The Philosopher's Toad

I've come across a fun metaphor in the book Frog and Toad Are Friends, in the story The Lost Button by Arnold Lobel. Lobel was deeep.

Frog and Toad enjoy a walk in a meadow, some woods, and along a river. Toad realizes he lost his jacket button, so they go looking for it -- back through the woods, the meadow, and the river. They find buttons everywhere, but none of them are the right one. 

The more wrong buttons they find, the more irritated Toad grows. In a fit of rage, he jumps up and down screaming, "The whole world is covered with buttons, and not one of them is mine!"

And that, my friends, is probably going to be my lifelong framework for recognizing coveting and discontent creeping into my heart. That's exactly how it manifests itself. 

• Singleness: "The whole world is covered in people, and not one of them is mine!" 
• Status symbols: "The whole world is covered in luxury items, and not one of them is mine!" 
• Illness: "The whole world is covered in healthy bodies, and not one of them is mine." 

Toad's erroneous thinking brought me a moment of clarity about my own.  

His mistakes?

• He focused on what he didn't have.
• He focused on everything wrong with the buttons he found.
• Finally, and perhaps worst of all, he framed his loss as an absolute.

His double absolutes, "the whole world" and "not one of them" reminded me of a verse that keeps crossing my path. The Apostle Paul presents a double absolute of a different breed in Ephesians 5:20, "...always giving thanks for all things..." (NASB).

My flesh: "Nooo. It's not that simple." 

Paul's ideal feels a little harsh. Rude even. We're either succeeding at giving thanks all the time for all the things, or we're falling short. It's probably a norm among us to give thanks too sporadically, and too selectively. But Paul never said to feel thankful. Giving thanks is something we can do whether we feel like it or not. He put no burden on us to feel a certain way, but he defines this an obligation to act out.  

Yes, giving thanks is hard.

• It's harder in heartbreak.
• It's harder in loss.
• It's harder when you're feeling Holy Ghost abased. 
• It's harder when everyone around you seems to be excelling and prospering like mad. 
• It's harder when all the world is covered in buttons, and not one of them is ours.

Our choices are similar to Toad's. When we're feeling the angst of what's missing in our life, we can stomp the ground, or we can look around at what we have and give thanks. 

• We can grieve and give thanks. 
• We can be heavy-hearted and give thanks. 
• We can be uncertain and give thanks. 
• We can give thanks for the unwanted buttons we found on a path we didn’t ask to be on in the first place.

Lobel tended to leave major elements of his stories unspoken. By the end of this one, Toad has grown an appreciation for the "wrong" buttons. He sews them onto his jacket as a gift for his friend Frog, who jumps for joy. It's almost like Toad realized how despite his frustration, the discoveries on their second trip around the meadow, the woods, and the river had lasting value after all. He seems to have found joy in the journey, and in generosity. 

Lobel also gave us these brilliant illustrations. 

Maybe the leaps I made here are a bit much, but I’m confident in this: for God's children, the worst difficulties of life aren’t absolutes. When our eyes open to the absolute goodness of what we've been given, and the absolute hope of what lies ahead, then we can experience a more absolute gratefulness, leading to a more absolute joy. 

Easy? No. But it's absolutely a walk worth taking. 

The Gall

The approach

Last year at this time, I was hyped about the resurrection,  and rightfully so. This year was different. My mental state was more like a three-ring circus of fresh grief, fresh questions, and fresh conviction. The topic of bitterness was nowhere near the surface, until God shook it there. And He shook hard.

Pixabay: Hyssop, Yakuplpek

One of several shakings was a sermon I heard. It’s a different time and place, but here’s a link to it. If you’re not Pentecostal, fasten your seatbelt before clicking that link. I’m focused on the last few minutes, the way Jesus refused to drink the gall.

I’d never realized the importance of it, but it’s no stretch to think Jesus’ refusal of the gall had a metaphor built in. It symbolized His full forgiveness, pure of bitterness. It was His goodness on display in a way my flesh doesn’t want to hear. Because if He had pardon for all who rejected and betrayed Him, beat and mutilated Him … then what does that mean for me and my hurt?

