To will one thing

This morning Paul and I read Psalm 27 together before I left for work (incidentally, I like reading the Bible together with Paul because different aspects of the passages will stand out to us and then we both get to see more in the words by sharing our thoughts), and I noticed especially verse 4:

"One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple." - Psalm 27:4

 It always challenges me, this verse. (It especially challenges me today as I have been reading a discourse by Kierkegaard on how purity of heart before God consists of willing only one thing - the good - in truth). Do I honestly desire just one thing? Or do I spread my heart thin in the multiplicity of my desires, in the quagmire of double-mindedness? If I truly desired this one thing of the Lord (namely, to know Him), then I could pursue it with my whole heart, with the confidence of faith, turning my eyes from the temporal goods (that are not good because they fade away and perish) that tempt me in order to seek this one eternal and unchanging good. But I think that all too often I don't just will this one thing - I will also for the approval and respect of others, and I will to avoid pain and heartache.

So how ought I to go about correcting the confusion of my mind and the desires of my heart? The Psalmist and Kierkegaard concur again on the answer to this question, I believe: to sincerely and seriously repent, taking my sin in my hand before God with sorrow and confession, and to commence traveling once more on the good path; with humility in the realization of my inability to continually and wholeheartedly follow God, instead of rash confidence in my own power and goodness.

"O You who give both the beginning and the completing, may You give victory on the day of distress so that the one distressed in repentance may succeed in doing what the one burning in desire and the one determined in resolution failed to do: to will only one thing." - Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits 

Merry Christmas!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I last posted! The week before Christmas was very busy for me, as most of my gifts were food-related and thus required an investment of time in the last few days before the holiday. And honestly I've been a bit exhausted at the thought of writing - I've been tired of the words, tired of trying to write something worth reading, tired of trying to be interesting or original or deep or meaningful. So I didn't write.

But I hope you all had a marvelous Christmas! Mine was wonderful (and delightfully spread over two full days, with my in-laws on Christmas Eve and my family on Christmas), full of the beauty and joy that seem particularly present on this day out of all the year. And I will endeavor to write more this week! :)

Fear-fighting

Here's my dilemma: my pastor told me (well, told the whole church during the sermon on Sunday) that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world and in my heart and that the choice lies with me to either quench the fire He is building (by not doing what He commands or prompts me to do) or actively work with Him to make it burn more fiercely. That is, if I ask the Spirit to lead me and transform me, He will; I just need to actually follow the leading He gives instead of closing my eyes and my ears and going my own way. But you know what? It is far easier to ask the Spirit to do those things in my life than to change the way I live and the choices I make in response to the work He is doing.

There are two fears fighting against my desire to submit to the will and work of the Spirit in my life, I think. The first, which is lesser, is the fear of coming up short - the fear that, after asking the Spirit to lead me, I will fail at following Him, and in so doing disappoint God and render my witness ineffectual. "Why ask at all," this fear whispers, "when the result could be more humiliating than if you had never tried in the first place?" But this fear is feeding me lies, because our approval from God, as Christians, comes from the righteousness of Christ, not our own ability (or lack thereof) to follow God as He desires. So my failure would not cause me to lose God's love, and I believe that He would rather have me try to follow Him than have me simply give up in despair before beginning. As Screwtape said (and I paraphrase), the sin of despair is worse than the sins that lead to it.

The second fear, which is stronger, is the fear of having my life turned upside down - of being called to do crazy things, and having to deal with the reactions of my family and friends and acquaintances, and having to give up the comforts I enjoy or my little happy dreams or the cozy small plans I've made for my life. If I honestly and wholeheartedly followed the Spirit as He led me, I guarantee you that things in my life would have to change. Many of these changes would be small, but I think some might border on the extreme, especially if I begin by obeying those small leadings rather than quenching the Spirit in those areas. And I'm afraid of what might happen, because it is so unknown and because God gives no promise of safety or comfort (He never does, you know). My heart wants to hold on to the small things that don't matter, and so it is afraid of following a God who emphasizes the temporal nature and insignificance of those things. This fear isn't feeding me lies, but it is hiding the truth. All these things might indeed happen if I began to truly follow God, and there very probably would be some degree of emotional pain involved, but what this fear conceals is the depth of joy and the fulfillment of being that is only found in trust in and obedience to God. Am I not willing to trade in the (at least relatively) shallow happiness that I can make for myself by going my own way for the unfathomable joy that I could find by knowing God and going His way?

