I have now edited my upcoming book on the patience of God about forty times. I’m at the point in the publishing process where I don’t want to even look at it anymore. I’m pretty convinced it’s the most boring book in the world at the moment.

I was talking to my friend, also a published author, about how this goes. You start writing a book out of passion. Then you wrestle with it. You form it. You test it. Then you fine-tune it. The fine-tuning is technical work, not passionate work. You pace back and forth, thinking about verb tense. You examine every verb to see if it’s strong enough. You cut sections you previously loved, realizing they were just for you, not your reader.

And then you release it into the world, wondering if anyone will understand it. The words are now circling around in your head in an endless loop, and you wonder if anyone will catch any of it. The layers of edits sit messily upon your subconscious.

I told my friend that when I released my first book, I was shocked when people told me they cried through the first chapter. I had gotten so lost in the necessary technical work that I forgot the substance. These words meant something to someone. Someone felt seen. Someone felt loved. Someone was inspired. She reminded me that this is how all authors feel about their book before it’s released. We each come to the point of hating it as we release it because we’ve been through it so many times.

Not knowing who will pick up my writing haunts me. That’s part of it. It may not be for everyone, and I’m fine with that. I have a picture of who my reader is, as all good writers do. We must know our audience. But words have a way of taking on a life of their own. That’s why it’s so hard to release them. Sometimes I hear stories about that, and they always catch me off guard.

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a church event on the other side of the country. I was in the back hallway, waiting for the event to start. Those ten or fifteen minutes before going up can be nerve-racking. As I paced while people slowly found their seats, an older gentleman approached me and asked if he could have a moment of my time.

Those who speak publicly will brace themselves with me for what happened next. Sometimes this goes well when someone bears their soul to you right before you go up, and sometimes it goes very, very badly. I had no idea who this man was or what he intended to say. But he looked kind and earnest.

He told me he had heard I was speaking in his part of the world, so he drove two hours to attend the event that day. I would guess he was somewhere between seventy and eighty years old. I asked him how he had heard about me.

He said he had read my book.

He paused then, considering how to tell his story.

He said he got the book for his wife. She’d been struggling, you see, and nothing he had done had seemed to help. She was withdrawn and distant from him. He couldn’t seem to reach her. He was trying to bring her back into the world—and back to him. She was suffering, and he didn’t know what to do. He saw a book called Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted, written by a woman, and figured maybe it would help her return to spiritual disciplines. Maybe it would help her return to life. He offered to read the book with her like a couples’ devotional. Really, he just wanted to make sure she read it.

He said he read that spiritual disciplines have both an individual element and a communal one. They got to the chapter on lament and mourning together as a discipline, and he wrestled with it.

It was here that he stopped.

He was silent for a solid minute. I looked at the ground and waited, trying to give him space for the next words. He did not move. He did the thing stoic men do when they are full of emotion and don’t know which way to turn.

He told me that I had written mourning is a communal activity. He realized he had been trying to get his wife past her pain when what she really needed was someone to grieve with her. He realized grieving with her was itself a discipline within their marriage.

At this point, he let out a short sob.

“You gave me my wife back.”

I don’t know that man’s name.

But I think of him every day.

I don’t know if these nouns and verbs coming your way will mean something to any of you. But I’ve seen what God has done with my messy words before. In each round of tedious edits, I pray for you, my readers. I pray for you whether you are a young woman or an elderly man.

You are loved. You are part of a body. You are not alone.

More than anything, I hope these words, sent out into the world, help you know that.

​My friend, , just came to my hometown to speak at the Lutheran Brethren Biennial Convention. He did a fantastic job, and he recently put out a book called “The Big Relief.” What a beautiful term for the gospel.

When our kids were little, we kept them in church sometimes, and we used the nursery sometimes. One of the reasons we used the nursery is that for a time we were the only family at church with little kids when we arrived, and the nursery was used as a storage room, and our kids and their needs were largely ignored, or at least “ask if you need anything!” People were happy we were there, but they also felt they were past the season of needing to bother with kids.

We wanted more families to feel welcome here, and opening back up the nursery was part of that. We put our kids in the nursery so that people in the church would see the consistent need, and in a sense, see their little neighbors. And it worked. Our church is brimming with kids 20 years later, and has been for awhile. Last Sunday there were so many little baby noises in the service, it was delightful. Some kids go to the nursery, and some stay in the service. All the parents come with different expectations and different amounts of sleep the night before.

