following year and the subsequent fall of Hong Kong, an even greater number of refugees sought refuge in Macau. During this period, the region had a troubled social atmosphere characterized by rampant gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution, and drug use. At that time, the Anglican Church in Macau did not have a resident priest.

On May 22, 1941, bishop Ronald Owen Hall of the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau ordained Li as a deaconess. On Easter 1942, she began presiding over the Eucharist in Macau, spreading the gospel among the suffering population.

During the war, many men joined the military and foreign missionaries who were imprisoned in concentration camps. To ensure uninterrupted ministry, the Anglican Church in China decided to break with tradition and ordain a woman priest.

On January 25, 1944, Hall ordained Li as a priest in the Anglican Church of Zhaoqing, located in Guangdong, making her the world’s first female Anglican priest. Hall later developed close relationships with high-rank leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Zhou Enlai. He praised Communism, earning him the nickname of the “Pink Bishop” (the color red symbolizes the Chinese Communist Party).

In 1946, the Archbishop of Canterbury challenged Hall’s decision to ordain Li, offering two options: either Hall would resign or Li would renounce her priesthood. Faced with this choice, Li sought God’s guidance and chose to give up her priestly title, desiring to fulfill God’s will. In her book, Raindrops of My Life: The Memoir of Florence Tim Oi Li, she expressed her willingness to serve the church humbly and without regret, embodying her life philosophy of submission and service without contention.

The next year, Li became the principal at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Hepu of Guangxi Province, and the following year, she traveled to the United States to visit and learn from Christian schools in the country. Upon returning to China in 1949, she established a maternity home, a kindergarten, and a primary school in Hepu. Two years later, she began pursuing advanced studies in theology at Yenching University. From 1953 to 1954, she taught at Union Theological College in Guangzhou, serving as the dormitory supervisor for female students and assisting with the ministry at Savior’s Church.

During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, Li led theological students and clergy to Jianggao, engaging in various agricultural and animal husbandry activities.

In 1961, she underwent forced ideological education required by the Chinese Communist Party at the Sanyuanli Socialist College and embraced socialism.

This experience seems to have left some “red” traces in Li’s later thoughts and life. In August 1964, Li wrote a letter to the local government exposing Hall’s “imperialistic tendencies” and criticizing him as an “accomplice of imperialism and colonialism.” Ironically, among her accusations against him was the “exceptional ordination of a female priest.” She claimed to write as a counter-imperialist and a patriotic clergy member in line with the spirit of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Quite likely, this was a reluctant act of self-protection.

Despite the appearance of loyalty to the CCP, Li was not able to escape persecution. Shortly after the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Li was assigned to work at the Forward Chemical Factory of the Guangzhou Christian Three-Self Association, handling tasks such as packaging medical syringes and waxing cupboard boxes. On August 25, 1966, Red Guards raided her home, injuring her and seizing valuable possessions. Her home was raided several more times after this incident.

After retiring from the chemical factory in July 1974 with a severe eye disease, Li had other health issues but persevered in physical exercise and recovered. In 1979, as China reformed and opened up, she began teaching English and re-entered church ministry.

In November 1982, Li moved to Toronto, Canada, and served at All Saints Church under reverend Philip Feng’s pastoral care. In 1984 her status as a priest was fully recognized by the Canadian Anglican Church.

1987 was a significant year for Li. On May 9, Geoffrey B. Stephenson of St. John’s Anglican Church in Toronto led a thanksgiving gathering to celebrate her 80th birthday and established an associate church in her name. Additionally, The General Theological Seminary in New York awarded her an honorary doctor of divinity degree, which she accepted with her sister, Li Chi-ching, alongside her.

The following year, Li attended the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion in England as an invited guest.

Li passed away in Toronto on February 26, 1992, at age 85. Anglican communities in the West regard her highly, and some regions have established commemorative days and special gatherings to honor her memory. The Li Tim-Oi Foundation, founded in 1994, aims to support missionary and pastoral work in the Global South.

Huang Yuan Ren is a Christian media editor currently residing in Shaanxi, China.

