I’ll Be Back

Really.  I will.

But for now… Look at this cool picture my 13 year old daughter took in New York!

Two for Tuesday: On Patience

 

He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition. ~ George MacDonald

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Just for Giggles

ht: cawleyblog

Getting the Narrative Right

I can never resisit excellent stuff from Tim Keller (ht: Denis Haack’s excellent blog,  A Glass Darkly)

There are two basic narrative identities at work among professing Christians. The first is what I will call the moral-performance narrative identity. These are people who in their heart of hearts say, I obey; therefore I am accepted by God. The second is what I will call the grace narrative identity. This basic operating principle is, I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey.

People living their lives on the basis of these two different principles may superficially look alike. They may sit right beside one another in the church pew, both striving to obey the law of God, to pray, to give money generously, to be good family members. But they are doing so out of radically different motives, in radically different spirits, resulting in radically different personal characters.

When persons living in the moral-performance narrative are criticized, they are furious or devastated because they cannot tolerate threats to their self-image of being a “good person.”

But in the gospel our identity is not built on such an image, and we have the emotional ballast to handle criticism without attacking back. When people living in the moral-performance narrative base their self-worth on being hard working or theologically sound, then they must look down on those whom they perceive to be lazy or theologically weak.

But those who understand the gospel cannot possibly look down on anyone, since they were saved by sheer grace, not by their perfect doctrine or strong moral character.

To read the rest of this article (original source, “The Advent of Humility: Jesus is the reason to stop concentrating on ourselves,” by Tim Keller in Christianity Today, December 2008, pp. 50-53) click here.

Two For Tuesday: The Necessity of Love

John’s point in 1 John 4, “God is love,” is that those who really do know God come to love that way too.  Doubtless we do not do it very well, but aren’t Christians supposed to love the unlovable-even our enemies?  Because the Gospel has transformed us, our love is to be self-originating, not elicited by the loveliness of the loved.  For that is the way it is with God.  He loves because love is one of His perfections, in perfect harmony with all His other perfections. ~ D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, p. 63.

In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian.  Here (in John 17:21) Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound:  We cannot expect the world to believe the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.~ Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian

Expensive

What does forgiveness cost? What is the currency that’s expended in trade for the words, “I forgive you?” The coin of the realm we must relinquish is legal tender backed by the things we hold dearest: our pride, our patience, our time… To forgive costs us our pride. It costs us the right to be the one who is right. It costs us our patience and our time, because to forgive means to step down from our hard won high place and stand on level ground where we might have to give again, might have to sacrifice again, and might even have to bare the indignation of being wronged again.

Ten For Tuesday: Past, Present, and Providence

We have to learn to commit not only the future but also the past to the Lord. ~Daniel Fuller, The Unity of the Bible, p. 286.

The intentions of Providence commonly do not appear till a great while after the event, perhaps many years after. The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you can apprehend the sense of them. ~Matthew Henry

Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. ~Oswald Chambers

Sometimes providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backward. ~John Flavel

Why believe the devil instead of believing God? Rise up and realize the truth about yourself – that all the past has gone, and you are one with Christ, and all your sins have been blotted out once and for ever. O let us remember that it is sin to doubt God’s Word. It is sin to allow the past, which God has dealt with, to rob us of our joy and our usefulness in the present and in the future.  ~Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression – Its Causes and its Cures, p.76

Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. ~Oswald Chambers

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

~William Cowper, Light Shining Out of Darkness

Only if we trust God to turn past calamities into future comfort can we look with gratitude for all things. ~John Piper, Future Grace, p. 49

Without retrospect, no real prospect is possible. ~H. Richard Niebuhr

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. ~C.H. Spurgeon

Mending and Healing

Mending and healing are two different things, I’m learning.  Mending means the stitches hold, the pain gradually lessens, the energy slowly returns.  Mending seems to be inextricably releated to time.  You can’t rush mending.

I have a feeling that healing is something different.  Healing, I think, is more connected to re-creating than rebuilding.

I’m working on mending right now, but I’m craving healing, in oh-so-many ways.   Time makes a poor thread for binding deep wounds, and the healing that comes with “give it time” is such a poor replacement for the healing balm of gospel restoration.

Ten For Tuesday: Thinking On Eternity

We cannot enjoy peace in this world unless we are ready to yield to the will of God in respect of death. Our times are in His hand, at His sovereign disposal. We must accept that as best.

John Owen (Meditation on the Glory of Christ, 1684, Preface)

The best moment of a Christian’s life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven.  And then it is that he begins to strike the keynote of the song which he shall sing to all eternity.

C.H. Spurgeon

Death in its substance has been removed, and only the shadow of it remains…Nobody is afraid of a shadow, for a shadow cannot block a man’s pathway for even a moment. The shadow of a dog can’t bite; the shadow of a sword can’t kill.