​
But mostly our kids sat with us. My youngest kid is a snuggle bug, and I would just massage his feet when he was a toddler, and got squirmy. I imagined how much his ankles and shins must be sore with all that growing and running all the time. So I took the time during the sermon to just teach him this is when you decompress. (Also it kept him still.) This is when you are cared for. This is where we lay burdens down. He loved it. It got to a point, that when he was 3 or 4, the pastor would get up to the pulpit, and our son would take off his shoes, and put his feet in my lap and say, “I’m ready.”

​
​In my first book, I compare liturgy to caring for someone in deep grief. After one of my miscarriages, my friend helped me. “Now you’re going to eat something. Now your going to take a nap. Now your going to take a shower.” She wasn’t giving me law to fulfill, she was serving me. A good church service does the same thing. Here is the word. Here is the body, and the blood. Here’s Jesus. Liturgy isn’t about formality or informality. It’s an order of service. It’s ordered service.

​
Now that our kids are grown, teenagers, and preteens, they have not lived a perfect life. Like me, they’ve all made mistakes. We’ve had our hard times as a family. But one thing I’ve noticed--especially in my adult kids--is that church is where my kids run when life gets hard. It’s where they go when they need some relief. It’s where they go when they’re ready to admit that they need help. And to me, that is the biggest win. They learned what church is for.

​
There was a season when one of my adult kids could only make it to church every other week. He was just figuring out this whole adulting thing, and finding community and paying the bills. After about a year of that, I asked him one Sunday evening if he was at church that morning, or if it was his morning that he had to miss it. He told me he had talked with his superiors and let them know he couldn’t miss Sunday mornings anymore. “I need this” was his simple response.

​
Not, “I should do this.” Not, “God will be mad at me.” Not, “My parents think I should.” Not, “I need to get my priorities straight.” Not, “It’s just a good thing to do.” He said, “I need this.“
This hits at a deeper issue. He knew the core of what church was for.

I think for a time, we’d get people plugged into church by “putting them to work.” Don’t get me wrong, volunteering is a great way for people to connect, and can be a relief in a way that it helps distract us for ourselves. But our goal isn’t to get people to do more. What if we saw our act of evangelism, or our act of fellowship, or even living out the gospel of going around and relieving people of their burdens? Brainstorming ways to give them relief?

When my other adult child (grown up kid? What sort of oxymoron do I use to describe this?) was at college, she had a certain criteria when she was looking for a church. Mainly she wanted one that would consistently give her the gospel. She told me once during that season “Everywhere, classes, job, activities--they all want something from me. I feel like church is the one place that I just get to just be.”

Whenever I get to travel, I love to sit in the sanctuary of where I’m at, and just be. Sometimes I find myself in a cathedral, where I can look up at the sunlight beaming in from all angles. At the Lord’s table, I hold my empty hands out, and they are filled. I didn’t even have to cook. My need is not shamed, it’s fulfilled. What a relief.

I hope you have a delightful July, friend. I pray for good nights rest, and laughter with friends. I pray you have the relief given only in Christ, and I hope you have a church that gives you that relief often.

Ephesians 3:14-19:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

This morning I tackled the strawberry bed. Isn’t it a mess?

Yes, there is landscape fabric underneath there, but last year it got ripped up by some critters or something. The last 2 years we haven’t gotten strawberries, because either the birds or bunnies took them all. I’m determined to find some sort of netting solution this year. But first: the grass.

A few years ago, I was on the phone with a pastor, bemoaning a systematic issue I was facing in the larger church. I was feeling overwhelmed, and helpless to fix the problem. His words of encouragement to me were “just weed your own garden, Gretchen.” Ironically, I was in the garden when he said that. It took on very literal meaning for me.

I’m not making any farming statement here. Of course we are a GMO farm, though even that is more of a spectrum to that than people realize. People have strong feelings about that, while knowing very little about it, so I’m not going to touch that whole touchy issue here. But stick with me for the illustration value.

As I was weeding the strawberries this morning, it was tedious work. I didn’t have to go blade by blade of grass, but I did have to pull out tuft by tuft by hand--little groupings of grass. It wasn’t too hard, as the roots were shallow due to the landscape cloth. It made a fun sound each time. Thwick, thwick. Very satisfying. But tedious.

