Extraordinarily Ordinary | Janie B. Cheaney

March 9, 2022March 9, 2022

His Story–and Ours

The story takes place during the last week of Jesus’s earthly ministry, as he was on his way to the cross. There are versions of it in all the gospels; this one is from Mark 14:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth: wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

In Luke, a “woman who was a sinner” approaches Jesus with the rare perfume; some scholars associate her with Mary Magdalene. John identifies her as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, so that could be who Mark is talking about. But he doesn’t name her, and maybe that’s for a reason.

She could be any woman, smitten with the goodness and holiness and beauty of this man who is like no other man. She does what she can, bringing her most precious possession to pour out on him. We don’t know why. He says she’s preparing his body for burial, but she probably didn’t intend that . . .

Or did she? He’s been telling his 12 disciples what’s going to happen, and they don’t get it. They’ve been very dense about accepting it. Maybe the women, who are also disciples, have a little more perception?

Anyway, whatever its motivation, the act has its own merit. It’s about Jesus, but listen to what he says: It’s about her, too. Her broken jar is precious to him. What others see as wasteful, he sees as beautiful.

The woman has no name, but she has a story, and both her name and her story are known by him. Both her name and her story are united with his. He invited, she responded.

And so he invites all of us nameless women: “Join your story to my story.” It’s the only story that will stand the test of time—in fact, it’s timeless, because it will not end in death. It will be told eternally, because he will tell it.

If you believe him, he’s telling your story now. If you trust him, it’s going to be beautiful.

Don’t be afraid.

September 4, 2021September 4, 2021

So, How Did It Go?

Not too bad!

That’s corn, pole beans, and corn on the left, sunflowers on the right, basil and melons in the foreground.

Big fails were tomatoes, 1/3 of which succumbed to blight (I’m never getting that variety again). The Romas and Lemon Boys did all right, and I was able to get about 14 pints’ worth of spaghetti sauce out of them, but they got pretty sad-looking by August. They’re beginning to green up again, but we’ll see if there’s enough season left for them to produce.

I got my strawberries too late (I’m never ordering from Burgess again); out of twenty plants, only three survived. They’re now spawning baby plants, so maybe I can get a row out of them for next season. All the blackberry plants died (same company–boo!). But the asparagus looks okay. Except for basil, the herbs were hit-and-miss: some parsley, chives, and cilantro, no dill or oregano. I was really looking forward to the fresh dill, too. All that stuff needs to be planted nearer the house, anyway.

Moderate success with the corn. The first row was probably planted too soon during a very rainy spring, and always looked puny. The second row went in three weeks later and did much better, though not many of the ears filled out well. Still, I got about 2 dozen substantial enough to eat, and good eating, too.

The pole beans (Blue Lake) came in with a rush: 4 lbs. in 3 days, amounting to 7 pints canned. There’s more okra than I do what to do with, which is usually the case, as I understand. But the big success: melons! I wasn’t too hopeful, as I’ve never had much success with them–never really tried, honestly. I set aside one raised bed for cantaloupe and stuck a few watermelon seeds in a vacant space. Somebody gave them to me, so why not?

The cantaloupe did great! I got at least two dozen, including this beauty:

Not all of them were uniformly sweet, but most were at least passable. It was a joy to watch them turn yellow and sunny and tumble happily off the vine.

And much to my surprise, six little watermelons made their appearance. I cut two of them too soon, while the flesh was still white–watermelons are notoriously coy about letting you know when they’re ready. But then, there was this little guy:

Overall, the successes more than balanced out the failures. We got too much rain at the beginning, but mostly adequate rainfall thereafter. I only had to water for two weeks or so. Lots of work: my one hour in the morning often stretched to 90 minutes, and my back is still sore. Definitely put more money in than I got out, but that’s not the point. Nobody I know, besides farmers, plants a garden to save money on food. There are other rewards, which I tried to express in my spring post. My views still stand, but I’ve learned a few things:

What I’ve Learned:

Corn has to be fertilized throughout the season. I knew that, but it just got away from me.
Tomatoes need a lot of prep and careful watching. But they can be worth it.
Don’t mess with bush beans after June. The beetles always get ’em in July. Plant pole beans early in June and by the time the bushes are done the poles are getting their mojo.
I worried about critters (the furry kind, not the six-legged kind) getting into the melons and corn, but several websites recommended blood meal as a possible deterrent, and it seemed to work.
Another thing that probably worked: I got a free packet of “vine peach” seed and poked them into an open space. Because why not? Vine peach is a small lemon-colored melon, about the size of a mango, and they don’t taste like much. One of those okay-if-you-re-starving kind of plants. The vines took up lots of room and I was ready to pull them up when I read that some gardeners use them as a decoy plant to distract four-legged foragers from the melons you want to harvest. And so far, it seems to work! I’ve found several hollowed-out vine peaches while my cantaloupe and watermelon are left alone to do their own thing.
Plant the okra all at once, not staggered, and one row is plenty.
But I might try this next year: two rows of okra with bush beans in between. In mid-July, pull up the bush beans. In mid-August, plant lettuce where the beans were. The okra might provide enough shade for the lettuce to get a start, and when it gets too cool for okra, the lettuce will be happy to keep growing.
Try to keep ahead of the bugs, instead of cleaning up after them. I say that every year.

The work isn’t done. I need to tighten up the fence and bring in some topsoil to fill in the low spots and haul a scoop or two of horse manure to season over the winter and maybe turn the mulch over . . . but you notice the references to “next year”? Next year could be a total bust–you never know. Gardening is not something you can predict, but neither can you lay back and coast.

April 28, 2021April 30, 2021

Come into the Garden

I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with gardening: on in April, off in August. I suspect this is common; everybody gets excited about a clean patch of black, soft soil, and ecstatic when the first bean plants poke their brave little necks into the sunlight. For the first few weeks I run out to see how much has sprouted, how much has blossomed, how much has—oh joy!—matured into edibility.

Each plant has its own personality. I don’t like peas that much, but plant them anyway because I love how they twine their little tendrils around the wires, like a baby instinctively closing a fist around a finger. And the way pole beans blindly seek something to climb on—you can see them feeling the air, reaching, joyfully wrapping (or collapsing if you don’t get around to putting up that fence. Cornstalks don’t need no support from you—they provide their own, thank you very much.

Then comes July.

The soft ground is baked to slate gray, leaves are drooping and changing color, and bugs are gleefully sharing the produce. Squash bugs don’t even share—they destroy. The first time I saw a full-size tomato worm I almost screamed. (The first hint of tomato worms is that the top branches of the plant are stripped. Color that was on the plant is now inside the worm, which why you can’t see them until—suddenly!—you can.)

Summertime is travel time, too, so the weeds took advantage of my absence to come out and play. By the time I get back, they’ve established themselves as master. It’s too much to keep up with! The garden seems to reflect my discouragement in every drying leaf and misshapen bean: we give up. Just put us out of our misery.

But I’m not giving up. This year will be different. Two main reasons, which I hope will provide the formula for a successful garden:

p/p + m_{2 =}S (i.e., success)

P is for preparation divided by pickup. In all the years we’ve lived here, we haven’t owned a truck. Who needed a truck, with a trusty station wagon and a rusty trailer? The station wagon is long gone and the trailer is a pain to hook up and haul around. So this year, this pickup:

Which makes hauling manure and compost a snap. (Unloading it is not so snappy, but getting it someplace to unload was the real challenge, now solved.)

M is for maintenance x maintenance. Once we’re all planted, one hour/day should keep the weeds down and the produce up. Maybe some extra watering at sundown, if needed. Bugs are a given, but if I ride herd on them maybe they won’t ride herd on me. No travel plans either, so no big gaps in the maintenance continuum.

Wishful thinking? Well, we’ll see.

If the main point was food for the table, no cost/benefit analysis would stand for it in these days of plenty. Gardening is about exercising dominion over creation, as humans were created to do. I suspect that’s why it strikes a chord in so many hearts—at least the hearts of those who don’t have to do it. (Subsistence farmers may just as often have their hearts broken.) It’s a skill and an art and takes a bit of time and experience to learn. I hope I’ve put in enough time and experience by now because I don’t have much left of either.