The gall

I shared this idea of the gall as a metaphor (in a butchered way) with a friend. She replied, “That rings true. Anger releases dopamine.” As in, the pleasure hormone. The temptation of bitterness is how it will help ease the pain. That part isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a neurological fact.

Another voice in my life affirmed how deep bitterness can have a numbing effect on your entire emotional and spiritual being. Once bitterness sets in, you stop feeling. You stop caring. When we consume bitterness, it consumes us.

 Bitterness is gall. The gall was bitterness.

Temptation

The gall was temptation. Jesus was tempted in the same ways we would be (Heb. 2:18). In trying to understand His temptation, we only have to ask, “What would any other person want?”  

Along with wanting to end the physical agony, He must have wanted to…

despise those who despised Him

reject those who rejected Him

shame those who shamed Him

mock those who mocked Him

punish those who punished Him.

And He didn’t.

He divinely forgave. But His humanity was like ours. He would have fought the urge to retaliate. To do justice. To treat them like they deserved to be treated. Those last hours, in the most extreme pain, He resisted every form of retaliation within His power. And He had all power.

He endured it all, and entered into death pure. The only man ever to stop breathing still sinless.

Song of the Drunkards

It’s my understanding the gall was prophesied only once, in Psalm 69:21. The context turns out to be fascinating. 

David is in extreme distress, lamenting. He repeatedly uses water to symbolize his overwhelm. I’m not sure I can articulate what I’m seeing here, but I hope the next time you read Psalm 69, you watch for the water.

I’ll use weasel words, because I don’t know. But this part is clear. Most of David’s direct petitions for help in this Psalm are linked to the water, and the water appears to be linked with his weeping. More details are posted below.* He describes the water as threatening, immersive, increasing, and out of control. 

He describes his enemies as hateful and destructive (vs. 4).

He describes the harm they did to him, causing reproach, shame, and dishonor (vs. 19). 

He describes being reduced to a song of the drunkards. He’s humiliated and broken (vs. 12).

He describes what he would like done to his enemies in twelve colorful curses spanning verses 22-28.

He asks to be delivered from his enemies, but he spends more emphasis asking to be saved from the water.

Salvation

All of this made me wonder if in this Psalm, David is praying for God to save him from his own gut-wrenching reaction to the wrongs. As David unknowingly prophesied about the Messiah being offered bitter gall, could it be he was warring in his own heart, begging deliverance from the poison of bitterness?

 If the water of his turmoil destroyed his footing (vs. 2), then his prayer may be asking for salvation from the emotional downward spiral. I found this relatable, because sometimes the pain about the pain is worse than the original injury. The chain reaction of emotions can be harder to manage than the actual offense.

Whether or not this is an accurate interpretation, I found it comforting to see David’s flawed humanity on display. When my reaction to pain is less noble than, “Father forgive them…” I can petition God the way David did. 

Hear me… 

Deliver me… 

Draw near...

Save me... 

Redeem me...

Like David, I can keep praising and magnifying a good God who hears, and who doesn’t despise me in my pain (vs. 30 & 33). 

The next time I’m overwhelmed, I hope I remember the pivotal moment when Jesus, as He was purchasing my salvation, overcame the curse of bitterness. And in doing so, He opened a pathway where I can walk sure-footed and free from it too.

And I will walk at liberty,

For I seek Your precepts.

- Psalm 119:45 (NASB) 

***

The first water cluster is in verses 1-2. The waters, deep mire [mud], deep waters, floods, could be linked with his weeping in verse 3. Either way, it directly falls under his first request, “Save me, O God, for the waters…” (vs. 1).

 The second water cluster is in verses 14-15. Mire [mud], deep waters, a waterflood, the deep, the pit. The pit here is usually translated “well,” so this is most likely a water reference too. It’s a break from description, and he launches into earnest prayer loaded with petitions: hear, deliver, let me not sink, let not the waterflood overflow me, hear me, hide not thy face, hear me, draw nigh, deliver me.