“…you told me never to use words like that except in ex—extreme provocation, and Francis provocated me enough to knock his block off!”
(To Kill a Mockingbird)
Back in my high school days, I wrote a series of short articles that I titled “The Irritants of Morg.” It began as an email to a friend about something that I found provoking and snowballed into a semi-regular exercise of opining sardonically about my daily life. If I’d been more of a go-getter, I might have posted my witty teen narratives on a blog, but I wasn’t; and so only a few people were readers of my brief series. I had copious material to artistically mine. Being a teenager is a provoking time without many compass reference points to keep one steady as she goes. Emotions slosh around like water in a bathtub, ready to overwhelm the margins without much warning. Sarcasm seemed an innocuous coping mechanism in comparison to some of the other options the culture had on offer; and so I wrote out my irritants with what I fondly recall was humour and gusto while trying to develop some self-control.
Recently, I’ve been thinking of reviving the old series since being provoked is a regular feeling most days. But provoked to what? Is irritation, dislike, and dark humour enough of a response;—or are these circumstances meant to draw forth something of the Kingdom of Heaven from me and drag it into the earth?
"…Since the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.”
(Matthew 11:12)
Such a curious verse that doesn’t sit well with our 21st century sanitized Christianity that exults niceness. We Canadian Christians are even more flummoxed by the idea. After all, being nice is a point of national pride. Yet as a result, we are in danger of being misled by our cultural expectations of what it looks like to demonstrate love; or what exactly constitutes the sort of good works that our faith enjoins us to undertake. As much as the circumstances of the last year or so have brought us all to the point of extreme irritation; what are we actually being provoked to? Is it just to be nicer and maybe more calm? No one argues with a nice, calm person. But the Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a yoga class. That ‘peace that passes understanding' can only surpass our understanding when the circumstances are anything but tranquil;—otherwise we’re just having a nice day.
Jesus was provoked and threw over the tables of the moneychangers and made a whip to drive out those who were using the temple for their own ends. Elisha was moved to prophesy a son for the Shunammite woman who was hospitable to him. David danced with abandon before the Lord when the presence of God returned to Jerusalem. Lot was grieved daily by the sin of his culture and was rescued by angels from destruction. Paul was so irritated by a spirit of divination in a slave girl that he cast out the demon and was imprisoned and whipped for his trouble. All of them—and more—were provoked to action by their response to the circumstances at hand.
These are provoking times for a reason. None of us can afford to avoid asking God the question of what exactly we are being provoked to do. Is it going out alone to kill the giant who mocks God? Is it blessing someone in their barrenness? Is it delivering those bound in spiritual darkness? Is it preaching to those who don’t want to hear? Because it just might be that these irritants that provoke us to action are divinely orchestrated inciting incidents meant to usher in the kingdom of Heaven.
(A version of this article was published in the July/Aug issue of live magazine. Check them out at www.baptistwomen.com )
