Tag Archives: meditations

Wisdom . . .

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I need it.

Wisdom has built her house;

she has hewn her seven pillars.

She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;

she has also set her table.

She has sent out her young women to call

from the highest places in the town,

“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”

To him who lacks sense she says,

“Come, eat of my bread

and drink of the wine I have mixed.

Leave your simple ways, and live,

and walk in the way of insight.”

Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse,

and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.

Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you;

reprove a wise man, and he will love you.

Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser;

teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,

and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

For by me your days will be multiplied,

and years will be added to your life.

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself;

if you scoff, you alone will bear it.

– Proverbs 9

Balance: Stay on the horse

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There is a famous quotation of Martin Luther in which he compares humanity to a drunken man who has fallen off of a horse on the left-hand side, and then proceeds to get back on the horse and fall off on the right-hand side.

I don’t have the attribution for that quote, but it’s such a wise observation. I’ve noticed this scary human tendency often in movements within the church. For instance, if we think the church is emphasizing social justice at the expense of saving souls, we react to create a church that cares only for saving souls at the expense of social justice. If we think that church has gotten too traditional, formal and stuffy, we leap over the horse and create a church environment totally divorced from church history and where reverence often takes a back seat to relevance.

Arguments tend to be phrased as “either/or” when they really are “both/and”. And I don’t know why we’re this way (note: I’m this way too).

I’ve begun to post a series of my thoughts on “balance”. Now balance is a word that portrays, to some, a sense of the safe, of the non-committal, of the middle-road. I would counter that balance is, in actuality, exciting, dangerous and very hard work. Balance is not a bad thing: there are many times when balance is necessary and desired: when walking or running, for instance. Or when walking a tightrope. Or when riding a horse. Unfortunately, our natural tendencies have us dumping off to one side or the other.

A subject I’ve read a lot about has been the American space program, and especially the Apollo program. The Apollo command module was equipped with a stable element, called the “eight-ball”, which had a set of gimbals that allowed it to maintain a stable, unmoving attitude relative to the stars, and thus gave the spacecraft a point of reference upon which to navigate. There was only one instance in which the ship’s stable element would cease functioning. This situation was called “gimbal lock“, and it occurred when the ship yawed too far to the right or to the left; the gimbals would line up, lock into position, and you could kiss any knowledge of which way you were pointed sayonara. We as humans tend to do that, don’t we? We yaw too far to one extreme, our internal “gimbals” lock, and the next thing you know, we’re passing Pluto and wondering how on earth we got there.

Balance is important, and it is something we learn. Scripture is described in Hebrews chapter 4 as being “sharper than any double-edged sword”. I don’t want to strain a metaphor too much, but the image that has always popped in my mind upon hearing that is of a sword that cuts both ways. Scripture balances against other scripture and drives us to the truth.

Unfortunately, balance doesn’t sell books or get people to read a blog post; if you really want to swing for the fences to make your point, straw-men riding hyperbolic steeds of rhetoric are needed (and, oh my goodness, is this sentence a mess! I think I’ll keep it 🙂 I think the idea is that by over-emphasizing one’s point at the expense of the contra, perhaps one can pull people into the middle-ground. And that does work, but the things sacrificed in that approach often include clarity, charity, and peace. It’s a lot harder to elucidate a position precisely in a way that makes people want to listen, and that’s why so often pendulum-swinging over-exaggeration is utilized instead.

I long for balance. And if the horse we’re riding is the Gospel, let’s maintain our balance, ride it well and not fall off, even if everyone around us is flinging themselves off into the ditches.

(previous post on the topic of balance: Balance: Heavenly minded, earthly good)

Balance: Heavenly minded, earthly good

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“Don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good”

Have you ever heard that statement before? I have. In the past, I have assumed it referred to people who thought only of the sweet by and by to the exclusion of the duties and callings of this life. But I didn’t think much more of it, and I didn’t really know anyone I’d put in that category.

Recently our pastor used that phrase in a Sunday morning message. He followed it up with a quizzical look and this statement: “I’ve never known anyone too heavenly minded”.

He has a point – particularly in this country, where we’re so inundated with the bright, sparkly things of this world and where teachings on heaven and hell in our churches are few and far between. What brings this to mind is what I’m seeing as a resurgence, writ large, of the tension between heavenly minded and earthly good in current church debates, and primarily in the emergent conversation.

