Maybe you’ve known this sort of thing for years; taught it in Sunday school; learned it your first year of being one of God’s children. I just realized it in last Fall. One bright morning, I woke and began my morning routine in typical fashion. I kept industrious pace; I made coffee. As the day began to gear up, though, I couldn’t shake a mounting anxiety about something in my life. It was some recurring worry which, though I might lose it through busyness or remembering why I had no reason for concern, it never seemed to weary of the pursuit and would rise with the sun each day, seemingly better rested than I.
That revelational morning, I asked the Lord for help; for wisdom in the upcoming situation; for sanity. I expected a reminder of calming truths or a peace which would prevail on my day’s outlook. Instead what I got was conviction for lack of humility. I would have laughed if only I weren’t so shocked. When I expected a reassuring hand on the shoulder, I got one across the jaw.
Conviction properly set in because I was not trusting God. Sometimes we forget this is a part of worry when it overtakes us but, when we look back, we see how ridiculous we looked when we thought that God needed our help in a situation or that He might be unaware of what was going on in His universe (cf. Job 38-42). We can’t see that He runs this place, but what we also are missing is how much He loves us. Remember the cross? Remember the blessings which shower you every day? Remember the community into which He has adopted you? Remember that He has forgiven you of the sin which defined you?
Perhaps when you read the description of conviction as an open hand across the cheek, it seemed a little harsh. Perhaps it sounded like the sort of thing which would follow an exclamation, “You ingrate! After all I’ve done for you! You should be ashamed!” I don’t think conviction is like that (though it rightly could be). Instead, it’s more like waking someone back to sanity from a nightmarish world; one in which God isn’t controlling everything and all things don’t work out for the good of those who love Him. In anxiety, we sometimes have to be shaken back to reality before it helps us; we have to remember His grandeur before it brings us any comfort. Sometimes subtle and gentle things restore us to a right view; other times it takes a shock. Whatever it takes, I’m always glad to be back home.
Thank God for rude awakenings.
Putting it to Paper:
Consider a past situation that caused you worry and no longer does. Go back a couple of years. Think on your worries and how you would have changed things in that situation if God had dropped everything in your lap to rule for a moment. What would you have done?
Now think about how that situation was resolved. Did the situation resolve just as you hoped? In the way and time? How can you see God at work in the way it was resolved?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
March 27:Giving Testimony
I have at least two reasons to believe that Job suffered for my benefit:
1. It is recorded. Paul assures us that ‘whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope’ (Rom. 15:4).
2. The comfort Job received was not only for him, but for us as well (2 Cor. 1:3-8).
So, how does this benefit me? It helps me have hope and I am comforted in who I find God to be because of this one man’s suffering. This isn’t it, however; the hope and comfort are more than we initially think. It seems true to the text that the ‘hope’ in Romans 15 has to do with a sort of personal eschatology - that there is some redemptive ending to whatever presently seems disastrous. This is good, but there’s more: that we can learn from the communication of someone else’s past suffering, though, is also hope-giving. It means that God can use our pain and losses for more than just personal sanctification:
Someone else’s future hope may be buried inside my wounds and tears, awaiting the right time when I unearth and unwrap it to pass on.
My college mentor, keying in on this idea, says, “We suffer for someone else” (cf. 2 Cor. 1:3-8). What Paul (and my mentor) hope we see is that sometimes part of the purpose God has us suffer through Good Friday is to tell them about the surpassing joys of Easter Sunday. The hope we find in Job and other trials in the Bible is not only of future relief, but future service. To put it differently: Not only can we hope that present thirst will be satisfied, we’ll have enough left around to give to another parched soul. Now that’s good news.
What is a story from the Bible which encourages you to endure with hope (other that Jesus’)? Go read that this morning.
1. It is recorded. Paul assures us that ‘whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope’ (Rom. 15:4).
2. The comfort Job received was not only for him, but for us as well (2 Cor. 1:3-8).
So, how does this benefit me? It helps me have hope and I am comforted in who I find God to be because of this one man’s suffering. This isn’t it, however; the hope and comfort are more than we initially think. It seems true to the text that the ‘hope’ in Romans 15 has to do with a sort of personal eschatology - that there is some redemptive ending to whatever presently seems disastrous. This is good, but there’s more: that we can learn from the communication of someone else’s past suffering, though, is also hope-giving. It means that God can use our pain and losses for more than just personal sanctification:
Someone else’s future hope may be buried inside my wounds and tears, awaiting the right time when I unearth and unwrap it to pass on.
My college mentor, keying in on this idea, says, “We suffer for someone else” (cf. 2 Cor. 1:3-8). What Paul (and my mentor) hope we see is that sometimes part of the purpose God has us suffer through Good Friday is to tell them about the surpassing joys of Easter Sunday. The hope we find in Job and other trials in the Bible is not only of future relief, but future service. To put it differently: Not only can we hope that present thirst will be satisfied, we’ll have enough left around to give to another parched soul. Now that’s good news.
What is a story from the Bible which encourages you to endure with hope (other that Jesus’)? Go read that this morning.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
March 19: G.K. Chesterton: Secret thought of Jesus
A favorite philosopher of mine said that trying to quote GK Chesterton only once is like trying to only eat one potato chip - it can't be done. Well, I'm going to try - time will reveal my success. The following quote is the final thing he writes in his most well-known book, "Orthodoxy." We often note new books coming out (which can be good) to the neglect of older, recognized classics (which is not so good). Here's a sampling of this classic. (After you read it, journal a response.)
'Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something.
'Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something.
'I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.'
'Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something.
'Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something.
'I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.'
March 20: Lewis on Praising
You've probably guessed I love CSLewis. I'm somewhat convinced that staying in a CSLewis book on a regular basis should be a spiritual discipline. Maybe I'll write out an apologetic on why I think this, but for now, I'll just pass on some quotes from his essay "A Word on Praising" from his book 'Reflections on the Psalms'. After you read it, journal a response.
'The most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or anything - strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game-praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars.
'I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least. ... I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?"
HERE IT IS:
'I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.
'It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.
'If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to "appreciate," that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude.'
I rest my case.
'The most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or anything - strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game-praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars.
'I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least. ... I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?"
HERE IT IS:
'I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.
'It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.
'If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to "appreciate," that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude.'
I rest my case.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Value of Lament?
The Book of Psalms was the hymnal of Israel. These songs were corporate expressions of the people as they collectively went before God. In them we find a host of virtues and the practical endorsement of making beautiful what we offer up to heaven. And lament, we also find lament. It is individually and collectively expressed and happens multiple times. We see Paul and Jesus, two of the Jews we are most encouraged to imitate, sorrowing unto death and so troubled in prayer that sweat poured out like blood. Does this fit with the occasional tendency in among Christians to only express the positive and appear happy?
Even if there was not an ethos discouraging discouraging-expressions, we do not need to leave the Bible for a seeming conflict. We are told to ‘rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice;’ we are even to ‘count it all joy when you go through various trials.’ How can God inspire Psalmists to lament and apostles to encourage unending rejoicing?
No really, stop reading for a moment and think about this. Does that seem at all odd? How can the hymnal contain Psalms which cry in agony with no mention of hope and only the feeling of abandonment? How can this be one of the ways that we can worship Him? AND is the Bible telling us to rejoice always (and never lament) or to do them simultaneously at times? Wrestle with that for a minute... or the rest of the day.
Write out your response and, if you find yourself using a cliche, explain it like the journal is unfamiliar with the phrase. Oh and, just to free you up, you don’t have to have an answer and it doesn’t have to be the right one. You can still be a Christian, promise.
See you tomorrow.
Even if there was not an ethos discouraging discouraging-expressions, we do not need to leave the Bible for a seeming conflict. We are told to ‘rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice;’ we are even to ‘count it all joy when you go through various trials.’ How can God inspire Psalmists to lament and apostles to encourage unending rejoicing?
No really, stop reading for a moment and think about this. Does that seem at all odd? How can the hymnal contain Psalms which cry in agony with no mention of hope and only the feeling of abandonment? How can this be one of the ways that we can worship Him? AND is the Bible telling us to rejoice always (and never lament) or to do them simultaneously at times? Wrestle with that for a minute... or the rest of the day.
Write out your response and, if you find yourself using a cliche, explain it like the journal is unfamiliar with the phrase. Oh and, just to free you up, you don’t have to have an answer and it doesn’t have to be the right one. You can still be a Christian, promise.
See you tomorrow.
March 13: The Value of Lament.
Yesterday we look at sorrow in the book of Psalms; how can that be that God incorporates anguished cries into worship, especially when the Good Book also tells us to rejoice always? Those are actually two questions, first, about how to understand rejoicing always and lamenting:
I suggest that the rejoicing and the lamenting are specific, as in, they are rejoicing ABOUT and lamenting ABOUT something else. For instance, if someone came up to you saying, “I’m so EXCITED!” you might ask, “About what?!” If they responded, “Oh, I don’t know, just excited.” you and I might both think that person a little odd - sorrow and rejoicing are responsive to stimuli. If applying this to our questions from yesterday, we could make sense of the seemingly incompatible by celebrating ‘various trials’ without being glad ABOUT sin (for instance). Simultaneously, we rejoice ABOUT the fact that our Shepherd brings good from the fangs of most ferocious of trials and nothing can ever really be against us. I rejoice in Him, regardless. Also, Jesus and Paul looked ahead towards other things for their joy when suffering, I take this as a good example to follow (cf. 2 Cor. 4:16-18; Heb. 12:1-2).
Additionally, I think there are a few blessings which make lament important:
1. It tells the truth that this is not heaven. We will always be happy in heaven, but this isn’t heaven and we shouldn’t expect a life without loss (cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-5).
2. It can expose us to our thinking. It sounds odd, but often we don't really know our thoughts until sharing them with another. I have found much foolishness exposed in just listening to what I’m praying to God.
3. It tells the truth about ourselves. I had a friend confront me my freshman year of college for ‘being fake’ because I was always putting on a happy face. For everything there is a season, even expressing happiness. We are told to rejoice with certain people and weep with others. Lament has its place.
4. It uses the fullness of our experience in worship/prayer to God (brings it all before Him recognizing His sovereignty over it). God wants all of me, not just the parts I think presentable. He sees it anyway. Plus, we miss out on a God-given catalyst for prayer in neglecting lament. After all, who among us cannot relate to Jesus who being in ‘agony prayed more earnestly’ (Lk. 22:44)?
5. It provides healthy catharsis - Sometimes prayer or journaling liberates the emotion from festering in our soul and, because of the privacy of these things, avoids the the sometimes unwise public exposure of our tenderest spots. Elizabeth Elliot is right, “The things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.” I think lament can help us get right to that.
So, when it comes to the joys you have or the pains, bring them to God and embrace what He may be doing in you. In fact, I think He'd like to have a word with you right now.
Go enjoy some prayer with Him.
I suggest that the rejoicing and the lamenting are specific, as in, they are rejoicing ABOUT and lamenting ABOUT something else. For instance, if someone came up to you saying, “I’m so EXCITED!” you might ask, “About what?!” If they responded, “Oh, I don’t know, just excited.” you and I might both think that person a little odd - sorrow and rejoicing are responsive to stimuli. If applying this to our questions from yesterday, we could make sense of the seemingly incompatible by celebrating ‘various trials’ without being glad ABOUT sin (for instance). Simultaneously, we rejoice ABOUT the fact that our Shepherd brings good from the fangs of most ferocious of trials and nothing can ever really be against us. I rejoice in Him, regardless. Also, Jesus and Paul looked ahead towards other things for their joy when suffering, I take this as a good example to follow (cf. 2 Cor. 4:16-18; Heb. 12:1-2).
Additionally, I think there are a few blessings which make lament important:
1. It tells the truth that this is not heaven. We will always be happy in heaven, but this isn’t heaven and we shouldn’t expect a life without loss (cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-5).
2. It can expose us to our thinking. It sounds odd, but often we don't really know our thoughts until sharing them with another. I have found much foolishness exposed in just listening to what I’m praying to God.
3. It tells the truth about ourselves. I had a friend confront me my freshman year of college for ‘being fake’ because I was always putting on a happy face. For everything there is a season, even expressing happiness. We are told to rejoice with certain people and weep with others. Lament has its place.
4. It uses the fullness of our experience in worship/prayer to God (brings it all before Him recognizing His sovereignty over it). God wants all of me, not just the parts I think presentable. He sees it anyway. Plus, we miss out on a God-given catalyst for prayer in neglecting lament. After all, who among us cannot relate to Jesus who being in ‘agony prayed more earnestly’ (Lk. 22:44)?
5. It provides healthy catharsis - Sometimes prayer or journaling liberates the emotion from festering in our soul and, because of the privacy of these things, avoids the the sometimes unwise public exposure of our tenderest spots. Elizabeth Elliot is right, “The things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.” I think lament can help us get right to that.
So, when it comes to the joys you have or the pains, bring them to God and embrace what He may be doing in you. In fact, I think He'd like to have a word with you right now.
Go enjoy some prayer with Him.
Just so you know, Betty White will host SNL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/arts/television/12arts-WHITETOHOSTS_BRF.html
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