Translated into English by Ariel Bi

- More from Huang Yuan Ren

What is Christianity Today?

Learn more about CT as a global nonprofit media ministry and our vision for the future.

For most of its existence, Christianity Today has been known as a magazine. While that’s still true, in the past several years, CT has broadened its vision and expanded its reach. From a growing global team to innovative podcasts to creative partnerships like Ekstasis, CT is so much more than a magazine.

Theology

A Meal We Won’t Soon Forget

Walter Kim

The hope and anxiety inherent in Jesus’ last passover feast

Come to the Table. Oil on Linen. 56 x 83

Kari Dunham

Can you remember what you ate yesterday? Maybe you had a bagel for breakfast or a burrito for lunch; whatever it was, the food most likely served as a transition to the next activity in your day. While most meals are uneventful obligations to fill our stomachs, some slow us down and feed our souls. The memory of a meal on November 20, 1993, still feeds my soul. It was a chilly, drizzly evening—typical for that time of year in Vancouver. At the end of a carefully choreographed day to optimize the conditions for my success, I asked Toni to marry me. After she said yes, we celebrated with a delectable salmon dish. The meal gave us the opportunity to remember why and how we fell in love. It was a moment of resolve, a time for making promises.

In the intimacy of an evening with beloved friends, Jesus hosted a meal with everlasting significance. Mark’s account of the Lord’s Supper sets the scene “on the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb” (Mark 14:12). The Passover meal commemorated God’s great deliverance of Israel from its slavery in Egypt. As God’s people practiced remembrance, it eventually became anticipation, whetting their appetite for deliverance from Roman oppression. The act of sacrificing the Passover lamb was freshly performed each year at the temple, and soon its meaning would be freshly presented in the Lord’s Supper.

The story, however, moves from anticipation to anxiety. Jesus interrupted the dinner conversation by saying, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me” (v. 18). Whatever pleasantries shared at the table would have screeched to a halt. This stark proclamation subverted the peace that a meal together symbolized. Shared meals provided a time and place where covenants could be ratified, where friendships deepened, and where even enemies could lay their weapons aside. While all betrayal is bad, a betrayal in the context of such hospitality would have been appalling.

As the disciples digested his words, “Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them” (vv. 22–24).

Typically, the blessing and breaking of bread would have simply ushered in the next course of dinner—the equivalent of saying grace and passing the pita. However, Christ’s words in the context of this Passover meal, full of redemptive anticipation and personal anxiety, ritualized something essential about God, both for the disciples at the table and for all who have followed since. The fruit of salvation came from an ugly tree, the old rugged cross upon which Christ’s battered body would hang. And so, we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).

Yes, Jesus commanded the wind and waves to be still. He raised Lazarus from the grave. At his return every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Phil 2:10–11). Such visions of divine power inspire awe and adoration. But Jesus offers himself as a Savior broken and battered, memorialized in the hospitality of the table, and prone to betrayal even in the midst of blessing. We can come to him honest with and unafraid of our own brokenness. By his wounds we are healed, and through his blood we are made whole. In the Lord’s Supper, whenever we take the bread and drink the cup, we slow down to savor the divine gift of joy that came through the sorrows of our Savior.

Walter Kim is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He previously served as a pastor and a campus chaplain.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Walter Kim

Theology

A Path Not for the Faint of Heart

O. Alan Noble

The cost of the cross in a world that loves pleasure

Table Assemblage. Oil on Canvas. 60 x 50

Michelle Chun

In some of the most haunting words in Scripture, Christ tells his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”(Matt. 16:24, ESV). At this point in the Passion story, the disciples don’t yet know the power of Christ’s words. They certainly understood what a cross was and knew something about the horrors of crucifixion, but they didn’t yet know that Christ himself would die on this instrument of Roman torture—or the various forms of suffering they each would face themselves.

