16 / Ordinary time, 2025

towers of Babel

The more I write in pen and ink, the harder it becomes to write on a keyboard. Oops.

But I have so many thoughts and not enough places to put them, so I’ll spill out some here and hopefully make room for more. I learned last week that on the Clifton StrengthsFinder test I’m very high in intellection and ideation, to no one’s surprise—everything I take in becomes brain-fodder, which might be why I actually don’t really like to read a lot or watch movies. It becomes too much.

Life itself is fodder enough. Life, and death. In the space of the last two weeks we have been grieving a sudden loss in my family, the tragic death of an acquaintance at a previous church, and the horrifying news that one of our neighbors died by suicide. I sit out in the garden with the dahlias every evening and think about the frailty of it all, how it passes in a blur of regular days and then there’s no time left, but you never had a chance to prepare, even though realistically you should have been preparing all your life. But death is not in our design, and so every death comes as a new shock somehow, even though it is technically “the way of all flesh.”

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in my years trying to think of how to do something that will outlive me. I was always trying to be extraordinary—trying to build something glorious to prove the worthiness of my existence and the realness of my dedication to God.

I didn’t realize how often such a building turns out to be a Tower of Babel.

I think of John MacArthur, another life lost in recent days. He was hailed as extraordinary during his life and has been lauded by many in my circle after his death. Like the builders of Babel, he labored and made a name for himself, but I wonder how many people he scattered in the process—by being a haven for abusers, a defender of slavery, and displaying the worst instincts of misogyny in the name of Christ for all to see? How often was the true Gospel of the Kingdom able, by the grace of God, to cut through the chaotic roar of gongs and cymbals?

Giving up Genesis 11:4 and picking up John 20:16 instead has been one of the most freeing exchanges of my life. The work is more mundane and repetitive, but the reward is far purer, and part of that reward is humility: I do so little to reap so much, while God does the secret work of life and growth that makes cells into babies, babies into children, and tubers into flowers. I just create a safe environment and do the daily chores to make sure the lambs are fed and cared for.

All this for a flower that blooms and then fades, and for lives that will—like every life—end too soon. But I’d rather co-create something fleeting with my most merciful God than build a tower into heaven on my own.

I wonder if the world would be better off with fewer “extraordinary” Christians and more ordinary ones. It is, after all, the ordinary work of parenting that heals generations; the ordinary work of farming that feeds nations; the ordinary work of hospitality that bridges divides. The ordinary work of work is what keeps the world turning.

As the old prayer goes,

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.