Sitting
- a meditation by Mark Belz, Cono Class of 1961 -
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The government has issued guidelines intended to stem the spread of the coronavirus, including staying home. That means that like millions of others I’m sitting a whole lot more than usual. And it’s frustrating, knowing that there’s a war going on out there. Doctors, nurses and paramedics are square in the middle of it, risking their lives, but I must stay home. The experts say that I can best help beat this pandemic by just sitting, and in that way be a key player. I have a crucial role to play. Perhaps they could paraphrase John Milton’s famous line: “They also serve who only sit and wait.”
The word “sitting” can indicate indifference, laziness or indolence. In such contexts it is negative—I am doing nothing when I should be doing something. But in our coronavirus context, it’s the reverse. I am doing something by doing nothing. Sitting may be right, or sitting may be wrong. It depends on the context. It depends on the who, what, why, where and when of the sitting.
Genesis 18 is a story about a man, Abraham, who was sitting: “And the Lord appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.” It sounds like it was in the summertime, probably midday or after. I picture it as one of those hot July days we experience in St. Louis. I remember the late Jack Buck calling some of those afternoon Cardinals games, and when the Cards hadn’t scored any runs and the game would be in the eighth inning or so, he’d quote an old country song: “Well, there ain’t nothin’ shakin’ but the leaves on the trees. And they wouldn’t be a-shakin’ if it wasn’t for the breeze.” Abraham was just sitting there. Nothing happening. Maybe the Oaks of Mamre’s leaves were shaking, but otherwise it was dead still.
And it was, so to speak, late innings. It had been a quarter century since he had pulled up stakes in Ur, his hometown, about 1000 miles away. He had moved here because the Lord had told him to, promising him that there “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” God had also promised him that he and his wife Sarah would have a son, and by that means make him into that great nation, even a “multitude” of nations. And the Lord had been very specific about that child: he would be born to Sarah, not to another woman, and he was to be named “Isaac.”
Abraham was 75 years old when he had left Ur; he was now closing in on 100. For 24 years he had lived in a tent, wandering about in an unfamiliar land. He had no permanent home. He had become a nomad, a Bedouin. Nothing that the Lord had promised him in Ur or in four appearances to Abraham since that time had come true. Most of all, Sarah had never become pregnant, and now she was past child-bearing years. As Abraham sat at the door of his tent on that hot day, things looked pretty grim. Nuthin’ shakin’. Yet there he sat.
Abraham had entertained some doubts along the way. He had laughed at the prospect of Sarah’s becoming pregnant at age 90. He had thought he might be killed in Egypt before any of the promises were fulfilled and thus lied to protect himself; he had proposed that Eliezer of Damascus might be considered his heir rather than his own son; he had substituted Hagar for Sarah in order to manufacture the heir. In these ways he was trying to nudge the promise along toward fulfillment, but his machinations hadn’t worked. Indeed, the Egypt lie had brought trouble to Pharaoh and to Abraham’s own household. The Hagar pregnancy had produced domestic strife. Apparently anything he could do wasn’t going to make a difference. The ball was in God’s court now, and actually always had been. He recognized that. So there he sat.
Abraham could have given up. He could have pulled up stakes once again (this time literally) and returned to Ur, his hometown. But if he ever entertained that thought, he must have dismissed it because he never acted on it. He stayed put.
My father, Max Belz, in his early adult life, owned a couple of grain and lumber businesses in central Iowa in partnership with his father. The two Grundy County businesses were flourishing, and Dad loved it. He and Mom built a beautiful new home for our growing family in the small town of Holland. But the Lord interfered by calling Dad into the ministry. Being fully convinced of that call, Dad and Mom sold the businesses, together with the new house, and moved to eastern Iowa where Dad became student supply pastor for a couple of tiny rural churches. Dad warmed up to the community, but not all the community warmed up to him. In fact, there was outright opposition from some families in the area. It surfaced in Spring, 1951, when my older sister Julie, older brother Joel and I were students at the one-room schoolhouse in that township, operated by Iowa’s public school system. Some of the not-so-friendly neighbor children attended there too.
We typically walked to and from school, but one spring day Julie decided to ride her new Western Flyer bicycle. It was a girl’s bike, but we all took turns riding it because it was the only one in the family. Julie parked the bike near some bushes outside the building. When we came out after school, she went to retrieve it and burst into tears. A member of the opposition had jack-knifed the tires; the Western Flyer was rendered a disabled vehicle.
Julie wheeled the flat-tired thing home, sobbing all the way. We all three sobbed our way into the living room and told Dad and Mom what had happened. We also told them that we wanted to move back to Holland. I remember Dad and Mom listening sympathetically to this plea. I think they had half a mind to move back too, but Dad said “Wait a minute.” He and Mom went off into the kitchen where they could discuss the matter out of our hearing, and shortly returned. Dad came over to Julie, hugged her, and said to us, over her shoulder, “We’re staying.”
The Apostle Paul said that Abraham did not waver in his faith, thus obtaining righteousness before God. True enough, he lied in Egypt to save his skin, he suggested that Eliezer would make a suitable heir, he invented his own heir by fathering Ishmael, he laughed at the thought of Sarah’s pregnancy. But he did not leave. He hung in there. Almost 100 years old, and he’s still there, sitting by the door of his tent in the heat of the day. Waiting for God to do what God had promised to do.
Sitting, of course, is not always the right posture. When God told Abraham to leave Ur and move to Canaan, it would have been wrong to sit. Nor is mere “sitting” of value. A right sitting occurs when you come to the end of your ideas and resources, or when year after year goes by and you don’t see your prayers being answered, but you nevertheless have that basic assurance that God is on the throne and that he will not let you down. It’s a resting, a repose, a time for contemplating once again what his great promises are, a time for giving glory to God simply because you know that he will keep his word.
I think Abraham was sitting there that day expectantly. Not necessarily that he thought something big was going to happen on that particular day, but that at some point, that big thing would happen. That’s why he stuck around, in a sense, to see how the whole thing would play out, because he knew it would play out. God would see to that, and when the moment came, Abraham would be ready for it. I believe that’s why the author tells us that when Abraham saw Three Visitors approaching his tent that day, he “ran from the tent door to meet them.” Ninety-nine years old, but boy, was he excited! He had more than an inkling as to what this was about, and Who it was that was coming to his tent. This is what he had been expecting.
Abraham’s sitting was voluntary. My sitting out the coronavirus epidemic is not; our governor just today signed a “stay at home” order until the pestilence has passed. But as I sit, I want to sit like Abraham sat. This doesn’t have to be down time. It can be, as Abraham’s was, a time for growing strong in my faith, a time for perhaps once again searching out the Word of God to take hold of the great promises of God for us and our families, for his Church, a time for taking these promises to heart, being fully convinced that God is able to do what he has promised.
– Mark Belz, Cono Class of 1961
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