At the core of Christianity is the command to deny ourselves. In a culture that revolves around affirming ourselves, it naturally becomes harder and harder to communicate that aspect effectively. The idea that we would deny ourselves as an act of spirituality is now counterintuitive. In Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age, he touches on the challenge of self-denial in the modern age: “For many people today, to set aside their own path in order to conform to some external authority just doesn’t seem comprehensible as a form of spiritual life.”

Self-denial is not just hard; it feels incomprehensible in our time, an age in which self-fulfillment is the cornerstone of a good life. Yet our faith does not ask us to neglect self-fulfillment—it just redefines the terms. According to the biblical story, we were actually created to deny ourselves, and in denying ourselves, we fulfill our true selves.

The world defines fulfillment as flowing from the authentic heart of the individual, unrestrained by any external sources. Christianity teaches that our hearts are wicked and unreliable— that we desire things that are not just bad, but are bad for us.

Jesus teaches the paradox that self-denial is self-affirmation (Matt. 16:25). It’s just that the “self” and the “affirmation” are defined by God, not by our fallible human whims. Who we are (children of God) and what it means for us to be fulfilled (union with Christ) isn’t up to us. To be with Christ is to be without our selfish desires.

So we must ask: what does it mean to deny ourselves? It means that we turn from sin. All sin is the act of choosing our own path against God’s will for us. It is a perverse affirmation of the self which puts its desires ahead of our neighbor and even God.

Obedience is a cross that we bear; it is a form of suffering, even though it is a suffering that brings healing, peace, and restoration. We like to imagine that obedience to God is painless, except perhaps in the case of persecution. But even when the world isn’t punishing us for our faith, simply choosing not to sin involves suffering. In the case of persisting, deeply ingrained sins, repentance requires a tearing away from bad habits; a breaking of familiar rituals; a rending from disobedience. And that can hurt.

For example (we don’t recognize this enough) choosing to be faithful in marriage requires that we deny ourselves the pleasure of intimacy with other people. For some people this is easy, but it can be a profound denial for others. After all, the world is filled with beautiful, interesting, lovely people. To say “I do” is to say “I deny.” For the sake of this fulfillment, I deny myself the option of being with someone else.

In this season of Lent, we remember that this form of self-denial is a model for the Christian life. While the world reminds us how delightful its pleasures are—how much we “deserve” them, and why honoring our desires is loving ourselves—we instead pledge ourselves to Christ. Greed, pride, envy, lust, gluttony—all sins we find ourselves more than capable of embracing as pleasures, and which following Christ requires us to deny. They are pleasures that harm us, but initially, like bread eaten in secret, they are pleasant (Prov. 9:17).

The Christian path is not for the faint of heart. It demands a great deal of courage, humility, and self-sacrifice. But we have a faithful Savior who modeled this sacrifice for us, who knows the cost of denial and the beauty of faithfulness. And faithfulness is beautiful. The same Christ that suffered on the cross was glorified in his body. And likewise, when we deny ourselves we are glorified to God. We receive a peace that comes only from denying our sinful desires and delighting in God.

Dr. O. Alan Noble is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, adviser to Christ and Pop Culture and author of three books.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Alan Noble

Theology

Be Still in the Middle of the Battle

Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

With so much at stake, how can we follow the psalmist’s instruction?

Hometown Hills. Oil on Panel. 5 x 7

Caroline Greb

On a sticky, steamy night last summer, I sat on my back porch in the dark and stared at a gangly potted cactus. This Epiphyllum oxypetalum, commonly known as the “Queen of the Night” was a gift from an elderly gardener friend. He promised me that there would be spectacular, if short-lived, nocturnal flowers. “And it’s really easy to take care of,” he assured. “I get seven or eight blooms at a time from my other plant.”

And yet, five years later, I had only seen a single, spent bloom, hanging between the scalloped stems like a deflated balloon. It was not for lack of trying. I watered the cactus regularly, but not too often. I adjusted its position for indirect sunlight. I fertilized, and I pruned. I brought it inside faithfully before outside temperatures dropped. Its tentacle stems grew rapidly in all directions. But the promised late-summer buds never appeared.