C.H. Spurgeon

A Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions.  He knows that death shall be the resurrection of all his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments.

Thomas Brooks (The Transcendent Excellency of a Believer’s Portion above All Earthly Portions)

Death is the last and best physician, which cures all diseases and sins – the aching head and the unbelieving heart. Sin was the midwife which brought death into the world; and death shall be the grave to bury sin! O the privilege of a believer!

Thomas Watson (The Christian’s Charter.)

Tears are a tribute to our deceased friends.  When the body is sown, it must be watered.  But we must not sorrow as those that have no hope; for we have a good hope through grace both concerning them and concerning ourselves.

Matthew Henry

For we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world (1 Tim. 6:7).  There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.

John Piper (Desiring God, p. 161)

Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?

C.S. Lewis

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, p. 119.)

I don’t know about you, but the more I think about the new heaven and the new earth, the more excited I get! It is incredible to think that one day soon we will not only experience the resurrection of our carcasses, but the renewal of the cosmos and the return of the Creator. We will literally have heaven on earth. Eden lost will become Eden restored and a whole lot more! Not only will we experience God’s fellowship as Adam did, but we will see our Savior face to face. God incarnate will live in our midst. And we will never come to the end of exploring the infinite, inexhaustible I AM or the grandeur and glory of his incomparable creation.

Hank Hanegraaff (Resurrection, p. 92.)

Ten For Tuesday: On Affliction

God never wastes pain.

 ~Jerry Bridges

It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.

~Madeleine L’Engle

Your afflictions may only prove that you are more immediately under the Father’s hand.  There is no time that the patient is such an object of tender interest to the surgeon, as when he is bleeding beneath his knife.  So you may be sure if you are suffering from the hand of a reconciled God, that His eye is all the more bent on you.

 

~Robert Murray McCheyne

 

Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us with the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them.

 

~C.H. Spurgeon

 

Afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and beat more.

 

~John Bunyan

 

The Lord afflicts us at times; but it is always a thousand times less than we deserve, and much less than many of our fellow-creatures are suffering around us.  Let us therefore pray for grace to be humble, thankful, and patient.

 

~John Newton

 

Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.

 

~Richard Sibbes

 

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.

 

~Samuel Rutherford

 

Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on His anvil into what frame He desires.

 

~Anne Bradstreet

 

Afflictions tend to wean us from the world  - and to fix our affections on things above.

 

~John Angell James

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pay It Forward

Since I’m having kind of a dry spell of blogging here anyway…

My friend Kathryn Trent Brown offered the following challenge in Facebook note, which I’m passing on here to you.

If you want to join in the fun and get a little something in return … be one of the first THREE people to leave a comment on this post and you’ll receive a gift from me during this year. There’s a small catch…You knew there would be didn’t you? Post this on your blog or Facebook wall (sorry, no MySpace-ing) referencing this post then come back and leave a comment on this post, telling me you’re in. Fun, huh? And by in, you do know that means you have to Pay It Forward and give something to three people on your blog or Facebook page. I don’t even care if you make something … just giving something is good with me!

Remember, only the first 3 comments receive the gift from me. When and what will be a surprise.

Ten For Tuesday: On Reconciliation

If you have been putting off going to another person to try to achieve reconciliation with him, you have wronged him. ~ Jay Adams

We must take the initiative to restore peace. Jesus taught that it makes no difference whether you have wronged your brother or he has wronged you.  Either way, you are always responsible to initiate efforts toward peace (see Matthew 5:23-24 and 18:15).  If  we are serious about intently pursuing peace, we won’t be concerned about which of us is the offending party.  We will have one goal: To restore peace in a godly manner.  Unresolved conflict between believers is sin and must be treated as such; otherwise, it will spread throughout the body like cancer until it requires radical spiritual surgery. ~ Jerry Bridges

Time heals things. We’ve heard that many times. And occasionally it is true that people’s emotions die down and they lose the heart to disagree or fight. But to depend on time alone in the body of Christ to mend church problems is a very dangerous path.  More often than not the problems only fester, become more serious, and then explode. ~ Curtis C. Thomas

Because peace is a fruit of the Spirit, we are dependent upon the Spirit’s work in our lives to produce the desire and the means to pursue peace.  But we are also responsible to use the means He has given us and to take all practical steps to attain both peace within and peace with others. ~ Jerry Bridges

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults.  So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Divisions in the church always breed atheism in the world. ~ Thomas Manton

The more fractured we are, the greater we become spectacles to the world.  The more we are united in love, the more the world sees Christ. ~ Curtis C. Thomas

Fractured fellowship robs Christians of joy and effectiveness, robs God of glory, and robs the world of the true testimony of the gospel.  A high price for an ego trip! ~ John MacArthur

Why is it that you harbor strife, bad temper, dissention, schism, and quarreling?  Do we not have one God, one Christ, one Spirit of grace which was poured out on us? ~ Clement of Rome