I remember years ago, in a different strawberry patch that is long abandoned, I asked my parents from Arizona to help me pull out the grass. My step dad, having very little gardening experience, started ripping up the whole bed, strawberries and all. I asked him to stop--that we had to do it by hand--and he said “but we have to get all the roots!” And I said, “if we get all the roots of the grass we’ll have no more strawberries. We just have to get out what we can get out.”

Jesus tells a parable about that, in fact.

I’ve found over the last 2 decades of learning how to garden that I don’t have to be good at growing things, as much as I have to be good at killing things. That was empowering. I have learned how to kill grass, kill dandelions, kill all sorts of weeds. We have the kind of soil where something is going to grow in that black dirt. It’s a war, and all I have to do is give the plants I want there a chance. If I can get them big enough to shade the weeds, or damage the weeds just enough so the plants I want can establish a better root system to gather water.

I’ve long given up the hope of a weedless garden. Every day I go do battle against the weeds, so the plants have a chance. You want to get the weeds early in the season, because at the end of the season, the ground hardens, and it’s harder for weeds to get in or out. When the ground is soft right now, any growing thing has a chance.

When it comes to churches, and church life, I’ve found that too many of us want GMO solutions. We want systematic change. We want the landscape cloth to prevent anything. We want to spray it all. We live in a GMO world. We want one guy to pull a lever, and kill everything in one swoop. Vote for this. Establish this new rule.

They didn’t have that in Bible times, though. In all the agrarian parables, a worker in the field pulled tuft after tuft of weeds. The tedious, little, minimal work. This work is small. It’s hunched. It’s personal. It’s never, ever, ever done, until the harvest.

We are killed through the law, and resurrected by the gospel. Holding a friend accountable. Having a hard conversation. Accepting the tedious, back-breaking, sweat-filled work of tending your own garden is such a personal, everyday work. And the goal isn’t pure, untainted soil, as that’s not possible this side of heaven. So it involves at the end of the day, saying, “well, that’s enough for today.” Knowing when to stop, and hold onto hope is hard too. Gardening teaches me the limits of myself every year. It’s humbling work.

Here’s the strawberry patch after about an hour or two of me pulling out grass by the roots. 2 fingers are bleeding from scratches, and my hands and arms are sore. There are bricks separating the patch from the grass walkways, but they’re buried by mess at the moment. Maybe one of these days I’ll make a deeper change. But I kind of like it. Will I have to pull grass from this patch all season? Yes. That’s the job. It’s the good work God prepared for me to do this morning. But there’s strawberries involved, so it’s not all hardship.

I’ve found in church life I’m no longer surprised I’m finding grass, nor am I as annoyed by it. I’ll do what I can, but also accept that at the end of the day, there’s stuff I can’t reach, and God will have to deal with it in his timing. It’s a peaceful place to reach--tending your own garden. It’s low, sweet work.

The law kills the weeds and the gospel gives water to the crop. Sometimes we get that wrong. Am I talking about sin or people? I don’t know, I’m just pondering. The garden is a tremendous place to ponder. It’s probably why the monastics liked it so much. Things that you thought were cut and dry become foggy and intertwined, but in a way that helps you hold the nuance and the story of it. I’m studying some poetry online under Malcom Guiteright now, and he talks about how story, or poetry, helps us understand truth better because it makes the abstract concrete, in a fresh new way. There’s a holistic 3D truth, rather than a flat, abstract truth that you learn in the garden.

But in the strawberry bed, what came through to me the most was the personal, tedious work of the Holy Spirit, and the personal, tedious work of the doctrine of vocation in our own lives. Being a worker in his field means bending low, and weeding and watering the little plot he’s given you. You may want GMO solutions to bypass the work, and maybe there’s a season for that. I don’t know. But he won’t bypass the personal, fine tuned work. He’s not that kind of God. He loves us in personal, detailed ways. It’s sometimes slow, back-breaking work, but he doesn’t mind. He makes time, and has all the time in the world to do what he intends to do.

I hope you have a wonderful June, friends.

In Christ,

Gretchen Ronnevik

Our social life out on the farm comes in bursts. My husband, Knut, is the one who craves having people around all the time, and his busy seasons at work have him all by himself on a tractor. So before spring planting comes, we tend to have a surge of company. Even one of our kids said the other day “we’re having people over AGAIN?” He’s soaking up his time with friends.

