A Thanksgiving Conflation

"Bless the LORD, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good

so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's."

(Psalm 103:2-5)

"What shall I render to the LORD

for all his benefits to me?...

I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving

and call on the name of the LORD."

(Psalm 116:12, 17)

"The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me."

(Psalm 50:23)

The Psalmist's response to all of God's goodness to him, to God's salvation and care and hearing of prayer, is to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving. My ESV Study Bible notes tell me that this sacrifice of thanksgiving was one of the peace offerings (Lev 7:11-18) God established for his people to create a rhythm of remembrance, a routine of returning thanks to God for all his undeserved gifts. The peace offerings, of which the thanks offering was one, were different from sin and guilt offerings in one important way: the peace offerings were eaten by the offerer. The sin and guilt offerings, at least the portions that weren't burned up, could only be eaten by the priests; they were holy to the Lord. But when the thanksgiving sacrifice was offered, the meat was enjoyed by the offerer, his family, and the needy. As a reminder that God didn't need the offering, as if he was hungry, he returned it to the people. It was, I'm told, a meal enjoyed together in the presence of God, its Provider and Host. The grateful family sat around the Lord's table and received each course as though it had been passed by the invisible hand of their divine benefactor.

Today, as we ourselves gather around tables spread with the bounty of a good God who sends rain and sun on those who don't deserve it, don't let "Thanksgiving" lose its vertical direction. Make room at your table for One more. No matter who rose early this morning and spend hours up to her elbows in turkey, God is the Host of all our meals. He, as he did with the Israelites, invites us to eat in his presence, to bask in his provision, and to return to him a sacrifice of thanksgiving. In light of all his benefits, and supremely his salvation in Christ, how can we do any less?

A Selective History of Provision

When Adam needed food, God had already made some.

When Adam needed a wife, God gave him Eve.

When Abraham needed a son, God gave him Isaac.

When Jacob (that rascal!) was on the run, God gave him flocks and a family.

When there was a famine in the Promised Land, God gave his people a home in Egypt.

When Egypt enslaved them, God set them free.

When they were hungry and thirsty, God gave manna, quail, and water from the rock.

When the people needed a king, God gave them David.

When the people were in exile, God brought them home.

When everyone needed a savior, God gave us Jesus.

When Brett doubted that God was going to take care of his family, that was dumb.

When a chapter begins this way, I already know I'm in trouble.

"Of course the preacher is above all others distinguished as a man of prayer. He prays as an ordinary Christian, else he were a hypocrite. He prays more than ordinary Christians, else he were disqualified for the office which he has undertaken....Over all his other relationships the pre-eminence of the pastor's responsibility casts a halo, and if true to his Master, he becomes distinguished for his prayerfulness in them all."

-C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, ch. 3: "The Preacher's Private Prayer"

Cue conviction.

Thanks for your honesty.

(This is true of me. You, too.)

"My life looks good I do confess
You can ask anyone
Just don’t ask my real good friends
‘Cause they will lie to you
Or worse they’ll tell the truth
‘Cause there are things you would not believe
That travel into my mind
I swear I try and capture them
But I always set them free
It seems bad things comfort me

[Chorus]
Good Lord I am crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
Good Lord I am crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down
Everyone is crooked deep down"

-Derek Webb, "Crooked Deep Down"

Good thing there's this.

Two Potent Implications of Ephesians 5:22-33 for Husbands

1. A good marriage is a return to the bliss of Eden, a kind of heaven on earth.

2. Like any other kind of heaven, nobody makes it there without somebody getting crucified.

Weighed Down?

I like what it says about God that this is what makes Jesus really mad:

"[The scribes and the Pharisees] tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger." -Matthew 23:4

If your view of God is that he likes to tie up heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, hear rather the voice of Jesus:

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." -Matthew 11:28

The Devil's Favorite Day

"Tomorrow is the devil's day, but today is God's. Satan cares not how spiritual your intentions may be, and how holy your resolutions, so long as they are fixed for tomorrow."