Jesus won’t allow the unreconciled condition to continue among believers.  In Matthew 5, if another considers you to have wronged him, Jesus says that you must go.  In Matthew 18, He says that if the other person has done something wrong to you, you must go.  There is never a time when you can sit and wait for your brother to come to you.  Jesus doesn’t allow for that.  He gives no opportunity for that.  It is always your obligation to go. ~Jay Adams

Last week’s Ten For Tuesday: On Forgiveness

Unconditional

I just finished reading my first Anna Quindlen novel. This bit of redemptive dialogue between Bridgette and Irving, in the final chapter of Rise and Shine, seemed worth sharing. (The first speaker is Bridgette, arguing with her rough and worldly friend Irvine, after he chastises her for a spat she’s just had with her sister.)

“You’re taking her side! You are! I can’t believe it!”

“There are no sides. You love somebody and you help them. You give ‘em a break. And they do things you don’t like! But you love them, so you go along.”

“Like a deal…”

Irvine shook his head.

“If it’s like a deal, you’re screwed, ” he said. “A deal means you’re expecting something back.”

Ten For Tuesday: On Forgiveness

Nobody is free who is unforgiven. ~ John Stott

Forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame–and pain–in a relationship…It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness…But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive. ~Philip Yancey

If I find myself half-carelessly taking lapses for granted, “Oh, that’s what they always do.” “Oh, of course she talks like that, he acts like that,” then I know nothing of Calvary love. ~Amy Carmichael

But forgiveness is not an emotion… Forgiveness is an act of will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ~Corrie Ten Boom

Those who say they will forgive but can’t forget, simply bury the hatchet but leave the handle out for immediate use. ~Dwight L Moody

The practice of comprehensive forgiveness overcomes our love of being right, our actual enjoyment and treasuring of our sense of being wronged…  The constant practice of forgiveness leaves no room for self-righteousness.  Frustrated condemnation of others and treasuring of old wrongs are not part of the artillery of God, but the slithering, slimy, deadly creatures of the Prince of Darkness. ~C. John Miller and Barbara Miller Juliani

We take God’s forgiveness for granted (when) we stubbornly withhold our forgiveness from others.  In effect, we behave as though others’ sins against us are more serious than our sins against God. ~Ken Sande

The person who is living by grace sees this vast contrast between his own sins against God and the offenses of others against him.  He forgives others because he himself has been so graciously forgiven.  He realizes that, by receiving God’s forgiveness through Christ, he has forfeited the right to be offended when others hurt him. ~Jerry Bridges.

The ability to forgive is one of the surest signs of having been forgiven.  It is part of the proof that we have received God’s grace…  Those who are truly forgiven, truly forgive.  The sins they commit are of greater importance to them than the sins they suffer. ~ Philip Graham Ryken

Forgiveness may be described as a decision to make four promises:

“I will not dwell on this incident.”

“I will not bring up this incident again and use it against you.”

“I will not talk to others about this incident.”

“I will not let this incident stand between us or hinder our personal relationship.”

~ Ken Sande

Next week’s Ten For Tuesday: On Reconciliation

Last week’s Ten For Tuesday: On Repentance

Justice and Mercy

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. –William Blake

I went back and read Micah 6:8 this morning, because “justice” and “mercy” keep coming up in my internal and external conversations. Despite having sung that verse to a campy little tune all my life, and despite hearing countless sermons on that verse over the years, I confess I often have a mistaken version of it rolling around in my head.

What I think I want that verse to say, is something along the lines of “He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to seek justice and love mercy…”

But of course, it doesn’t.

I can’t parse the Hebrew to know what the best translation of those words really is. The best I can do is use Bible Gateway to compare standard translations and learn this: none of them talk about seeking justice. The part about “justice” is all about my actions…

“to act justly” (NIV)

“to do justice” (NASB, ESV)

“to do what is right” (NLT)

“to do justly” (KJV, NKJV)

Now, I have to beg cultural influence here, as a bit of a defense for my poor internal exegesis. “Justice and mercy” get thrown around in a pairing to suit every need, particularly by those wanting to draw our attention to the social implications of the gospel. But most of the time, when you hear those words paired, the subtle implication is that we should be fighting to get other people to act justly, and focused on showing mercy ourselves.

But Micah 6:8 calls US to act justly.

Now I admit: I’m a product of my surroundings. I’ve been living in a small Presbyterian world of graded church courts and layers of accountability and circles of authority and hey! I think all those things are a great and biblical model of church government. Except that they’re made up, at each level, by a bunch of sinners. The checks and balances don’t always work. In other words, pushing for “justice” where there has been conflict doesn’t always bring satisfaction.

I’m also a big fan of Ken Sande’s Peacemaker book. In fact, I’d be quite happy if we could all just get together and open a vein and sign a contract promising to apply the peacemaker principles at every turn (since I think they’re simply careful applications of biblical principles.) But again, the process is broken: it takes two to tango, in all the best and worst senses. Darn sin! It messes up everything!

