love keeps
The same day that I sit in the hammock chair on the porch reading Ezekiel, my bare toes curled and hardly touching the wood planks of the floor, my body twisting slowly in the newborn morning, Kevin gently says to me, “I think you need one of those days when you leave your phone on the charger and take off your watch and just rest.”
I look up at him, slipping my glasses down and away from my eyes so that he looks like my husband and not a blur in front of me, my finger laying flat against the crisp page, just below where I read again, “then you will know that I am the LORD.”
I say ‘again’ because when I read Ezekiel, I notice that same phrase countless times, so often that it begins to feel like part of the punctuation, like a pause or its own little Sabbath, built into the words as they flood my mind. I could demonstrate for you, and after a while you might roll your eyes, the way you would if I over punctuated with colons, like you would if I kept grabbing your arm and giving it a jerk. In Scripture, repetition works like the underline of a pen and absolutely should arrest my attention. I should take a closer look at those words—then you will know that I am the LORD, then you will know that I am the LORD, then you will know that I am the LORD. I should let them grab me; I should wonder what is so important about them that God seems to want to use them like a paddle to restart heart. But still, somewhere in the murky part of me, I also just feel annoyed.
Kevin smiles. He speaks of Sabbath, of the way I observe it when I am taking care, not the sloppy way I sometimes rest with my phone still within easy reach of my hand, with my watch still vibrating against my arm.
Recently, I heard a well-known Bible teacher bluntly assert that human obsessions with social media come from the buried desire to be omniscient and omnipresent, like God. “We don’t like to admit that we can’t actually know and be involved with and invest in hundreds of people’s lives at one time,” she said, but of course, I am paraphrasing. I pondered the idea, thinking that this was one of the reasons I gave up on most of that stuff, but also recognizing that the same ancient temptation only shows up in my life in other ways.
“I do?” I ask my husband, returning his smile. Funny, that my openness to his careful observation only repeats the two words I used to seal the covenant I made with him. I do? I do. Kevin watches over me, and I watch over him, because love does that. It keeps.
He nods, saying only, “Yesterday you were on your phone every time I walked in the room. On your phone, with your book in your lap.” He knows I read to rest, that the book in my lap means I intend to stop attending, that the phone in my hands, at my fingers, in front of my eyes, means I never do stop. Leaving my phone behind has been a way I exercise my trust in the LORD, a way I actively remember that I’m not Him and therefore, I’m not needed by everyone all the time.
“We like to believe we are critical to everything,” that Bible teacher had said. She put her hand on her hip, like she dared whomever to send her nasty emails, like she knew fingers were tapping keys while she spoke. I didn’t have to wait long to figure out how that temptation, that desire Eve had from the beginning, shows up still in my own life. In my mind, I know I’m not like God; in my crooked heart, I still believe things might fall apart if I’m just not available for a while.
I memorized this passage in Colossians that says of Christ, “in him all things hold together.” I remember it now, looking up at my husband, pressing my finger on that crisp page in the book of Ezekiel.
In discipleship, I learned and now often teach a simple way to meditate on a phrase of Scripture by reading and re-reading, saying and re-saying the words while shifting the emphasis from one word to another. I look down at my Bible and begin the slow savoring again, stopping on that phrase God keeps repeating through Ezekiel: Then YOU will know that I am the Lord. Then you WILL know that I am the Lord. Then you will KNOW that I am the Lord. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
I glance at my phone, sitting on the table beside me. It happens slowly, how I go from a Sabbath without it to “Sabbath” with it always within reach, with me always sending my words out like they could be lifelines.
“You know, you’re right,” I say to Kevin, glancing over to where he’s settling now into his own chair. “I do need that.” I do.
At the same time I admit this aloud to Kevin, I am admitting to the LORD that I need his relentless repetition of those words in Ezekiel, that I need Him telling me over and over that He wants ME to KNOW that HE is the LORD, and by natural conclusion, that I am not. It happens slowly, the way my heart forgets that God is the only one who can handle unlimited accessibility; the only one who can ever truly know and love and keep watch over everyone; the only one who ever really holds things together.
Be still. I hear it like a whisper now, like the wind, lightly touching my cheeks. Know that I am the LORD.
In my lap, the pages flutter and I press my hand flat right where Ezekiel, speaking the lifelines of God, says, “I will make with them a covenant of peace…and they shall know that I am the Lord their God with them, and that they…are my people.”
He had to add that ‘with them’—they shall know that I am the Lord their God WITH them.
I receive it now like a fresh wind in my soul. He’s with me. He watches over me. His love keeps.
