About Ephraim's Return
Welcome to my blog! I’m not sure how you landed here but I’m glad you did! If you’re a follower of Jesus (or if you’re not, but you’re curious about what it means to be a Christian) I hope you’ll journey along with me in this blog!
When we talk about “following Jesus” and “blogging” in the same breath, we are immediately faced with two difficulties: 1) How can we follow Jesus 2,000 years after He lived and died? 2) How can participation in a blog help us to follow Jesus? Let’s tackle these two questions in order:
First, how can we follow Jesus 2,000 years after he lived and died? If we had been alive back in the days when Jesus walked the earth and if we had lived anywhere near where Jesus lived, when Jesus came to our door and said “follow me” we could have strapped on a pair of sandals and followed him down the street. That’s how the early disciples followed Jesus. They went where he went and did what he did, and all the while they were learning his ways and becoming more like him in lifestyle and character. How can we do that now? On the night before he died, Jesus anticipated our question and answered it:
But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you…. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.[i]
We have the Holy Spirit to guide us as we follow Jesus. We also have the Bible and the Church, but these are all subjects for later posts. For now, suffice it to say that God has made provision for us to be able to follow Jesus even though we are separated by 2,000 years of history.
Second, how can participation in a blog help us to follow Jesus? Blogs exist to encourage dialogue, but over the last fifteen or so years we have blogged and dialogued over issues of the faith ad nauseam. We seem to be addicted to dialogue. The proliferation and popularity of faith-oriented blogs over the past decade and a half suggests that we may be far more interested in asking questions than in answering them in ways that help us in our quest to become more authentic Christians. Has all of our blogging and dialoging helped us to better follow Jesus? There is also the consideration that, as far as the Christian worldview is concerned, truth is not determined by democratic vote. Truth comes to us by revelation; we do not create it through dialogue. We discover the truth by surrendering our own perspective and by asking God to give us His perspective. Can a blog be helpful in doing that, or is a “Christian blog” a contradiction of terms?
Henri Nouwen touches on some of these issues in his book, The Way of the Heart.[ii] Nouwen helps us to see that in our society we are constantly being bombarded by words. As a result, words no longer have creative power. They no longer communicate. Nouwen uses the example of theological seminaries, which should first and foremost teach us to love God and to be conformed to the image of Christ. The problem is that in our theological studies we are plunged into a world of theories and discussions, and the essence of loving God and being conformed to the image of Christ very easily becomes lost in a sea of theological jargon.
Our dilemma may be likened to the experience of entering a room where everyone is talking at the same time but no one hears what anyone else is saying. When all of our words are morphed into white noise, all we have left is “politics”. This is especially problematic when our words concern God and the Christian life. We are drowning in too many words, addicted to our own opinions, distracted by our theories, compromised by our “schools of thought”, and in denial of the fact that, truth be told, much of what we say is not worth saying. We have created a culture of religious white noise, and we think that we are speaking meaningfully about God when nothing of substance is being communicated. We say that we “love Jesus” but we have no real understanding of the implications of His love for us, either as individual Christians or as the Church. We need to call a truce. We need a breath of fresh air. Without sacrificing critical thinking or intellectual pursuit, we need to reconnect with God and to learn to hear “the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”[iii]
This blog is an invitation to journey together as we seek to center our minds and hearts on God Himself, so that what we become is more important than what we say or how we say it. As long as we are willing to submit our thoughts and opinions to the scrutiny of God’s Word, this blog can be a worthy endeavor. We’ll live in the creative tension of thinking through the issues, but doing so in a Spirit-led and Bible-based and Church-honoring and Christ-magnifying and God-worshipping way so that we learn to surrender our own opinions and perspectives in order to humbly embrace God’s perspective. We’ll learn from those who have gone this way before: Henri Nouwen, A. W. Tozer and others of kindred spirit who can mentor us through their writings. In the process of becoming more we may find that we are speaking less, but our fewer words will carry greater weight as we come to know our God in deeper ways.
Why the title “Ephraim’s Return”? The title is inspired by a verse from the prophet Jeremiah:
“Is Ephraim My dear son?
Is he a delightful child?
Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him,
I certainly still remember him;
Therefore My heart yearns for him;
I will surely have mercy on him,” declares the LORD.[iv]
Ephraim was a half-tribe of the people of Israel, but in this context God addresses the people as though they were an individual, specifically, a wayward son who comes to repentance. Recognizing his own sin, in his grief Ephraim cries out to God to “bring me back that I may be restored”, and receives the joyful revelation that God still remembers him, yearns for him, and has mercy on him.
May everything we discuss in this blog be grounded in a deep awareness of our constant need of and gratefulness for the mercy of God, knowing that God is constantly calling his daughters and sons to return to Him in repentance and faith so that we might know Him more fully and love Him more deeply.
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[i] John 16:7, 13
[ii] Nouwen, Henri J. M. (1981). The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence. New York, NY: Ballantine Books (see the unnumbered chapter “Our Wordy World” on pages 37-40).
[iii] Genesis 3:8
[iv] Jeremiah 31:20
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.