So, in the midst of ongoing unresolved conflict, I need to read Micah 6:8 again. When everything in me wants that verse to confirm my craving for justice, I’m instead reminded that I must act justly. I must continue to repent, wait, pray…. Micah 6:8 isn’t a battle cry for judicial action, it’s a bucket of cold water, thrown in love, on even our valid cries that we’re being treated unjustly ourselves.

To DO what is right, and to love mercy… I want to GET what is right and then make myself look all the better by showing forgiveness and mercy. Whew! How’s that for a stinkin’ bunch of heart idols: I want to eat my cake and be called generous for giving some away after I’m stuffed.

To act justly: keep doing the right thing.

To love mercy: can I learn to love mercy so much that I can really give it where it isn’t deserved or even asked for? (Since that’s ultimately the type of mercy we’re shown through Christ?)

Micah 6:8 is hard. I’m not going to sing it to that campy little tune any more.

Before you can ever make a clean and unamended confession of your sin, you have to first begin by confessing your righteousness. It’s not just your sin that separates you from God; your righteousness does as well. Because, when you are convinced you are righteous, you don’t seek the forgiving, rescuing, and restoring mercy that can be found only in Jesus Christ”

- Paul David Tripp, Whiter Than Snow (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 22. (ht: Of First Importance)

Collection

I’m a hopeless collector of words.  So I’ve started a new “commonplace book” called locus communis as a place to keep and categorize them all.

Contributions will be happily considered, especially if they have source references cited, which most of my collection so far doesn’t

Satan Seeks A Gap Called Grudge

In an excellent message on Ephesians 4:22-27,  titled as above, John Piper points out that “if there is any way that Satan can assist you to hold a grudge, he will do it. For there are… … goals of Satan which are greatly advanced when professing Christians hold grudges…”

One of those goals of Satan is to crush Christians into uselessness.  Here’s a place Satan has a hey day in my life: when repentance (which can be accomplished by one person) doesn’t lead to reconciliation (which takes two), I can fall into a paralysis of self-doubt.  When I don’t measure up to being “fixed enough” to be worth the effort of relationship in the eyes of someone, it’s easy to start listening to Satan’s words more than Christ’s.

Here’s how Piper puts it:

Satan aims to crush broken Christians until they are depressed into uselessness. Paul tells about an instance of church discipline at Corinth in which the offending party repented. Paul counsels in 2 Corinthians 2:7, “So you should turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you reaffirm your love for him.” The burdens of life are so great at times that someone’s grudge against us can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You can destroy a person by holding a grudge against them—the very work of Satan from the time of Cain and Abel.

(John Piper, Satan Seeks A Gap Called Grudge, www.desiringgod.org) (h.t. cawleyblog)

So the battle for me is to find my rest in the reconciliation of Christ.  I feel, so strongly, the tug and pull of how Satan would like to destroy every shred of faith I have, by keeping me focused on the pain of unreleased grudges others hold against me.  The battle requires falling and getting up a thousand times: sometimes a thousand times a day, it would seem.   Piper’s sermon is a good reminder that my enemy isn’t the person with the grudge, but Satan.

This morning, going into the weekend, I’m in the middle of those 1000 times.  And, through the sadness, shouting Micah 7:7-8 at Satan as often and as loudly as I can.

Alphabetically Speaking

Have you ever noticed that all the hard words of the Christian life start with R?

Rejoicing, Resting, Repentance, Reconciliation, Restoration, Restitution…

Ten For Tuesday: On Repentance

 A stiff apology is a second insult. ~ G.K. Chesterton

All the longer your delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?

~ Richard Baxter

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. ~ C.S. Lewis

The Christian who has stopped repenting has stopped growing. ~ A.W. Pink

Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying, Repent Ye, intended that the whole of the life of believers should be repentance. ~ Martin Luther

Though true repentance is never too late, yet late repentance is seldom true.

~ Thomas Brooks

Again and again, God’s Word reveals that He is not as concerned about the depth or extent of the sin we commit as He is about our attitude and response when we are confronted with our sin. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Scripture considers repentance a path to liberation, not condemnation. ~ Ed Welch

Repentance that renews precious fellowship with our incomparably wonderful God ultimately furthers our joy.  Just as we cannot enter into true repentance without sorrow for our guilt, we cannot emerge from true repentance without joy for our release from shame. ~ Bryan Chapell

Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it. ~ Matthew Henry

Next week’s Ten For Tuesday: On Forgiveness

Seeing Differently

I still consider myself very much a student of painting, and I’m far from confident whenever I approach a new piece of work.  But there is, even in the learning process, a delightful sense in which I can loose myself in the seeing. Today, painting the velvety petals of anemones, I saw how their violet blue color can have a golden orange warmth and a rose red highlight and a blue black shadow, all within the space of a few centimeters.

