Hi all,
We are having some real-no-really winter here in North Carolina this week, with some days that do not climb out of the 30s. I realize that many of you are colder than that. I’m just glad to have an excuse to teach my children about ice scrapers, and how they are superior to credit cards as ice-removal devices.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: In Praise of the Raggedy Beginning
On my desk sits a large postcard image of a desk facing a window. The ink blotter is neatly kept; the books are stacked along the back edge of the desk; the chair sits perfectly poised, awaiting the writer’s next session. Outside the individual panes of the window is a garden, where sunshine reveals a well-kept yard, verdant in full summer bloom.
This picture is of CS Lewis’ desk at his former home, The Kilns, in Oxford.
Though I adore it, and I look at it every day, this picture is a bit of an untruth.
According to most accounts, visitors to the Kilns in Lewis’ day would have found his desk strewn with open books and papers. The chair was probably left askew; the ink blotter would have been dotted and scarred. Dust covered the shelves. Lewis and his brother, Warnie, were both smokers, and they used to tap their ashes into the carpet, ostensibly “to keep the moths away.”
Yet out of these distraught conditions came the land of Narnia—yea, even that Narnia that played host to the fastidious housekeeper Mrs. Beaver. The scattered manuscripts on the messy desk gave us Aslan, Lucy, Puddleglum, and the noble Reepicheep.
Last month my husband and I saw a beautiful concert at the Ryman Auditorium, “The Mother Church of Country Music.” It was once the home to The Grand Ole Opry. Some say it is their favorite room in which to attend a concert; the tightness of the audience’s position in their wooden pews (it was a church once) coupled with the unique design of the far-reaching balcony make for an intimate, balanced sound. It’s warm and friendly; the room sings, too.
We’ve seen Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God show probably close to twenty times. I’ve lost count. It is a fine-tuned machine now that they are twenty-five years in. The lights dim and brighten at the right time. The background singers never miss; the slides that form the backdrop are stunning. When I sit down to this show, I feel as though I am sitting in the passenger’s seat of a finely tuned automobile. I expect that things will be beautiful and perfectly timed.
That’s not to say that I’m not moved every time I see it. It is never stale. I am always caught up again in the story of the Nativity, from Moses through to the birth of Jesus. It’s wonderful.
However, there was a time when I would sit down to this show and not have quite the relieved feeling of anticipation that I do now. There were years that Andrew’s voice would be nearly gone—Charlotte was always on the tail end of the tour in those years, and Andrew sang more of the songs then. There was a good amount of coming and going in the guest artist spots because people had babies or needed to be home for some other reason. For a while, there was annual turnover in the “Deliver Us” slot, meaning that the position earned the nickname “The Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher” slot.
So there was a gritty glory to it, that this little merry band of musicians just gutted this thing out year after year. It was a bit less slick then, but it was just as beautiful; perhaps it was more so in some ways. It was a slightly more raggedy, wonderful time.
I recently read the end of Zechariah, where the prophet sees the rebuilding of the temple. It seems hard to imagine—what an unattainable goal, wrought by mere human hands after so much human destruction. Generations have failed time after time, yet here we are told that the construction will be completed.
And here’s the verse (4:10) that makes me get a lump in my throat every time:
For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. (ESV)
In the NIV: “Who dares despise the day of small things…?”
In the NLT: “Do not despise these small beginnings….”
The beginning of this work is tiny, but it is a beginning. Within the scope of God’s mighty history and sovereignty, it is a powerful thing to just begin. Here we also see that it is a usual human reaction to “despise” the small beginnings. Isn’t it perfectly human to want to rush on—to get to the good part—to finish gloriously?
Not many of us are building a temple, and none of us are promised success in the same way that the prophet sees here. However, the Lord looks upon the fledgling first efforts—these are not hidden from him. Faithfulness in the small start is faithfulness nonetheless, and we ought to regard it as such. Moreover, the Lord himself is building a temple in us1, and the struggling beginnings are a part of that effort. He looks on these beginnings with kindness and favor, because he can see the end.
To a God who is timeless, there is no rush to become excellent right away. There is a process and a season for the raggedy beginning, the eager, messy middle, and the polished end. Sometimes there are even seasons of bailing out halfway through and starting over.
Here’s to the small start, the tiny step of faithfulness, the minuscule decision to move, the raggedy beginning. Let us not despise it.
For the Anglophiles
“Poetry is everywhere and it’s fine for you to love it.”
Reads & Listens of the Week
This Russell Moore Q&A has a little bit of everything: Aliens, Demon Possession, and the Afterlife, for example.
Courtney Reissig on the season to let something burn: “Buildings and institutions fall because we live in a broken world.”
I enjoyed this interview with Drew Holcomb on How Leaders Lead. He talks a lot about his dad and grandfather and their influence on him as he grew up.
If you’d like to know how a romantic evening ended up with a flaming squirrel setting a couch on fire, listen to this re-aired episode of This American Life: Fiasco!
I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two. -Charles Spurgeon
Eph 2:22
I have no proof of this, but I hope the title of “Small Things Like These” is a reference to that verse.
Was very encouraged to read about rebuilding and small beginnings after our parents lost their long-time home in the LA wildfires last week. Thank you!
But reading the two links at the bottom about “letting things burn” and about a squirrel setting a couch on fire was really hard after experiencing the intense destruction of the wildfires. I know that wasn’t intended but wanted to share that the topic of fire may be difficult for some at this time.