Then, last spring, as my family floundered in wave after wave of traumatic loss, I stuck the plant on the corner of the front porch and turned to care for other, more pressing needs. So on that late summer evening, it was to my utter surprise that I found two swollen buds sheathed in twisting, pink sepals, ready to bloom.

The well-known instruction of Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God,” is a popular refrain. It appears on bumper stickers, hand-lettered signs, and shareable social media content. We invoke it as an encouragement to slow our frenetic pace and trust God to care for us. But the CSB translation offers a slightly different take: “Stop your fighting, and know that I am God.”

Psalm 46 begins by describing a context of cataclysmic upheaval. Declaring that God is our refuge, strength, and helper, the psalmist holds to this truth even when the “earth trembles and the mountains topple into the depths of the seas, though its water roars and foams and the mountains quake with its turmoil” (v. 2). The text offers pictures of world-shattering destruction and violent conflict, both natural disasters and political chaos.

In the third and final section of the psalm, the psalmist describes God’s intervention using wartime imagery: “He makes wars cease throughout the earth. He shatters bows and cuts spears to pieces; he sets wagons ablaze” (v. 9). In view of the whole psalm, it seems that verse 10 is not telling us to simply take a break from life’s hustle and bustle. Instead, it is a counterintuitive command to cease desperately fighting for our own security and survival.

Last year my family’s world did, indeed, feel like it was toppling into the depths of the sea. Everything in our lives was upended by the sudden deaths of two young friends and the fallout from those traumas. Every day I desperately fought to find safety, and to protect my children from darkness that threatened to pull them under. I trembled and raged and felt myself in deep need of refuge.

With so much at stake, how could I possibly follow the psalmist’s injunction and stop my fighting? And yet, Psalm 46:10 insists that the middle of a battle is precisely the time to be still. The command is coupled with a call to contemplation: “Know that I am God.”

God does not pledge to keep tragedy and turmoil away from us—we would not need a fortress if that were the case. Instead, he vows to be the strong tower that keeps us safe in the midst of the fiery battles and raging waters. Secure in that knowledge, we no longer need to punch and scrape and struggle on our own.

Lent does not deny our heart-piercing, bone-tired, chest-constricting reality. It does ask us to cease our struggling—not because we are giving up, but because we are choosing to bear witness to God’s promise to his children.

On that muggy summer night, I sat quietly and watched the cactus’s blush-colored sepals arc up and back, then stretch out like sun rays around the soft, unfurling petals. In the darkness, the pale blooms shone like stars, guiding me back to the God who says, “Be still.”

Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is an author and associate professor of art and art history at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

Ideas

How We Learned to Hate Genocide

Nadya Williams

Contributor

Caesar boasted of thousands of civilian deaths. Christianity is the reason we mourn even one.

Roman soldiers fighting against Dacians engraved by Nicolas Beatrizet

Metropolitan Museum of Art / WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

When he published his scandalous guide for picking up women in ancient Rome in A.D. 2, the elegiac poet Ovid recommended gladiatorial shows as a great location for finding love. Something about watching men fight to the death, Ovid suggested, just works.

Ovid’s casual acceptance of violence as a source of respectable public entertainment was nothing new. Rather, it was the norm in pre-Christian antiquity. A little over 400 years before Ovid, for example, the anonymous author of The Constitution of the Athenians complained about what he considered to be one of Athens’s greatest social ills: On Athenian streets, he sputtered, a man can’t easily tell which passersby he could strike at will. Slaves, he thought, needed more distinctive clothes so you’d know that you could hit them.

I could keep going, but you get the point: The ancient world was defined by its acceptance of pervasive violence. True, some ancients bemoaned this status quo, but they had no expectation that it would ever change.

So why are we not like this today? The answer, in a nutshell, is 2,000 years of Christianity. The change Christianity made in bringing compassion and mercy to a world that defaulted to cruelty is so complete that it is difficult for modern American Christians to fathom. We take our norms around violence for granted, but we shouldn’t. They are uniquely Christian—and uniquely worth preserving.