Our new farm shop behind our house, that will eventually be the farm office and place to work on all the farm equipment, isn’t ready to move in, as they were hoping. With the strange year of commodity markets, messing with grain deliveries, along with the regular load of training and book work they do in the winter, and getting the shop finished up, there just haven’t been enough hours in the day. Most of the winters, he’s gotten 3 day weekends, to offset his 6 day weeks the majority of the year. That hasn’t happened this winter. It’s just been a lot of work with this new building.

Trying to make the best of it, Knut bought some portable pickleball court equipment, and set up a pickleball court in one portion of the new shop, before it gets filled up with stuff. He’s been playing with friends as much as possible before the planting season drops, and he will hardly have a social life for months again.

It took me a long time before I realized that my effort to have daily or weekly habits were always foiled because I live in a seasonal life. My daily life looks different, and demands different things from me in each season. Layer on top of the seasons of the farm, the various seasons of parenting. Life has a different rhythm when you’re potty training, or someone is teething, or teenagers want to discuss the big things of life at 11pm.

It took me years to realize that my efforts to have a structured life kept failing because it clashed with my values on having a present life. I want to see the person in front of me, and value them above my habit tracker.

But a structured life felt more controlled and predictable. It assumed that I am the master of my day. A present life, at least a present life on the farm, acknowledges the weather of the day, the opportunities of that particular day. A seasonal life knows there’s a time to play pickleball, and a time to drive the tractor. Sunny days can’t be wasted, and rainy days are a gift of rest that are to be kept. There are days for waking up early, and days (for me at least) of sleeping in.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, as I just started working out...again this year. I think this is now my 5th time “starting” a weekly plan for working out this year. It’s only March, so I’m just going to say that starting 5 times in 3 months counts as just being regular about it.

It’s helped by using words like “shifting” instead of “starting/stopping” habits. I’m shifting into traveling/speaking gear for a week or two, then I’m shifting back home and giving my body some rest. Then I’m shifting into working out again, then shifting into caring for my family when they’re sick, and soon I’ll shift into end of school year program chaos.

This shifting gears language has been helping me embrace the present reality of each new season, instead of viewing my ability to uphold structure as a sign of success. I’m still getting ahold of it.

Honestly, I still wish I had just a normal week, whatever that looks like. I turned 45 this month, and I’m slowly realizing that there is no normal week, there is just today.

There is spring, when the daffodils start peeking above the dirt, when the shadows shift positions, and the sun feels warmer. I’m shifting from my wool sweaters to my cotton ones, and have people over multiple times a week.

There’s shifting seasons, as described in Ecclesiastes 3, and there’s daily bread for those seasons. The structure of our days is not found inside of us, it’s found outside of us. It’s already written and we need only walk in it. He’s prepared good works for us to do, in each season.

I hope you are enjoying this delightful spring, friend. I sure am. It was a long winter, and I’m enjoying the fresh air, and one of our adult kids just got home for Easter. During this Holy Week, I hope you enjoy each day, and the daily bread given for that day.

And yet “being intentional” is stronger than “wishing.” Steps are taken. Plans are made. On the farm we might say we intend to have a good crop. We place our seed orders, and prepare the soil. We put in the work. Who knows if hail or drought will come? But if you don’t plan, nothing but weeds will grow.

As I watch my adult children walk into that tension in life: make plans, but hold them loosely. Don’t wait until the last minute and hope someone will magically come in and do it for you. But also, we are always there for you, for as long as it’s within our power. There’s a tension there, and it can be awkward.

It’s messy, living within tension. And yet, that’s where reality is. Already, not yet. Sinner and saint.

It feels like all of life has become living within some sort of tension. There’s living within political tensions, financial tensions, relationships tension. I’ve been trying to figure out some kind of definition of “tension” beyond pressure. I think “nuanced” might be a good synonym.

Nuanced is a nice, politically correct word. Foggy, unclear, depends on the situation, gray area, are how it feels to me. As we move into the New Year, we do so with tension. We can’t see what is before us. So we are standing here with our intensions.

I have been saying in multiple situations lately that I’ve learned contentment with the tension. It did not come easily to me. I learned this contentment against my will, really. It was pressed into me.

This tension is tied so much with humility: accepting that I don’t know, I may get it wrong, and trusting grace to carry me through.

