Urgency for Others
by Jared Johnson
“It’s time.”
My wife, Melinda, had been trying to get me out of bed for a good ½ hour, maybe 40 minutes. I struggle with early mornings, and it was “oh-five-hundred” – 5am. To be specific, I think it was 5:07 when my feet hit the floor. A few minutes later, she was downstairs and I was upstairs, when I heard her shout in a way I’d never heard before nor since.
To make a long and messy story short and sanitized, we now have a birth certificate claiming our fourth child was born at 5:27am that morning. I’m not exactly sure of the timing, but I do know a screenshot of my phone says I dialed 911 (“Um, little help, please?”), at 5:29, and I know for a fact that was just after we delivered him at home.
About 36 hours later, ready to leave the hospital.
I needed to feel a little more urgency that morning. God-bless-us, our delivery story for that little guy is an incredible story of blessing and goodness. But I still wish I’d been more urgently attentive to Melinda. We had no discussion about delivering any of our kids at home at any point, ever, in our relationship, but … there we were.
Of all e2’s words of months this year, urgency is hardest for me. Last month the word was rest and I have exactly zero trouble, uh, “resting.” I’m a bit past 40 now and either I’m getting old and soft (likely), or my personality is simply adjusting with my age; what gets my attention, what moves me emotionally now is quite different than what hit me when I was a teen, a newlywed, a young parent.
I needed to feel a little more urgency that morning. God-bless-us, our delivery story for that little guy is an incredible story of blessing and goodness. But I still wish I’d been more urgently attentive to Melinda. We had no discussion about delivering any of our kids at home at any point, ever, in our relationship, but … there we were.
Of all e2’s words of months this year, urgency is hardest for me. Last month the word was rest and I have exactly zero trouble, uh, “resting.” I’m a bit past 40 now and either I’m getting old and soft (likely), or my personality is simply adjusting with my age; what gets my attention, what moves me emotionally now is quite different than what hit me when I was a teen, a newlywed, a young parent.
When I asked the elders of my home church to ordain me, they required a sermon draft as part of the exam. During the exploratory part of that process, I began with Psalm 107 (ended up using a different text), but ever since that time of lingering in that text, it’s stuck itself in my thinking. There are four major sections to the Psalm that describe people in duress, people who faced dire circumstances.
Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless. Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died. (verses 4-5)
Some sat in darkness and deepest gloom, imprisoned in iron chains of misery. They rebelled against the words of God, scorning the words of the Most High. (vv. 10-11)
Some were fools; they rebelled and suffered for their sins. They couldn’t stand the thought of food, and they were knocking on death’s door. (vv. 17-18)
Some went off to sea in ships, plying the trade routes of the world. … Their ships were tossed to the heavens and plunged again to the depths; the sailors cringed in terror. They reeled and staggered like drunkards and were at their wits’ end. (vv. 23, 26-27)
The very next phrase, repeated four times, following each of the four desperate circumstances is this:
“God, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.
The Hebrew word that most translations render as “trouble” evidently carries an idea of “narrowness” or “tightness.”[1] One translation I have renders it “pressure” (John Goldingay, The First Testament, [print only]).
Reading in a well-kept Bible in a comfy chair about people sitting in deep darkness, do we make the connection that someone suffering depression or severe anxiety fits that description? How many of our neighbors – from fellow Americans to Uighurs on the other side of the globe – are suffering under the pressure of despondency, depression, desolation? “Iron chains of misery” probably describes the bleak emotional state of untold millions, whether or not they’re actively rebelling against and scorning God.
In our folly, do we suffer fallout and consequences of sin? I have!
Have external circumstances (in the text, sailing/wandering) beaten against us? Have we been so down that our appetites vanish? I know that feeling too.
Here’s the point of my rambling and the tie-in to urgency: do others’ desperate plights as illustrated in Psalm 107 get us? Do we feel compelled to intervene, to be the hands and feet of Jesus and participate in doing something to rescue people in distress?
Increasingly, for me, yes, I do feel that compulsion.
I want to see others’ discomfort alleviated. But as a young, brash and obnoxious teen and twenty-something, I cared very little about others’ predicaments. Now I have to work at guarding myself against a different kind of callousness: compassion fatigue.[2] In ministry roles, we should be able to sympathize and empathize with others, but at some point, our capacity is spent, the noise overwhelming. When that happens, we’ll lose any sense of urgency, tune others out and then check out altogether.
Jude verse 23 tells us to “Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives.”
My own read of the broadest strokes of church history tells me we have no trouble “exercising caution.” We “other” and dismiss people very easily.
But Jesus proactively sought out and engaged broken people – and their brokenness was often a direct result of the mess they had created in sin. But He still extended grace. He still showed mercy. He stepped straight into the stinking pile of filth and offered cleanliness, redemption. Sometimes they took Him up on His offer. Sometimes they didn’t. But their response wasn’t up to Him. It’s not up to me. I simply need to make the offer, extend the grace.
God gave us His Son; He now inhabits us by His Spirit. God the Father, Spirit and Son are community, the very essence and definition of relationship. Yet on the cross, Jesus wailed “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?!” It was the only moment in all of their eternal existence during which God, somehow, felt alienation among Himself.
God suffered incredible, indescribable distress for us, for our benefit, for our ransom and rescue. Can we follow His example, showing lavish mercy, snatching people away from “fire?” Whether it’s fire of judgment and hell or the temporary but intense heat of nasty circumstances here-and-now, how can we exercise painful generosity, as our Good Father did, giving ‘til it hurts, to help snatch people out of their distress? Some days, that’ll be for our own family. Some days, it’ll be a friend; some days, a coworker; sometimes, a complete stranger.
“God, help!” I cried out in my time of pressure. And He saved me from my distress.
[1] https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6862.htm
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/compassion-fatigue
