Rounding out a month of posts on purity: a glance at what it means to be pure mentally.

Who comes to mind if you think of the phrases Biblical woman and mental purity? Mary, perhaps? Or Lois? Yes, certainly.

But today I want to shine a quiet light on the woman from Luke 7. She was not respectable enough to be known by any other name than “woman who had lived a sinful life” among her neighbors in that community. But she was worth so much to Jesus that He would both love and forgive her — and that He would have her story recorded for a millinea-long display.

We don’t know her exact sin(s), but we can guess what they likely included. And yet, no matter what she had done or what had been done to her, she certainly ached, as shown in her sacrificial display, to scour her mind, heart, body, and soul of what she had done, of what had been done to her.

Here, in her story, we seen a beautiful domino effect of truth. Perhaps mental purity is the most miraculous purity of all. And it is the one that must be sought and granted every day of our lives in a fallen world. Because the person who craves it cannot undo what they have done or unsee what they have seen or unknow what they have known. But the bitter tears that have flown down can be collected to baptize that mind, and the redeeming gifts and blessings that come after can slowly but surely staunch the craving to renew that mind to what it was meant to be.

And now, a final short poem in the series:

~ Purity 4: Woman (That is Me) ~

Does the salt in my tears

Sting the scratches on Your toes

The way it burns up from my soul? I need

These tears to say what my mouth cannot:

A prayer that You would choke

Memories of horror and missteps I took,

That You would uproot those weeds

And let a grove of olive trees —

Peace-filled branches —

Sprout up in their place. Pour back

On me sweetness and kisses so that

I will again dance: renamed, renewed.

She was not virginal in her purity. Not completely. Not like the younger maidens working near her to glean in the master’s field. She had been married before; she had been known.

And she came to him in the dead of night, where he rested, in obedience to her mother-in-law’s advice. Advice that put her in a very prone position. He could choose to further mar her reputation or he could choose to respectfully protect it.

And he could have chosen another woman from among so many. A younger woman. A non-foreign woman. A richer woman. A previously-unmarried woman.

But he saw her. And he chose her. And he protected her with his own robe, his own presence, and later his own follow-up actions. Until he could bring her home as his bride.

The woman he loved. The woman he saw as beautiful and pure. The one he had been waiting his whole life to meet and cherish.

Today, in honor of this couple and the renewal of physical purity through the eyes of love, a third short poem.

~ Purity 3: Ruth ~

Numbing-cold. The sandy soil,

Chaff-dusted, nipped at my skimming feet,

Bare after my sandals slipped off

Against my palms, to cancel flapping

Alarms. Shivering, in my fear-hope,

I lay at his feet and prayed he would wake

On his own. And ask that I stay — that only.

Nothing more. Unless there could be more.

But how could there?

Unless he covered me?

Yes. Unless he covered me…

And then He covered me!

So, ever after, I was to be His: clean.

Next in this series on purity, we pause to consider the power of beauty via emotional purity. According to Genesis 12, Sarah was exceptionally physically beautiful, even as she aged. Yet, she is more fondly remembered and rightly praised in 1 Peter 3 for her projected image of one with a gentle and quiet spirit, living in a proper and good sense of humility and obedience. Certainly she laughed and doubted and jumped the gun. But in the end, she learned how to master her feelings and accept her assigned place in life with hope.

This sounds foreign to me as a modern American woman. But when I dig deeper, I see this is not just an antiquated cultural demand. No. According to Peter, such submission shines from a pure heart, from an honest-core self that wants good and chooses service for the sake of those who are loved. Will there be fear, negative reactions, and mistakes? Yes. But inner beauty lights a woman’s face and shines through the storms of life (and marriage) like low car beams glowing through a dark, snowy drive.

We do not know exactly what Sarah looked like physically. But it doesn’t really matter. We know the essence of her heart: a much more enduring legacy.

So, a poem in her honor…

~ Purity 2: Sarah ~

Queen of this house,

This moving, growing home:

Collection of tents-servant memories.

I have presided with smiles, tears, screams.

Princess of my Father,

Living to love my master:

Challenge of ever-changing complexities.

I have blossomed through bitter to sweet.

Naming the feelings, seeing the fears,

I stand up on choices, cling to what’s dear.

And see a face so beautiful in my mirror.

Growing up, I quickly came under the impression that the central focus of purity as a virtue had to do with sexual chastity or keeping one’s body and thoughts clean and unblemished in that area of life. While that certainly is important to consider, especially in our evermore-desensitized culture, I now stand on the cusp of marriage in these last few weeks of singlehood and ponder what it will mean to approach my husband as a pure bride in each sense of my person: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

In that light, four times over the course of this month, I want to share a piece of word art and a short poem to highlight the life of each of four different women from the Bible. In each case, focusing on one of those aspects, I hope to think differently about who they were, who I am, and who each of us (men and women alike) is meant to be.