This summer, I hope to walk into the garden in the cool of the morning, with a touch of the same wonder felt by the first gardeners. Their experience went awry, giving us thorns and weeds and earning our bread by the sweat of our brow. But a new day was on the way:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.
G.K. Chesterton

Gardening is an act of faith. There’s always another dawn, another spring, another Easter—until there isn’t. When all those things cease, we’ve reached our goal and can happily lay down our trowels and rakes. Unless there’s gardening in heaven, too. I wouldn’t be surprised.

November 17, 2020November 17, 2020

Taste and See

I knew it was a lost cause, but late last month I did it anyway: bought a pound of peaches.

October peaches are not peaches, though they may look and feel and even smell fleetingly of the real thing. The rubbery texture is all wrong, for one thing: real peaches are tender with that least little bit of resistance before giving way under your teeth. The juiciness of a late-October imitation is stingy rather than generous, and as for the taste . . . an echo, maybe. Better than “peach flavored” teabags or candy, but nothing like an actual, tree-ripe, farmers-market peach, pouring out authenticity from the first touch to the last slurpy bite.

The same for raspberries, blueberries, cherries, honeydew and almost any other summertime fruit. Less true for apples and pears, but still. That tang, that bite, that complexity in flavor is impossible to duplicate artificially. For lack of a better term, I call it wildness.

The fruit itself isn’t wild—that’s important. The original peach, outside the original Garden, was probably leathery and more sour than sweet. But the potential was tucked within its wrinkly pit, and it was up to countless husbandmen, creative image-bearers, to graft and plant and variegate the fruit that we know today. There may be many varieties, cling and freestone, but they all share the same essence that belongs to that particular fruit and no other. I’ll bet Mesopotamian gardeners and English orchardmen experienced something of the same joy I feel when biting into the first real peach of summer.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Ps. 34:8)

A peach, a watermelon, a zucchini, a sweet potato are all good in their own way. There are many, many ways that the Lord is good. He is good as Creator of all the people around our Thanksgiving table, and all the bounty on that table. He is good as the granter of all my senses. He is good in the sweet, and perhaps especially in the sour. He is good in all the ways he’s unlike me. He is good in pleasure (when we often forget him) and even good in pain (where we can’t help but cry out to him). He is good in ease, and even better in difficulty. He is good in the familiar and the unexpected. He is good in sunlight and starlight, clouds and rain. He is good in too little and too much. Not a tame lion, not a loyal servant; not a vendor or a salesman; not predictable, not domesticated, not safe—

But good, in ways we don’t even know yet.

We can’t always feel that goodness, but sometimes we can taste it, even in something as common, and yet as extraordinary, as a peach.

September 18, 2020September 18, 2020

Keeping Watch . . . for What?

Jesus said it many times: Watch out! Or simply, Watch! A watchman scans the horizon for enemy attack. In dangerous situations it’s his responsibility to listen for any alien sound and notice any untoward movement so he can alert the city. A watchman is the first line of defense. Someone has to stay awake at the firehouse. Someone has to be on alert at the bank or the political rally. That someone, in ordinary life, is every Christian.

What are we to watch for? First, threats like “your adversary the devil, seeking someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8). Also, those who cause divisions (Romans 16:17), who undermine sound teaching (I Tim. 4:6), who stir up trouble (Gal. 5:15). And finally, we are to watch ourselves, that we do not become careless and neglectful—even to losing what we worked for (II John 8). The world, the flesh, and the devil are all opposed to us. We forget that. We try to be friends with the world while picking fights in the church and making peace with ourselves. We sleep on the job, only to wake up with a start as Jesus stands over us, sadly shaking his head. “Could you not watch with me for one hour?”

One hour? How about a lifetime? From the moment we’re born again to the moment our story on earth ends, we’re supposed to be on our guard for the enemies who would pull us down. That kind of alertness is defensive.

But there’s another kind of watchfulness: the kind that actively looks for him to show up. He’ll be coming in the clouds for everybody to see some day, but I think there’s might be another kind of Second Coming as well—not only a one-time event but an ongoing phenomenon. He was there, in the person of the Holy Spirit, when I believed. He meets with me in prayer. He ministers to me through the good works of the church, and ministers to others through me. He is always coming: Abide in me, as I abide in you.