-J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men

38 Days from the Minefields

This is probably redundant, since everyone who reads this blog also reads Justin Taylor's...

But let me say publicly, as if there was any doubt, that I'm in love with this song.

[Kim, apparently the prerequisite for becoming an adorable elderly couple is dance lessons, so we better get those on the calendar...in 2030. Also, as long as I'm addressing you parenthetically and publicly, you should know that in the course of writing this blog post, I forgot that I had pasta on the stove and left it there way too long. Welcome to the minefield.]

Dear America, Happy Birthday.

Love,

Your favorite rock 'n roll poet.

This is more important than I like to pretend.

"For by [Jesus] all things were created...all things were created through him and for him."

-Colossians 1:16

The Narrow Gate and the Praise of Men

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." -Matthew 7:13-14

One of the most potent implications of these verses for me is that I cannot both find eternal life and please the majority of people. I have to choose whether I will walk the way that leads to life or the way that leads to applause. Choosing the right path is only the beginning, and I'll need God's grace to be powerfully at work in me for every step, but I cannot choose well until I'm sure that I must choose. And choose we all must, and will.

(HT: DAC)

What We Can Learn From Vampires

Let me be clear: I hate vampires. I hate the idea of vampires in general, and every time vampires pop up in entertainment or conversation, I hate that, too. Those who know me know that vampires are my number one fear, fictional though they be. They rank just above sharks. Just above sharks, which are real and have therefore killed an infinitely greater percentage of humans than vampires.

Here are just a few reasons why vampires are by far the most fearsome of all monsters:

1. Vampires are not obvious. They look just like us. A little pale perhaps, but who's to judge someone for being a tad pasty? The mummy is hard to miss. But vampires? If vampires were real, anyone could be one.

2. Vampires get you at your most vulnerable. Vampires have this nasty habit of showing up in your bedroom at night. You would think that if you lived in a world where vampires existed, you would learn to lock your windows. But that makes for very tame cinema. Werewolves get you at night, too, but they usually get you walking through a forest at night and honestly, what are you doing in a forest at night? You had it coming.

3. Vampires are always in control. Have you ever seen a scared vampire? Me either. Every time you see a vampire, his or her cool smirk says, "I've been waiting for you. This is going down just how I want it to. Go ahead and run; I can turn into a bat."

4. Vampires can turn into bats.

5. Vampires turn you into one of them. Death is bad enough. But turning into someone who enjoys killing others, even their own friends or family? [Note: in writing this, my hair is literally standing on end. But I've come too far to turn back now.]

6. Vampires show no mercy. They never go easy on you; they never give you a break. They always get you, and they're usually laughing when they do.

And if the post was titled "Why I Hate Vampires," I would have delivered. But it's not. Because there's something we can learn from vampires. This was a fruit of a Monday reflection back on Sunday, not a reflection on the sermon, mind you, but a reflection on the 500,000 times I had to see the preview for ABC's new series "The Gates" while watching old episodes of LOST. Vampires, I think, uniquely embody one of the most subtle and overlooked qualities of genuine evil: it's attractive. Vampires, as a rule, are uniformly good-looking. Brad Pitt has been a vampire. Tom Cruise, too. Vampires are beautiful, seductive, magnetic. They don't usually have to chase you down; they reel you in. It's my uneducated and extremely wild guess that about 80% of vampire attacks happen while kissing...the vampire. [Again, shivers. I don't ever want to write the word "vampire" again. What was I thinking??] We just can't help ourselves.