This difference between Christian and pagan thought is most clearly visible in how we treat civilians in war, and one of our best sources to understand the contrast is none other than Julius Caesar. Throughout the ’50s B.C., Caesar was Rome’s leading military general, campaigning in Gaul. His official aim was to subdue the territory and make it safe for a full Roman takeover.

But Caesar also felt his career was stagnating, and he needed a goodwill boost from the Roman public. What should a man in such a quandary do before the age of social media? In a useful reminder that TikTok isn’t necessary for documenting atrocities, Caesar wrote about his military victories in vicious and graphic detail, publishing in installments back home in Rome what would become known as Gallic War.

If you’ve ever wondered what good Christianity ever did for our violent, war-torn world, Caesar’s text—well in line with other military writings that survive from the Greco-Roman Mediterranean—gives a visceral answer.

In one striking episode, Caesar’s army comes across a large group of Germanic refugees who had been driven out of their former home by another tribe. It seems clear from Caesar’s description that these are not trained soldiers—they are unarmed families. To the surprise of the crowd, Caesar responds to the meeting by ordering a full-scale military attack.

A massacre ensues as Caesar’s soldiers pursue defenseless men, women, and children on land and to the nearby river, where some jump into the water in a vain attempt to escape. Caesar happily boasts that this “battle” resulted in not a single Roman casualty though the enemy numbered 430,000. Caesar does not provide a precise number for casualties, but modern archaeological findings at the site confirm the gist of the account: 150,000 civilians dead.

Even that lower number far exceeds the 5,000-enemy death toll Rome considered to be the baseline for a general to claim a triumph—the highest military honor available to a Roman. In other words, the slaughter had no military justification, even by the laws of the day. It was senseless cruelty, the result of the utter devaluing of the lives of non-Romans, and it was only one of several such episodes Caesar thought would make for good PR.

We read a story like that and easily call it genocide. But scholars including Michael Kulikowski and Tristan Taylor argue that no one among Caesar’s original audiences batted an eye over these descriptions of violence. His popularity in Rome increased. Our horror in reading Caesar’s text, in other words, is distinctly ours—the product of 2,000 years of Christian teaching about the unconditional preciousness of human life.

Christianity provided a radical and unprecedented alternative to Caesar and his world. Even the just war tradition, problematic though it is, is rooted in a very different way of thought than the pre-Christian worldview offered. Instead of allowing empires to abuse people at will, just war theory predicated standards that must be met for war to be considered justified. And our very discontent with that tradition is itself an example of the Christianization of our thinking.

Central to this change is Christianity’s revolutionary emphasis on the imago Dei (Gen. 1:27). While this idea was important in early Judaism, it was through Christianity’s adoption of the concept and rapid spread around the Mediterranean that it became widely known. Christians affirmed the priceless worth of every person in God’s eyes. But in the pagan worldview within which Caesar operated, the worth of a life depended on a number of subjective factors—including the opinion of an attacking general.

Indeed, just as in The Constitution of the Athenians, people in the Roman world fell into one of two categories: those who could not be harmed without penalty, and those who could be harmed basically at will. Roman citizens, especially men, and especially aristocratic men, fell into the former category. Non-citizens, and especially slaves, fell into the latter.

This is the significance, for instance, of Paul emphasizing his Roman citizenship on a number of occasions in his ministry (e.g., Acts 16:38): It placed him in a privileged class, and he used that to the gospel’s advantage. But the early Christians saw such distinctions as null and void. God loves every image-bearer—man or woman, slave or free, Roman citizen or not (Gal. 3:28). It is because of this different worldview that a noblewoman and her slave, new converts both, could die together as martyrs for their faith.

Even in increasingly post-Christian societies, the Christian stance on the value of human life still shapes our views of war. It is the source of our horror over violence against civilians and the foundation of formal protections for civilian life like the Geneva Conventions. It is because of Christianity that we feel outrage mixed with sorrow and horror when we see deliberate and cruel targeting of civilians, like that done by Caesar against defenseless Gaul—or the murder and sexual violence by Hamas against Israeli civilians in October, or Putin’s missile strikes against Ukrainian civilians over the past two years.