Be on your guard against false teaching, the leaven of the Pharisees, the destructive aims of the devil, the inclinations of my own heart to sloth and neglect. Be the alert sentry, ready to sound the alarm while patrolling the wall of your soul or scouting enemy territory.

But also, be the faithful servant, tending the grate and freshening the flowers in anticipation of the master’s arrival. Watch for Jesus to show up in the hour-by-hour. If I’m looking for him, he will.

July 17, 2020July 17, 2020

The Time that Got Away

A little click, a little swipe, a little scrolling and skimming down your Instagram feed,

and lost hours will stalk you like the undead; spent minutes like ghosts. (From Proverbs6:10-11)

Where does the time go? Is there some place where hours and days and weeks pile up to exchange for some other value, or do they just disappear like raindrops on a hot pavement? Do I make time, or does time make me? Both, really: I dispose the hours but at the same time they are units to be filled in the blocks that build personality and character. The question is, filled with what?

For the last five years I’ve used a Passion Planner^TM to map the short- and long-ranges ahead of me. Passion Planner is big on motivation and goal-setting, with space for evaluating each month, strategizing for the year and setting markers for where you want to be in January 2021. Every month includes two pages for reflection on what you learned, what you’re grateful for, etc. (these pages get nothing from me). Each week has a “Focus,” a place to list positive things that happened, an inspirational quote, to-do lists for Personal and Work goals, and a “Space of Infinite Possibility”—a blank span of white, index-card size, for whatever you want. Infinite possibility! Usually blank, in my planner, because I’m just trying to get through the week. The columns marking off days and hours and half-hours get filled up. I also use the back pages, of which there are many, for lists, budgets, and ongoing projects.

So the planner is like a back-up hard drive for details I need to keep track of. And passing minutes are like software, always running, always claiming my attention, always falling into patterns. Patterns become habits that can so easily sink into vast swathes of “wasted” time—hours that can’t be recalled or remembered but somehow, like the daily calories I consume, build my character for better or worse.

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil

(Eph. 5:14-16).

Look carefully. What did I purchase with spent minutes? How can I spend them more wisely this week, or next hour? Maybe the Passion Planner, for all its motivational claptrap, is right to prompt me to spend some time in reflection each month, “looking carefully” over the time recently traveled, considering where I went and how I got there. Isn’t that part of wisdom? Most of us, I suspect, are sitting on a mountain of wasted time. The good news is we all have unused time ahead, though no one can say how much. The days are evil, but if Christ is shining, there’s enough light in each hour make good use.

April 23, 2020April 23, 2020

The Potential in the Pause

Looking out over the landscape, I see plans derailed like a massive train wreck, cars spilled in all directions. Some are huge: entire industries, like airlines and hotel chains. Others are smaller, but no less huge in their way: the senior trip, the anniversary cruise, the promotion, the book contract. The wholesale wreckage of plans leaves us stunned and confused, disappointed and devastated.

I had my own little plan, and now I’m as confused as anybody. Here’s how it started: twenty-one years ago we moved to five acres in the country because my husband was worried about Y2K (remember that?). I was less worried than he, but we found this place for cheap and bit off a renovation project that was a lot more than we could chew. Once the house was livable, we stayed and stayed.

After a few years, I decided I didn’t like this place. It has its charms, but nothing was very close, the only kind of internet connection we could get was dial-up, and after driving almost an hour to church (one way) once or twice a week, I was fed up. My husband felt differently, and let’s just say we had our disagreements.

Fast-forward about nineteen years, to 2018. We’re getting older—in fact, most people would call us old. My husband has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which accords with my growing suspicions, and though it takes a while to convince him—and he’s not always convinced—he’s coming around to my conviction that we need to move. Five acres will soon be too much for us to keep up, and we need to be closer to services, doctors, and help from the church.

Fast-forward to 2019. I have a plan. This year I’m going to start clearing out the clutter, selling a few collectibles, lining up carpenters and plumbers to make some minor repairs and enhancements. During the first quarter of 2020 I’ll be repainting, window-washing, and carpet-cleaning so we can stick a For Sale sign in the front yard by May 1.

Jump to February 2020. Problems have come up: the antiquated septic system will need a major overhaul, and that’s never good news. Also, the real estate agent has done a price comparison, and the likely selling price is way off what I expected. I’ll have to do some re-figuring and scale back expectations for what we might be able to buy.

Then comes March: real estate grinds to a standstill and so does everything else.

I used to lie awake at night, or wake up with a sense of dread that I’m stuck here forever. So this is like a nightmare come true, except—

It turns out to be not such a nightmare.

This property is beautiful in the spring. My carpentry plans are on hold, but I rearranged some furniture and my office and bedroom feels almost like a new house. We’ve been doing more together, like clearing brush and cutting the grass. In the evenings we read to each other. We’ve been getting more exercise, enjoying the peppy bird songs and hopeful spring peepers near the pond. I put out some flowers last week. I find myself thinking, if we’re still here another year or two . . .

It will be okay.

I’ve heard that people are getting too comfortable with quarantine; that it’s going to be hard to hop back on the overscheduled merry-go-round. The longer we’re stalled, the slower recovery will be, so the merry-go-round is likely to crawl before it spins. We’ll have to adjust to new speeds for everything, including the real estate market. But for now, for me, it was good to slow down and watch the slow golden sunset over our Kelly-green property line. The time will come to move, and all the old problems will still be there, and we’ll have to deal with them, and it won’t be fun.

But I am not stuck. I am paused, like the peasant girl in Breton’s Song of the Lark (my cover picture). In music, the pauses matter as much as the notes; potential hovers within, like the Spirit of the Lord hovering over the waters (Gen. 1:2).

Besides, on the other side of all this might be someone who’s looking for a quiet place in the country.

April 1, 2020April 1, 2020

The Difference a “D” Makes

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.
Luke 13:10-13

I woke up burdened before I had to wake up. I am burdened by literal stuff—a house to sell, some valuable possessions that may not be worth much anymore, a husband in declining health–and also much self-recrimination (“Why didn’t you move faster on all this?”). I woke up sullen as a rock, impenetrable as clay. I opened my Bible to Luke 13, the reading for today, asking God to speak through the words heard and read so many times before. And here’s what he said:

Woman, you are freed from your burden.

It echoed in my head: not free, the more common usage of the idea behind the word, but freed.

Suppose the word was indeed free, as in, You are free. That’s an adjective, modifying me. It would suggest that I am already in a state of freedom, only my mental hangups keep me from experiencing the sensation of running through sunlit fields (in slo-mo) surrounded by butterflies and rose petals. What’s you problem, girl? Don’t you know all that dead weight you’re carrying is crap that the world (along with relatives, dependents, friends, bosses, etc.) loaded on you? Sweep out all that junk and be who you are—free!

But Jesus didn’t say that. “You are freed,” he said (“set free” in the NIV). Freed is a past participle, indicating action. And not my action. Someone else had to do something to bring it about. This bent woman, that blind man, this dead girl, that demon-possessed boy were all bearing, not just disability, but the widespread consequences of sin. “Satan has kept her bound,” said One who ought to know. And all were freed.

But what happened to their disabilities, their burdens? If “freed” is a verb form rather than an adjective, they had to go somewhere.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when this incident happened. And he was taking all the burdens there.

No one he healed was free from the normal stresses of life or the certainty of death. But all could be freed from the burden of carrying an ever-increasing weight all the way to the grave.

As for me, nothing in my circumstances changed between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m. And yet, I am freed.

November 3, 2018November 3, 2018

Establish the Work of Our Hands

Here’s a newsflash from the world of medicine.

A Professor of surgery at London’s Imperial College, with the delightful name of Roger Kneebone, reports that he’s concerned about the increase in surgical students who lack certain vital skills. Can you guess which ones? Not diagnostic acumen or imaging analysis—many of these students ace their exams and blaze through their diagnostic computer programs.

But they don’t know how to sew. And they aren’t too proficient in cutting, either—which, if you need to have your appendix out and patched up again, might be a skill you’d want your surgeon to have.

How does a bright young person get through medical school, all the way to the surgical theater, without learning how to stitch up a kitchen wound or dog bite? How did she even get through kindergarten without learning how to cut along a straight line?*

We see a similar decline in the States, too: even kids who aren’t aiming at brain surgery for a career find themselves stymied when it comes to doing laundry or even folding clean clothes.

Cooking? They can probably manage the microwave, but can they turn on an oven?

