"He [the Lord] does not delight in the strength of the hose;
He takes no pleasure in the legs of a man.
The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him,
In those who hope in His mercy." - Psalm 147:10-11
Sometimes I wish I were perfect just so I could give myself to God and have Him be pleased with me, as if, somehow, my own merit and appearance of righteousness could be enough to meet His standards. I wish I could save myself (or somehow make it so I didn't need salvation) so that I could come to Him without needing to be dependent on Him, as if that would somehow make Him love me more or be more pleased with me. I think it is a common human desire: we wish to accomplish great things on our own to win the approval or acceptance of someone we respect, and we want to be able to do what ought to be done without needing to be a burden on someone we love. Of course, it doesn't work in our relationship with God! In our own strength, we can never live up to His standards or make ourselves righteous in His eyes, because we are stained and weighed down by sin. And in our own strength, we can never pay the penalty for our sins, because the punishment is too great for us to bear outside of eternity; if we chose to bear that burden ourselves because we didn't want to be dependent on God, He would let us - but we would never be able to be with Him in fellowship and love. For that, His grace is necessary.
The beauty of these verses is that in them we see that God finds pleasure not in the things we accomplish by our own striving and strength, but in us, we who have chosen to depend upon His grace and hope in His mercy. In the mindset of the previous paragraph, we were trying to make God delight in us by doing things that we thought would please Him and hoping that His pleasure in the good acts would translate to pleasure in us as persons; now what we see is that He takes pleasure in us when we let go of the good acts, and stop trying to be perfect on our own, and put our hope in His mercy and grace. Why would this be? Why would He be more pleased with us when we burden Him with our weaknesses and needs, relying on His grace and mercy to cover our sins, than when we strive to be righteous and offer to Him our good deeds?
Well, simply put, the answer is pride. To think that we are capable of doing for ourselves what only God can truly do (and what He suffered pain, humiliation, and death to accomplish) is incredibly proud. To want God to love us for our merit and innate goodness, so that we reject the love borne of His grace, is incredibly proud. It is saying, in essence, that we want the universe (and God!) to operate on our terms rather than on God's terms. We want His love and acceptance more than anything else - but we don't want to receive it in the way He has chosen to offer it to us. Let us lay down this pride before it leads us to the end to which it carried Satan! Let us accept the breath-taking offer of love and grace that He wants to give us, instead of trying to prove we are worthy first! We never will be, unless we first accept it as an undeserved gift.
But if we do accept His grace, knowing we don't now and never will deserve it through anything we can accomplish, then the incredible will happen. When we lay our broken and filthy souls at the foot of the cross, to receive His grace in humility and awe, we will find that He delights us, that He accepts us, that He loves us unconditionally. We will find that in the moment of surrender and faith we will have attained what all our striving could never earn: His pleasure in us. For He takes pleasure in those who fear Him - in those who hope in His mercy.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Little gifts and mighty graces
God is always giving us little gifts - the sun coming out after rain, the happiness of welcoming a loved one home again, good food and a full stomach, the comforting warmth of blankets and pillows at the end of the day, the quiet pleasure of a day of rest, and so on. Indiscriminately, he fills our days full of these little gifts; sometimes we rejoice in them with gratitude, and sometimes we hardly notice them. Assuming we choose not to ignore them, though, these little gifts are enough to bring us joy and satisfaction for a lifetime. However, God does not limit Himself to them. His purpose, being set on eternity as well as temporality, is not content with merely blessing us in this life; He wishes also to bless us with gifts that will last for eternity and with gifts that will bring eternity to our hearts here and now. Obviously the greatest of these gifts is salvation! In between this overwhelming, unfathomable, unbelievable grace, and the little daily graces that we take for granted, though, are many rich and beautiful gifts - graces that surprise and amaze us with their extravagance, and that transform and inspire our hearts.
These intermediate graces are, I think, children of the grace of salvation. Having saved us - having bought us with the blood of Christ, adopted us into His family, and sealed us with His Spirit - God is not content to have merely covered us with His righteousness: He desires to cause that righteousness to grow up and bear fruit within our very hearts. To accomplish this purpose, He bestows upon us these sanctifying graces. There is the grace of knowing His tender comfort in the midst of great sorrow; of gaining security and peace through His strength becoming our defense in times of worry or fear; of hearing His ever-loving voice answer our confusion with His truth; and so on. They are less frequent than the little common graces, but they are also more powerful. They cause us to know God more, and thus they are indescribably wonderful.