Here is the point and accusation being made in that conversation: Jesus came to inaugurate his Kingdom on earth, to fix the mess we’re in, and to overcome the Roman empire with a new kind of reign based on God’s ways, so that God’s will will be done “on earth as it is in heaven”. Unfortunately, the argument goes, all we’re concerned about in modern evangelicalism is “getting people saved” so that they can go to heaven and avoid hell. Evangelicals care too much about heaven, to the exclusion of this present world and all its troubles, for which they do very little.

While I think that representation is a bit of a caricature, I can see that there’s some truth in it. But the corrective being suggested seems, to me at least, to just be another fling off the other side of the horse. The books coming out, for instance, on the emergent side of the aisle seem to be paying short shrift to eternity. Their message: the church is too heavenly minded. We need to start being some earthly good.

And, in this way at least, they’re right: there are clear Biblical commands toward earthly goodness, and we are all as believers compelled by Christ’s love to love our neighbors, to do good to those around us, to meet the earthly needs of the least of these. And the reason we are to be this way is very simple: to glorify our Father in heaven.

I find myself tangled in yet another false dichotomy when it is suggested (or inferred) that earthly goodness and heavenly mindedness cannot coexist, and it makes me wonder if theologies built upon a foundation of our efforts to solve the world’s problems are theologies that, deep down, don’t really believe in eternity. Because if eternity is true, this life really is a vapor, a wisp, one blade of grass in a vast field.

If we are to be earthly good (and I believe we are), we are to be that way for God’s glory, and because, to paraphrase a recent, popular movie, what we do today echoes in eternity.

If eternity is true (and I believe it is), how much does the weight of it overwhelm day to day concerns? And how much does the need for each person on earth to heed the call of Jesus to repent and believe overwhelm all other issues in this life? These questions become rhetorical when you consider that in a snap of the fingers, we’ll be gone, and eternity will be what remains.

I believe that balance is a very important aspect of our faith, and I would like to see more of a balance, in my life, in the teachings of the church, and in the current in-family debates in Christendom, between heavenly mindedness and earthly goodness. May we never lose site of the enormity of eternity, and the glorious and frightening prospect that it has for us and for our neighbor. In the light of this, may we serve our neighbor, in Jesus’ name, as we would want to be served, doing God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven, for the glory of the Father.

I’ll leave you with a C.S. Lewis quote that sums up what I’m trying to say exceptionally well:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

– C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

What’s a Christian to do with the Old Testament law? Part 3 (the Law of Christ)

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"Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

– Matthew 5:19-20

(Ok, here's where I need to take a deep breath)

I've said sometimes when teaching, "if the words of Jesus don't scare you, you're not really reading." This statement of Christ is a great example of what I'm talking about. It scares me.

And it confuses me a bit as well. When Jesus refers to the "least of these commandments", what is he referring to?

In the previous few statements in chapter 5 of Matthew, Jesus has affirmed the law and the prophets, and has claimed in himself to be the fulfillment of them. He reiterates that he has not come to abolish the law, but rather to fulfill it.

In reading ahead to the end of the chapter, we see that Christ launches into a series of "you have heard it said / but I say to you" statements, where he reinterprets six commands from the Old Testament and moves their "center" from the skin-depth of our external actions to the depths of our hearts. For example, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment" (vv. 21-22a).

It is important to notice that Jesus doesn't make the law easier here. He makes it harder.

Some have argued that the purpose of the law is only to show us our need for Christ, and our inability to please God on our own. While this view has some attraction for me (I don't need to take these commands seriously? Cool!) I don't believe it is correct.

My friend Jared summarizes nicely my discomfort:

The Law is indeed a mirror (as James' epistle elucidates), it does indeed confront us in its very existence with our failure to measure up, with the complete imperfection within us. No, by the law will no one be justified. Yes, the law's declaration demonstrates our own alienation from God's holiness. But this notion that this negative declaration is only why it exists, to show us we can't do it, is just . . . weird. I just can't read the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, in which Jesus makes the Law harder by making it about our hearts and not just our behavior, and think it's just some bizarre logic puzzle meant to mean the opposite of what it says.

When Jesus says "Love your enemies," yes it is implicit that we can't do that perfectly, that it is not in our own power to do that or even want to do that. But it is still a command. It is still something to do. And with the Spirit's transforming power, in the new life in Jesus, it is something we can and must do.