When I’ve been painting all day, as I did today, I have a few residual hours after I leave the easel in which my sight is changed.  For a few hours, every fold and crease and texture gets noted and named.  I mix colors in my mind as I look at objects and people (I watch my daughter sitting on the couch: how would I catch the way the warm light from the wood stove is playing on her face, pushing back the shadow that curves around her defined features… raw sienna… a touch of alizarin crimson at the round of her cheek…a bit of cobalt blue where the light begins to fade…)

Then my seeing begins to fade.  I still have sight, but I stop seeing. I move through the house and see words and uses instead of colors; there’s the folder of papers I need to remember to take tomorrow, there’s the coffee cup I left out this morning (and I wonder if the dishwasher needs to be run?) and there are the shoes I kicked off in the middle of the kitchen floor…  My mind begins to fill up with thoughts and projects and duties and, before I know it, I’ve lost the sight I gained, like some forgotten childhood language.

“Now we see through a glass darkly…”    For me, part of the “redemption” of heaven might mean the redemption of seeing all things properly and fully.  Maybe for now, I can’t really handle seeing like that all the time, and so God only allows me little controlled bursts of it.  Maybe there’s a sort of safety mechanism that keeps us from seeing too clearly when our souls can’t hold it yet. (I picture something like the natural defense our irises provide to protect our optic nerves from receiving too much light: maybe there’s a sort of “aperture” that closes on our attention, to keep us from burning ourselves out in a full, unveiled awareness of beauty…

I picture that when we’re able to look at God with unveiled faces, we’ll be looking with those perfected bodies and minds that can contain the pure beauty we’ll stand before.

For today, just the purple in an anemone was enough to bowl me over.  I can’t wait for heaven.

Not An Optional Thing

(n.b.  I’ve noticed that when my blogging buddies get busy, they still find time to post a quote, even if it’s without any comment.  I feel a bit lazy here, but some of these little nuggets I’ve been running across lately really do move me, so please consider these cheap and easy quotes as still some small part of the dubious pursuit of knowing what’s going on inside my head.)

Ruskin here, aptly describing why I care about teaching students to “get” that beauty in art matters:

And all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which we call ‘loveliness’ … and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being.” (John Ruskin in Traffic, 1864)
      

More Aelred: On Humility

“Humility is rightly compared with the morning, for as the origin of all the virtues it enables us to distinguish between day and night, between light and darkness, between virtue and vice. All those who take leave of the darkness of vice must of necessity begin with the virtue of humility in order for the growth of the virtues to be realised until the end of the day.”

Aelred of Rievaulx      (ht: A Vow Of Conversation)

Friendship Ultimately Redeemed

“…and above all, with the destruction of the sting of death together with death itself, whose pangs now often trouble us and force us to grieve for one another, with salvation secured, we shall rejoice in the eternal possession of Supreme Goodness; and this friendship, to which here we admit but a few, will be outpoured upon all and by all outpoured upon God, and God shall be in all.”     

(Aelred of Rievaulx in Spiritual Friendship)

Ruskin on “teaching taste”

“What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.”   John Ruskin

Confession

So remember, you who profess to be followers of the Lord Jesus, that to you indifference is impossible! You must bless the church and the world by your holiness, or you will curse them both by your hypocrisy and inconsistency. In the visible church it is most true that “no man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself.”   Charles Spurgeon

I’m teaching my youngest students, a group of fourth graders, how to carve linoleum blocks to make relief prints.  Since I use real linoleum with them (rather than the spongy stuff usually made for grammar school students,) they have to use “real” linoleum cutters.

As you can imagine, my biggest concern during each class is that they strictly observe some safety rules, one of which is that they must never, ever, ever, put their free hand in front of their cutting hand, so that if the knife slips, they don’t end up needing a tetanus shot.

I try to watch them like a hawk, but invariably, I end up getting stuck at some child’s desk answering a question (”I think I just accidently carved my horse’s head off.  How do I put it back?”)  with my back to the majority of the students.  At that point, I have to say a little prayer and trust them to follow my instructions.

Today, around lunch time, I found that a note had been slipped onto my desk when I was out of the room.  It read,

“Dear Mrs. Stevens:  Today in art when you weren’t looking I put my hand in the wrong place two different times.  Would you please forgive me?”

It wasn’t signed, but I think that was probably more a product of fourth grade forgetfulness than a desire to remain anonymous. 

I’ve been learning a lot about grace, humility, and confession lately.  One of the things I’m learning is to be quick to listen and hear the truth in people’s criticism’s of me, and realize that because of the righteousness of Christ, I’m free to repent fully without defending myself or making excuses.  Making excuses minimizes the greatness of Christ’s gift: if I need His righteousness plus my excuses in order to “come out in the right,” then I’m missing the point of what “reconciliation” means.  My understanding of the balance sheet is wrong.