These fears have to be addressed head-on, I think - to expose the underlying deceit, and to combat them with the strength of truth. Maybe I can ask the Spirit for His guidance and transformation... maybe I can seek to obey His leading with a heart that chooses to trust rather than to fear.

O Root of Jesse

Today's antiphon remembers that Jesus is the eternal king of the nation of Israel, because He has come to reign forever on the throne of David as God promised to David himself so long before, and it also hints at the whole-worldliness of the salvation Jesus came to bring.

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before You kings will shut their mouths,
to You the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

In declaring Jesus to be the Root of Jesse, we are reminded of the greater picture of God's plan - we see the Incarnation in the light of history rather than as an isolated event coming unexpectedly out of nowhere. As God, Jesus sits on the throne of heaven; as man, He is rightful heir to the throne of David, and thus in His person unites the two thrones as a precursor to uniting the two kingdoms beneath them. It is symbolic of the reconciliation He makes between each of us and God the Father through His own body on the cross.

Similarly, by saying that the nations will make their prayer to Him, we see the future aspect of the event of the Incarnation. In the past, God was the God of Israel; in the future, He shall be the God of all peoples - and the great turning point was the life and death of Christ, who though coming of the house of David and the nation of Israel yet offered salvation to Jews and Gentiles alike through the sacrifice of His own body. We are no longer outside His walls; He has called us His people. The One who fulfilled all the prophecies, to prove His truth and faithfulness, has done a new thing: He has called all nations to Himself, and built His people from all the peoples of the world.

O Adonai

Today's antiphon recognizes God in His historical role towards the nation of Israel, for whom He is both the redeemer and the lawgiver:

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Adonai, meaning "lord" or "master," is the name of God that most highlights the direct authority of God over our lives; more than merely pointing out the objective and philosophical authority of God over creation as the Creator, it emphasizes the direct and specific authority that God has over each of us (and our thoughts and our actions). He is our Master, our Adonai, and as such has the right to give us laws to obey, as He gave to Moses.

But the wonder of the first coming of Christ is that this purely magisterial aspect of our relationship with God has been colored with new elements - replaced, even, with the deeper love and intimacy of friendship and even marital love. As Jesus told His disciples, 

"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." - John 15:15

And again in Hosea, in the middle of a beautiful prophecy about the restoration and redemption of Israel with the coming of the Messiah:

"'And it shall be, in that day,'
Says the Lord, 'That you will call Me "My Husband,"
And no longer call Me "My Master"'" - Hosea 2:16

The One who came with fire in the earth-shaking power of His holiness, who gave us the perfect and unattainable standard of the law, has also come with redeeming love, and made a way for us to become righteous and be reconciled to Him, that He should be our Husband rather than our Master. This great transformation of our relation to God is the purpose of the Incarnation and the promise of Christmas.

O Wisdom

Beginning on the 17th of December, the great O Antiphons are incorporated into the celebration of Advent. Each antiphon is a prayer for Jesus's coming, and begins with a different name for Him, and meditates on a different aspect of His nature and relation to us. So for today we read:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

What stands out to me in this antiphon is the juxtaposition of the words "mightily" and "sweetly", pointing out how in God strength and gentleness, power and beauty, peacefully and perfectly coexist. There is no imbalance in His wisdom: He both commands as a sovereign King and whispers as a tender Lover; He both builds the world as a scientist and designs it as an artist. To put it simply, in Him is the fullness of wisdom.

A good man

A good man is a marvelous thing.

He is the one who is there for you in strength when you feel like the world is spinning too fast around you and you just can't hold up anymore and you break down in front of him and your ruined pride burns in your chest like the tears burn in your eyes, and he is there simply holding you, standing as a wall between you and the crazy storm of life, giving you space to heal, letting you hide yourself in him, bearing your burdens until the moment passes and you can take them up again, renewed and restored by his love.

He is the one who never seems to judge you when you stumble or you fail, but helps you stand up again and encourages and inspires you to live a better life and persevere in following God by his example and his words.

He is the one who never gives up, though his heart is bowed down with discouragement; he endures through the trials and uncertainties of life with steadfast faith in his God, and works as hard as he must to fulfill his responsibilities and honor the God he serves. And he does this without boasting of his efforts and his labors, in that pure humility that comes of centering his thoughts and feelings on the truth.

