Being Bitten and Bearing Burdens (Friday Devotional)

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

 

- Galatians 6:2

 

At a church fellowship this past weekend, I took a bunch of the kids outside to run off some energy with a game of baseball. Before long, my son hit the ball into a line of bushes along the side of the building. So, dutifully, I got down on my hands and knees to retrieve the ball.

 

…and stuck my left hand directly in a fire ant pile.

 

As you might expect, it took all of 2 seconds for me to realize what I’d done. I frantically started swatting at the one hand with the other, trying to brush all the ants off as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, by the time I was all clear, I’d acquired 18 ant bites, most under my watch band and wedding ring. The damage is done—all that’s left to do now is periodically apply some hydrocortisone cream and wait for the itching to stop.

 

That experience got me thinking about the way problems typically crop up in life—problems far more severe than a few bug bites. When you are hit with a crisis, there is usually a moment of intensity—the appointment when the doctor tells you the cancer is spreading, the meeting when you find out you’ve been laid off, the day you are handed divorce papers. And when we think of hard times, we usually think of those intense moments, when your hand is wrist deep in the ant pile.

 

But in truth, life’s greatest trials last longer than those instances of peak intensity. As shocking as those singular moments are, they are inevitably followed by much longer periods of adjustment, treatment, and, hopefully, healing. After the funeral comes the grieving, after the break-up comes the loneliness, after the car accident comes the endless calls with insurance adjustors. Reminder after reminder of what you’ve experienced, a constant itching.

 

Pain in this world, sadly, is far from momentary—it ebbs and flows, but is never absent for long. So in the face of this sobering reality, it is incumbent upon God’s people to shoulder each other’s loads, to bear one another’s burdens. God called his children to come together as the church so that, as we await Christ’s return, we would not be overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world in the meantime. Your brothers and sisters in faith are here to lift you up when you struggle, even as you are called to do the same for them.

 

Trying to pursue faith as a solo endeavor is a fool’s errand, not to mention an act of disobedience. Your church family needs you, and you need them—not just when life is biting you, but to help you heal when you’ve been bitten. Life is too long and suffering too real to persevere alone—turn to those God has given you to help and to be helped.

The Spiritual Slide (Friday Devotional)

 

Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord.

- Romans 12:11

At my son’s weekly baseball practice, the coach always starts with the same drill, a “diamond run” around the bases. The drill ends, as you might imagine, with the players running back to home plate from third base—once you touch home, you’re done with the drill and you get to the back of the line.

Inevitably, Andrew always ends the drill the same way—while simply stepping on home plate would satisfy the coach, he insists on sliding every time. I always know 10 minutes into practice that his uniform will need to be washed, because he ends every diamond drill with a cloud of dust. His enthusiasm just can’t be contained.

Even as adults, there are times when we feel that same kind of excitement, such that we just can’t contain ourselves—go to a sports bar on a Sunday afternoon if you don’t believe me. Grown-ups can be enthusiastic too, and sometimes we set aside our polite restraint in the name of passion.

The Bible calls us to that same kind of enthusiasm about our faith. While culturally the church often aims for dignity and decorum, there ought to also be room for unfiltered joy. Jesus has given us salvation in him, the promise of eternal life, the hope of glory. You have reason to celebrate, reason to praise—so don’t muzzle yourself!

It’s fine to just step on home plate every now and then; the run still counts the same. But you should see the smiles all around when you slide.

Not My Job? (Friday Devotional)

 

But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.”

Luke 10:29-32

On August 8, 1982, the Boston Red Sox were playing an afternoon game at Fenway Park. Suddenly a foul ball screamed past the first base dugout and left fielder Jim Rice heard a sickening crunch. Looking around the corner of the dugout into the stands, Rice saw 4-year-old Jonathan Keane bleeding profusely from his head. Realizing that it would take several minutes for park EMTs to get to the scene, the ballplayer sprang into action. Rice leaped over the railing into the stands, cradled the young fan into his arms, and carried the boy into the dugout, where he received immediate attention from the team's medical staff.

Within just a few minutes, Jonathan was rushed to the hospital, where doctors credited Rice with saving the boy’s life. Jim Rice played the rest of the game in a blood-stained uniform, a reminder of the turn the day had taken. His job may have been to play left field for the Red Sox, but his calling that day was far higher.