I like what Dallas Willard says about this stuff: The life of faith is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. There is a huuuuge difference. And I think many of those who get hung up on the Law as mirror — setting one "use" of the Law against another — fall off the horse on the other side.

Well said.

So what's Jesus doing here? I believe that Jesus meant what he said; this is how we are to live. This is what the Kingdom of God looks like: it's a Kingdom populated by followers of Jesus who live not just in accordance with the letter of the law, but who accord with the spirit of the law as well. Kingdom people are people who understand that anger in their heart does lead to murder, that lust in their heart does lead to adultery, that the person standing next to us is not a fool to be despised, but is rather a creature fearfully and wonderfully created in the image of God. Kingdom people are people who understand that we don't live for ourselves, for our dignity, or to get "what's coming to us".

In the following verses and chapters, Jesus is going to describe his Kingdom, populated by the blessed meek, the blessed poor in spirit, the pure in heart that he described at the beginning of his sermon.

If you're like me, the description of the Kingdom in the sermon on the mount is both very good news and very bad news. It's good news when I think of how wonderful it would be to live in that kind of society; a society of Jesus-followers living from the heart and living out the love of Christ to each other. But because I'm crooked deep inside, it becomes bad news when I start imagining myself conforming to this law of the Spirit, because it seems impossible.

But I've learned that what seems impossible to me is often not impossible for God. And this is the gospel, the good news, that a dead man like me can be made alive in Christ and can actually do the good works which the Lord, who's workmanship I am, has prepared for me to do.

When we live in accordance to the law of Christ, which is the law of the Spirit, not just the letter, our righteousness will surpass the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, who knew the letter backwards and forwards but who had lost the purpose of the law, and who had become dead to the things of God even as they memorized and lived out the externals of his commands.

And we are to live in accordance with Christ's law. Not to earn salvation, because Christ has already earned it. This life of obedience in the Spirit is natural; a result and a reflection of Jesus.

The law of Christ, which is the fullest expression and completion of the law and the prophets in the Old Testament, is joy. As is being a citizen of the Kingdom of God, lit up by that same law, a shining city on a hill.

[Note: this was cross-posted on the HNW Gap Singles site]

What’s a Christian to do with the Old Testament law? Part 2

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Disclaimer: I have no illusion that what I'm writing in this post represents the only valid understanding of the scripture in Matthew 5. This is my best understanding to date, though.

"For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished." – Matthew 5:18

Jesus makes a remarkable statement here. Some have said that Jesus' previous "I have not come to abolish the law" statement was a defensive counter to the religious leaders' accusations of him as a lawbreaker. This makes some sense, except for the fact that many believe that the Sermon on the Mount came early in Jesus' ministry, before much of that criticism had been leveled. And also, note the reach of Jesus' statement. Not only did he not come to abolish the law, but he affirms that not the smallest letter or stroke of the pen of the law would pass away until all of it is accomplished! That's quite an overreach, if all he was trying to do was deflect criticism.

Plus, Jesus never strikes me as the kind of person who feels the need to defend himself.

Notice how Jesus talks about the law: to Jesus, the law is not a set of dead rules to follow. No, the law has a purpose, which can be accomplished. And we know this from scripture – the law is a mirror for us to see ourselves the way God sees us. The Psalmist writes of how the law "revives the soul", enlightens us, makes us wise, and endures forever.

Sometimes we get the idea that the law was an evil thing that Christ did away with. But that's not what he's saying here. To Jesus, the law is a very good thing, with a very good purpose, and it was to be accomplished, in him.

So, has the law been accomplished? People debate these days whether any of the Old Testament law applies to us today. There are some aspects of it that, obviously, were accomplished in Jesus' passion. For instance, we don't sacrifice animals for sin anymore, because Christ is our ultimate and all-sufficient sacrifice. We don't follow the rituals of the temple anymore, because we ourselves are now the Temple of the Holy Spirit. And certain aspects of the law – the dietary laws, for instance – were specifically set aside in Scripture. Others, such as circumcision, are shown to have been replaced by new signs in the new creation (in this case, baptism).

I am not versed in all the theology behind Christ's statement. But I know that the law was not a mistake. It points us to Jesus, and in him it finds its fulfillment, and it is perfected in the "Law of Christ".

More on that in a later post.

[Note: this was cross-posted on the HNW Gap Singles site]


What’s a Christian to do with the Old Testament law? Part 1

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“The Sermon on the Mount is probably the best-known part of the teaching of Jesus, though arguably it is the least understood, and certainly it is the least obeyed” – John Stott (from The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, InterVarsity Press, 1978, p. 15.)

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

– Matthew 5:17-20

Sometimes, when preparing to teach the GAP, I foolishly think “I’m up to this”. The good news about the Sermon on the Mount is that I don’t hold any illusions about my qualifications to teach on it. Nearly every statement Christ makes in this sermon is a conundrum to me. When I read with open eyes and heart the words of Jesus, I find myself scandalized. So much of my life fails to line up with his words, and so many of his words don’t match my preconceived notions of what being a Christian is all about.

The good news here, again, is that I know that if Jesus and I aren’t lined up, I’m the crooked one.

Take this statement: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Now, that’s quite a statement, isn’t it?

Yet, I’m so glad Jesus said it! In that one statement Christ affirms the witness of the Old Testament about himself, and he begins lifting the fog that often surrounds my reading of the first five books of the Bible. Jesus lived in a time of great piety surrounding the Old Testament law, the Torah. And he was often accused, by the Jewish religious leaders, of ignoring or setting aside the law, which they held so dear.

And in my day I find myself confused when reading the Torah (don’t you?). How many of us read, for instance, Leviticus for pleasure?

We don’t get it. And the religious leaders didn’t get Jesus. He didn’t come to abolish God’s word. How could he? He is the Word!

No, Jesus has come to fulfill the law. He is the fulfillment, the end point of what the Old Testament was getting at. In his perfect life and atoning death he fulfilled what Moses and the prophets wrote about, commanded, and hungered for. Emmanuel, God with us, here to usher in a new age, a new Kingdom, a new way to be human.

And it only makes sense that Matthew would report Jesus’ words regarding the fulfillment of the law in himself. One of the main purposes of Matthew’s gospel is to show how Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. Do a search sometime on the word “fulfill” in Matthew using your favorite Bible software or Bible website. Over and over you read “All this took place to fulfill . . .” and “that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled . . .”. By my rough count, there are fifteen such statements in Matthew. Jesus is the fulfillment!

Read Leviticus, and the other OT books of the law, with Jesus in mind and the seemingly dead regulations, sacrifices and symbols begin to sparkle with life. It’s all about him. Jesus is the firm foundation upon which the Bible must be read, to understand it and to live it.

Of course, knowing that doesn’t mean that Jesus’ statements in Matthew 5 are crystal clear to me. I still struggle with them. And I know I’m not alone.

I’ll write more on this in a later post.

[Note: this was cross-posted on the HNW Gap Singles site]

Honesty isn’t everything

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The title of this post might catch you up short. No – I’m not saying that honesty isn’t important. I’m also not saying that it isn’t a command of God.

What I’m saying is that honesty, defined as full transparency, with every inward struggle and angst worn sleeve-ward, is not the highest virtue.

I got to thinking about this as I surfed through the blogosphere one day, reading people’s feelings about this and that, and feeling like I was being sucked into a vortex of negativity. Now, negativity is something I can generally brush off like the black snowflake it often is, but when it’s in the church (did I mention i was surfing the God-blogosphere?) it tends to have barbs on it.

What interested me in particular were the accolades being passed through linkage to these “fearless, honest” (but extremely negative) bloggers. Not only did I have to wonder at just how much bravery it takes, really, to press the “Publish” button, but I also wondered if it really does much good to splash one’s darkest musings on the walls of cyberspace.

Then I began thinking about Mother Theresa.

And a post was born . . .

I’m a bit late to the Mother Theresa discussion, but you may have read of the recent disclosure that, based upon her private letters, it appears that she endured a decades-long dark night of the soul, and was troubled by doubts about God and his seeming absence in her life.

But Mother Theresa was born into a different generation; a generation that knew that life was hard and knew what duty was and understood the flitting nature of feelings and emotions.

And that’s what amazes me. In the midst of all that she was going through internally, Mother Theresa obeyed what she understood God’s call to be in her life, and she went to and served the least of these in a place that placed a crushing weight of tragedy, disease, and poverty upon her and the sisters of mercy that worked with her. She obeyed even when she didn’t feel the joy of salvation or the presence of God. And she sustained this obedience through decades of service.

