In Days Fraught: "We Should Not Be Too Taken Aback" -
Fraught?
Fraught is the word of the week. As in headlines like, “How is TV news going to cover the weirdest, most fraught election in US history?” Or, “How to talk to kids about the election and fraught politics.” Fraught, fraught, fraught. Fraught.
Election or not, our lives are fraught.
So just what is “fraught”? It’s an adjective and its strong synonym is UNEASY. The word worked its way to us from the Middle Dutch noun vracht, which meant “load” and which is also the source of the word freight. As in baggage, burden and load.
Merriam-Webster defines fraught as,
1: full of or accompanied by something specified —used with with a situation fraught with danger; The paper was poorly researched and is fraught with errors.
2: causing or characterized by emotional distress or tension : a fraught relationship
We agree: these days are fraught. Being fraught is nothing new.
But this might be. That sometimes God consumes like a moth what is dear to us, that the Giver of all good gifts sends moths.
God Sends The Moth
I’m here to say that God sends the moths (Psalm 39:11). God sends consuming moths to drive us lay up treasures where no moths destroy (Matthew 6:19ff).
I’m here to say that God shakes the earth. God shakes the earth that what might not be shaken will remain (Hebrews 12:26-27).
I’m here to say that God makes crooked (Ecclesiastes 7:14). God makes crooked and when we acknowledge him he makes our paths straight (Proverbs 3:6).
And I am here to remind that no evil will befall you if you make the Lord your refuge; that our faith may be endangered by security, but secure in the midst of danger; that inordinate grief betrays false gods and misplaced love.
I’m writing this post to reassure my fraught self and your fraught self that God strikes with severe mercy—he shakes our sense of security and sends moths to devour our treasures—because our Lord God will not share his glory with another or his praise with idols (Isaiah 42:8). In his grace, our Lord will not permit us to have stability apart from Himself.
In other words, I’m here to say that God sends these fraught days.
God Sends Fraught Days
Why? James answered well: “that you may be perfect [mature] and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1.4).
That’s good, right? Who wouldn’t want to be mature and complete lacking nothing?
But what if those only come at the cost of days fraught?
Our current trials may be discipline. Covid-19, the political scene, and our increasingly tense relationships could be God’s moths. He might bring these circumstances so that we tighten our grip on him or he could be bringing it to loosen our grip on our treasures. But in both cases God is working in and through these fraught days to make himself our chief treasure.
Consider the Psalmist in Psalm 39. He believed that what he was enduring was a result of divine discipline for sin.
When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath!
Psalm 39:11
Erik Raymond explains,
In other words, God sends the discipline and the circumstances act as a divinely dispatch moth to consume his treasure! This is good because in sin we are, like Achan, hiding treasures in our tent (Josh. 7.22). God intends to unfasten us from these fleeting treasures and to refasten us, wholly and completely upon himself.
Regardless of whether our specific sin prompted these fraught Trump v. Biden post-election days or if God’s more general goal that his children grow in holiness was the cause (Hebrews 12:10), we can rest assured. For we know that if we are patient and trained by our trials, these fraught days will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11).
Therefore, we should not be too taken aback.
We Should Not Be Too Taken Aback…
I, for one, do not want to miss the forest for the trees in these fraught days. God’s ultimate purpose is that we trust in Him (Psalm 37:4-7, Isaiah 26:3-4, Proverbs 3:5-6). Our work, Jesus said, to believe in the One He has sent (John 6:29). To trust him.
We tend to feel like our times are more fraught than times past; as if Noah and Job, Joseph and Moses had fewer reasons for discouragement and unease. So I’ve come back to this bit by J.I. Packer a few times in the past couple fraught days.
The same wisdom which ordered the paths which God’s saints trod in Bible times orders the Christian’s life today. We should not, therefore, be too taken aback when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen to us now. What do they mean? Why simply that God in His wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet, and is dealing with us accordingly.
Perhaps he means to strengthen us in patience, good humour, compassion, humility, or meekness, by giving us some extra practice in exercising these graces under specially difficult conditions. Perhaps He has new lessons in self-denial and self-distrust to teach us. Or perhaps He wishes to break us of complacency, or unreality, or undetected forms of pride and conceit. Perhaps His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him…
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, InterVarsity Press, 1973, p. 86
Perhaps His purpose is simply to draw us closer to Himself in conscious communion with Him…
Free From Fraught
As I write this votes are being recounted in my hyper-divided swing state of Wisconsin. Our nation is on a razor edge. The tension is tangible, this fraught-ness that is new. Oh sure, I’ve been disappointed before.
But this is gloom goes far beyond the two men atop hundreds of thousands of contested ballots in light blue and pink states. As much as I spout hoping in God, I’ve been more skim milk than real cream since election night. Kind of weak. Rather fraught.
But I know there is a good design in it all of this. To quote from a Puritan named Thomas Boston,
It speaks comfort to the afflicted children of God to consider that whatever the crook in your lot is, it is of God’s making and therefore you may look upon it kindly since it is your Father who made it for you. Question not but that there is a favorable design in it toward you.
By some miracle of grace, that is what saints do. We trust that there is a favorable design in our fraught days. I am drawing near. He is drawing me near. And I’m more aware of the treasure it is to commune with Him.
We trust, and we watch for the divinely dispatched moths. They might fly in with coronavirus closures and kids stuck at home. Or they might appear in the mail with late arriving ballots or on the wings of a Twitter bird that does not tweet away.
We trust that God in His wisdom sends moths to eat away our idol hopes and make something of us which we have not attained yet. Yes, we trust that God is at work. Perhaps simply to draw us closer to Himself.
And we are drawn and to him who takes our fraught upon him, who daily bears our burdens, and we are not too taken aback.
And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
Psalm 39:7