When you see someone who needs help, it’s far too easy to default to the priest and the Levite’s position in the story of the Good Samaritan—to ignore the need. Whether because you’re in a rush to do something else, because you’re concerned about your own well-being, or simply because your heart is hardened in that moment to your neighbor’s need, the easiest thing in the world is to pass by. After all, it’s not your job to help.

But what Jesus reminds us—what Jim Rice displayed that day in 1982—is that sometimes your calling is more important than your job. Sometimes God puts you right in the path of someone in need, not so you can pass but so you can step in. Because sometimes the person best suited to help is not the one with all the education and training—sometimes it’s the person who’s right there.

Helping your neighbor may not be your job at any given moment. But according to Jesus, it’s always your calling.

August Reading Log

Y'all, I read The Power Broker this month, all 1,169 pages of it (that's of actual reading material; there's another 100+ pages of bibliography and index). 50 pages a day every day but Sundays, with only 3 days all month when I gave myself a break. All so I could have this log ready by Labor Day.

So yeah, it's a short log this go-'round, just three entries. But make no mistake, I did a LOT of reading last month. Take a look!

THE POWER BROKER by Robert Caro

During his presidency, Donald Trump popularized the idea of the "deep state," a cadre of unelected bureaucrats who do all the real governing and stymie any attempts by elected leaders to subvert their efforts. Some embraced the idea, others dismissed it as a conspiracy theory, still others believed the truth was probably somewhere in between.

In New York City, from 1927 to 1968, Robert Moses was the Deep State personified. Never once elected to office—not for lack of trying—Moses acquired and consolidated power through a host of appointed positions until he was the de facto czar of the city. Nothing was built in NYC for 4 decades without his approval, and the success of every mayor largely depended on their relationship with him. Ostensibly an urban planner and parks commissioner, Moses ruled the city with an iron fist.

The Power Broker is Robert Caro's now-legendary biography of Moses, an exhaustive account of the man's rise and fall and an explanation of why New York City is laid out the way it is. Told with both a writer's flair for the dramatic and a journalist's thirst for evidence, The Power Broker did more than anything to make the general public aware of Moses, forever shaping his legacy.

The verdict? In Caro's telling, Moses must be admired for his ability to Get Things Done, building at a rate unmatched before or since. But his methods, his narrow-minded vision (for example, he was so fixated on building highways that he essentially ruined the city's public transportation), and his disregard for the poor ultimately make him feel like a supervillain as you read The Power Broker. Year after year, Moses wielded incomparable power in the city, and year after year people suffered so that another bridge, another highway, and another park could go up.

Plowing through The Power Broker is a herculean feat for a reader—not only is it long, but in places it's pretty dense, especially for those (like me) who are not native New Yorkers. But admiration for Caro's airtight research typically overpowers any threat of boredom or overwhelm, and Caro has a gift for balancing the more tedious sections of the book with juicy conflicts, such as Moses' Dickensian relationship with his brother Paul. This book not only won Caro the Pulitzer Prize, it gave him the credibility to write his multivolume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, arguably the finest historical writing of the last 50 years. Any student of history owes it to themselves to read The Power Broker—it lives up to the hype.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY by Roald Dahl
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR by Roald Dahl

My big kids have officially hit the ages where we've moved from picture books to chapter books for bedtime reading. So this month, following a successful showing of 1971's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I decided to introduce them to the classic book it's based on. And then after they liked it, it was on to the sequel!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the whimsical story of a poor boy's tour through the most magical candy factory imaginable. When the factory's owner, the enigmatic Willie Wonka, issues invitations for a few lucky individuals to tour his heretofore secret abode, the destitute Charlie Bucket is one of the lucky winners. But when the tour begins, he sees that Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory is more than anyone bargained for, a "world of pure imagination," as the movie puts it—and, for children with hearts less pure than his, danger.

If you've seen the original film (the less said about the 2005 Johnny Depp version, the better), you've got a good idea of the story beats; the movie's a pretty faithful adaptation. Like all Roald Dahl books, this one is brimming with imagination, along with just a hint of menace. It's a classic for a reason.

I wish I could say the same of the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, an ill-conceived, tedious story that only occasionally hints at the magic of its predecessor. Picking up right where the previous book left off, it hurtles Charlie, Wonka, and the entire Bucket family into space aboard Wonka's magical glass elevator, where they encounter everything from aliens to a a giant space hotel to the President of the United States (via telephone). Where the first book is silly in a charming way, this one is just kind of dumb, aiming for laughs and usually falling short. Things get better when they finally return to the chocolate factory for a few chapters of aging and de-aging the grandparents with Wonka-Vite and Vita-Wonk, but by that point I was mostly just counting down to the end.

While one of these books was much better than the other, both proved that Roald Dahl remains a read-aloud favorite for good reason. The kids were begging for "more Charlie" every night, and that did their reader dad's heart good!

EAST OF WEST VOL. 1-10 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

While I read most of this series back in 2017, it hadn't reached its conclusion yet at that point, and I'd always wondered how Hickman and Dragotta managed to tie up the loose ends in those last dozen issues. So, at a rate of 2 issues per day, I spent most of the month in the dystopian world of the Chosen, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the dystopian sci-fi Western version of America they inhabit.

Here comes the summary, and buckle up— as usual for a Jonathan Hickman project, it's a lot. The world we are given is one in which the United States is divided into 6 dueling nations: the Union, the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, the PRA (a Maoist nation of Chinese exiles), the Endless Nation (Native Americans), and the Kingdom of New Orleans. Each of these nations has a representative who believes in the Message, an apocryphal text building upon the Book of Revelation that prophesies how the end of the world will come. The Chosen serve the Horsemen of the Apocalypse...or at least three of them. The problem is that Death, one of those Horsemen, long ago married and had a child with one of the Chosen and is now at odds with the followers of the Message, including his fellow Horsemen. He and his son, the Beast of the Apocalypse, now seek to avert the end of the world that everyone else is seeking to bring about.

If that was a lot to take in, know that it was equally hard to summarize. But here's what matters: East of West mixes the aesthetic of a spaghetti western with sci-fi, adds in some Game of Thrones-style palace intrigue, and tosses in biblical prophecy for a ride as thrilling as it is complex. The cast of characters is large and compelling, the twists are unexpected and exciting, and the dynamic art is a perfect match for the story.

East of West is the kind of story independent comics ought to be telling, one so visual that it wouldn't work in prose but so driven by words that it would lose something onscreen. If you miss watching Game of Thrones, this would make a great replacement.

SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW by Tom King and Bilquis Evely

When a young girl's father is murdered, she vows revenge on the killer and dedicates her life to that pursuit. When Kara Zor-El's dog Krypto is kidnapped by that same murderer, she joins the girl in her quest. And as the two make their way across the universe together, they both learn a little something about trauma, purpose, and hope.

Longtime readers of this log will not be surprised to hear that I liked a Tom King series; in my opinion he's the best writer in comics today (and when he's on his A game, I don't think it's particularly close.) But this story is notable for the way King moves away from certain devices that, by his own admission, had started to become crutches—there are no 9-panel grids here, no art by Mitch Gerards, no confessionals to camera. Indeed, at a surface level this is a pretty straightforward action-adventure story, a simple revenge quest.

But beneath the surface, King is doing some of the best character work of his career, sharing a story that effectively differentiates Kara from her famous cousin, showing her to be a tougher, more traumatized, less pristine hero than Kal without diminishing her in any way. With young Ruthye as the tale's narrator, the reader is kept at a remove from Kara, meaning we pick up on these things through story rather than inner monologue. And Ruthye herself evolves as the story progresses, with Supergirl's heroic influence building on her issue by issue.

As great as King is, a word must also be said about Bilquis Evely's art, which is gorgeous throughout. Vaguely recalling the kind of fantasy artwork you might see in a Tor paperback, it's intricate, colorful, and dynamic, ensuring that the story always comes first, with the character work happening under the surface. I look forward to seeing what Evely will work on next; she's got to be in high demand after the success of this series.

By the end of the book, this was probably my second favorite Tom King series ever (Mister Miracle, my favorite miniseries of all time, has a lock on #1). Word is that DC Studios is looking to adapt this into a feature film, and I can see why. Highly recommended.