In a strictly legalistic sense, she wasn’t very honest about how she was feeling. At least not publicly.

And in hiding her inner thoughts and, indeed, denying herself in that area she was able to continue the work Jesus had given her to do.

Perhaps she realized that the way we feel, right now, is rarely reality, and that the dimness of the glass that we look through has not diminished in the least the light of glory that awaits on the other side for those who persevere. And, through her suffering, perhaps she realized that it really wasn’t, in the final analysis, about her.

God bless her. And may I grow to be half so wise.

Theodore Dalrymple on good and evil

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Theodore Dalrymple, a non-believer, writes of both some some very good and some very bad people he has known. Many of the most admirable souls he recalls here were people of faith. It’s an interesting piece, with a balanced feel and a final paragraph that I think is tremendous. The article is excerpted below:

I met other nuns in remote parts of Africa who seemed completely happy in humbly serving the local people: a community of Spanish nuns whose cheerful and selfless dedication caused to the ill, the handicapped and the young caused them, rightly, to be loved and revered. In Nigeria, I met an Irish nun, in her mid-seventies, who was responsible for the feeding of hundreds of prisoners who would almost certainly have starved had she not brought food to them every day. In the prison, a lunatic had been chained for years to a post; many of the prisoners had been detained without trial for a decade, the files of their cases having been lost, and they would never leave the prison, even when a judge ordered their release, unless they paid a bribe to the gaolers which they could not afford. They believed they would spend the rest of their lives in detention, seventy to a floor-space no larger than that of my sitting room.

The nun moderated the behaviour of the prison guards by the sheer force of her goodness, It was not a demonstrative or self-satisfied virtue; one simply would have felt ashamed to behave badly or selfishly in her presence. She is almost certainly dead now, forgotten by the world (not that she craved remembrance or memorialisation). I sometimes find it difficult, when immersed in the day to day flux of my existence, to credit that I have witnessed such selflessness.

. . .

I once made the mistake of writing an article in [a] left-wing publication saying that, in my experience, the best people were usually religious and on the whole religious people behaved better in their day to day lives than non-religious once: and I wrote this, as I made clear, as a man without any religious belief.

As a frequent contributor to the public prints, I am accustomed to a certain amount of hate-mail, and can even recognise the envelopes that contain it with a fair, though not total, degree of accuracy. Of course, e-mail has made it far easier for those consumed with bile to communicate it, and on the whole it exceeds in vileness what most bilious people are prepared to commit to paper. I don’t think I have ever hated anyone as much as some of my correspondents have hated me.

Suffice it to say that I have never received such hate mail as when I suggested that religious people were better than non-religious in their conduct. It seemed that many of the people who responded to me were not content merely not to believe, but had to hate.

. . .

Perhaps one of the reasons that contemporary secularists do not simply reject religion but hate it is that they know that, while they can easily rise to the levels of hatred that religion has sometimes encouraged, they will always find it difficult to rise to the levels of love that it has sometimes encouraged.

[A clang of sword against shield to Lars Walker of the excellent Brandywine Books]

Holding aloft the 3-cent candle of hope

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I’ve got lots of post ideas. I just haven’t found the time (or the guts, frankly) to post them. But here are some thoughts and links while I while away my lunch hour.

Remember the old cliche’ “it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness”? My candle is not that bright and I feel sometimes that I’m walking through the inky-black darkness of the blogosphere holding aloft one of those little sparklers you find on a cupcake. But, doggone it, I’m going to grit my teeth and continue to do so. Yes, we need our Jeremiah’s, our weeping prophets. And, of course, all is not well, in our country or in our churches.

But sometimes I think people can’t see the light of hope for the darkness they’ve chosen to focus on.

Maybe I’m wrong. But, for those of us living in the western world at least, we live in an age of unparalleled material blessing and freedom. Even our poorest are rich by history’s standards. And, if that wasn’t un-PC enough to say, though the church in America is badly in need of reform, discipline, and a re-focusing, it is also full of some very, very fine Christians and some brave, stalwart pastors and leaders. And many churches are holding onto the truth, while simultaneously doing honorable work among our poor and dispossessed.

Am I whistling through a graveyard? The Bride is beautiful. And much maligned, even by those who are part of her.

