The Middle

Even though I don’t really want to write anything having to do with politics anymore, I do feel the need to follow up last week’s blog about the unity our president is calling for. Unity is important and powerful, and I know it pleases our Maker deeply. The Bibles tells us it is “good and pleasing” to God when we “dwell together in unity”. In that same breath the Bible tells us, “there, (in unity) God commands a blessing.”

One of my favorite songwriters, Mat Kearney, writes a lot about the struggle to find unity, particularly in marriage. He sings: 

Like ships in the night letting cannonballs fly
Say what you mean and it turns to a fight
Fists fly from my mouth as it turns south
You’re down the driveway, I’m on the couch.

 And…

Tell me why it feels like there's a Grand Canyon between us
Tell me how you're feeling 'cause I can't stand the distance
You know we started with love, and it still is enough to believe in us
Tell me why it feels like there's a Grand Canyon

The rift is real in America. The rift can be real in our marriages. The rifts can be real in our relationship with parents, friends, co-workers, church families. The extra emotional tension of 2020 and the emotions that come with continued uncertainty can cause even tiny rifts or divisions to become “Grand Canyons” in a moment. 

For unity to happen, someone has to take the first step to close the gap. Someone has to give for there to be give and take. Someone has to sacrifice what they want and feel, get out of their emotions for a moment, humble themselves, reach out knowing the attempt can be rebuffed many times before it is received. It is a most arduous task, it flies in the face of the many self-centered impulses in our body, and it can make us look weak in the eyes of the world, as well as our own eyes. But in God’s perspective it makes you look a lot like Jesus. 

Jesus left heaven, humbled Himself by taking on the form of a helpless baby, and thirty years later offering up His life as a bold, sacrificial first step toward closing the gap between us and our Maker. And ever since that day, many people have responded to His act of love by surrendering all of their life to Him. What they find is not slavery, but life to the full. They find freedom from slavery to sin, freedom from confusion and uncertainty of life’s mysteries and challenges, and they find freedom from fear and the weariness and foolishness of self-reliance. 

Last week I was trying so hard to hope and pray for President Biden and his team to make the first move, to try and close the gap, to give a little in hopes of creating a healthy give-and-take unity in our country. So far, it seems he only wants people to unite to his ideals and values, and lacks the courage or understanding of what true unity requires. 

I’ll finish this email with a lyric from a unifying old Diamond Rio country song I loved when I was growing up. 

I’d start walking your way
You'd start walking mine
We'd meet in the middle
'Neath that old Georgia pine
We'd gain a lot of ground
'Cause we'd both give a little
And there ain't no road too long
When you meet in the middle

All the best to you and yours,

David

P.S. It’s been great to hear back from some of you who read these blogs. I pray the words I put together to express some of the thoughts rattling inside my soul will not just be adding to the noise of our lives, but actually help us find wisdom.