I do not know how you should use your precious hours, but note this. You seek justice and you seek peace. Very often, it will be one or the other, not both: peace or justice. Very often, they do not come together in time. You must work this out for yourself.
To take something—this is a marvel: first, a creature must perceive it, then desire it, then move for it, and only then, take it. Our awe at seeing how animals take what they need is rooted in this most basic narrative of our own nature. It is our own story.
Only Tamar is a true agent in this great drama. Judah merely acts on his fears and desires, like any creature. Only Tamar intends the future of all Judah—and she is a Canaanite.
The struggle is a mystery. You cannot force the fight to make yourself grow. It is strange grace to be given such a night and such a fight and such sight as comes with the rising of the dawn. The gift is offered far more often than it is accepted. It can come through the veil of any crisis—at work, in health, in jail …
The Genesis stories send a peculiar task: to feel after a spiritual meaning for an unspiritual life. In all of Genesis’ 3,000 words, the name of God appears not twenty times, and even then, mostly as a believer’s boast—but God in Godself does not appear. Therefore, let us ask about an unspiritual life. What is it?
“The holy roller-coaster” is a handle I give to my Old Testament students to set the history of Israel clearly in mind. Spread across some 1500 years, that history has four peaks of great favor separated by three calamities for the whole people. As this undulating wave forms on a blackboard on the first day of class, I often ask my students what the big picture calls to mind. “A roller-coaster” says one. Eventually, from a deeper place, someone says: “My life.”
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