Changing the oil every 2000 miles? Forget it. In fact, they often do.

Yes, I’m pushing 70, so I’ve earned the right to rag on kids these days, just as my father used to rag on me for my taste in music and my mother for the way I wore my hair. But this looming scandal in the medical field, like the shortage of skilled craftsmen here in the U.S., is more than a cultural trend. It’s a symptom—one of many symptoms—of a shift in thinking that grew up with digital technology. It’s the idea that we don’t really need our hands any more. Just our fingers. Manual labor is a thing of the past, meaning manual skills are no longer necessary. Musicians, dancers, sculptors, and painters may follow their dream through the arts, but those who are not gifted in those pursuits can sit back and be entertained with a swipe of the screen.

This is a deeply gnostic belief, and it ties in with other popular contemporary illusions like transgenderism. It’s why some school districts have eliminated shop and home ec classes, pared art, music, and drama programs and cut back on recess time. We live in our heads, and “knowledge” is the only thing that matters. The future (supposedly) belongs to “knowledge workers,” not electricians and carpenters.

But no one lives in a virtual world, as much as some misfits and sociopaths may think they do. There’s no real disconnect between brains, hands, feet, and that incorporeal being otherwise known as Soul. God made us to be integrated beings, hand and mind working together. What he has joined, no man can pull asunder without great damage to both.

To work in this way is a tremendous honor, because in doing so we imitate Creator. God may not have “hands,” as we understand them, but he is so active in the world–making, unmaking, and recreating–that Bible writers can’t help but speak of “the hand of the Lord.” Even in an act as basic as turning over a row in the garden and planting seed, we follow in his metaphorical footsteps. Angels, so far as we know, don’t make anything, or certainly no material thing. That privilege belongs to us.

So put down the phone or tablet (as soon as you finish reading this!) and go make something. Take a pottery class. Draw a tree. Build a birdhouse, or paint one. If nothing else, figure out how to thread a needle and sew on a button. Apply the workings of your mind to the skill of your hands, then teach someone else to do the same. Ask the Lord to establish the work of your hands (Ps. 90:17), and rejoice in following his creative, productive ways.

*In Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote of his own lack of ability to cut with scissors. It was a strange disconnect between his very acute intellect and the parts of the brain that controlled small motor activity. As a child, many a project begun hopefully had to be abandoned with tears. He never learned to drive or do math, either, which suggests an interesting connection between manual dexterity and figures. The Canadian writer Robertson Davies was the same way.

October 16, 2018

Invasive Love

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

His love endures forever . . . .

Psalm 136:1

Psalm 136 notably includes the refrain, “His love endures forever” in every alternating line. The Hebrew verb translated “love” is hesed. Some translations focus on the “forever,” making use of a linking verb (e.g., “His love is everlasting”). Speaking as a non-scholar of Hebrew, I’m sure that’s grammatically correct, but might not be the best interpretation. God’s hesed (often translated “steadfast love,” “lovingkindness,” “unfailing kindness,” “mercy,” etc.) endures. More than that, it actively endures. It’s not a feeling extended toward us, but a tool (or weapon) continually wielded on our behalf.

Suppose Psalm 136 read something like this:

His thoughts dwell longingly on us.

His love is everlasting.

He rehearses our many excellent qualities.

His love is everlasting.

He’s already picked out the ring.

His love is everlasting.

Tomorrow he intends to pop the question.

His love is everlasting.

Though human-like emotions are attributed to God (our emotional nature comes from him, not the other way around), they are not manifested in ways especially human, like a besotted young man contemplating the girl who’s captured his heart. Almost all the non-refrain lines in Psalm 136 are active. Even violent: He struck down, brought out, divided, overthrew, led out, killed, gave, remembered, rescued. “Mighty wonders” are the tokens of his love. Steadfast love is not a generalized benevolence, but a frightfully specific, focused, burning, overpowering force.

In English, love is both a noun and a verb. In Hebrew, hesed implies action—a reaching, searching, interfering kindness that speaks more of the lover than the object. It invades our space and shakes us awake, bundles us up and pulls us out of destruction. It outlasts time, and endures. Endures conflict, indifference, disobedience, rebellion . . .

Most of all, it endures us.