Passion

I have been mulling something over which I read in the Old Testament and thought I’d share.

I know you’re not supposed to bring your work home...but this week I was actually pretty glad to have had a chance to do something at work which really hit home – and stuck in my head. I’ve been preparing a talk on the theme of legacy and was listening to a sermon about Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a Jew who was serving in the court of Artaxerxes, the Persian King, as his cupbearer. The Jews were in exile, apart from a select few who had made the 900 mile, 4 month trek back to Jerusalem and started building their houses there. But the temple remained destroyed and the wall of Jerusalem in ruins. When Nehemiah was told this by someone who’d just got back from Jerusalem he reacted pretty strongly to the news – he was very upset and mourned and fasted and prayed. For 4 months! Then he went to ask the King if he could go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple – and he asked for help to get the materials to do it! And as you read on through the book, the rest is history. A legacy of a city rebuilt, even in the face of opposition and intimidation.

I was thinking of my reactions to bad news and comparing them to Nehemiah’s. We’re similar in that he mourned and I often cry or feel like crying when I hear bad news. But actually, we’re not the same when it comes to mourning. Because when I cry, I more often than not cry for myself – whilst he was crying for others, for Jerusalem. The preacher speaking said in his sermon that if we had two bottles – one for the tears we cry for ourselves, and the other for the tears that we cry for others – the former would likely be to the fullest bottle by the ends of our lives. But praying and fasting as an automatic reaction? I’m more likely to be trying to find ways of making the situation better, thinking about what I can do to solve things and getting stressed about it all. But his knee jerk reaction was – turn to God. Acknowledge his greatness and goodness, plead with him...and for quite some time. 4 months in fact. As it wasn’t until 4 months later that he asked the King if he could go back to Jerusalem.

One thing was clear though. Nehemiah was a passionate man. No one reacts in that way if they don’t feel strongly about something. I have gotten frustrated with myself in the past for feeling strongly about things, for being passionate, for caring about things and people until it seems to hurt. It’s very inconvenient as you end up getting caught up in issues and with people when it would have been so much easier to bury your head in the sand and keep quiet! But I guess there is a good side to passion...it isn’t just a feeling. If it’s for the right thing or person – then it’s an action...and eventually...a legacy. No one will have a legacy if they don’t have a passion. And the nature of that legacy will depend on the object of that passion.

I think everyone is very passionate about at least one thing. Ourselves. I am passionate about ME! We love ourselves very much and are very passionate about the way we look, the careers we secure for ourselves, the way other people think about us and the image we project. The problem is if the only passion is me then that’s a misdirected passion. Nehemiah’s passion was God - as his knee jerk reaction was to pray and fast. God was the first person he turned to. I think that says a lot for how much he loved and trusted God. If something really great happens or if something really bad happens – the person we feel like turning to first, I would have thought, is one of the people whom we love the most. It’s like it’s something out of our control – it’s a gut reaction. My mum, my best friend or my sisters are my knee jerk reaction I think. But what if I were to reach for God first, rather than reach for a person?

Nehemiah’s passion was also others as he was really moved by the situation in Jerusalem. I was trying to think of the last times I’d been deeply moved, when my emotions had been in upheaval, when I’d felt very sad. Again, most of the situations were rather me-orientated, with my own personal experience dominating in the immediate past. However, I know the earthquake in Haiti definitely moved me, particularly as I had to read through updates and stories at work a lot during January so I was prepared to speak to the media – but I don’t think I shed any actual tears over the hundreds of thousands of people, the hundreds of thousands of souls that were lost on that awful day. I know I can be moved – I’m an emotional person. But I need to be moved, to be passionate about more than just myself. God needs to be my passion, he needs to be the one that stirs something inside of me, and stirs me to feel more for those around me – and those beyond the borders of my own immediate world. I wish God was my passion more because if he were, I wouldn’t get so unnecessarily passionate about all the things that don’t really matter. And believe me, its easy to get upset about things which don’t matter. Phone companies who leave you on hold for ages, someone taking a long time in the queue at Tesco, someone having continuous phone conversations on the train, crying children on public transport...just some of the things I have been unnecessarily annoyed about in the last 5 days alone! Imagine being more passionate about these things than I am about the need to sort out my own sin?!

Nehemiah prayed, mourned and fasted. And he waited on God for four months. But then he actually did something. He went to the King and asked for permission to go to Jerusalem – and then went and rebuilt the wall. So his passion turned into action. So if I’m going to say I’m passionate about Christ and then have a life that is completely unreflective of that, who am I trying to kid?! If we think God’s given us a passion for something or some people – for kids work, for the poor, for music, for mission, for social justice, for hospitality...what ever it is that really gets you...then that means you actually go and do that thing. You pray for that thing, for that person, for those people. Otherwise its just words. It’s just a pointless feeling of no benefit to anyone else. So if you’re passionate about doing something – then do it..and if you’re physically can’t do...pray! If you’re passionate about a group of people – then be amongst them, serve them, pray for them.

And don’t be scared of showing it. Having a passion for others means taking a risk. It will probably mean hurt and disappointment at some point along the road. But that passion for others is made possible by a passion for Christ. As there’s no risk there.