 But this anonymous fourth grader reminded me of something more today: I’m not only free to repent (to agree with God) of the sins that are pointed out in me by others, I’m free to say, “Yeah, and you don’t even know how bad I am when you’re not looking!”

When Spurgeon says, in the quote above, that “you must bless the church and the world by your holiness or you will curse them both by your hypocrisy and inconsistency,” I think he’s talking about becoming like that fourth grader.  Not only are we inconsistent in our proclamation of the grace of Christ if we minimize our need for it (by defending ourselves and minimizing our sins,) but we’re missing an opportunity to bless others by modeling for them what freedom to repent  Christ really bought for us.

I admit: I’m poor at this.  (In my brief history in the blogging world, I’ve come to feel that an awful lot of us are preaching mainly to ourselves…) I struggle and minimize and justify and fight mighty internal battles to get myself to a place where I can choke off the fight or flight instinct that comes from being criticized.  But when I see the integrity of unsolicited confession in a little child like I did today, I think: “THAT! THAT is what we should look like because of the freedom we have in Christ!”

 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Caption?

Rick posted this photo on FB today.  I’d forgotten about it.  

When Ellie (a senior this year!) was a baby, we used to dress her this way quite a bit because we had a friend who had a tye-dye business and kept us well supplied in fun outfits. One spring morning, when she was probably about a month and a half old, I went outside to find that Rick’s brother had just plowed the field adjacent to our house.  I LOVED the way the freshly plowed field looked and smelled, and I LOVED the way my baby looked and smelled, and I impulsively thought the two should be together, so I put her down in the dirt and snapped this photo.

The look on her face cracks me up.  Any caption ideas?

Useless Beauty

I spent the day painting at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C.   Ever since I registered for this particular workshop, called Painting the Amaryllis in Oil, my anticipation of this enjoyable weekend (the class continues tomorrow) has been mixed with odd twinges of guilt.  For the last several days, I’d recognized this but I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on why I was feeling that emotion. Was it because I was going to spend two eight hour days away from my family?  Was it because I’d spent a hefty chunk of change on the workshop fee – money which I should probably be saving for my next seminary class or, better yet, Ellie’s upcoming college tuition bills?

The answer hit me, in the middle of the day, as I slowly came up for air from a couple hours of concentrating on the shapes of six amaryllis petals on one particular stem.  I realized that my vague sense of guilt had been coming from the fact that I wasn’t taking a broad, drink from the fire hose, whole-lotta’ bang for the buck sort of class.  In other words, I wasn’t taking something that was immediately and perfectly “relevant” to my job of teaching art to high school students.  I didn’t intend to have them paint amaryllis any time soon, and I never teach oil painting, in the confined spaces of our tiny classrooms.

In other words, I’d been subtly giving in to the idea that I was doing something useless.

When that realization fully hit me, I immediately felt giddy with relief as my theology restored balance to what had been going on in my subconscious.   Useless? Useless? How could spending these hours immersed in seeing beauty ever by any stretch of the imagination, be considered useless for those who have been redeemed by the Creator of beauty?

Satan loves to trip us.  He uses all the obvious “sins”: bitterness, slander, thievery,  lust…  But I think he positively chortles with delight when he deceives us into barging through weeks at a time without taking the time to stop and see the “useless” beauty around us.  When our eyes glaze over and we don’t notice the pattern of the shadow cast by the bare tree branches on a bright winter day, or the contours of the sweet cinnamon-skinned hand of the noisy baby in the shopping cart ahead of us in the checkout line… When we can’t hear or taste or feel or see anything beyond our computer screens and the ugly overflow of ink in our datebooks… When our minds replay hurtful words and unjust losses until they hardly have room for anything else… THEN, Satan smiles.

So, the best part of my day today wasn’t the new oil techniques I discovered. It wasn’t that I spent the day with some excellent artists and enjoyed the personal attention of a favorite teacher.  It wasn’t even the excitement of painting in a studio with a view of the next door Capitol building, all gussied up for the coming inauguration (though I must admit, that was pretty cool.)  The best part of my day was remembering this: that to see – to loose myself in the seeing – is to kick Satan in the teeth with one of the best gifts God’s given us.

Praising Him tonight for the grace of “useless” beauty. And thankful for how Satan is muted by the power of the shape of amaryllis petals…

And all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which we call ‘loveliness’ … and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being.”
John Ruskin, Traffic (1864)

Hanging My Hat On Today

It is utterly crucial that in our darkness we affirm the wise, strong hand of God to hold us even when we have no strength to hold Him.”

(John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift)

On Slander

Slander isn’t the mere fact of speaking the truth, with humility to others. Slander isn’t saying “here’s the brokenness that lies between us that we’re unable to solve.”  Slander, in short, isn’t simply trespassing against our peace-faking idols that try to  make us say “let’s pretend the elephant in the corner of the room isn’t there and all hold on to our plastic smiles and ‘God bless you’ attitudes.”  Slander, rather,  is the opposite of love.