Genuine evil is like that. Most of us aren't tempted or drawn to the big stuff, to genocides or lynchings. But the evil we commit, like gossip, or anger, or lust, we don't commit because it overpowers us, but because it allures us. We believe its promises of pleasure and power. We believe its eyes are only for us, and that it will deliver all the good it promises. We get a little closer to get a better view. And we're taken. If temptation came to us like Frankenstein's monster, lurching and stumbling and gargling incoherently, we'd be safe. We'd stay clear. But it comes to us with charm and flattery, masquerading as an angel in light, promising life and plotting against it. Satan himself may play the gentleman to get close, but he'll show no mercy, either.

In the end, the only promises we can believe are God's. There are many winking eyes out there, many coy smiles. Every day is full of invitations, full of offers, full of assurances of benevolence. But the only promises we can trust are those that come from lips that were once cracked in the midday sun on a hill outside Jerusalem. The only hands whose embrace we should seek are those marked with the scars of Calvary. Only Jesus Christ has given his life for ours, and has thus proven the sincerity of his love. If he tells us to steer clear of something, let's do it. If he tells us to run hard after something, let's do it. Can't we trust him? Whatever sin promises you is a lie. Whatever Jesus promises you is just the beginning.

Help for Prayers (and Pray-ers)

Come, my soul, thy suit prepare;

Jesus loves to answer prayer;

He himself has bid thee pray,

Therefore will not say thee nay.

Thou art coming to a King;

Large petitions with thee bring;

For his grace and power are such,

None can ever ask too much.

-John Newton, quoted in D. A. Carson, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount

A Case for Good Fiction

"It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought - almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions - the Everyman edition of Phantastes [by George MacDonald]. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier....Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore had no notion was this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise (that was where the Death came in) my imagination....The quality which had enchanted me...turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I should have been shocked in my 'teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness."

-C. S. Lewis, "Introduction to Phantastes"

The Awesomest Loser Ever

America loves a winner. We don't care what you do on the weekends; if you win eight gold medals in a single Olympics, Michael Phelps, we will frame a picture of you, set it on our nightstand, and kiss it goodnight (I hope I'm not the only one). Duke and the Yankees have plenty of detractors, but it wouldn't be March without Mike Krzyzewski prowling the sidelines or October without pinstripes. It's the winners who get the ovations. It's the winners who visit the White House. The winners beam and wave as confetti collects on their shoulders and "We are the Champions" blares. The losers are still kneeling on the court/track/turf, hands on head, mouth slightly ajar, still too stunned to cry. They have our respect, but our adoration belongs to another.

That's why, if I live to be 1000 (which, as I understand Christianity, is exactly what will happen), I will never get tired of Revelation 5:9-10. Perhaps more than any other text in Scripture, it demonstrates the utter upside-down-ness of the Christian message. This part of the book of Revelation is a scene in the throne room of heaven, and a bunch of mighty angelic beings are singing this song to Jesus:

"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain..." (Rev 5:9)

"Jesus, you are so unbelievably awesome, because you got yourself killed." With stuff like this in its holy book, how did this religion ever make it to the top? How did a religion built around the veneration of a martyred rabbi even survive to 2010, much less establish itself on every continent and in every nation on the planet? What was it about this death that made it not a tragedy, but a victory to be praised forever in heaven? Read on.

"Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth." (Rev 5:9-10)

Jesus' death was a win because he did something by it. What looked to the world like just another state-sponsored execution was in fact the greatest upset, come-from-behind, buzzer-beating victory in history. When Jesus' enemies thought that they had crushed his sect once and for all by murdering its leader, in reality they had accomplished exactly what Jesus intended: salvation for his people. Rome didn't crucify Jesus against his will; Jesus offered himself to God as a sacrifice, as a substitute, in the place of untold millions who deserved the death penalty for their rebellion against God. He ransomed them, bought them out of captivity to sin and the fear of death, and delivered them to his Father so that they might be a people for God's own possession, who will reign with him forever and ever (cue Hallelujah Chorus). What looked like defeat was actually the greatest win ever, and the more we learn of Christ, the more amazing it will seem. This event, this cross, will occupy our fascination and our praise for endless ages in heaven.

