Posts Tagged ‘Respect’

11 Apr

Everyone is Someone’s Child

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Community. Tagged: , , , , .

Someone's Child

How King David Makes Me Mad and Helps Me Explain the Importance of Seeing Others as Gifts

There are things that annoy me and I don’t react well to them and then there are things that bring out a “holy anger.” I taught a Bible study yesterday that brought out that holy anger because the story involved treating human lives as if they were expendable.

I am taking a break from my series on Receiving Others as Gifts to talk about this story. But it is not really a break from the theme of “Others as Gifts” at all because honoring the very life of others—no matter who they are—is a basic premise of receiving them as gifts.

The study was from Gather: the Magazine of Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Gather studies this academic year have been featuring different women in the Bible and this particular study was about a woman named Rizpah and her dramatic mourning over her sons. You can read the story in 2 Samuel 2:1-14.

Why did Rizpah’s two sons die? [WARNING: GORE ALERT!] Well, King David handed them and the five sons of Merab over to Saul’s enemies, the Gibeonites, to be impaled.

Why did David hand them over? Well, there was a famine for three years and David was freaking out. Meanwhile, apparently “the Lord” reminded him about the “bloodguilt” from the time when Saul put Gibeonites to death.

So, David figured if he appeased the Gibeonites then the famine would end. Easy peasy.

And what did the Gibeonites require? At first they behaved as if they couldn’t be appeased. But when David pressed them they suggested this eerily specific idea. David could hand over 7 male descendants (“sons”) of Saul for them to be impaled.

And David agreed!

Right there, my holy anger was already kindled, but that wasn’t what really set me off.

What really set me off was verse 7, “But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan son of Saul.”

Yes, yes, David was honoring an oath. How noble.

It was, in fact, an oath that he made with his best friend, Jonathan! Are you catching that? It was his best friend’s kid that he spared.
Of course, David would place a value on the life of his best friend’s kid.

But the other 7 that he handed over were expendable. Their lives didn’t matter to David.

And it’s not that he doesn’t know that life matters, because he spared the life of a prime candidate for the Gibeonites’ bizarre execution. David knew that life mattered, but he selectively denied the value of the lives of the seven.

But see, everyone matters. Everyone is someone’s kid! And Rizpah with her dramatic time of mourning over her kids wouldn’t let David ignore the value of all of the lives that he had handed over.

And that brings me to why I’m interrupting my series to write about this—because my whole bit about Receiving Others as Gifts is to remind us that people matter!

All people matter! Even people we don’t like! Even our enemies! Even people we don’t even know!

We don’t get to pick and choose!

The atrocities we’re capable of when we lose site of this are horrifying.

I want to be certain to point out that God never asked for the execution of the seven sons of Saul. That was sheerly the agreement between the Gibeonites and David.

I imagine God out there with Rizpah, wailing and lamenting the senseless loss of life. Because those were not just Rizpah’s sons, they were not just Merab’s sons, they were God’s precious created people.

They matter to God.

We matter to God.

Others matter to God.

I hope and pray that we find in our hearts to let others matter to us–to receive them as gifts.

Read all the posts in the Receiving Others as Gifts series:

16 Mar

Getting a laugh or bringing a smile?

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Community. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Smile2

Oftentimes my first reaction to something is a selfish, arrogant, self-centered thought. However, as an introvert, I am ordinarily able to choose to actually say something more gracious. (Introverts are known for thinking before they speak.)

So, one may reasonably question, what is the truest portrayal of who I am? Is it the self-important first reaction or is it the deliberately-chosen, kinder, gentler words actually spoken?

Whichever is the most true is debatable, but it is certain that my first reaction is the funniest. There need be no debate on that. I can easily get a laugh if I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

And speaking of the first thing that comes to mind, it could be argued that my first reaction is the most true. Were I quicker to speak that first thought, there would be integrity between what I think and what I actually say.

Does it necessarily follow that who we really are is exclusively a matter of our first reaction? Can we not be what we first think and what we choose to say or do in response?

If we have the presence of mind to catch ourselves from saying that witty first thought just to get a laugh, is that not saying something about about us? About our character?

See how I work these questions out over at Life & Liberty in my post, How a Well-Chosen Response Can Bring a Smile.

26 Feb

On Control Issues & Parenting…

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Family. Tagged: , , , , , , .

BoyLeaping

My son will hit double digits next month. These nearly-10 years since his birth have flown by. And all-of-a-suddenly he’s got his own ideas about this young life of his.

We were playing out in the farm field the other day and he asked me whether I was going to stop him from doing something. And I reflected on the reality that it has been a long time since I actually could physically stop him from doing something I was concerned about.

I mean, if a child of 3 darts toward the street, he’s easily caught, picked up and taken to safety. But a child of 9 11/12…

For more of my musings about how I’m dealing with my son’s growing autonomy, click the photo above to go to Life & Liberty to read the rest of this essay, When Kids (and Others) Can’t Be Controlled.

17 Jan

A Vision for Loving Community

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Community, Inspiration. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

20140117-233858.jpg
Every human is infinitely and equally valuable. We don’t raise that value by achieving more than others. Our creator creates us equal.

I don’t work with these children because I’m better than these “needy” kids and want to “help” them with my superiority. Instead, I create a loving community with them to celebrate our equality and shared human fellowship. I level the playing field so we can unlock our gifts together.

–Kati in The Blackberry Bush by David Housholder

See my previous post for my review of The Blackberry Bush.

6 Dec

Receiving Others as Gifts

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Community. Tagged: , , , , , .

Gracious God, who created all humanity in your image:
Make us grateful for the companionship of other people, receiving them as gifts of your grace.

The Deaconess Litany of the Lutheran Deaconess Association

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I’ve written a few posts in the past drawing from the Deaconess Litany of my Deaconess community. It is an extended prayer that we traditionally pray on Monday nights. The remarkable thing about well-written prayers like this is the way they can work into our hearts and minds and actually be a part of forming us as God’s people.

20131206-163719.jpgThe portion of the litany quoted above has been just such a formational prayer for me. This idea of receiving others as gifts of God’s grace has worked its way into the very fabric of my being. I want to share with you a few of implications of this that have emerged for me and one reservation I have about it:

  1. Receiving others as gifts of grace means that we don’t take them for granted. Gifts are not things to which we are entitled, in fact, they are often unmerited and unexpected. Approaching our relationships in this way leaves us open to the ways that others can surprise us.
  2. Receiving others as gifts doesn’t have to mean we “like” everything they do or say. Just as we coach children to say “thank you” when they get a gift from a loved one whether they like it or not, so we too can graciously receive other people in our lives.
  3. Receiving others as gifts of God signals that they are holy others as they are from our divine creator. The sacredness with which we hold their lives and the honor we show them are necessitated by the reality that they are God’s.
  4. One reservation that I have about this prayer is the potential of the “gift” analogy to be taken too literally, as if others are mere objects. (See my previous post about teaching children that people are not objects.)

This idea of receiving others as a gift is emerging for a theme for me as I live out my faith. I’m still processing all of this, but I’m seeing connections among the types of books and ministries to which I have been drawn over the years and it seems to come back again and again to this idea. I hope to be able to write more about this as time goes on.

For now, please know that you are a gift to me. Thank you for reading!

Please connect with me either in the comments below, by e-mail at livingfaithjct (AT) gmail (DOT) com or on Facebook or Twitter (see the green buttons on the page); I love hearing from you!

Read other posts of mine about others as gifts:

The More Different We Are, The More We Need Each Other

Shutdown as Opportunity

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