History shows that Christians have never perfectly lived our confessed belief in the imago Dei. A stumbling block for my Jewish mother, for example, has been that some professing Christians helped perpetrate the Holocaust—in her birthplace, Ukraine, Christians sometimes turned their Jewish neighbors over to the Nazis. We could also mention the Crusades and many other violent evils. Church history includes plenty of blood.

But history also shows the sheer horror of a world without the moral vocabulary to recognize those evils, without the influence of the imago Dei and the rest of the Christian worldview. It shows the horror of a world guided by Caesar, not Christ.

Nadya Williams is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and the forthcoming Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024).

- More from Nadya Williams

Theology

Life as a Fading Flower

Amanda Held Opelt

Ash Wednesday breaks down our illusion of invincibility

Poppies & Dogwood, Oil on Canvas, 2023

Elizabeth Bowman

Every year around Ash Wednesday, a hillside near our home in the mountains of Western North Carolina erupts with the yellow of budding daffodils. These are the first of the spring flowers to bloom, and their golden hue stands in stark contrast to the grays and browns of the surrounding winter.

Brilliant as the blossoms are, they are short-lived. In the days after their arrival, the daffodils are windswept by the harsh mountain cold that always lingers longer than we hope. A late frost or snowfall will inevitably cling to the quivering petals, sometimes cutting their display of beauty short. After a few weeks, the flowers that remain shrivel and brown, eventually falling to the ice-hardened earth, frustrating our optimism that warmer days are near.

It is no wonder that Job—a man whose suffering looms large in the biblical narrative—compared the fragility of his fleeting life to that of a delicate flower. Even though he possessed extraordinary wealth, even though he numbered among the righteous, he was vulnerable. He was upright, prudent, and just as susceptible to calamity as anyone else. His possessions were destroyed by fire and warlords, his children were killed in a natural disaster, and his good health was lost to a painful disease. In the wake of these catastrophes, Job fully realized what is excruciatingly true for all of us: our days are windswept, ephemeral, lived in the aftermath of the fall.

It is easy for privileged Americans to feel a sense of control: Our generation has unprecedented access to food, water, shelter, and medical care. Our ability to make choices around what we’ll do for work, who we’ll marry, which communities we’ll join is historically unprecedented.

Meanwhile, the self-help and wellness industry has infused in us the notion that we can circumvent any uncomfortable feeling or experience. Exhaustion can be mitigated by the right green smoothie recipe or essential oil, chaos can be controlled by the perfect time-management app, sadness can be soothed through mindfulness or meditation, and boredom can be alleviated by a streaming service or social media platform.

Moreover, as Christians, we can believe that solid theology and steadfast commitment to the spiritual disciplines can serve as a bulwark against the buffeting of life. Perhaps Job’s friends assumed the same thing about their righteous companion.

Slowly the lie creeps in: I can control my outcomes. I can avoid suffering.

This illusion of invincibility explains why so many of us feel bewildered—offended even—when hardship inevitably comes. It’s humbling to realize that suffering and death are part of being human, no matter our virtues, vigilance, or privilege. Our lives are less like well-constructed fortresses and more like fleeting flowers. We are all painfully exposed, as vulnerable as those daffodils bursting forth into the brutal cold.

Jesus reminds us of the potentially unsettling reality that God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45, NASB). But in the same sermon, Jesus tells us not to worry; to have no fear for what we will eat or drink or wear. “Notice how the lilies of the field grow,” he says (6:28).

The lilies are clothed in beauty by no effort of their own. They “do not labor nor do they spin” because God is the artist who oversees both their flowering and fading. And that same God knows what we need. The humiliation of helplessness can sometimes lead to an unexpected form of rest, a retreat from our efforts to control our outcomes, a respite from our own labors.

I make it my mission to notice how those daffodils grow, to admire their brilliance rather than bemoaning their brevity. Even though the lives of those flowers are brief, they are indeed a beacon of hope—a material reminder that seasons do change, that warmth always arrives, and that glory is possible even in the harshest of environments. God, and only God, makes it so.