One of the things that most assures me of the truth of Christianity is that it defies all the conventional wisdom. No man thought this up. Only God could have veiled the most important victory in history in the guise of its most ignominious defeat. Only in the mind of the Almighty could the face of a champion, the Champion, be that of a man struggling for breath, blinking sweat and blood out of his eyes, squinting in the desert sun, with a mouth so parched that he could barely gurgle out a prayer. The Christian message is that God himself became a man, went willingly to his own execution, and by his death gave life to all who believe. And to prove that his sacrifice was effectual, he rose on the third day to tell us about it.

What has your worldview done for you lately?

Two Roads Diverged

There are two ways for sin to be covered:

Psalm 32

1Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Either you can cover your sin, concealing it, pretending it hasn't happened and isn't happening, that it isn't so bad and that God doesn't sweat the small stuff, or you can confess it and he can cover it, seeing it, grieving it, and joyfully forgiving it all because of his Son's life, death, and resurrection in our place. On the first road, you'll waste away. On the second, you'll enjoy the happiness of communion with the God who for some reason loves drawing near to those who repeatedly draw back from his best. It's your choice.

Hey, choose life.

Reason #574 Why it's Good to Read the Psalms: You Realize What a Wuss You Are

Psalm 31 (A Psalm of David)

11 Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach,
especially to my neighbors,
and an object of dread to my acquaintances;
those who see me in the street flee from me.
12 I have been forgotten like one who is dead;
I have become like a broken vessel.
13 For I hear the whispering of many—
terror on every side!—
as they scheme together against me,
as they plot to take my life.

14 But I trust in you, O Lord;
I say, “You are my God.”
15 My times are in your hand;
rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
16 Make your face shine on your servant;
save me in your steadfast love!

After reading something like this ("Everyone in my life either avoids me or tries to kill me, but it's cool, because You're on it"), it gets pretty hard to pray, "Lord, I'm in such despair because of this traffic! I'm going to be ten minutes late to work! O why have you forsaken me? Where is your steadfast love of old?"

Why I'm Marrying Her

Seven months ago today, with sweaty palms and a determined avoidance of eye contact, I asked Kim Solari if she would ever consider going on a date with me. Four months from today, God willing, we will be married. One of my favorite things about Kim is her willingness to tell me when I'm being an idiot. I want to give you a small window into how this works.

Last week Kim and I had plans to bring to my BFF and his wife, recently home from the hospital after the birth of their third child, a hot meal to give them a break from cooking. I, neither for the first nor last time, was running significantly late. I got out of class late, traffic was worse than I thought it would be, and Portillo's (Did you think I was going to bring something homemade? Who do you think that I am?) didn't have the order ready when I arrived. By the time I picked Kim up to head over to their house, I was angry at everything.

"Why are you upset?" she asked.

"I hate being late," I said. "I wanted to give Bryan and Amy a break from cooking, but now we're bringing dinner late, the food is cold, and they're going to have to start feeding the girls before we get there, so we can't all eat together." I deliberated about whether to say what I was really thinking. I went for it. "Honestly, I just want to be the hero. I want to be everyone's hero all the time. And I can't. And I'm angry about it."

"Honey," she began gently. "You're not supposed to be the hero. That's not how the story goes." Thoughtful pause. "If you were everyone's hero, we'd all be going to hell."

Touché.

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." (Prov 25:11)

Help for Weak Hands

I had an alarming experience last Sunday. I was standing in CrossWay's lobby during the time of corporate singing at youth group, and these were the words we were endorsing together: "Your blood has washed away my sin/Jesus, thank you/The Father's wrath completely satisfied/Jesus, thank you" (you know if it has the word "wrath," it must be a Sovereign Grace song). As I sang, I found myself wondering, is this really true? The Father's wrath completely satisfied? I began to scan my memory for Scripture passages that would undergird the precious truth that Jesus, on the cross, took all of God's anger against my sin...and I came up empty-handed. I had nothing.