He is the one who leads his wife with wisdom and strength, who lets her know through his actions and attitude that he can be trusted, that he can and will make decisions when they need to be made, that he will provide for her, and that he is worthy of her respect and adoration. He is also the one who loves his wife with gentleness and passion, who lets her know that she is wanted and desired by him, who cares for her heart with tenderness matching in intensity the strength with which he leads her, and who claims her as being very much his woman and his alone.

He is the one who deliberately each day stands alert against the things that tempt him away from following God, and chooses to set aside temporal pleasures if need be to make time to pray and meditate on the Word. Like a sentry he stands guard against all that threatens to destroy him and the ones he loves, and, with the strength of God in his right hand and the shield of faith in his left, he will not let those things erode the heart and foundation of all that is truly important to him.

He is the one in whom his wife can safely place her heart, secure and confident in his love and in his strength.

When a good man gives himself like this to a woman, how can she not desire to give to him all that she is and has to give? Then, in the mutual giving and receiving, the two grow ever more into one, and love deepens, and God is honored. It is my great hope and aspiration that I might respond in such a way to the man I am married to, who is a very good man indeed.

Discouragement and grace

It is so easy for me to become discouraged when I sin, especially when I watch myself continue in a sinful attitude or course of action in the very moment of realizing its sinfulness. If I was a good Christian, I think - if I really loved and followed God - I wouldn't be thinking or feeling or acting this way. So the fact that I sin, and do so despite the inner promptings of the Spirit and my conscience, must mean that I'm not a very good Christian at all.

But what does it mean to be a "good Christian" in the first place? After all, a Christian is one who has acknowledged his own sinfulness and utter inability to love and obey God, and who has thrown himself unreservedly on the completely undeserved grace that God offers. Our whole faith centers around this key truth: that God has redeemed us out of His own great love and mercy, not because of our merit and righteousness. Our whole concept of self-identity is founded in this statement: that we are sinners saved by grace. If we are saved by grace, it is only rational to expect that we ought to continue in grace, right? So a truly "good Christian" would be one who lives in God's grace, not expecting to achieve perfection by his own efforts, and thus not descending to the depths of despair and discouragement every time those efforts fail. In other words, it is my response to my sin even more than the sin itself that is important to my faith and the continued growth of my relationship with God.

This was brought home to me (after an evening and morning of discouragement at my own feeble attempts to live righteously) by an article I happened to stumble upon over at Ligonier Ministries (I didn't even know they had articles on their website! I now have a new treasure trove to go through!). To quote briefly:

We must resist the temptation of thinking we can stand in our own strength. We must depend on the grace of the One who said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If we fall, we must go to Christ, confessing our sin and hoping in His mercy. The Scriptures declare: “The righteous falls seven times and rises again” (Prov. 24:16). To fall seven times means that you have been restored six. The greatest believers are subject to great weaknesses.

It's brilliant, that line: "To fall seven times means that you have been restored six." We shouldn't expect to be able to walk without falling, because our own strength has always come up short. But we should strive to live by grace, to get up and press forward once more after each and every fall, knowing that our Lord is our strength. He will restore us and raise us up - will we try again to follow Him, or will we simmer in our self-disappointment and refuse to accept the grace He offers day by day?

Candle of joy, candle of song

Tonight we light the third candle of Advent. Traditionally this candle is pink, or rose - the liturgical color representing joy, in contrast to the somber purple candles of the other three weeks denoting Advent as a time of repentance and preparation for the coming Messiah. In our house, to begin this week, we read Isaiah 35, which is a beautiful picture of the fulfillment of joy that will come to be on earth when Jesus returns, and of which we can see glimpses here and now since His first coming so long ago.

When Jesus returns, even the wilderness and the desert will sing with joy for the restoration and the healing that He will bring, for He will relieve their barrenness and cause springs of waters to gush forth from them and make their wasted lands blossom like the rose! If He is blessing even the physical inanimate earth with such life and beauty, how could He not bless its people also? In the following verses, we see that He does: the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will dance, and the mute shall sing!

And the redeemed of the Lord shall walk through the now-beautiful wilderness on the Highway of Holiness, on which no wicked man or ravenous beast may walk, towards the land of the promise and the presence of the Lord - towards our home and the place of our belonging. We shall walk with everlasting joy on our heads like crowns of splendor, and we shall be singing as we come.

While the fulfillment of this prophecy is still to come, I believe that it is, in a spiritual sense, in the hearts and lives of the people of God, foreshadowed even now. Where the Spirit is at work in the world, there life springs forth from what once was dead and barren, and the blind eyes of sinful hearts are opened to the truth, and our crippled spirits dance in praise to the God who has saved us. And as we follow Christ on the narrow way He spoke of in the Gospels, we figuratively walk on the Highway of Holiness, safe from the schemes of man and from the devil who walks about like a devouring lion, coming out of exile to the land where we truly belong, rejoicing in the promises and the home that await us at the end of the road.