The link of slander to pride in James 4:10 shows that slander is not the humble evaluation of error or fault, which we must constantly be doing. Rather, in slander the speaker speaks as if he never would do the same thing himself. It acts self-righteous and superior toward one’s obviously idiotic inferiors. Non-slanderous evaluation is fair-minded, constructive, gentle, guarded, and always demonstrates that speakers sense how much they share the same frailty, humanity, and sinful nature with the one being criticized. It shows a profound awareness of your own sin. It is never “against-speaking.”

Read the rest of this excellent article by Tim Keller and David Powlison.

(h.t. Gospel -Centered Musings)

A New Year: Honesty and Hope

HONESTY:

“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”

(C.S. Lewis, Into The Wardrobe)

HOPE:

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him…”

(Job 13:15)

We must believe that all shall work for good to us, even when all seems to make against us. We must cleave to God, yea, though we cannot for the present find comfort in him. In a dying hour, we must derive from him living comforts; and this is to trust in him, though he slay us. (Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Bible, Job chapter 13)

No Private Rooms In Heaven

I know I should write the obligatory “New Year”s Eve”  post, full of retrospection and deep theological musings about the coming year… But, I have one last (OK, probably not really last) post on community – and the coolest thing is that it merges the “community” ramblings I’ve been having for a few months now with the “reconciliation” ramblings of the past few days.   The two kind of have to go hand in hand, don’t they?

Anyway, this is from a great newsletter I get (though this is from an oldish issue) from an organization called Jubilee Centre. You should really read the whole article here, but if you don’t have time, at least read this great paragraph.  (As usual, all bold print is my own emphasis):

In a mindlessly tolerant society, demonstrating that behaviour matters is an important biblical responsibility. The key to meaningful Christian relationships in the church is not the abandonment of values but the commitment to forgiveness when things go wrong. However, all too often our mechanisms for dealing with difficulties are avoidance or division. Like bacteria, unaddressed difficulties grow and eventually infect all relationships, debilitating the whole body. Division too is just another way of avoiding the painful route of forgiveness. While Jesus said that there were many rooms in the place he was going to prepare, it was hardly his intention to provide accommodation that would facilitate our tendency to avoid one another!

Ha!  How great is that last sentence?!

Like I said, you should really read the whole article.  And subscribe to the newsletter: great stuff.

And finally: a blog I’ve lurked around on for quite some time, and enjoyed, belongs to Sarah of Nine Tons of Marble. She has written some great thoughts on community too, and they’re worth checking out on her site.  (She also does some amazing sculptural work, apparently, which makes me really want to know her in person… Check that out here.)

I wish you all a happy new year.

I wish you all great community and connectedness.

And mostly, I wish you all reconciled relationships, coram deo.

Giving In

…I can’t believe I gave in to the Facebook thing.  And that it has eaten me alive for the past 24 hours!  I have to just keep chanting to myself “I won’t stop blogging, I won’t stop blogging, I won’t stop blogging…”

Bonhoeffer on Reconciliation

“Not just our own anger, but the fact that someone has been hurt, damaged, or disgraced by us, who ‘has a cause against us,’ erects a barrier between us and God. Let us therefore as a Church examine ourselves, and see whether we have not often enough wronged our fellow men. Let us see whether we have tried to win popularity by falling in with the world’s hatred, its contempt and its contumely. For if we do that, we are murderers. Let the fellowship of Christ so examine itself today, and ask whether, at the hour of prayer and worship, any accusing voices intervene and make its prayer vain.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

The Ministry of Reconcilliation

You can find the most random, wonderful things with Google.  

Today, googling (isn’t it funny how quickly that had become a verb?) for something related to”reconciliation,” I stumbled upon a document produced in 1970 in Nairobi, by The World Alliance of Reformed Churches.    I found it to be a beautiful statement.

All italics are mine, in this excerpt that follows:

“We know that the church is often untrue to its calling. … The church itself knows with a special agony its own weaknesses – its failure to love, its idolatries and false securities, its temptation to disguise sordid purposes in pious language. It confesses that it fears to lose its life, to be a servant of men, to bear the cross.

“Yet we know also that repentance is the way to renewal. In the active remembrance of the deeds of God and the contemporary awareness of his presence, the church finds the assurance of forgiveness and enjoys the foretaste of the promise that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. It is an awesome responsibility to be given the ministry of reconciliation. The church, even with its troubled conscience, acknowledges that responsibility and rejoices in the call to be faithful to its God. In this present age, so loaded with portent and opportunity, the church declares in word and deed that the God of its past history is the God of the present and the future.”