One of the most wonderful of these graces is when God removes for a moment some veil of sin and allows us to see something with His eyes instead of our own. We may not have even realized that our vision was so obscured - but then all at once everything looks different, and we know that it looks as it truly is and the way we had formerly perceived it was skewed and blurred. To compare it to something much more trivial, it is akin to putting on a pair of glasses and suddenly seeing the world without the astigmatism and myopia. Overwhelmed by joy, the heart effortlessly overflows with praise; it is impossible to contain the gratitude at being given such a grace as this, at being privileged for one brief moment to see with clearer sight. There is humility, also, in the knowledge that the vision is not born of any merit of our own, but is purely gift and grace, and in the deepened recognition of our sinfulness and of how small our relationship with God really is - but it is the humility of self-forgetfulness, not the humility of despair. With eyes newly open in Christ to some beautiful and glorious truth, we lose ourselves in Him; our whole being is colored through and through with His radiance, and His light is the joy of our hearts.
There is a strange shyness about the things we see by these graces; the sweetness is too piercing and too intimate for it to be revealed to the world as some great spiritual experience. It is like trying to tell someone the secrets you whisper with your lover - the joy is too high, the love is too great, and above all the thing itself pulls back from being told. These graces change our hearts and draw us nearer to God; they give us new eyes to see more clearly; they are the planting of seeds and the bearing of fruit in our lives; but they themselves are not known outside the heart in which they labor. They are the love-notes of our eternal Bridegroom, delighting in His Bride.
These intermediate graces are, I think, children of the grace of salvation. Having saved us - having bought us with the blood of Christ, adopted us into His family, and sealed us with His Spirit - God is not content to have merely covered us with His righteousness: He desires to cause that righteousness to grow up and bear fruit within our very hearts. To accomplish this purpose, He bestows upon us these sanctifying graces. There is the grace of knowing His tender comfort in the midst of great sorrow; of gaining security and peace through His strength becoming our defense in times of worry or fear; of hearing His ever-loving voice answer our confusion with His truth; and so on. They are less frequent than the little common graces, but they are also more powerful. They cause us to know God more, and thus they are indescribably wonderful.
One of the most wonderful of these graces is when God removes for a moment some veil of sin and allows us to see something with His eyes instead of our own. We may not have even realized that our vision was so obscured - but then all at once everything looks different, and we know that it looks as it truly is and the way we had formerly perceived it was skewed and blurred. To compare it to something much more trivial, it is akin to putting on a pair of glasses and suddenly seeing the world without the astigmatism and myopia. Overwhelmed by joy, the heart effortlessly overflows with praise; it is impossible to contain the gratitude at being given such a grace as this, at being privileged for one brief moment to see with clearer sight. There is humility, also, in the knowledge that the vision is not born of any merit of our own, but is purely gift and grace, and in the deepened recognition of our sinfulness and of how small our relationship with God really is - but it is the humility of self-forgetfulness, not the humility of despair. With eyes newly open in Christ to some beautiful and glorious truth, we lose ourselves in Him; our whole being is colored through and through with His radiance, and His light is the joy of our hearts.
There is a strange shyness about the things we see by these graces; the sweetness is too piercing and too intimate for it to be revealed to the world as some great spiritual experience. It is like trying to tell someone the secrets you whisper with your lover - the joy is too high, the love is too great, and above all the thing itself pulls back from being told. These graces change our hearts and draw us nearer to God; they give us new eyes to see more clearly; they are the planting of seeds and the bearing of fruit in our lives; but they themselves are not known outside the heart in which they labor. They are the love-notes of our eternal Bridegroom, delighting in His Bride.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Pursuit of Happiness
The dilemma before us is not whether an individual has the right to pursue their own happiness, but whether they have the right to pursue that happiness at the expense of the well-being of other people; that is, is every road permissible, or are some barricaded for the good of society and the protection of the innocent?
Here is a practical example of what I mean (based loosely on a real story). A woman (let's call her "H") has been with her current husband, "M," for about 10 years. They've been married for 8 of those years, and have 3 children together. But "H" is starting to become tired of the situation. Life has been a hard grind for her the past few years - they've drifted in and out of unemployment and homelessness - and she doesn't see much hope for the future. Honestly, she hasn't been happy in a long, long time, and she's thinking about leaving. Her husband is a nice guy, sure, but she wants more. If the right man appeared, he would seem like a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel she imagines stretching into the years before her - he would seem like a ticket to happiness.