So, this time, I begin with the mother of all mankind. Not the first woman who usually comes to mind when we think of spiritual purity, is she?

Perhaps she should be…

~ Purity 1: Eve ~

Initial fruit tasted strangely sweet

On my tongue

But felt bitter-heavy

When it sank into my bowels.

Slow burn of something foreign

Had begun with me,

In me.

Third stirring felt strangely bitter

In my heart

But tingled sweetly-light

When it washed over my womb.

Deep joy of something granted

Had begun with me,

In me.

Heaven saw my kiss of death

But kindly placed in me this Seth

And restored my purity,

Once more setting my spirit free.

Starting off a new month with a multifaceted, often misunderstood, and easy-to-lose yet hard-to-truly-gain virtue, I would like to share a short series of haiku written in honor of Job. He is often still included in that old comparison when we say someone “has the patience of Job.” But ultimately, just as much as he had patience, he had honor.

~ I ~

Would you have become

Poster child of Virtue

If you’d given up?

~ II ~

The darkest forests

Have rock-rough paths leading to

The brightest clearings.

~ III ~

Health, houses, wealth, wife,

Children, reputation, life:

Which came back dearest?

~ IV ~

Two yellow flowers,

Delicate, pierce opaque ground

To be crowned by sun.

Instead of writing more about patience in this five-Sunday month, I want to pause and breathe.

I want to stop and dwell for a little while on the greatest virtue of all.

I want to exhale hatred and fear and angst and rage and grief.

And I want to inhale healing and hope and peace and trust.

I want to love.

I have read that George Floyd was my brother. I know he was already my brother in a general human sense. But I have read that he was a Christ-follower like me.

So that makes him my brother twice over. And while he was a stranger to me in this life, I will be honored to embrace him in Heaven one day.

And even though he was a stranger to me, a man I “wouldn’t know from Adam” on the street while he was living, I would never wish suffering upon another–let alone suffering a death like he did.

God, have mercy.

My heart grieves over every act of mercilessness. Every act of harming. Every act of dehumanization. Every act of cruel destruction.

And when any such act seems to be fueled by discrimination, it does more than “add insult to injury.” It slathers a despicable coating over a heep of seething evil.

Where is love? That greatest virtue…?

True love is in God’s heart that still beats with the desire for our redemption and our best. And it is in our hearts when we are attune to Him.

I realize in this moment that I don’t really want to be colorblind. Because if I were, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate and revel in glorious diversity and the gifts that all of us bring to the banquet of humanity.

I don’t want to be colorblind. Instead, I want to have x-ray vision of the Spirit that looks at other people and automatically sees the soul. I want to want the best for the stranger beside me, no matter what. And if they should become less of a stranger to me, I want to want their best even more.

Yes, let this be the heart of such love in me. And let that heart, that vision, do some small part today to melt the despicable coating and drive back the seething evil.

May I…may we…be conduits for the love and peace that leads to unity.

How God must smile when He sees us unified. And how He must weep when He sees us divided and hurting one another. My heart aches for His heartache.

I want to close these thoughts with a very short, untitled poem in Mr. Floyd’s honor:

When we watched your struggle —

Your murder, your dying —

We saw your skin tone,

Screamed at compounded injustice.

But God saw your soul

And wept at your choking

And ran to embrace you,

To welcome you home.

Rest now, earlier than you planned to,

Peacefully, in the arms of the One

Who has always loved you.

While here we remain and struggle…

To look past each other’s shells…

To love.

Every solid long-term or marriage relationship requires a great deal more than attraction and charm to remain vibrant and to grow even more meaningful. One of the most important ingredients in that recipe is a steady and liberal dose of patience. That is true as the years go by, but also in the early stages, when the relationship first forms and then stands or fails during its initial tests.

I have known about this in theory, of course, after studying marriage and family counseling two decades ago and now taking further counseling classes again. And I have had the privilege of observing couples who demonstrated such patience to one another.

But I have always felt a particular appreciation for a good man who will exhibit patience towards a woman he cares for. Such behavior is one of the most endearing human displays of Christlikeness that I can think of.

And, dare I say that I have often despaired when I looked around me and considered what a lack of such men I have seen out in the world. These days, it seems that a man either has to apologize for being a man, or that he has to be assertive, aggressive, or forceful to prove that true “men” really do still exist.

While I have worked and served and prayed, I have observed and waited. I have indeed known and thought these things in theory. But I despaired at some moments. Would my own patience and hoping pay off, in the realm of relationships? Would it be possible that such a good man could still exist, and that he would be interested in me romantically?

Enter one man named Paul, stage right. A man who has turned out to show me incredible patience, from nearly the first day I met him.

Yesterday, while we spent time enjoying each other’s company and swapping stories on a bench underneath a cobalt, cloudless sky, listening to rushing water and birdsong, I rested against his shoulder and prayed something like the following in a whisper: “Dear God, I wish every woman in the world could be loved like this. This is the kind of beautiful human love that is such a gift for a woman’s heart. Thank You.”

Before we met up for some quality time yesterday, I had recently sent Paul a link to a classic Billy Joel song (since Paul and I like to share fun and meaningful songs daily with each other). I told him that I have always loved the melody of the song, but now that I was listening to it again at a different stage in my life, there were some traits of the woman as described in the lyrics that I really did NOT want to possess or show–especially towards him.

Later, the idea took root in my mind. What if I could use the tune and rewrite the words to reflect my appreciation for Paul and his patience and gentleness and goodness shown to me? In a fit of inspiration, I did so.

And yesterday, near the end of our time spent together, I sang him the result.

I smile at the irony, how I started this month with a profile sketch of a man named Paul who wrote about love being patient. And I am ending the month with a profile of a man named Paul, as sketched in song lyrics, who has showed a very patient and growing love to me already. Below, I would like to share my new words with you, as well as recordings of both the original song and the melody alone.

As I share this piece of my heart along with a reflection of the man who has captured it, I hope the words will bless you.

Round the bend in my path, I looked up and I saw you

Felt a tug in my soul, a sweet longing to know you

All the hints of true goodness, they turned out to be

May I never forget what a blessing your trust is to me

Through the ups and the downs, you spoke truth I needed

Brought the tears to my eyes, held my heart in its bleeding

Then you prayed with conviction to set my pain free

May I never forget what a blessing your words are to me

Oh, you have shown such a light

You have laid down your pride

You have beckoned me near

Oh, you have stepped through each door

You have given me more

You have shattered my fears

You rejoice in my hopes and delight in my laughter

You wait out my storming and draw me close after

Through it all, we grow deep, like the roots of a tree

May I never forget what a blessing your heart to me

Oh, you have shown such a light

You have laid down your pride

You have beckoned me near

Oh, you have stepped through each door

You have given me more

You have shattered my fears

Take my hand, we’ll walk on until we reached the next bend

Turn the way that He leads and cherish every season

May His grace be our heartbeat, His presence our peace

With God as my help, may I never forget what a blessing your love is to me

As with some other virtues, trying to define patience can be a challenging thing. The definition of it, and the many angles from which it can be viewed or understood… The way it may be easier to define patience by noticing a lack of it rather then reveling in it and appreciating it at the moments when it surrounds and embraces us…

So often, I think of patience in a more positive to negative sense. That is, when I am expecting someone to become angry or frustrated with me, and they don’t show that anger or frustration, and they wait for me to say what I need to say or do what I need to do, that has so often been to me a sign of patience. And I think I have so often thought of my own patience as being reflected in those types of behaviors toward other people too.

But there is another side to patience, that I think has to do a lot more with endurance and perseverance and hope, especially in the long dark nights of life. Patience in that case is synonymous with persistence and resilience. It does not give up but literally suffers long.

Certainly, God is patient in that sense, but the difference with God is that in His all-knowing way, He sees the ending and what will come at the breaking point of the long dark night. We, however, in our limited finite sense and bindings of time, cannot see into the future. We do not know when the end of the battle and the long dark night will come. We can only hold on, wait, pray, and use every ounce of our faith to not give up in the long stretches and the struggles and the pain we may encounter along life’s way.

A great example of this that comes to mind from history today is the example shown by the early citizens of the United States. They fought for years, even decades, for their complete freedom, independence, and ability to really establish themselves in the land they dreamed of calling home on their own terms.

A survey of all they went through in hindsight shows us the points where they were closer to victory and other points where they were so near to defeat. But of course, in their time, they could not know exactly what was happening and what would happen next. They fought, stood, responded, and carried on, helping each other and believing in faith that if they would keep fighting and keep looking upward, in the end they would it gain something sweet.

As one who has benefited my whole life so greatly from the sacrifices they made and the patience and persistence they exhibited, I am grateful. And I think this teaches us that when we show such patience and persistence, reaching out for the dreams and the hopes that we have, we may benefit in our lifetime, but it may be the generations that come after us that benefit even more. And both of those things, in God’s all-knowing plan, are great blessings. In honor of those early revolutionaries and the patience and perseverance that they exhibited, I would like to share a “sentence” poem that I wrote just now.

We did not know

When the end would arrive,

But it was our

Dream

Of what the end might

Look like

That carried us through,

That gave us courage

And hope —

That gave us the patience

To lay the foundation

For a forged

An enduring

Home.