There’s a balance to be achieved. I’m not speaking against Godly criticism of our church culture. I have recommended (and heck, I will again) Gospel-Driven Church as an example of how to do this right. The Internet Monk is also a site I highly recommend, though he is no stranger to dark nights of the soul and confessional blogging (and getting mercilessly slammed for both). Yet he tenaciously holds on to the truth, to orthodoxy, and hope.

So I’m reading this passage in a new way today. Do you see it too?:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

– Romans 8:31-39

Also, apropos of (almost) nothing, check out this quote by J.D. Hatfield:

The New Testament is centered on Christ, and its exhortations on the holiness of believers. This is not a simple call to obedience, but to holiness. Holiness is not righteousness, righteousness flows from holiness. Holiness isn’t simply obedience; it is being set apart for God and depending on God by drawing your boundaries, as God would have them. Obedience flows from holiness, and holiness is cultivated by a right understanding of God and what He has done for us in Christ. To understand Christ more fully is to be made more holy in practice.

That’s something for me to chew on, definitely (HT Transforming Sermons).

Finally, from the aforementioned Gospel-Driven Church, It’s Not About Programming; It’s About Culture. The final few paragraphs are below:

It is wearying trying to sell our churches on the notion that what they’ve been selling for so long doesn’t work. It is difficult suggesting that the service-centered approach to reaching the lost has failed. It is a delicate thing to suggest that we have not exalted Christ and we have not glorified God and therefore we haven’t really served the people we’ve claimed to.

And yet for some of us inside this culture, slogging away at discipling the culture into a more vital discipleship, it is incumbent upon us to, in our hearts and minds, say “Here we stand. We can do no other.”

I rather like that, and I’m inspired by efforts to change the church that flow from sincere love and concern for the Bride and devotion to her Lord.

So I’m going to hold my candle aloft. And you can blow it out, but it’s the frustrating kind that bursts back into flame without having to be relit [Bill makes his “booyah” face].

And I’m also going to attempt to start policing what I read on the Blogosphere and who I link to in my Bloogroll.

It’s either that or Prozac . . .

Thoughts on Isaiah 40 and Sandlot

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Note: I posted this earlier this morning on the HNW GAP Singles site:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

– Isaiah 40:1-5

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

Regarding this passage, Matthew Henry wrote:

When eastern princes marched through desert countries, ways were prepared for them, and hinderances removed. And may the Lord prepare our hearts by the teaching of his word and the convictions of his Spirit, that high and proud thoughts may be brought down, good desires planted, crooked and rugged tempers made straight and softened, and every hinderance removed, that we may be ready for his will on earth, and prepared for his heavenly kingdom.

This expresses my deep hope, both for myself, for my family, for my church and for those I am privileged to teach, that we will daily “prepare the way for the Lord”.

Yet often the road is not clear. My heart is not smooth ground for the Spirit to move, unhindered.

I’m reminded – and this is the way my mind works early on Sunday mornings, I guess – of those chase scenes we’ve seen a hundred times in movies. Not car chases, but the on-foot kind. You know the ones I’m talking about: as the person being chased is running, he or she keeps grabbing random objects (trashcans, boxes of stuff, etc) and throwing them in the way of the chaser.

SandlotIn the movie Sandlot, there is a fabulous on-foot chase scene, featuring Bennie “the jet” Rodriguez and a huge saint bernard named Hercules. Bennie has retrieved a Babe Ruth autographed baseball from Hercules’ backyard collection, and Hercules wants it back! One segment of the chase scene has Bennie knocking over trashcans in Hercules’ way as he runs for his life.

The funny thing about that scene is that, ultimately, Hercules chases Bennie back to the sandlot and to Hercules’ back yard. They end up where they started, and the ball is back where Hercules wants it.

To strain an analogy a bit: I guess if the Hound of Heaven wants you and your treasures to come home, that’s where you’ll end up, no matter how long he has to chase you and how much trash you throw in the way.

Of course, ultimately Hercules’ owner, himself an old baseball man, after learning of this whole escapade, says “Well, why didn’t you just knock on the front door? I would have gotten your ball for you!”

There’s a lesson in there that I’ll let you figure out.

And there’s a much deeper lesson in the words of Isaiah. Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight His paths!

He is the King. May the mountains of our pride fall and the valleys of our sin fill with righteousness. May we welcome our King, and live out His Kingdom.