If divorce would truly make "H" happy, does she have the right to take that option, even though "M" had never actually done anything wrong? Does she have the right to hurt him simply for the sake of her personal happiness? If they were dating I would say yes; after she has vowed to stay with him for life and he has built his life around that commitment, I would say no. She has burnt that bridge; she has blocked that road. She is still free to pursue happiness, but not by those means. And what about their children? Does she have the right, in the pursuit of her own pleasure, to split apart their family and destroy their security, to set them up for poverty and broken relationships in their own futures? As their mother, is there some duty that constrains the avenues she is allowed to travel in the pursuit of happiness?
Society suffers when personal happiness is elevated above moral duties and relational responsibilities, because personal happiness is not a strong enough glue to hold families and communities together. It is widely acknowledged that in order to accomplish something wonderful it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice something incredibly valuable; what is not so widely recognized is that it is sometimes also necessary to make that sacrifice in the simple attempt to be a decent human being and fulfill one's duties. And because the task and the goal can seem so mundane - so trivial and ordinary - the sacrifice can be even harder. There is no glamor or glory attached to it, and the dreams of happiness one must surrender sparkle so beautifully (and deceptively) in one's imagination. But when one thinks of the broken hearts and homes that an unbridled pursuit of personal happiness leaves in its wake, it is clear that these duties are not trivial and these sacrifices are not pointless.
So yes, we have the right to pursue happiness, but we do not have the right to pursue happiness with whatever means we choose. Our past choices narrow our future options; our moral obligations further establish the set of paths on which we may travel. But this limiting is what gives strength to the fabric of civilization - and if we work to create happiness on the paths we walk, whatever they may be, that limiting has also given strength of character to our souls.
Here is a practical example of what I mean (based loosely on a real story). A woman (let's call her "H") has been with her current husband, "M," for about 10 years. They've been married for 8 of those years, and have 3 children together. But "H" is starting to become tired of the situation. Life has been a hard grind for her the past few years - they've drifted in and out of unemployment and homelessness - and she doesn't see much hope for the future. Honestly, she hasn't been happy in a long, long time, and she's thinking about leaving. Her husband is a nice guy, sure, but she wants more. If the right man appeared, he would seem like a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel she imagines stretching into the years before her - he would seem like a ticket to happiness.
If divorce would truly make "H" happy, does she have the right to take that option, even though "M" had never actually done anything wrong? Does she have the right to hurt him simply for the sake of her personal happiness? If they were dating I would say yes; after she has vowed to stay with him for life and he has built his life around that commitment, I would say no. She has burnt that bridge; she has blocked that road. She is still free to pursue happiness, but not by those means. And what about their children? Does she have the right, in the pursuit of her own pleasure, to split apart their family and destroy their security, to set them up for poverty and broken relationships in their own futures? As their mother, is there some duty that constrains the avenues she is allowed to travel in the pursuit of happiness?
Society suffers when personal happiness is elevated above moral duties and relational responsibilities, because personal happiness is not a strong enough glue to hold families and communities together. It is widely acknowledged that in order to accomplish something wonderful it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice something incredibly valuable; what is not so widely recognized is that it is sometimes also necessary to make that sacrifice in the simple attempt to be a decent human being and fulfill one's duties. And because the task and the goal can seem so mundane - so trivial and ordinary - the sacrifice can be even harder. There is no glamor or glory attached to it, and the dreams of happiness one must surrender sparkle so beautifully (and deceptively) in one's imagination. But when one thinks of the broken hearts and homes that an unbridled pursuit of personal happiness leaves in its wake, it is clear that these duties are not trivial and these sacrifices are not pointless.
So yes, we have the right to pursue happiness, but we do not have the right to pursue happiness with whatever means we choose. Our past choices narrow our future options; our moral obligations further establish the set of paths on which we may travel. But this limiting is what gives strength to the fabric of civilization - and if we work to create happiness on the paths we walk, whatever they may be, that limiting has also given strength of character to our souls.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
A Farewell (or A Eulogy)
Our culture is in the process of banishing two of the great handmaidens of civilization. I'm not thinking of truth and beauty, although the same could be truly said of them (and indeed they are the greatest, second only to the great triad of faith, hope, and love), but rather of another pair: nobility and wonder. In their place, we have chosen cynicism and flippancy - cheap and shriveled substitutes for the living glory we might have known.
