Tag Archives: compassion

Unexpected faith

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As I began to unpack in my last post, it’s easy to think that faith thrives when the environment shelters it. However, faith actually suffers when roots don’t need to run deep. There’s something about hostile or dry environments that draws out deep faith.

And when faith springs up and flowers in dark places, it shines even brighter. 

The Bible puts Sidon firmly in the “dark” category. The region became wealthy through the trading done by their sea merchants, and the triumvirate of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all predict Sidon’s downfall for her sins against God (Is 23; Jer 25:15-22; Ez 28:20–24). But it turns out that the widow’s faith is not exceptional; it’s actually part of a pattern. 

First, Yahweh’s Temple is built with Sidonian cedar (1 Chron 22:4). How did that happen? While God intended for Joshua to drive out the peoples in modern-day Lebanon (Josh 13:6), the Sidonians were among those who remained as a thorn in Israel’s side (Judg 3:1-4). But when King David sets up a system of tribute and forced labor for many of these tenacious peoples, he instead works out a cooperative relationship with Sidon and Tyre. 1 Kings 5 records that the king of Tyre loves David so much that he willingly contributes huge amounts of cedar and woodworkers to build the Temple. 

Jumping to the New Testament, Jesus shames the Galileans by telling them that if Sidon had seen the miracles he performed among them, they would have repented quickly (Matt 11:21). Clearly he sees them as spiritually open and much more willing to accept his words than his own people are. Indeed Luke 6:17 notes that large numbers of people from Sidon come to hear him preach and be healed. 

Then in Mark 7:24-30 and Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus brings his disciples to the area for a retreat. They’ve been running flat out, and John the Baptist has been martyred. Jesus intends to give them a break in a resort town, but a local woman recognizes Jesus and pesters his disciples relentlessly about her daughter’s demonic possession. Jesus first puts her off by saying his primary mission is to Israel. But her tenacity, her submission and her scrappy logic impress him. Jesus responds, “Woman, you have great faith!” He then rewards this faith by healing her daughter. The receptivity of this audience seems to change Jesus’ priorities in the short term. The next thing Jesus does is head for the Gentile region east of the Sea of Galilee. In fact, Jesus never commends the faith of anyone in Israel, but only among foreigners (for instance, Matthew 8:10). 

So the Sidonian widow is not really an aberration. There are a number of reasons why this woman might find Israel’s God appealing:

  • Power: Baal, her people’s god of harvest, seems powerless to defeat Yahweh’s control over the rain.
  • Compassion: Israel’s God shows himself willing to hear the cry of widows and orphans, even foreign ones. As Exodus 22:21–23 says: “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.” 
  • Grace: She’s encountering grace on a daily basis. In spite of her sin, Elijah and his God are still providing for her rather than judging her.

There’s something about Sidon, this land in such close proximity to God’s people, struggling to hold onto its beliefs and stand against Israel’s religion. Spiritual sensitivity and hungry seekers keep popping up from that region throughout the Bible. Perhaps this is the ultimate answer to Jesus’ provocative question to the Jews: if there were lots of widows in Israel, why did God use a widow in Sidon? (Luke 4:25-26). 

But what if these aren’t one-off examples? What if the roots are connected? What if the widow is open to Yahweh because of David’s kindness to King Hiram? What if the woman with the demon-possessed daughter reaches out to Jesus because the story of that widow was embedded in her culture? A seed had been planted centuries before.

Something similar happened in Ethiopia. My wife Becky and I once had the opportunity to visit an Ethiopian Coptic Church in Israel. The priest we spoke with recalled the Church’s long history, pointing to a tapestry behind him depicting the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon (1 Ki 9). He then connected her story to a God-fearing Ethiopian who centuries later made his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Acts 8:26-40) and was baptized as a Jesus-follower. Both the Coptic Church and the Beta Israel community in that country have ancient roots.

In Wycliffe, we hear about these seeds all the time. Before a missionary sets out for the most distant place she can imagine, she needs to understand that God is there and working before she arrives. As I noted in my last post, there’s a second narrative: the purposes God is pursuing in the lives of the people before the missionary arrives. If you have any doubts, read Don Richardson’s 1981 classic, Eternity in Their Hearts. 

Faith can spring up in surprising contexts, standing out even more because of the darkness it’s set against. And dormant seeds that were sown centuries before can suddenly spring to life.

Do you have one of those stories, where you’ve seen God at work in unexpected places? I’d love to hear examples of God revealing a little spark of faith where we’d never expect it. Leave me a comment with your story.

Elijah series:

Wartime leadership: under armor

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In my last post, I named four strategies we can deploy as wartime leaders. There’s one more.

5. Wear the right clothing
When you heard “clothing,” many of you immediately jumped to Ephesians 6:10-20, which unpacks the armor of our warfare as believers, the outerwear believers are exhorted to put on before standing “against the schemes of the devil.”

The remarkable thing about that list of armor is that almost every piece can be used ineffectively. We’ve all seen Christians wildly swinging their swords and using Scripture in a way that causes “friendly fire.” We’ve seen people use truth as a hammer instead of a belt. Others put on the breastplate of self righteousness, hide behind their shields of faith or misunderstand their helmet of salvation. Confident in the fact that their own eternal salvation is secure, their helmet narrows their vision, makes them hard-headed or prevents them from asking if salvation has relevance to this life.

How can we Christians misuse our armor this way? Because we go out to war commando-style. We forget to put on our underwear.

Before we grab our armor, shield and sword, Paul recommends some additional clothing in Colossians, some traits that we should put on first. Think of these as the Under Armor of the believer (with apologies to the company, I think the idea translates pretty well).

I think Eugene Peterson’s rendering captures the essence of these verses:

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. (‭Colossians‬ ‭3‬:‭12-14‬)

Be honest: we think of compassion, humility and love as “soft skills” for peaceful, “kumbaya” community. This list of clothing doesn’t read like preparation for warfare, does it? So let’s look a little deeper. We’ll see that these characteristics have very real application to wartime leadership.

First, the Colossians list maximizes the effectiveness of each piece of armor. Look again at the list in Ephesians 6. The Bible is full of verses that pair “soft skills” with each piece of armor. A sampling:

  • Proverbs 21:21 pairs righteousness with kindness. He who pursues the two together will find life and honour in addition to righteousness.
  • Psalm 45:4 matches truth with meekness and righteousness. A victorious king puts on his armour and sword, and defends the causes of truth, meekness/humility and righteousness.
  • In Ephesians 4:15, Paul pairs truth with love within the context of growing up.
  • In Philippians 2:12, Paul speaks of the process of learning to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Other translations use words like reverence, awe, humility and sensitivity.
  • In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul urges his protege to become an approved worker, “rightly handling the word of truth.” The context is maturity, hard work and discipline, drawing from the metaphors of a soldier, an athlete and a farmer.

Second, the traits in Colossians provide incredible defensive protection on their own merits. Knights knew the best way to prepare for flaming arrows was to cover their shields with dampened hides before they went to war. That’s the image Paul had in mind when he said faith is a shield that can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one (Eph 6:16). Character traits like compassion, humility, gentleness and patience are equally effective at dousing the flames of accusation, violence and rage. As Solomon pointed out, “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Prov 15:1).

There’s another application. Many of the attacks on the believer come from within and behind. Our own spirits are waging war within us (Gal 5:17; Rom 7:15-8:11). Unity and community are constantly breaking down. The clothing in Colossians 3 is our best response to the everyday situations of tension, misunderstanding, abrasive personalities, false motivations, jealousy and narcissism. Leaders in particular are vulnerable, because a large part of leadership is dealing with personnel and personality issues.

Third, the Colossians characteristics prove to be our most effective offensive weapons. In my last post, I mentioned the immense power in forgiveness to disarm our most fervent attackers. Proverbs 25:21-22 associates kindness and compassion with an image of surprising violence: feeding a hungry enemy is like heaping burning coals on his head. In Romans 12:19-20, Paul picks up that image and sets it in the context of forgiveness and allowing God to mete out vengeance and wrath. “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.” Rather, our job as sons and daughters of God is to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt 5:44-46).

Bottom line: our flesh wants to fight back in kind, but we cannot win God’s victories without using God’s weaponry and methodology. It’s counter-intuitive, and it’s counter-cultural. In Jesus’ upside-down kingdom, meekness trumps power, humility can defeat hostility and death can equal victory. Recently, as I read A Wind in the House of Islam, I noted what the research showed about movements to Christ. People are drawn to the Lord when other religions model violence. But people move just as quickly away from Christianity when Christians (or “Christian nations”) respond with violence. It’s only in responding with compassion, kindness, meekness, forgiveness and love that the kingdom of God expands. Those are the weapons of our warfare.