Grateful to everyone who took the time to read this book. I really poured myself into it, and whether it was kind comments, written reviews, or the occasional best seller tag, I was blown away by the response. Sharing anything with the world is scary, but I’m glad I was pushed to see it through.
"May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful."
—Mary Oliver (Upstream)
Thanks for the kind words, I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed it (and that it found its way to Westminster).
Abandon the Orderly House is on a Kindle Countdown Deal through the end of the week! The ebook is only $0.99 instead of the usual $9.99.
“None of us is yet whole in Christ. All of us are in the process of becoming. We are not finished products. He has pruning and shaping to do in us. And he has promised that he will continue what he has begun.”
—Eugene Peterson (Lights a Lovely Mile)
“We do not live in an ironclad universe of cause and effect. In the presence of the God of Jacob, there is life that is beyond prediction.”
—Eugene Peterson (As Kingfishers Catch Fire)
“I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”
—Henri Nouwen (In the Name of Jesus)
Because there were plenty of moments where it seemed like it was all over for Moses, but it wasn’t. He was still growing, he was still changing, and he was still becoming who he needed to be in order to answer God’s call.
It may seem like those things have already taken control of your days, or they’ve already stamped your destiny. But when you walk with the God of Moses your story is always capable of making another turn.
And the same God that was present in the story of Moses is working in your life too. So your start in poverty doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Your father’s addiction doesn’t have to become your own. And the decisions you made when you were just trying to survive do not have to define your life.
The boy that was abandoned in the river will one day walk through the sea. The young man who fled to the wilderness will return home again. And God will use everything he experienced along the way to achieve freedom, not just for Moses, but for all of his people.
And no matter what happens next, that should be an encouragement to us all. Because we are reminded that the way our story begins does not decide how it ends.
Moses is not just a child who survived against all odds or a young man who threw it all away. He is an individual called by God for a tremendous purpose. Because God will not waste his unique identity, his righteous anger, or the pain he had to endure just to become a shepherd in the wilderness.
This is real courage. And it’s possible because Shiphrah and Puah love the God of Jacob more than they fear this thin skinned tyrant who imagines himself mighty while targeting immigrants and children.
But because the midwives fear God, we’re told they refuse to obey the king’s orders. And they allow the boys to live, despite all the ways that decision could come back to haunt them.
If the midwives settle for “just following orders”, putting the king of their nation above the King of creation, this will be the end. So we get this agonizing moment of tension that could end the line of Jesus 1400 years before he’s ever born.
The Israelites were set apart by God and they were blessed to be a blessing, but as Pharaoh gives this order, the end of God’s people is no longer unthinkable.
Pharaoh, who is perhaps the most wicked character our Scriptures have presented so far, orders the Hebrew midwives to kill a generation of Israelite sons. And suddenly the promise God made to Abraham and his descendants seems like it’s falling to pieces.
Entire groups can be stripped of their dignity and eventually their humanity as evil rhetoric turns into scapegoating which slides into genocide. And that’s exactly what happens here.
A (perhaps timely) sermon preview 🧵 as we begin the story of Moses:
When scared people allow themselves to be steered by leaders who do not fear the Lord, history tells us that all kinds of evil are possible.
"Only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything You have ordained. Let me rest in your will and be silent."
—Thomas Merton (A Book of Hours)
"I give myself to Your love and mean to keep giving myself to Your love—rejecting neither the hard things nor the pleasant things You have arranged for me. It is enough for me that You have glory. Everything You have planned is good. It is all love…"
"My actions prove that the one I trust is myself—and that I am still afraid of You. Take my life into Your hands, at last, and do whatever You want with it."
This prayer from Thomas Merton has been stuck in my mind for months as both an encouragement and a conviction. Perhaps you need to hear it too.
“There is nothing that I may decently hope for that I cannot reach by patience as well as by anxiety.”
—Wendell Berry (The World-Ending Fire)
“None of us can dialogue with others until we can calmly and confidently hold our own identity.”
—Richard Rohr (Falling Upward)
So many leaders operate from a deep insecurity (hidden by false confidence, antagonism & pseudo-intellectualism). Is it any wonder we’re divided?
If you have a Kindle, the ebook version of Abandon the Orderly House is 90% off for the next few days—just $0.99!
www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0DT...
“Prayer does not lead us to shame, guilt, or despair, but rather to the joyful discovery that we are only human and that God is truly God.”
—Henri Nouwen (With Open Hands)
"No matter what others say about us, we are not so bad that we cannot experience love, and no matter how awful we feel about ourselves, God doesn't share that low opinion."
—Eugene Peterson (Lights a Lovely Mile)