When I use the word "nobility," I am not referring to aristocratic hierarchies or rich and landed persons, but to an "elevation of mind and exaltation of character," to high ideals and upright conduct. Nobility is what enables a person (and collectively, a society) to see innate worth rather than mere hedonistic or utilitarian value in every individual human being, to pursue true honor and seek after deeper meaning without forsaking dignity and courtesy, and to labor wholeheartedly for a cause because it is right and true and glorious and beautiful even if it has no earthly hope of success. It is a focus on deeper and higher things - an eternal perspective - that enables production rather than consumption and allows one to be content and at peace in any material circumstance. It is a quietness of the heart that leads to efficacious action rather than to indolence, because it is coupled with a great purpose: to know and will the good. In this quietness, filled and made great by the desire for the good, there is no room for petty complaints, for selfish worries, or for the trivial thoughts and actions that waste a life; there is no capacity for scoffing at or ridiculing anything that aspires to the good.
Wonder has no capacity for scoffing at all. Wonder looks at the world around her and delights in the beauty of it all, dances to its secret songs, falls back in awe at the marvels she beholds. She is like a child in her open curiosity and excitement, but with the maturity and wisdom to endure through great trials and see the glory behind this pain, the light beyond these dreary shadows. You might accuse of her of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses; she would retort that you must be looking at it through blackened ones. She asks why "the way things really are" must always be the way that holds the most hurt, that allows for the most sin, that conceals corruption and falsehood, when God is good and has made a good world. It is not that she ignores all that is bad and decaying and cruel - it is simply that these things fade away in the light of all the wondrous things she sees as well. Her eyes look into the eternal, and her heart is filled with a joy greater than all temporal ills, which no evil can destroy. While she may appear foolishly innocent and hopelessly naive, she has in reality found a solid rock beneath the shifting sands on which those around her have staked their souls, and she has seen the truth to which they have blinded their eyes. She sees the permanent unfading goodness against which the winds of trouble and sin beat in vain, and rejoices in that goodness rather than despairing at the winds.
How sharply nobility contrasts with the flippant and mocking attitude of our culture today! We would rather stand by and laugh (and what a deadened, joyless laughter it is, in the bitterness of our hearts) at the demise of our communities and families than hope and labor for their healing; we laugh too at those who do labor, and take pleasure in their failures, because then we can proudly proclaim how right we were about the fall of civilization. It is damning to say that we saw things fall apart and chose to do nothing, even if the fall were inevitable; but we see only how we might come out on the top of the pile at the end of that fall and then laugh in our self-assured complacency all the way to the bottom. Then, to make our consciences rest easy at the deceit, exploitation, filth, and pain that we rely upon to maintain our material comfort and fill our empty hearts, we make innocence a joke and ridicule those deluded enough to believe in beauty and to cling to truth. There is no quietness except the stillness of the morgue; no peace except the final rest of death.
And how complete is the separation between open-eyed, childlike wonder and our harsh, defensive cynicism! More than anything else, cynicism is the last defense of the terrified heart against despair: by assuming the worst in advance, with an attitude of knowing negativity, one can escape the pain of thwarted dreams and even take pride in one's ability to avoid the delusions of joy. After all, it is undeniable that things will go wrong in this life, and that people will disappoint us. Why should we trust anyone, when we have been hurt and seen other be hurt by betrayal of such trust? Why should we look for beauty in anything, when the startling filthy ugliness of sin has jumped out at us from so many seemingly beautiful people and places? How can we open our hearts again to beauty and light and truth when we have begun to doubt that they exist at all, when we have been crushed in the darkness and cruelty of this life? In our cynicism, we can feel that at least all this pain has made us wise enough to understand the darkness of the world. And we look down upon wonder and joy with cool and sneering disdain, because in the depths of our hearts we hate and despise them as cheats - even as we desperately crave what they pretend to give - but know how foolish it would be to reveal those true feelings. In wonder, every emotion is genuine and life, imbued with the light of truth, overflows with joy; in cynicism, no sincere feeling is revealed, and the heart, being covered with deceit, moulders in the dust of fear and the black rot of hate.
Nobility offers to take the pain and fight the evil, regardless of the consequences; its deepest desire is to do what is right, and not merely to do what is right but to pour itself out in the doing, and not solely to pour itself out in the doing, but to suffer all the pain of the doing in themselves. Nobility seeks to not to draw in, but to give out; not to obtain personal pleasure, but to do what is right that others might thus be uplifted:
"'If I were to be made a knight,' said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, 'I should insist on doing the vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.'