I’ve been using terms lately like “learning the stability of grace” like one learns to walk on the waters of their baptism into Christ.

God has given us the law, and it is clear and unmovable. God has given us his gospel which is the fulfillment of the law, and sacrifice of himself for our sake. Those are clear.

Reading through the epistles, there’s so much that is left unclear. There’s so much left murky. So many decisions are relational, and spiritual maturity is for those judgment calls. There’s so much we don’t see or understand. And I’ve learned contentment in that because these gray areas are where I’ve been driven to prayer, driven to worship, fasting and pleading. It’s where I’ve learned the presence of the Holy Spirit, given so that I might not be alone in the foggy world until Christ returns.

Not only am I learning the stability of grace, I’m learning the stability of the Spirit. He’s not flighty. He’s not moody. He’s constant and steady.

I think it’s good to define what we can define, and set boundary lines where scripture is clear. But in all the areas where scripture does not speak, and gives freedom, I’m learning the stability of his presence, and the practice of seeking Him rather than seeking extra-biblical rules.

It’s such a peaceful place, in his presence. He does not drive me to fear. He’s a shelter--a hiding place. My heart has been breaking often for things I read in the news these days, and at the same time I’m grateful for a place to bring that brokenness. We are not lost when we have Him, no matter how dark things get.

As far as my intentions for the New Year, I’m hoping to carve out some kind of creative sabbatical for the month of January. I don’t know what follow up and edits might be sent my way, but I’m intending to do some water color painting, and maybe finish a quilt. I need some sort of creative reset after turning in yet another big project. I’ve been resting, and now I feel it’s time to prime the pump for whatever is next.

I think I finally have an idea or two for my next book. Either of them will demand a bit more play from me, so I’m trying to shift from heavily theological mode to play mode mentally. Have you read “Supper of the Lamb” by Robert Capon? If you haven’t, I recommend it for a January read. That’s the note I’m hoping to resonate with in my creative sabbatical reset. One idea is to finish up a poetry collection I’ve been working on, and the other is to write a book on home or hospitality--that tension of making a home in this world that’s not our home. It’s not so much a book on keeping house--though those make handy illustrations, but what it means to inhabit a place. We’ll see. I’m still workshopping it a bit. I need some time to play with it.

But January isn’t for nailing down my next topic. It’s for playing and letting my brain breathe a bit. At least...in theory.

Of course there seems to be so many appointments and family stuff in January that I wonder if my intentions are foolish, or if I’m setting myself up for failure. It’s then that I remember that we are called to abide. Abide with him--walk with him. He won’t lead us astray.

Have a Happy New Year, friend.

In Christ,

Gretchen Ronnevik

Then my husband Knut took the 4 kids we have still at home, and myself out nordic skiing in this winter wonderland on Saturday. It was breathtaking.

This fall I’ve been a part of something I haven’t done in years: a women’s Bible study. Going to a Bible study was difficult for years, as I was the younger woman who had children, and all of the older ladies’ in the study had teen or grown children. I asked for childcare--begged actually. The pastor generously hired someone for me, so I could invite others with kids too. But then one of the ladies in the Bible study invited the childcare worker to join--and she did for a week or 2, and then stopped coming. Once again, I was just running laps around the church chasing my toddlers, and couldn’t hear anything. It was such a hard, parched season for God’s word.

Then we started homeschooling, and I found I couldn’t do both. So Bible studies became independent, or online. I was still rooted in my church, and Sunday school. But I missed out on a lot of what the women were studying. I felt out of the loop.

Then one year, I was standing around, waiting for one of my kids to finish their confirmation class, and saw a bunch of other moms waiting, and started up a Bible study on the book of Hebrews with the moms I gathered up in the foyer. That was fun for awhile, but then that ended too.

This summer, I reached out to someone who had just moved to town. Her husband got a new job, and their family life had drastically changed. She had previously been a homeschool mom too, but was now teaching in a school. I knew the situation her family was coming into, and I asked if there was any way I could support her this year? She said with their family’s new situation, there was no time for her to be in a Bible study at the times offered. Could I teach one at a time she could do?

It took awhile to even find a time that would work for her. But once it was set, we invited others--she was more successful than me in that. We studied the book of Galatians together--1 chapter a week. At home we each read the chapter each day, and took notes and wrote down questions, then on the Bible study day, we read the whole chapter aloud, then talked through our observations and questions. That’s about it.

