Yes, Nathanael, There is Good in Nazareth...

When we moved here 9 years ago, the neighborhood was new. We saw the plans laid out as we signed the papers: a pool here, tennis courts there, wooded areas where the creek runs behind. There followed a year of hammering and buzzing all around us until finally our section was complete. Another year of heavy trucks lumbering by, at all hours, down and around and out of sight and back. And then the quiet began to return, along with the squirrels and birds.

And now the trees that were new are full and tall, the bushes overgrown in areas, the sod established, the neighbors settled in.

I run a path through these familiar, quiet streets and see mostly a sculptured kind of beauty as I pass. I smell the scent of dryer sheets as the dryers vent into backyards, and from time to time I have to slow down when I smell tea olives blooming on the way.


But still there are sections of barrenness between established homes. There will be sod -- and then -- dirt, gravel, weeds. Nature returns to itself in places that are not tended, and their ugliness mars the beauty of the surrounding areas. How easy it is to find the gaze directed at ugliness, and suddenly I'm looking not at blue sky but the arresting reminders that this is no paradise...


As I walked out the front door today with my iPhone in hand, I caught a whiff... ah, the tea olive must be blooming. Again? I had to go check, around the corner of our house, where hiding the big ugly metal of heating and air units is a tea olive reaching to the second floor of our house. Its tips just brush Claire's windowsill. Mmmmm... if I could bottle that fragrance, I'd be a wealthy woman! It smells like heaven. In fact, one night I dreamed that I was swimming in this beautiful exotic location and no matter where I went, the water felt perfect and the air always, always smelled like tea olives. I remember in my dream I didn't want to leave paradise...

So I stopped for a few moments and sniffed till I (almost) had my fill. And then I set off on my run. I passed through quiet streets with their interspersing empty ugly lots. There was a hawk flying overhead today, huge and black against the bright midday sun. Its shadow fell over me once or twice.



Did you know that there are tv channels devoted to "the good life?" Their programming is designed (I suppose) to inspire poor people to get rich, or to inspire the rich to spend more money. :) I find it entertaining, this spin they put on "living the life you've imagined," as if that is within our grasp at all times, the big "if only..."

When Claire was a baby, I could easily imagine the life I wanted -- it was the same one that everyone else seemed to have already. We once took a trip to visit some old friends who lived in a neighborhood much like the one we live in today, and on the way home John and I sat in dumb silence, contemplating how impossible it seemed that we would ever have the chance to take our kids to our own neighborhood pool, or even walk safely down the streets with the stroller in tow. We had no common areas, no garden, no picnic tables. Just a very tiny little starter home that was both my joy and my frustration. No matter how vividly we could wanted a better life, I also wanted to be home with the kids, and John enjoyed his work. We made our choices within the given boundaries. Life comes with choices. Imagination may be boundless -- but reality has borders, and you only hurt yourself when you continually ram your pretty head against them.

Within a year or so, however, we found ourselves living in a house double the size of our first home. It happened so fast we barely had time to take a deep breath and fully appreciate the gift! Within the next 3 years, we were leaving my hometown and all I knew, including that house that had been the dream for so long and the neighboring pool that seemed to encapsulate everything I had wanted at the time.

And here we are, living in a place BEYOND what we imagined. And still I remember one day just a few years ago, watching one of those daydreamy shows about people who move to Italy and proceed to "live that life they imagined." They made it all seem so simple! The kind of show that makes you look around your suburban home and say, "Hey, we're adults in a free country, for goodness' sakes! Why are we here, when we could be in ITALY?" I asked John in a fit of frustration-with-self: "Do you think there is ANYONE in the world who ever says, 'I wonder what it's like to live in American suburbia?'" In comparison to the wild beauty of the cliffs of Greece or the small towns of Italy or the shores of Hawaii, WHO in their right mind would CHOOSE to live HERE? He looked at me with one peaked eyebrow and said: "Um, yeah... probably about 3/4 of the entire world." Oh. yeah. Those people. :)

My point is, my imagination cannot touch what God has planned for us, for any of us. And God's best isn't usually good fodder for prime-time tv shows - His ways are NOT our ways, and His good intentions toward us do not always translate to our standards. His plan is to give us HOPE and PURPOSE -- these things we cannot grasp for ourselves with money, travel, or adventure.

We live before His face every day, right where He plants us, but still our hearts wander and rove and step on the lines and poke the fences for weak points where we might technically squeeze through. Even though there are acres within the pleasant boundary lines, our hearts still want to linger at the fenceposts. In our distraction and preoccupation, our backs stay turned to the green pastures and the still waters inside. We've seen those intermittent brambly places where nature seems to have taken over and they look ugly... we know the fence doesn't keep out the ugly, and our hearts long for perfect. Maybe it's out there...

We are homesick for eternity. We are longing, but in this twisted world we get it all wrong! We think we're longing for THAT... when in reality, all we really want is here. It's just not ALL here, yet...

Sometimes the bumper sticker is great: Life is Good. It's good on a sunny day when the tea olives are blooming and I feel strength in my legs. Sometimes we say to each other, "If God wills, we will do this or that," and He DOES allow, and we are glad.
And sometimes life is a living, ugly hell of an empty lot, and we wonder with Nathanael, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46)


Maybe life is simply dull, monotonous, colorless, and that tv channel drones like a prophet: "your life is what YOU make it. Live the life you imagine!" But the law comes like a wolf in sheep's clothing... when it sounds like promise and hope, it brings a heavy burden instead. In contrast, Jesus is the True Prophet and He tells us about his upside-down wisdom that topples worlds:

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" Matt. 16:24-26

Ah, Nathanael. Did anything good come from Nazareth? Only the best... the only thing good enough to ransom our souls.


There WAS good in Nazareth.
There IS beauty in ashes.
There IS treasure in clay pots.
There IS a pearl in those overgrown fields.

Instead of living the life I've imagined, let me live the life He imagined before time began, to do the works He has planned beforehand for me to do. It may look like a long, hard, sweaty run uphill past overgrown empty lots full of weeds... followed by the breezy downhill rush of quiet, with the fragrance of tea olives along the way. It may not look like much to me, even at its best, and I may forget to be grateful for all the good things laid out behind me, all the mercies leading to this moment, the wind at my back and the sun on my face. I may feel hot and distracted.

But one day the veil will be removed and I will see it all for what it was: hidden beauty.

There is no need for restlessness. He IS wherever I already AM. I don't need to travel to Italy to be overwhelmed by God's glory. I don't have to feel the burden to "make life" anything at all, because IT IS KEPT. Jesus is the crown jewel, and He is enough to make even the barren beautiful. His beautiful presence in jars of clay is what makes even hardened pottery valuable. We don't have to measure the things themselves, or our quality of life, in order to estimate the goodness of life in this land of the living -- or to measure God's grace -- or to measure God's goodness towards us.

The angels once asked the disciples, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here..." What I want is THERE: all of Him and all of Heaven forever. I see bits of Him all around like pieces of scattered light... but despite my best attempts to gather and store and categorize and hoard, He will not be bound and boxed. All that glitters here is not the gold... IT IS NOT HERE.

My treasure is KEPT in heaven for me. Will I be patient for it? Aaron and his golden calf are no substitutes for the real God on the smoking mountain.

"Men of Galilee," the angels asked again a bit later, "Why do you stand looking? This same Jesus will come again..."

So --
knowing this, I am free to "live, move, and have my being" in this world. All this pasture, soft and green and watered, with its dark, weedy patches, is mine to roam and enjoy and co-create and muddle through. There are discoveries to be made and activities to be explored and suffering to be endured. But the hidden beauty in it ALL (good, bad, and ugly!) is that the Good Shepherd travels with me just like He did with the Israelites: going before, settling around. All is well, and one day we will know and not just believe it to be true.

We will see with our eyes the finished product of this long, slow process: the Temple He is building on the threshing floors... the one that COST something to build. Every precious tear that goes into it, every death that comes because of it is kept and precious to God the Creator.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time."
Ecc. 3:11

There is a time for everything... but one intent:
to live Coram Deo,
Soli Deo Gloria.


"Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight ahead of you...
Do not swerve."
Prov. 4:25-27

"Glory to God in the highest --
And on earth [be] peace: [there is] goodwill toward men."
Luke 2:14