'That would be extremely presumptuous of you,' said Merlyn, 'and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.'
'I shouldn't mind.'
[...]
Merlyn wrung his hands. 'Well, anyway,' he said, 'suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?'
'I could ask,' said the Wart.
'You could ask,' repeated Merlyn.
He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely." - T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Wonder sees the world and rejoices that it is. If we can mourn a loss or complain at the downward path some things are taking, we can with wonder celebrate those things that are not lost, and praise those things that rise upward. While we know that all is not well now, that there is pain and darkness and sin, we do not have to be absorbed by those negative things: we can wonder and delight in the things that are good in opposition to the evil and in the things that are good simply in being themselves:
"This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. [...] These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. [...]
The wonder has a positive element of praise. [...] Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale." - G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy
We have dismissed King Arthur as a myth, turning him into a comic buffoon or an ignorant medieval warrior, so his nobility will not affront our flippancy. Chesterton we never knew - and what did he know about life, anyways, that deluded Christian author from a wealthy family in a privileged nation? God we have forgotten. And with Him we have forgotten how to conduct ourselves with the honor of a noble spirit and the joy of a wondering heart; we have forgotten how to be truly civilized, and so all things come apart.
When I use the word "nobility," I am not referring to aristocratic hierarchies or rich and landed persons, but to an "elevation of mind and exaltation of character," to high ideals and upright conduct. Nobility is what enables a person (and collectively, a society) to see innate worth rather than mere hedonistic or utilitarian value in every individual human being, to pursue true honor and seek after deeper meaning without forsaking dignity and courtesy, and to labor wholeheartedly for a cause because it is right and true and glorious and beautiful even if it has no earthly hope of success. It is a focus on deeper and higher things - an eternal perspective - that enables production rather than consumption and allows one to be content and at peace in any material circumstance. It is a quietness of the heart that leads to efficacious action rather than to indolence, because it is coupled with a great purpose: to know and will the good. In this quietness, filled and made great by the desire for the good, there is no room for petty complaints, for selfish worries, or for the trivial thoughts and actions that waste a life; there is no capacity for scoffing at or ridiculing anything that aspires to the good.
Wonder has no capacity for scoffing at all. Wonder looks at the world around her and delights in the beauty of it all, dances to its secret songs, falls back in awe at the marvels she beholds. She is like a child in her open curiosity and excitement, but with the maturity and wisdom to endure through great trials and see the glory behind this pain, the light beyond these dreary shadows. You might accuse of her of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses; she would retort that you must be looking at it through blackened ones. She asks why "the way things really are" must always be the way that holds the most hurt, that allows for the most sin, that conceals corruption and falsehood, when God is good and has made a good world. It is not that she ignores all that is bad and decaying and cruel - it is simply that these things fade away in the light of all the wondrous things she sees as well. Her eyes look into the eternal, and her heart is filled with a joy greater than all temporal ills, which no evil can destroy. While she may appear foolishly innocent and hopelessly naive, she has in reality found a solid rock beneath the shifting sands on which those around her have staked their souls, and she has seen the truth to which they have blinded their eyes. She sees the permanent unfading goodness against which the winds of trouble and sin beat in vain, and rejoices in that goodness rather than despairing at the winds.
How sharply nobility contrasts with the flippant and mocking attitude of our culture today! We would rather stand by and laugh (and what a deadened, joyless laughter it is, in the bitterness of our hearts) at the demise of our communities and families than hope and labor for their healing; we laugh too at those who do labor, and take pleasure in their failures, because then we can proudly proclaim how right we were about the fall of civilization. It is damning to say that we saw things fall apart and chose to do nothing, even if the fall were inevitable; but we see only how we might come out on the top of the pile at the end of that fall and then laugh in our self-assured complacency all the way to the bottom. Then, to make our consciences rest easy at the deceit, exploitation, filth, and pain that we rely upon to maintain our material comfort and fill our empty hearts, we make innocence a joke and ridicule those deluded enough to believe in beauty and to cling to truth. There is no quietness except the stillness of the morgue; no peace except the final rest of death.
And how complete is the separation between open-eyed, childlike wonder and our harsh, defensive cynicism! More than anything else, cynicism is the last defense of the terrified heart against despair: by assuming the worst in advance, with an attitude of knowing negativity, one can escape the pain of thwarted dreams and even take pride in one's ability to avoid the delusions of joy. After all, it is undeniable that things will go wrong in this life, and that people will disappoint us. