Frustration was mounting. I was pulling my hair out and Patrick was in despair. He had a fairy tale due in the morning and I was trying to help him with the plot of the story, and it just wasn’t happening. One page of the story he had written earlier had to be destroyed. That is depressing to anyone, but to a nine-year-old, it is like killing the family pet. This is writing—slow, painful and gut-wrenching. Here is a nine-year-old learning the first steps of this excruciating dance with a tired dad who is trying to be patient. I don’t know of anything harder or more intimidating than taking imagined thoughts out of your own head and trying to put them on paper for others to read and enjoy. Nevertheless here we were. After forty-five minutes, Patrick had written one paragraph. He had his head down and a look of defeat on his face, so I left the room before I exploded or began to break things. I found Teri in the kitchen and let her have it for leaving me with this tour of hell.

After calming myself, I went back in the room and with as much patience as I could, we began to talk about the story. I keep looking at my watch and that one paragraph and was inwardly in purgatory.  At this point, all I am hoping for is a couple of pages and getting him in bed. Eliot has long since been tucked away for the night. And then it happened. The ancients would say, “He found the muse.” As we talked about the plot of the story and I asked him what happened next, he would tell me and then he said, “Just hush Dad, I have to write this down.” I shut my mouth, opened my book and watched his countenance of defeat turn into one of joy as the story literally flowed onto the paper. Fifteen minutes and four pages later he looked up at me, grinned and said, “Finished.” A few minutes later with teeth brushed and story in hand we made our way to bed where my little bard could read his story to Eliot and me.

Later as I reflected on what I had just witnessed, I just shook my head. Whether you are nine or forty-seven, writing is the same—pencil and a blank piece of paper, an idea, fits and starts and finally inspiration. Is there anyway to shorten this process? I suppose since the poets and bards of antiquity told stories that passed into myth and legend until today, there has never been an easy way to write. Computers make this easier, spell checkers are a miracle, and cut and paste features are nice, but still, the discipline of writing is as it has always been. It is the cross—death and resurrection.

Lent is a discipline that reminds us that this is the way things are—death and resurrection. The Bible tells us that the story line of our redemption follows this pattern as well. For us to be born into new life, Jesus had to die. His death did not start in the week leading up to Easter, it started when he was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He laid down all that was his by right to make a way for us to participate in the eternal joy and happiness he had known in the bosom of his Father.

Nature likewise screams death and resurrection to us in the round of seasons, day and night, seedtime and harvest. Psalm 19 in particular tells us that we need to pay attention to nature. The world around us is not something to use, but to attend—watch and listen. “The heavens are telling the glory of God;/ the very shape of the starry space makes news of his handiwork./ One day is brimming over with talk for the next day, and each night passes on intimate knowledge to the next night/--there is no speaking, no words at all,/ you can’t hear their voice, [but]—their glossolalia travels throughout the whole world! (translation by Calvin Seerveld in Rainbows For The Fallen World)

Commenting on this passage Seerveld says, “The good news of Psalm 19 is that the whole world of rocks and dirt, wind and seas, is a chorus of praise to the almighty Lord of heaven and earth, not metaphorically but literally! So Psalm 19 offers a reforming vision and redemptive direction to every man and woman who has the eyes to see the inscape of late afternoon shadows and the ears to hear the glossolalia (tongues, speech) of night sounds and the mute speech of stars, and wants to join the world-wide chorus of ‘Praise God form who all blessing flow’ rather than be a human candle-holder looking on blankly as your 20, 30, 60 or 70 years go past like a yesterday.”

What I am saying is that we are blessed to have the Bible that tells us the story of Jesus and how to live in this world. But unless you attend and listen to both human nature and the larger cosmos, you will miss the music of life. Yes, the story line of death and resurrection is given in Scripture, but I will guarantee you this—make your life a study of only Scripture and never attend, study, participate in life with children or other image bearers of God, never just sit in silence when the sun is setting, never get your hands in the dirt or pay attention to the rhythms of life that are forced on you with the seasons, and let me tell you what your expression of Christianity will be like: wooden, stale, staid and mechanical. It will be, in a word, inhuman. You will know all the right words, but never hear the music of this great dance going on around us.

I learn more about the ins and outs of what the Bible means to be human by watching and relating to people and the good earth around me than I ever will in a classroom. There I learn the steps of the dance of death and resurrection, but it is in a real robust life of watching a nine-year-old learn to write or pondering what it will take to have a huge crop of asparagus in two years—this is where I learn the music, and in the music is the song which speaks of beauty and joy. As I told Patrick about writing, there is no shortcut to this joy, no shortcut. Lent in the church calendar screams it at us as well. Are we really listening or just being a candle-holder looking blankly on?