Jacob
“But, I’m not a baby,” the boy says, looking at up at me petulantly, with dark, bottomless eyes, his lips pursed in a pout. “I’m eight.”
Suddenly, I remember the voice of Jesus, calling us all his little children, even though some of us like to think we’re adults.
I had called the boy Joshua at first, because it’s early and there are eighty-eight kids in this room, and the ‘J’ names smooshed together in my mind, but he had quickly corrected me.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jacob,” I had said, thinking, by all means let me train you under the right name; thinking, do his parents know how nefarious a name is Jacob?
Of course, there’s only ever been one name to train under, and not my name or Jacob, not the name of the person in training but of the person who does the training, that is, Jesus. Disciples have always worn the name of their teacher.
“I appeal to you in the name of Jesus,” the apostle Paul had written.
Here is where I realize that my view of this situation is a bit out of focus.
By all means, let me train you under the right name.
In Hebrew, Jacob means deceiver, and the Jacob of scripture had been well known for his slipperiness and cunning and thievery, even against his own family, before he learned to be in awe of the Lord and, after many years, finally became God’s pilgrim. For some of us, discipleship takes a very long time.
So, this one’s tracking about right, I had thought, at first, bending down toward Jacob’s ear so he could hear me at a whisper.
Jacob—this one, had been wandering the children’s worship room, sometimes on his knees, sometimes on his bottom, and even a few times standing right up and meandering on his short (shorter than he thinks) legs, during the time when he should have been listening, and, as I reminded him, “at Movement Level Zero.” Movement Level Zero is naturally very hard when you’re eight or nine or ten, or even if you’re twenty-five or forty or sixty-something, so I am not surprised that the floor of this children’s room always looks like a pail of writhing worms.
I had stood in the back this morning, watching young Jacob’s journey, how he got tangled up (on purpose) with other people along the way, how he had distracted and manipulated them into trouble. He would lean over and whisper, maybe a slithering question, pretending to hide some gem of a thing in his hand, and then, once he had drawn another child’s attention, deftly poke that child in the ribs.
On the other side of the room, when Jacob had, in his wanderings—and sometimes it takes wandering a lot of miles to learn how to seek after God, encountered Kevin standing over near a wall of cabinets, Kevin told Jacob (and his mystified compatriots) to go back and sit in the center of the room, to be still. Jacob had suddenly developed eight-year-old back problems which necessitated an exaggerated and defiant lean against those cabinet doors.
“But I can’t,” Jacob had loudly whispered to Kevin, effecting an exaggerated look of pain.
Discipleship is messy, that’s what the Spirit calmly reminds me now, as I lean in to train little Jacob. He’d have me remember also that before I could learn the character of God, He had to teach me how to sit still and pay attention, and He did it while, as the psalmist says, He crowned me with steadfast love and compassion. Before Jacob can ever know God, he’ll have to learn to sit still and pay attention too. For him right now, that’s the lesson.
“How am I acting like a baby?” Jacob demands darkly.
I stand back a little so he can see my face, and I ask God in the whisper of a prayer to show me how to love a Jacob. Jesus always leads with love, and I am remembering I’m training now under His name.
“You don’t know how to listen yet,” I say simply, trying for patience.
“Oh, I know how,” Jacob says with a little sneer, “I just don’t want to.”
Well, at least he’s honest. When God started teaching me, I had all kinds of excuses.
In multiple ways and repeatedly, God tells all of His people to be still, to desire ears that hear, because, as Ann Voskamp says so well, stillness is the first step on a Red Sea Road (Waymaker, 150), and, as the psalmist wrote, we have to be still to know with every fiber of our being that He is God, and it’s better, says Jesus, to be still before Him and to listen than to do all the pressing things we can find to do.
“Baby class, then?” I hold out my hand in invitation.
There is childlikeness, and then, there is childishness. With affection, God calls me His child, tells me to become like a child in faith and prayer and reliance, and, at the same time, with the very same affection, He tells me to put off my childish ways.
Jacob makes a sucking sound against his teeth and slumps away from me, but, for the first time all morning, he shifts his attention toward the teacher up front. Of course, I am under no illusion that Jacob will remain anymore than I did when the Lord started with me. Jacob is learning to keep watch, and sometimes that takes a while, but one day—one day, I think, glancing at a knot of fourth graders entirely captivated with the story of God–when Jacob learns the better thing, he’ll be ready to discover more of the Lord.
I smile now, drifting back a little to give Jacob the kind of gracious space he needs to grow, remembering how many times God has leaned close to patiently whisper in my baby ear, “Hey now, be still. Stop chasing so hard after trouble.”
One beat, two, and then, little Jacob pops up on his amazingly resilient little knees and begins another trip around the room.
Ah well, I think, drifting in behind him, it only took the Israelites forty years.
As for me after all these years, I still wander off, hop right up on my shorter-than-I-think legs, and all over again, my good Shepherd steps right in to save me from myself.