Sincerity, according to the dictionary I use when my ESL students, means that we show outwardly what we really think or feel inwardly.

By extension, many people may think of sincerity as being synonymous with transparency or even predictability. But is that always the case? In the life of one man, I would say both yes and no.

He was a young, brilliant intellectual with a quiet passion for truth. Over the course of his years living, studying, working, and thinking, he developed an ever increasing sense that the truest measure of abstract faith is found in visible obedience. “One act of obedience,” he wrote, “is worth a hundred sermons.”

No one who read his works or heard him preach could doubt his sincerity, that what he observed and taught fell one hundred percent in line with what he believed. And such sincerity would cost him increasingly more, test his faith even more fully, as the years went by.

Yet, as those years went by and his nation descended into further evil and chaos, the young man who had long held a pacifist’s stance began to secretly but actively try to overthrow his nation’s sovereign in a violent way. Were his feelings at that time fully transparent to the world? No. Fully predictable to the world? Absolutely not. But were they nonetheless sincere? I sincerely believe so.

For he would go to his death for his actions, but he would still preach what he knew to be true and show his Master’s love towards those around him in his prison to the very end.

His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he was executed at the age of 39. One cold spring morning at dawn, he was brought from his cell in a Nazi camp and led to a gallows to be hanged. It was April 9th, 75 years ago this past week. And it was just days after he had led his fellow prisoners in a worship celebration of his Master’s resurrection.

Protestants don’t canonize saints in the sense of the Catholic tradition. But if we started, I imagine this young man would be at the top of our collective list. And I find irony in that. Because he wanted always to mainly point others to the One he followed. As he once prayed, “May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”

And maybe that’s the most beautiful thing we see reflected in his life: that while it was not always completely transparent or predictable, no one could doubt the depth of its sincerity.

Sounds a lot like the earthly life of his Master.

In Bonhoeffer’s honor and to the praise of the One who was there to lead him home, I offer a short poem:

When I stare into the coral horizon

And breath the last breaths of these lungs,

I will drink deep with anticipation

The marvelous truth of the glories to come.

My neck will snap, my body swing.

But my soul will rise up to meet its King.

Then, robed in white, His praises I’ll sing.

Wiedergeboren. Ruhm.

Growing up with a mother who has always loved all things western, from cowboys and Native Americans to horses and guitar-picked ballads, I think it only fitting that I should write a post about justice and lawmen of the “Wild West” period.

I decided to do a flash jaunt of research and was fascinated by a list of archives I discovered at legendsofamerica.com. What I found most interesting about browsing the biographical blurbs there was how a number of those real-life sheriffs, deputies, rangers, and marshals lived a kind of double life — being both some sort of criminal and some sort of lawman.

That led me to think about how this concept of justice is ultimately an objective one…but that it can seem subjective, especially in self-regulating societies like the western frontier or in daily circumstances where we are right in the middle of things.

What is the difference? Essentially, it is simply in point of view. God, being high above, can see both or all sides much more equally than we can from a limited, horizontal plain.

In that light, and in honor of all the frontier-based lawmen who were really good, fair, and just, I have written the following poem to help us maintain such perspective.

After Ned Branson robbed the bank, I tracked

His mangy hide for two days. I lacked

Anything beyond my gun, coat, canteen,

And my faithful mare, Trinity.

Behind, in Silver City, I left Sally and little

Alice with my heart, and I whittled

Away the hours of riding with strokes

Of prayers for them, their best in my hope.

But I was well aware of what might be

And the violent confrontation awaiting me:

How it might not end well, how I could

Rot in this desert, fallen where I’d stood.

On the second day, I found Ned’s path

Led down, but there was a way to catch

Another view by shifting Trinity left

And climbing to a majestic cliff.

From there, I looked out just in time

To spy the tension, tuned so fine,

Between my prey and the Madder Gang,

Ned and Charlie now posed to draw and aim.

And from such heights, I could clearly see

Who drew first and whose shot streamed,

To strike a deadly mark, across the span

So that I blinked and saw Ned hit the sand.

I waited for the gang to ride away —

I would deal with them another day —

Before I descended to place Ned’s frame

In a dry and sandy shallow grave.

Then I found a stream with a patch of green

Where Trinity could feast and I could sleep

Before we turned homeward, alive and well,

To a house so love-filled, even if so small.

And on the way back, I mused aloud,

“My view from the level plain’s ground

Would not have been the same

As what I saw from high above that day.”

When I finally came to the edge of town,

Before I turned right, toward our house,

I paused to thank Almighty God

Who had, in mercy, brought me home.

And I thought of how His vast view

Is always higher, clearer, true.

I asked Him to help me always recall

How He’s the best lawman of all.