What I did not expect is how much these women have become a lifeline to me this fall. As grief just keeps hitting me like waves, as we are living in the wake of loss after loss these last few years, these women were new friendships God just dropped out of the blue. I didn’t know I needed this so much.

We’re a bunch of nerds, all of us. The women in this group are incredibly smart, and ask striking questions. They wrestled deeply and openly. We are all managing crazy schedules, and this odd time somehow works for all of us. What these women have taught me most in this study is how to sit in the wrestling. One of them said just off the cuff, “If you’re not chewing, it’s not meat.” I want that on a sticker.

When I was younger, I think I would rush to find the answer, but what I’ve learned in this study is how necessary wrestling is. Wrestling is a part of the Christian life. Luther called it “anfechtung” in German. In Latin it was a 3 step process he labeled: oratio, meditatio, tentatio. That 3rd part “tentatio” is the wrestling, the battle. This was a shift from the 3 part formula for spiritual growth that the monks had: oratio, meditatio, contemplatio. [I think that’s what the Latin word was, but I left my reference for this in my office, and don’t have it in front of me. This concept was explained in depth in Grace Upon Grace by John Kleinig.)

In other words, the monks talked about prayer, meditation, then contemplation--or interaction with the text-- as the Holy Spirit enlightens us.

However, Luther called that 3rd step a battle, a wrestling, not a simple enlightenment.

I think that’s because meditating on the word of God leads us to wrestle with what needs to die in our lives, whether it be a mindset, an idol, or some way we justify ourselves. Meditating on God’s word does lead to life, and it does enlighten. But “Old Adam” as Luther calls our sin nature, dies hard. There’s a wrestling to this enlightenment. There’s often a humbling that we hate as what needs to die, dies. There’s a death and resurrection in the wrestling.

I think about this as a mom, and as someone who attempts to teach the Bible. So often I want to help people skip past the wrestling, or I see their wrestling as my failure to make things clear. What I’ve learned the hard way over the years is wrestling is where the growth is, and it’s a wonder to behold. I no longer wish to rush it.

Every attempt I’ve had to rush along people’s wrestling has turned manipulative as my impatience ends up ruling the day, not his grace.

Anyway, we finished Galatians, and I asked them if we should move onto another book, or take a break for Advent. They asked me to pick out a couple of Advent options that we could study together, and we’d choose as a group from my research. I whittled the choices down to Love Came Down at Christmas by Sinclair Ferguson, which is just a daily Advent reading based on 1 Corinthians 13, and On the Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria, which is a little booklet written by the same guy who wrote the Athanasius Creed. It talks in depth about what the incarnation means about God, and what it means about us.

Anyway, they chose the Athanasius one, nerds that they are. I’ve never taught on this book before, so I hope they aren’t disappointed. I’m a bit nervous about it, truth be told. Please pray for us in that. Also, you should read along! It’s a great thing to contemplate during this season. You can buy the book online, or it’s even a free PDF several places.

​

And in final news, that book I’ve been writing on the patience of God these last few years and needing a bunch of extensions and rewriting? The content edits came back from my publisher on the complete manuscript and they love it. My rewrites were accepted. Just a few minor changes, and it’s off to the copyeditor next. I can’t believe it’s actually happening. It’s actually moving forward. Pray for all the rounds of edits ahead of me next as well, that we sharpen up the clarity and beauty of this book to be a gift for God’s church.

I pray for a peaceful Advent season to each of you, as we enter this time of waiting. Ha!--that’s funny. Waiting for the patient God. We can wrestle with that thought for a moment.

In Christ,

Gretchen Ronnevik

I decided not to send this month’s newsletter out until I had something more cohesive to say. I wanted to make it worth your while, rather than something I just did to feel like I did something. I decided to take it slower, and do more listening, and spending time with the people around me. I just needed a breath.

I’ve been talking with various friends this last month, and the topic of shame in connection to repentance has come up a lot. I was thinking about families where they don’t really place much value in saying they’re “sorry,” because they think talk is cheap, and it’s better to feel sorry.

Repentance for them is defined as feeling bad. And there’s that aspect to it, where a contrite heart is necessary. But when we gauge our forgiveness or our salvation by our repentance, and defining repentance as a feeling, pretty soon your salvation is dependent on your feelings.

