And He Takes, and He Takes, and He Takes

All the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders and He shook my face
And He takes, and He takes, and He takes

— Sufjan Stevens, Casimir Pulaski Day

Job got it wrong when he said ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,’” read the Facebook post a friend of mine had shared. “The Lord only ever gives; He never takes away. When we feel like He’s ‘taking’ something, He’s just giving us a new gift.”

“What kind of sugar-coated nonsense is this?” I thought, bristling internally. “Has the person who wrote this post never experienced any kind of loss?” Good grief; even Job’s friends had the sense to sit in silence and mourn with him rather than chirpily saying, “Hey, it’s all OK, man! God’s just given you the new gifts of childlessness, penury, and chronic illness—blessed be the name of the Lord!”

My friend shared that post a number of years ago; the original has now been lost or buried in the constant churn of social media, and I can’t be sure I’ve quoted it entirely accurately. To do the writer credit, though, the crux of her argument may have been that only the devil takes, and that God only ever gives. I don’t know what the ultimate theological implications of that line of thinking are. I just know that the phrase “God never takes; He only gives” has been lodged in my mind since then. Sometimes it sure does feel like He takes, too.

What do we mean when we say that someone is “generous”? My childhood ideas of it revolved around presents—if someone gave you a lot of presents when you were maybe expecting only one (or two), or if they gave you a huge, astonishing present, the grown-ups would say that person was “very generous.” Even though my understanding has long since expanded beyond this notion, I unconsciously tend to think of generosity as giving, and often as the giving of material things. This is not an incorrect understanding of the word; the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it in one sense as “liberality in giving,” or “munificence.” Being generous is important to me, and, as God has so far blessed me with good, steady jobs that more than provide for my needs, I’m happy and eager to share the fruit of those blessings with others.

However, my tendency is to conveniently limit my generosity to merely money or the tangible resources it can obtain. What’s much harder is to give my time, my attention, my sense of control. It’s easy to give a check; it’s harder to give myself. And this is where generosity gets interesting.

The word “generous” comes from Latin roots and originally meant “to be of noble birth” (the word “gentle” came from similar roots and had a similar meaning). “Generosity,” then, was one’s “excellence or nobility of birth,” and over time developed the further meaning of “courage” or “nobility of conduct.” In modern usage, this idea is retained when we talk about generosity as “magnanimity” or a “willingness to forgive.” [1] Isn’t it an appropriate and beautiful thing that courage plays a role here? For this type of generosity also requires a person to give himself away. And the cost is not something easily quantifiable, as it might be for even the most extravagant of birthday gifts. It is impossible to know how much a person must “give up” to forgive someone else.

And He takes, and He takes, and He takes.

Sufjan Stevens’ “Casimir Pulaski Day” is a gently heartbreaking account of a young person dying of bone cancer and the singer’s complicated feelings of love, grief, and confusion at God’s apparent silence in the face of his friend’s suffering. [2] The phrase “All the glory that the Lord has made” is repeated throughout the song, accumulating more and more significance until the poignant final chorus:

All the glory that the Lord has made

And the complications when I see His face

In the evening in the window.

All the glory when He took our place

But He took my shoulders and He shook my face

And He takes and He takes and He takes.

There’s a quiet resignation in the singer’s voice on that last line, as if his friend is not the first thing God has “taken” and he knows it won’t be the last. I first met this song when I was a young adult, when nothing especially tragic had happened to me yet. Objectively speaking, nothing especially tragic has happened to me even now—but in the intervening years I have watched so much loss and hurt and heartbreak unfold in the lives of those I love. At the same time, my life is nothing like what I expected it to be at this point; the fact can feel like a “taking” of my dreams, hopes, and aspirations as one by one each longed-for thing appears more and more impossible. 

And He takes. And He takes. And He takes. And yet …

Last year I memorized Isaiah 53, the prophet’s account of the LORD’s Suffering Servant. “He was despised and rejected by men,” Isaiah says, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:3 ESV). 

Surely He has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed Him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our transgressions;
    He was crushed for our iniquities;
upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with His wounds we are healed.

(Isaiah 53:4–5; emphases mine)

When I start to despair or feel like one more door has been shut, bolted, and barred, I often think of the last verse of “Casimir Pulaski Day” and imagine Jesus looking me in the eyes and gently shaking some sense into me. “Oh you of little faith, why do you doubt?” He seems to be saying. But recently, when this song was looping through my mind, I started thinking about it in the light of Isaiah 53. And I saw something different. He still stood me up and gripped me by the shoulders; He still took my face in His hands and looked long and steadily into my eyes. 

But then He took my griefs off my shoulders and put them onto His. 

He took my fears from my clenched fists and held them in His own opened hands. 

He took my sins and put them on His own head, and didn’t stop until He had taken them all. 

Maybe it’s true that God Himself never takes away the good He’s given. It’s certainly true that He acts and gives abundantly, beyond anything we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20), even in the face of someone else’s evil intentions (Genesis 50:20). But it’s not true that He never takes away. In the most noble, most courageous, most stupefying act of generosity that there ever will be, Jesus showed His willingness to give us forgiveness, to freely give us His very Self and all the Father’s love that is rightfully His—by taking our sin upon Himself.

In this world all has not yet been made well and whole; the loss we experience due to sin and death makes us groan, makes us long for Someone to come and take it away. Someday He will. But until then, when we feel like the weight of the world is about to crush us, we can remember that the Suffering Servant was crushed for us.  

And He takes, and He takes, and He takes.

[1] The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and etymonline.com have very interesting discussions of “generous,” “generosity,” and “gentle.” See also etymonline.com’s discussions of “take,” “courage,” and “noble.”

[2] For a more in-depth look at the story unfolding in Sufjan Stevens’ “Casimir Pulaski Day,” check out this blog post from The Weeklings. 

 The featured image, “Muscari March,” is courtesy of Amelia Freidline and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Amelia Freidline

Amelia M. Freidline lives in the Kansas City suburbs with her parents and a feisty wee terrier named for the tallest mountain in Scotland. She studied journalism, English, and history at the University of Kansas and has worked as a word herder and comma wrangler in food media throughout her professional career. She’s a founding member of The Poetry Pub and has helped edit poetry collections for Bandersnatch Books. She is an amateur poet and writer, a photographer of faeryland, and a wielder of butter, and has self-published several small collections of original writing and photography. Raised on Lewis, Tolkien, Chesterton, Sayers, Conan Doyle and Wodehouse, Amelia hopes to be British if she grows up. She enjoys trees, adventures, marmalade, and great conversations. She loves Jesus because He loved her first.

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