There has never been a winter when that hillside has not been resurrected into beauty. Those daffodils feel like a miracle, a foretaste of a greater resurrection to come. And even the weakest of hopes, with God’s caretaking, can blossom into eternal joy.

Amanda Held Opelt is an author, speaker, and songwriter. She writes about faith, grief, and creativity and has published two books.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Amanda Held Opelt

Theology

Living in a Season Without Answers

Kayla Craig

Learning to have a quiet hope in the midst of heartache

Evening Romance. Oil on Panel. 30 x 48

Cherith Lundin

This year, I’m learning to have a quiet hope. My eight-year-old daughter has Down syndrome. Her already winding path took an unexpected turn at just six months of age, when a relentless storm of seizures wreaked havoc on her brain and body. The disabilities and delays left in the wake of her seizures touched every aspect of her life.

As my husband and I navigated her diagnosis, our family’s journey became a slow, steady pilgrimage into the unknown. Week after week, my husband and I sat on the physical therapy mat with our daughter, willing her muscles to awaken from their slumber, praying for the static in her brain to quiet down. In the midst of her struggle, we fielded questions from well-meaning friends and family, asking when she would take her first steps or speak her first words. We didn’t have answers.

Progress was achingly slow, and at times our efforts felt like a lost cause. During the pandemic we shifted to virtual therapy sessions, and clung to our computer screen, the lifeline to our daughter’s potential. As the isolation deepened and our hearts grew heavy with uncertainty, I reached a point where hope seemed as fragile as my daughter’s body, ready to bruise with the slightest touch. My husband persevered when I could not. Though I had slammed the laptop shut, finding that its quiet hum of hope had gone silent, he kept showing up for those virtual therapy sessions. He nurtured a flicker of expectation even when I had almost surrendered to despair.

As time passed and the world emerged from its slumber, we resumed our weekly treks to hospitals and clinics, parking our cluttered minivan in reserved disabled spots. Today, she’s in second grade, still unable to pull herself up, but with the aid of a helping hand or a gait trainer, her feet are able to find solid ground. With some assistance and assurance, she steps forward, hope unfurling to the cadence of her steps.

Friends, family, and even acquaintances have had recurring dreams of her walking. The first time I had this dream, I awoke feeling foolish for imagining something so audacious. I wrapped my tender hope back up in layers of self-protective armor. However, the shields I’ve carefully held for so long recently came down: I held my daughter’s hands as she stood before me, swaying to the worship band’s melody. As we sang, she propelled herself forward, her leg braces and pink sneakers pulling me along, heading toward the front of the sanctuary with increasing speed. I scooped her into my arms and could see what I hadn’t seen before—the profound truth that she was running into the loving arms of the Savior who cares.

The one who understands the depths of our humanity—who is well acquainted with our weary bones and aching hearts—calls her beloved, adores her, and, in a mysterious twist, also cherishes me—the doubter, the cynic, the mother who at times can only whisper the word hope.

God does not dismiss the desires we cradle in the quiet corners of our hearts. The God who spoke to Elijah in both the silence and the storm holds our fragile hopes and, as we see in Lamentations 3, calls our patience and perseverance good.

I may not know whether my daughter will run with abandon this side of heaven, but I do know this: the Lord is good to those whose hope is in him (v. 25). Lent beckons us to contemplate our fragility. Remember that even the anticipation of hope is a precious gift in this reflective season as we sojourn this weary world. When all you can see is unanswered prayer, do not despise the hints of hope while you wait.

When you wonder if even your faintest of cries for help are for naught, remember this: “It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God.” ( Lam. 3:25–26, MSG) May our hearts be filled with quiet hope as a sacred gift. May the faint echoes of this hope sustain us as we take halting, wobbling steps with God into the waiting, the darkness, and the unknown.

Kayla Craig is an author and the founder the Liturgies for Parents. Kayla lives in Iowa with her husband and four children.

This article is part of Easter in the Everyday, a devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Lent & Easter season. Learn more about this special issue here!

- More from Kayla Craig

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