Words do matter to God--especially his own. What he says is what he does. He is his Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God, as John 1 puts it. He speaks things into existence because his word is powerful. When he says you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven. When he says “It is finished” it really is finished.

“I’m sorry” is a good word, as are “You are forgiven.”

We still have this tendency, though, to put almost a virtue label on shame, where feeling a certain amount of shame feels virtuous. The thinking is: you’re beating yourself up enough--therefore you don’t take things lightly. You’re in a pit of shame--because you are in awe of the holiness of God. In a weird and twisted way, we see our shame as a virtuous act.

I was recently at a conference talking about Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” which was his response to Erasmus, in the debate of free will. But actually, Erasmus and Luther had a lot in common, and did agree on many things, outside of their great debate. They were both Augustinian monks. In fact, in 1516, a year before Luther nailed the 95 thesis, Erasmus had published a new translation of the Greek New Testament, which corrected the old translation of “do penance” to “repent.”

Because of this, historians have the phrase, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”

It might seem like the same thing, but it is not. To “do penance” is to work your way out of your shame. To repent is to turn to Christ alone for your salvation. This whole debate over repentance vs penance was wrapped up with indulgences, and buying forgiveness as penance.

I’ve been studying the book of Galatians with a group of friends this fall, and we just went through chapter 5, talking about the fruit of the flesh vs the fruit of the Spirit. The epistle has been laying out the dichotomy between working for our righteousness, and looking to Christ for our righteousness. The “theology” of the flesh--worked out by clinging to the law for our salvation, and the gospel of the Spirit, clinging to the cross for our salvation.

There’s something about “doing penance” that fills up our self-righteousness. Galatians 5 gives a list of those who have the fruit of the flesh, and those who have the fruit of the Spirit. And the thing that we noticed about the list of the flesh is that everything on that list had the underlying belief of entitlement. “Doing penance” is a double edged sword, where it has you fluctuating between deep shame, and deep entitlement. (You haven’t done enough, now you have done enough and you deserve what your eyes see. It swings back and forth, and leads to sin.)

Whereas, in the list of the fruit of the Spirit, the gaze is fixed outward toward our neighbors, and giving grace to our neighbors.

Self-righteousness breeds entitlement--we’re owed this. We owe God. We’re keeping accounts, and checking boxes. And if you penance hard enough, we think we have fulfilled the law, and people just need to get over their hurt.

In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit has more of a humility to it. The grace for us breeds grace to others.

It’s a posture, on one side (the flesh) an annoyance that people haven’t gotten over your sin, when you have done your due penance, and on the other side (the Spirit) is a posture of freely loving our neighbors to our fullest capacity. [This chapter in Galatians is really best read with the context of chapters 1-4, with maybe some Romans 7 to help us understand.]

Must we repent? Absolutely. But God repents us. He’s repenting us. He’s doing the verbs. Dead people can’t repent, they must be brought back to life. God turns us from our sin, which is tangled up in our self-righteousness, and turns our face to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. That is the turning of repentance: from trusting in our works, to trusting Christ alone.

With the strong correction of “Repentance” rather than “Do penance” from Erasmus, a year later, Martin Luther says in his first of the 95 thesis, “When Jesus said ‘repent’ he meant that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.” He did not mean that the entire Christian life was one of shame, it was an entire life of fixing our eyes on Jesus. It’s not trusting him at salvation and taking it from there. It’s looking to his salvation every day. Every day we need him. Every day we need his Spirit.

You are not made righteous by your shame, or by beating yourself up. The law has its place to show you your sin, but it won’t save you. Your feelings don’t make you righteous, Jesus makes you righteous through his death and resurrection. Fix your eyes on him. As you do, you’ll be filled with compassion for your neighbors. Keep them on yourselves, and you’ll be justifying yourself to everyone to try to manage your shame.

You can constantly try justify yourself, or you can trust in the justification of Christ. That is the repentance they’re talking about. The Holy Spirit will convict, the Devil will condemn. The Holy Spirit will point your gaze back to Christ, and nail your identity in him. Anything less is not from him.

Fix your eyes on Jesus, friend, and rest in his work. It really is finished. You can let go of the shame now. The penance was paid. Now go and love your neighbor with the extravagant love he’s placed in you.

Your friend,

Gretchen Ronnevik