The Rest at the End of Ourselves

Today I've listened repeatedly to what has to be one of the most beautiful recordings I've ever heard: Mindy Smith and Sola's cover of Antje Duvekot's "Reasonland." (Before you start to feel impressed that I know such obscure singer-songwriters, let me say that I heard this song on a mix CD from Marc Tantillo. Most of my musical "finds" roll downhill from him and Josh Glidden.) If you haven't heard it, the link will take you to a free listen on Grooveshark. Art is always preferable to analysis of art, so if you have to choose between listening to the song or reading this post, listen to the song.

Here are the lyrics for the interested:

In Reasonland the emperor came down

To the water's edge and said, "I don't know where I'm bound

I've got emeralds and rubies sewn into my gown

But I am sadder than the diamonds in my crown

So will you lay me down in a fiddler's cloud

Lay me down to dream

Let my aching head be still, let me surrender to your will

Lay me down and deliver me"

The mighty king came down to the sea

Said, "I may win any battle that I please

I got a hundred-man batallion, they all fall down at my feet

But there’s a songbird who will not sing for me

So will you lay me down in a fiddler's cloud

Lay me down to dream

Let my aching head be still, let me surrender to your will

Lay me down and deliver me

I wanna fly out to your center

I wanna sink down into your gold

I wanna go down without my dagger

I wanna shed these clothes"

The preacher's wife kneeled down by the waves

Said, "For your love and salvation I have prayed

I am a tired tightrope dancer, I wanna go no more this way

Just give me something, a penny for my faith

So will you lay me down in a fiddler's cloud

Lay me down to dream

Let my aching head be still, let me surrender to your will

Lay me down and deliver me

Will you lay me down, won't you lay me down

Lay me down to dream

Let my aching head be still, let me surrender to your will

Lay me down and deliver me"

The song depicts three people at the end of themselves. The emperor has money enough to sew jewels into his clothing, but he can't buy joy. The king has military might enough to defeat all comers, but he can't coerce beauty. The preacher's wife has a reputation of piety, but she has no assurance of God's love. They have wealth, power, and religion, but at the end of themselves, all they really want is rest. In fact, they want a kind of death, a death to their bankrupt existence and a true surrender to the will of another. They're looking for rescue. They've come to the chasm where forward progress stops and only voice can travel. They pray.

Like these pilgrims, we all have to come to the end of ourselves sooner or later. What we really long for can't be bought or forced or faked. We all live east of Eden, and a sword separates us from the home of rest. All our life is striving: we strive after security, we strive after beauty, we strive after an assurance of God's love. And sooner or later, we too must kneel down by the waves and confess that we've come as far as we can, and we can't go as far as we must. We've come up short, and the distance between our ability and our longing must be made up for in grace. Rest must come as a gift, or not at all.

This is a terrifying turn of events for foreigners to the gospel, but for Christians this is the place of provision. In God's kingdom the blessing comes not to the strong and rich, but to the poor in spirit, to the seaside beggars. Grace comes to the humble. We can come to the end of ourselves without fear, because we know that the rest we long for comes not through our striving but through the grace of Christ, who took our burden so we could have his treasure. Jesus meets us at the shore and offers freely joy, beauty, and love that this world can neither offer nor plunder. The pilgrims' prayers are not in vain. For every Christian there is a laying down at the end of our labor. There's a rest at the end of ourselves.

I can relate to this.

"All of my life I've held onto this fear
These thistles and vines ensnare and entwine what flowers appear
It's the fear that I'll fall one too many times
It's the fear that His love is no better than mine

But just as I am, just as I was
Just as I will be, He loves me, he does
He showed me the day that He shed his own blood
He loves me, oh, he loves me, He does!"

-Andrew Peterson, "Just As I Am"

You Become What You Worship

"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." -Romans 1:21-23

The Bible tells us that we were made in the image of God, that we were set in the Garden as God's icons, as his idols even, making visible his unseen care and rule and joy. We were made to behold and reflect God's beauty, mirrors to his face, moons to his sun. But we're dumb ("fools" is the technical term), so we stopped doing that and started looking at other things, looking to them to save and satisfy us. And the image began to seep away. Our minds, made to consider and ponder and form new ways to worship, became futile in their thinking. The lights went off inside. We're solar-powered; as soon as we duck in the shade, our systems shut down. We're cut off from the Source. The writer of Psalm 115 nails this: "Those who make [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them." Those who worship dead things become like them: unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling. Unliving.

If that doesn't make you a little squeamish, you probably haven't reckoned with the fact that money can be an idol. Marriage. Beauty. Power. Possessions. Popular opinion.

Worshiping idols undoes us, tears at our fibers. But gloriously, God's made a way out. A true worshiper, the True Worshiper, came into the world to rescue us out of the hole we were digging. He loved God with all his heart (the only one who ever did), but on the cross he became our idolatry so that we could become his worship of God. He beckoned us back into the light, clothed in his record of righteous praise. And now, as the Holy Spirit shows us the beauty of Christ in that very good news, "we...are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor 3:18). Jesus turns back the clock on our disfiguration, and as we worship Christ, we become like him.

You become what you worship. Choose wisely.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!