After a few minutes the juices started flowing again, but I knew that I needed to do something to get the truth of the gospel back in the front of my mind. This week I started using John Piper's The Passion of Jesus Christ in my devotions. It has fifty short meditations on what the Bible teaches about what Jesus accomplished on the cross (it has since been retitled Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die).

When you feel the need (I assume I'm not the only one!) to firm up your grasp on the truth of the gospel, what helps you?

Playing to the Cheap Seats, or, Everybody Loves a Baby

One of the great things about holidays is the opportunity to take group pictures. I give you the Wendles, present, future, and honorary (clockwise from top left): my parents Bill and Marg, my fiancee Kim, me, my brother-in-law Micaiah, my nephew David, and my (twin) sister Erin. The smiles aren't faked. We actually like each other.

And just for good measure, here are a few pictures of my nephew being adorable over the early months of this year:

New Year's Day.

1st birthday.

Easter.

Even Easter is Just an Echo

Three hours ago I was sitting in a church building mourning the death of the Lord Jesus two thousand years ago. Eleven hours from now I'll be in another church building mourning a much more recent departure. A friend's mother passed away from cancer last Tuesday, and tomorrow morning Kim and I will, in what limited way we can, join him in the mingled sorrow and relief that accompanies the death of a Christian after a prolonged illness. Shu-Lang quietly passed into fullness of joy in the presence of her Savior, leaving a gaping chasm in the lives of those who have the (mis?)fortune to remain. We know we should rejoice with her, but we feel quite unable to participate in a joy we cannot witness and in which we cannot join. Her final healing is abstraction; her absence is concrete.

Tomorrow is the day before Easter. On Sunday morning, as young girls file into church with their pressed pink dresses and patent leather shoes and mothers work determinedly to remove the last smears of chocolate from the cheeks of their sons, what hope will Easter offer to my friend and to his father? Will warm wishes and hearty laughs ease his ache, or will his grief be a pane-glass window between him and the others, allowing him to see the celebration but keeping him from being embraced by it? Can the most golden-tongued preacher offer anything to my friend but the cold comfort that once upon a time God's Son rose from the dead?

Tomorrow is the day before Easter, the day we remember the long, lonely silence between the death-cries of Calvary and the triumphal shout of resurrection. In a way, that Saturday never really ended. Yes, Jesus awoke in the dark of the tomb and emerged victorious over death, sin, and Satan, and ascended to his rightful place at the right hand of the Father on high. Hallelujah! But his followers have yet to fully share in that victory. We have eternal life but are still subject to death. Sin's chains are broken but the shards pierce us still. Satan is no longer our master, but he haunts our windows and doors. We still live between cross and crown. We're still waiting on daybreak.

You see, even Easter is just an echo, a reverberation through time declaring that just as the Lord has risen, so we will all rise. My friend's hope tomorrow is not merely that Jesus didn't stay dead, but that through his life we will all come alive in the end. At the end of all things Shu-Lang will burst from the ground and shine like the sun in the kingdom of her Father. She will shower laughter upon her sons, and they will turn together with unshielded eyes and unveiled faces towards the Light of the world. Tomorrow, just as Jesus' followers once laid his body in Nicodemus' tomb, Shu-Lang will be laid in the ground. And one day, just as Jesus burst forth with a shout, so will she. Tomorrow my friend will mourn. One day, he will laugh for joy. Easter isn't an escape from sorrow. It's a declaration that sorrow will not have the last word, that all believers in Christ, whose bodies are sown in the earth, will reap a harvest of imperishable life, that every tear will by wiped away, that on a day soon arriving all shall be well, all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well. Happy Easter.