He is the True Light coming into the world

"Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God." - Psalm 43:3-4

 He has sent forth His Light and His Truth into our world, in human likeness, as a baby born in poverty, and He does lead us by that True Light into the place where He dwells. From this all our joy comes: that God became man and dwelt among us, bringing light into our darkness and truth into the sea of lies surrounding us, that we might know Him and draw near to Him.

A reaction to the Economist debate on the "place of women"

Where do you think a woman's "place" is?

Should a woman be in the home, as traditional Western society has stipulated? Or should a woman be in the workplace, as modern feminism argues? (hat tip to Network of Enlightened Women).

Over at the Economist, as linked above, a woman argues that women as a group belong in the corporate working world, and that the choice to remain at home as full-time mothers and homemakers is undesirable for both the women themselves and for society as a whole. That a woman who chooses to remain at home is choosing to leave her potential unfulfilled and to hang as a consumptive deadweight on the beneficence of her breadwinning spouse. That such a woman hurts the "cause" of all women worldwide by her refusal to take up the "responsibility" of every modern woman to work outside the home throughout the entire course of her life. That because men can do something, women shouldn't be allowed not to do it.

Feminism has changed course, or is at last revealing the dark heart of their movement. The cry is no longer for the freedom of any individual woman to choose to work full-time and be respected for that work; now the cry is to remove that freedom to choose by making full-time, life-long participation in the labor force an expectation for every woman. Career-minded women, I have no objection to you pursuing your careers wholeheartedly! It is your life, and you can choose your priorities. But please don't say that, just because it fits your ambitions, it is the only noble goal a woman can have, or the only role she should play. While you fulfill your private dreams and help increase the nation's GDP, I intend to invest in the next generation. I intend to teach young minds to see the world with wonder, to help them learn to love other people, to give them a secure and stable home, and most importantly of all, to train them to follow God. Will my contributions be felt monetarily? Probably not. But I believe and hope that they will be felt through the fabric of society, as I weave in to my small section of it the strong threads of love, faith, and belonging that the family is best equipped and designed to provide.

An armor of peace around my heart

Either I am rapidly turning into a worrier or I have always been one and am now just starting to realize it! Whichever alternative it is, it is rather annoying...

I feel that, in some sense, worry is antithetical to trust and faith, and one of the central facets of being a Christian is having trust and faith in God. For instance, if I am trusting God with my feelings of self-worth and identity, then I shouldn't be worrying about what the people around me think about what I'm wearing, or what the other church-goers will think about me having to raise my hand to ask for a Bible when I forget mine. Those things truly will not affect who I believe myself to be if I am defining myself in faith based on what God has declared to be true about me! So the worry and the trust aren't exactly able to coexist, at least not without a struggle.

On the positive side, if we are willing to take a step towards faith and away from worry, God lets us know how and accompanies it with a pretty awesome promise:

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." - Phil. 4:6-7 

That's probably a familiar verse to most of you, and it is to me as well, but let's not allow its familiarity to diminish its power and impact in our lives! I see here a wonderful promise: that if we take action against against our worry by taking our requests and anxieties to God with prayer and thanksgiving, we can be assured that our hearts and our minds will be defended and protected by God's own peace, in Jesus. And from what will they be defended, one might ask? Primarily they will be guarded from anxiety itself, I believe - but I also think that God's peace will work to defend us against many of the emotions and sins that accompany worry: fear of rejection, for example, or the need for the approval of others, or an inability to speak the truth boldly. These are different for each person, but the common thread is that they, entering our hearts on worry's coattails, attack our faith in God and consequently threaten our actions of obedience to God.

So let us go forth into the stress and anxiety that the holiday season can engender (or let's face it, if you're anything like me, that any season of life can engender) full of prayer and thanksgiving, that we may build in Christ an armor of peace around our hearts and our minds!

Candle of light, calling us out of the darkness

Yesterday marked the beginning of the second week of Advent, when we light, along with the candle of hope, the candle of light. Just as the candle of hope had layers of significance - reminding us of the promises of God for our lives now and challenging us to trust in His unfailing faithfulness - so also the candle of light has multiple themes in which it encourages and inspires us.

"The people who walked in darknessHave seen a great light;Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,Upon them a light has shined" - Isaiah 9:2

To all who are blinded and bound in the darkness of sin, Jesus comes bringing light, offering a way of escape into fullness of life. That is a magnificent part of the glory and wonder that Christmas is all about! - that Jesus, the Lord of the Universe, the One who spoke and physical light was created, the One who shines so brightly with spiritual light and holiness that the new earth will need no sun for the brightness of His presence, would cover himself in the rags of a mortal body and live in the land of the shadow of death that we might through Him thus come to know the light ourselves. Isn't it amazing? Isn't it marvelous? How would we believe and talk about something so extraordinary without breathless wonder, if we were not somehow numbed by familiarity and doubt to its brilliant power?

But there is another aspect of the coming of light: we must receive it, we must choose to walk in it. Light can be frightening, because it leaves nothing hidden - it reveals our sins and our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses.

"And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed." - John 3:19-20

If we have this desire for hiddenness within us, because we are ashamed of our sin and yet don't wish to give it up, it is for us to heed the cry of John the Baptist, who came preparing the way for Jesus's ministry on earth, and who is still relevant to us to help us prepare our hearts for Jesus's ministry in our lives:

"In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!' For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; Make His paths straight.'"" - Matthew 3:1-3

 So during this week of Advent, as we celebrate the coming of light into the darkness, let us also open our own hearts to the coming of light, and repent of the darkness we hold within us. For He has come to forgive our sins, and the sins of the world, and His desire for us is that we might know Him and walk with Him where He walks - in the pure light of righteousness.

This means war

I have to confess that sometimes I live as if I were a materialistic naturalist.

By this I mean that I think and act as if matter is all there that there is, and as if all things can be explained naturalistically and thus all problems can be solved naturalistically. I remember that I have a spirit as well as a body (although I don't always think about it very much), and I remember God who is the uncreated self-sustaining Spirit, but I don't give much though to angels or to demons. Most emphatically, I act as though angels and demons have no influence over my life or over the world I live in. Considering that we're in the middle of a spiritual war, with the eternal destinies of human souls at stake, that's probably not a good attitude for me to assume. But I honestly haven't thought about spiritual warfare very much at all, beyond some vague idea that the whole thing is a nice metaphor for being a good person and a diligent follower of Christ.

Over the past few days, having had the issue brought to my attention from at least three separate sources, I've been thinking that maybe it is more than just a metaphor. I don't like thinking that way! The thought of malicious spiritual beings bent on my destruction, active and unseen in the world around me, is extremely unsettling. I like this world where what can be seen or otherwise scientifically verified is all that exists, besides God - where all things proceed by natural laws, and known inputs lead to known outputs, and nothing is out of place or uncontrollable. It is very comfortable, you know? Acceptance of a spiritual reality is in a sense truly a release of control, because while we can often control nature we cannot control the actions of spiritual beings whose very existence is only tenuously revealed to us. For someone like me that is absolutely frightening.

But when I seriously look at the Bible I see that, despite my fears and despite my ingrained way of thinking, there is a real spiritual war going on. In 2 Corinthians 10 we see Paul saying that even though we are in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, but fight with weapons that are mighty in God for "casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." Similarly, in Ephesians 6 he tells us that we are struggling against the "rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places". So the armor that he tells us to wear in the following verses is more than a metaphor - it is truly spiritual armor that protects us in this war in which we find ourselves. I think that may be one of the purposes of the book of Revelation, actually - to show us the reality of the spiritual war that is going on all around us, so that we might be strong in battle instead of ignorant sheep wandering towards slaughter.

Coming to Revelation, though, one finds more than just a vivid picture of the reality and significance of this spiritual war. We see that the war will end, and we see that God will win, and we see that all things shall be made new in beauty and glory and peace. Essentially, we see that there is a hope to live for, because of the greatness of our God! It might be frightening and unnerving here and now to think of fighting and struggling with evil spirits in our everyday lives, but it doesn't need to be, because of the power of our God and our confidence that He is indeed on our side. If we have placed our faith in Him, He holds our souls safe even as we fight on the front lines of the war.

This almost makes me want to laugh in the face of the demons! Ha! Bring it on! My God is greater than you and you are doomed and already defeated! I'm not afraid of you, or anything you can do, because God is on my side! I'm not sure that is the most beneficial or humble response though... :) One thing is certain, though - it is better to live and fight and be vigilant against sin in the strength of God then to passively cower in fear and try to make everything comfortable and controlled.