 (The World Alliance of Reformed Churches, report to the uniting general council, Nairobi, 1970: )

 

Although this was a part of a document which was addressing a more global, organizational sort of reconciliation, it seems that these words are perfect for individuals to consider as well.  How would our churches be transformed if we saw repentance as the way to renewal, and viewed personal reconciliation to one another as one of the best privileges we have in bearing the image of a God who is all about reconciliation?

“Loaded with portent and opportunity” – Isn’t that just what life is with messy people, globally or in our own little corner of the world? Oh, for the grace to learn this, and be about the unsafe, wonderful business of mending and healing!  Lord grant us a passion for this ministry!

Small Graces on a December Evening

I stepped out on the back porch a few minutes ago to relish the balmy December evening.  It has been a bit damp, so the ground has that moist smell and there’s a light breeze making the empty winter trees creak. 

Rick has a friend over right now and I could hear their low voices coming from the library, and smell sweet pipe smoke.  He must have the window open to enjoy this mild night.

Earlier, a friend called and listened.

These are the small graces that stumble through discouragement.  I always hope for BIG graces: for miraculous restoration of broken things and for triumphant “praise the Lord!” moments.   But mostly, what I find, when I’m paying attention, are the small graces that allow me to say, with Job, ” yet I will still praise Him.”

December mildness, conversation and pipe smoke, a friend who listens.  It is enough.  I will still praise Him.

Pray

John Piper provided this great encouragement to “pray more consistently, more earnestly, more hopefully, and more biblically in 2009.”

I found it helpful, and hope you will, too.

Spiritual Friendship

I heard an excellent message by Tim Keller this morning.  Rick sent it to me a couple days ago, and I just got around to listening to it today.

It was so good that I took the time to pause it and take notes in a few places.  Here are a couple of the passages that struck me:

 ”What the Bible teaches us is that the gospel of Jesus Christ creates and calls us into spiritual friendships. … In other words, the gospel of Jesus Christ does not simply send you deeper into the heart of God than you ever thought you would go, or deeper into the heart of the hurting world than you ever thought you would go, but it sends you deeper into the heart of other brothers and sisters in Christ, giving you profundity and intamacy of relationships beyond anything you ever thought was possible with any other human being…”

 

“…if you don’t need people, if you’re afraid of accountability, if you’re afraid of people looking inside, if you’re afraid of people nosing into your business… …if you’re afraid of love: the less you want friends, the less like God you are. Don’t you realize?  What is the purpose of creation and what was the purpose of redemption? What is the purpose of everything God has done since creation?  To make us friends!”

 

“To need and to want deep friendships is not a sign of spiritual immaturity: it’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of health.”

Listen to the whole sermon here: Spiritual Friendship

The God Who Tears Curtains

Was there a sound of fabric tearing: a ripping, sickening sound of irreversibility?  Did night’s velvet curtain crackle as the incarnation tore into being? 

What other ripping, rending, must have filled that night? Mary’s flesh ripped by the violence of birth. Joseph, breathing fast with fear – Oh, God! so much pain, so much water, so much blood!  Did he tear his robe with shaking hands - strips to swaddle the ugly, shriveled, shivering infant? Was that sound of linen ripping – crisp, brisk, sharp - startling after Mary’s cries and the baby’s wailing had finally abated?  Did the angels, ripping through the fabric of logical space, push and shove when they burst forth with the news?  Was there a terrifying snap as they appeared? What sound does the sky make when it breaks?  Did eternity unravel quietly that night or did the strong threads of time come apart with a shriek?

 

And later, when the sound of rending marked his death – that temple curtain, nine men tall, woven like steal - what sound must it have made?  Man’s safe barrier from God, ripped from top to bottom by the God of impossibilities…  

 

Can that God who tears curtains still tear men’s hearts from their own clutching hands? Is that power any less to rip away pride and rightness and dullness of love? Can that shredder of peacefulness and bringer of peace still work these wonders?  Does the incarnation still have the power to break and rend and heal and mend TODAY?

 

What sound would cold hearts make if they shattered?  

 

Please, God, please… be the one who still tears curtains today.

You gotta love those blogger book give-aways!

And I’m not above taking the bait for THIS pile of good ones.

(Plus, the blog would have made it to the “Folks Who Caught My Eye” category anyway…)

Check it out! (Or maybe not, since I’ll have a better chance of winning that way!)

(H.T. Finding Grace)

Not that it’s about the gifts but..

…you know it’s been a good first half of the school year when you return to your desk after lunch on the last day of school before Christmas break and discover you have to search a bit under the pile of gifts in order to find your wireless mouse….

 

I love my students.  And my fellow Tim Keller appreciating friend, Jan, who bought me one of the books at the top of my wish list that you see here…  I have no idea what the can of diet coke was about – there was no note or explanation.  Maybe just a thoughtful gesture to balance out the effect of all the sweets? 

Note the clove studded orange made for me by a 6th grader: now THAT’S a cool gift!