The Unflinching Poetry of Scripture

"Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes." -Job 3:23-26

"Why, O LORD, do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" -Psalm 10:1

One of the things I love about Scripture is its refusal to give pat answers to hard questions. Christianity does not offer a neat and tidy package of truth and technique that will make the whole world suddenly make sense and work right. Not any kind of biblical Christianity, anyway. The poetry of Scripture, which you might expect to be uniformly ebullient with care-free praise, is rather full of lament, the cries of holy men who know God and to whom God's ways still don't make sense. They know he's faithful. They know he's good. (He is, isn't he?) But their experience confirms none of it. They undergo loss, and they can't see any good coming out of it. They are on the run for their lives, and they've done nothing to deserve it. In the moment when they long for the comfort of God, their voice echoes in emptiness. If God is good, why's he so hard to find? Why does he hide himself in times of trouble?

The God of Christianity, the God of Scripture, the God who is, is breathtakingly free. This is in a sense the heart of what it means to be sovereign. None can stay his hand. He tames Leviathan and Behemoth; no one tames him. God is always faithful to his word, but he is free to fulfill it when and where he pleases (HT: VG), which is rarely convenient to humans. He will do what he will do. One day we may cry out to no avail. The next, when we are looking for anything else, God will suddenly break upon our souls with a vision of his friendly heart. Where was that yesterday? And as soon as it has come, the break in the clouds has sealed up again.

The longer I walk with God, the less I look to my experience to be my tutor in God's ways. The great knowers of God knew better. God is wild; he can't be predicted or pigeonholed. He must rather be trusted, trusted even with our doubt. God could have kept only the happy psalms in Scripture, but he handed down the laments as well. He's not embarrassed by our questions. Neither does he commend them. But he surely understands. In fact, today, Maundy Thursday, we remember that God himself, kneeling in a garden near Jerusalem, called out and was not given his heart's desire, that the cup of God's wrath on the sin of humanity would pass from him. He was strengthened but not delivered. The next day, even more horrifically, he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In one of the magnificent paradoxes of all-time, God himself knows what it's like to feel, to be forsaken by God. He can sympathize. Whatever the reason for the desolations we experience, it's not because he doesn't understand, or because he doesn't love.

In the end, we can't know God for real without knowing him on the cross. If God became a man, died in our place, and rose from the dead, then no matter our experience, we know he's out there, and we know he's love. Sure, the things he does seem not to make sense. Sure, he hides himself in times of trouble. But he's good, and though we can't trust him to be predictable, we can trust him to be God. And if he's who he showed himself to be in Christ, that's very good news.

The Light, the Heat

When I study in public places, I frequently use music to block out the conversations around me. (Basically, I want to be where people are, so I don't sleep, but I also don't want any meaningful contact with them.) Tonight while I studied for my ethics midterm, I gave two spins to Peter Gabriel's So, his 1986 masterpiece that produced six singles (impressive considering the album has only nine tracks). It revived all my admiration. No other voice approaches Gabriel's smoky howl, and few songwriters can paint such textured beauty on the canvas of rock...if that's even what this is. So is proof that the 80's weren't a total wash.

For those of you whose only exposure to "In Your Eyes" involves John Cusack and a boombox, I give you the extended version from Secret World Live. If you don't have time for the whole cut, just watch the first minute to see what the crowd does with the lighters.

The Marvelous Complexity of the Heart of God

The fact that "God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day" (Psalm 7:11) makes it all the more amazing that at the very same time he "is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9). Every day, God feels indignation that his name is not more praised and that the world he made perfect is so full of injustice. And every day he withholds his anger, that more may repent and find him to be overflowing with love and mercy. What a God!

Ecclesiastes, the Trinity Tarn, and a Subtle Allusion to The Shawshank Redemption

As I was walking briskly across campus towards the Barilla office this morning, I noticed a tree lying on its side in the tarn (this is how I was instructed during my first semester to refer to the pond behind the mansion; I never knew until just now that this term is reserved for mountain ponds). The sudden arrival of spring, with its attendant rain and thaw, had apparently turned to mud the once firm earth that held the tree leaning precariously over the water, and it toppled with what I idealize in my mind as a mighty splash, though it was probably nothing of the sort. Two geese, oblivious to the overnight calamity, paddled indifferently nearby.

