Genesis 3:19 – By the Sweat of the Brow = Angry?!

This morning, I’ve been noodling around with some Hebrew idioms. Specifically, idioms that have to do with the face, because I spend so much time seeking the face of God. I think I seek His face so much, because it sometimes feel like it’s just a split hair out of the range of my vision.And, yet, I know that it’s there if I could just… get there! (Wherever “there” is)

Though not finished playing with it, Genesis 3 talks about after that whole unsavory apple eating business and the effects because of it. It has the story line about the introduction of work feeling like, well, work! The introduction of toil in order to provide food for family. “From the sweat of your brow, you will eat your bread…” followed by the returning to dust part but that’s a complete digression.

I’m excited because I deal with some fairly serious latent rage issues. Most often now, though, it’s just the leftover twitching roots of the majority of a lifetime of being ticked off and voiceless. I struggle with how to handle a rage that I’ve already worked through rationally and understand that it is no longer directed at anyone; however, part of it still has not washed out of my system. Trying to figure out the cause in order to deal with it has had me wrapped around the altar a good number of times. After living under a banner of avoidance (to rip off a great phrase from Grey’s Anatomy), then working so hard to unearth all of that junk into daylight where it can be sorted and washed off, certainly the last thing I want to do is have festering spiritual oozy spots growing. So I walk up and introduce myself to the ugly stuff and hope to handle it without my stomach twisting up but so much.

Looking at the Hebrew translation & phraseology, God showed me that what I’m struggling against is part of the post-fall human condition: anger. The working by the sweat of the brow references a Hebrew idiomatic phrase, he will work until “his nose becomes inflamed or heated,” which means to become angry or bad-tempered. So, frustration and angst in general became part of our inheritance in the fall — a thing that comes to us as we work for our bread. So part of this irritation that I keep processing as somehow deviant behavior may be a thing that I need to surrender in a completely different way than what I thought. It’s the frustration and anger of wrestling with my humanity rather than something that I cannot unwrap.

A dear friend recently discussed from Henry Nouwen, the graphic image of clenched hands holding onto a coin. The coin represented the idea of thinking that our identities sometimes get wrapped up in holding onto smaller things that we somehow perceive define us. We simply forget about the sum total of the person holding the coin being the large part & the coin a simple prop.

God’s amazingly cool gift in this one may well be an invitation to wrap up in His grace when we’re tempted to shriek in the irritation of making this life thing happen in some semblance of order and still honor God. I think, once again, God’s showing me another place where I have come to the end of me and must reach out and take that Joshua 1:3 step of faith in order for Him to work with me.

Picking Up the Ant by the Feelers

April 21, 2008

That is how my daughter described God’s dealings with me. Pretty dern accurate, too. My son doubled over and produced a vibrant sort of guffaw-howl-chortle thing that cycled every time he looked back at me after she said it.

I take whatever is on my heart/mind/spirit to God. Really. Truly. Completely. And then, much like the ant who knows only how to work, I zoom out of the sacred playground where my destiny has been planted. But I’m zooming out to do work that is on God’s to do list, not Heather’s. Absconding with God’s errand list generally produces more rather than less work yet to be done.

However, God, being the uber-benevolent type Who promised not to break the bruised reed, gently picks me up by my little feelers and, according to my daughter, “plops me where I was supposed to learn to be in the beginning but wouldn’t stop howling about it.”

She did give me credit for learning to be a much more obedient ant. This was followed by the quiet murmur of, “Because you were smart enough to figure out God was going to keep picking you up by the feelers anyway…”

The conversation happened after church today when God did one of His grand show off events that made His handiwork and guiding hand unquestionably clear. By now, my kids are used to it and just think it’s hysterical to watch my eyes bug out that God could be so detail-oriented in my little, regular, aims-for-boring-but-never-

quite-gets-there kind of life. I’m just a girl next door type, so the awe and humility get me every single time. And I think I may just be learning to relax and swing my legs a little when He’s moving me around by the feelers, because it’s always a better place than I would think to put me.