The scene brought two thoughts almost simultaneously to mind. I thought first of Ecclesiastes 11:3 ("...and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.") and how R. C. Sproul became a Christian after the captain of his college football team shared it with him (I know, I can't believe it either, but it happened). The second, more lasting thought was this: time is actually passing. That tree has irreversibly fallen; it will never stand again. Spring has come, and we will never have that winter again. Other winters, sure, but that one's gone for good, or soon will be. Those geese will be back for a few seasons, but then they'll be gone, too. Time is passing. Every sunset closes a chapter we won't get back and can't rewrite.

I'm not trying to be a fear-monger. I'm glad spring is here. Soon we'll have flowers shooting up and trees squeezing out buds. The geese will start preparing a site for their eggs, and after that, goslings. I'll probably forget all about the tree and blog about how life is full of new beginnings. But God's message for me today was that tree, and Ecclesiastes 11:3. The next verse reads, "He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap." If you wait for the perfect moment, you'll still be waiting when the tree falls. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

If you're not living the life you want to live, what are you waiting for?

Grace, amazing

Tonight at Care Group we were reminiscing about the people and events God used to draw us to himself. He demonstrated the greatness of his power and the creativity of his work in one woman's story particularly. She shared that the medium God used to bring her to clarity about Christ and his work for us was "Jesus Christ Superstar," the early-70's rock opera that presents Judas Iscariot as a tragic figure. A tragic figure! I don't remember the play well, but none of my memories are of a clear explanation of the meaning of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

Hearing her story comforted me for two reasons. First, this shows me the strength of God to save and the mighty reach of his grace. When he decides to save, he does so, and he'll use even a misleading (heretical?) musical to do it. His grace shines brightly even from dirty bulbs. And secondly, this encouraged me as a fledgling preacher. I have so much room to grow in expounding Scripture. But I have to think that I can preach the gospel at least as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber, and if God can make Christ known through "Jesus Christ Superstar," he can certainly use me as well!

I like blogging, but...

...I'm not crazy about how much blogging tempts me to think about myself. I thought about the blog within one minute of waking up this morning, and before I was out of bed I was already fiddling with the layout. I tried different colors for the text. I want to seem artsy, but I don't want to seem like I'm trying too hard. Then, in the shower, I was contemplating whether I should write something in the "About Me" box. Something profound, but not pretentious. Something spiritually significant, but not preachy or heavy-handed. No, just leave it. The internal dialogue continued in my devotions. I just had a good thought - should I blog about it? How would I phrase it? Does it seem like I'm showing off? Wait, I'm supposed to be praying!

The wretched truth of the matter is that I'm a selfish person. I care deeply, idolatrously, about what people think of me, and I want to manage my image to earn your worship. Blogging's just the way it's coming out today. I haven't decided whether I want to move forward with blogging (is this battle with self-preoccupation going to be mainly sanctifying or mainly discouraging?), but I know that blogging's not to blame. My great need is for inner transformation, for cleansing and quickening, for the Spirit to so flood my heart with visions of the greatness of God that thinking about myself seems insufferably mundane in comparison. Let it be so for all of us!

Launching right in

Andrew Osenga is playing in Elmhurst tomorrow. I'm not going to see him. I would, but it just so happens that the only other Nashville-based acoustic storyteller named Andrew I like better is playing in Sugar Grove at the same time. (If you like good things, you'll be there, too.)

I doubt Andy will notice my absence...but just in case, I'll make it up to him by sharing the song that has occupied my mental down-time more than any other the past few days.

Without further ado, I give you "Swing Wide the Glimmering Gates." If you like it, you can download two free EP's on his website. If you don't, what's your problem?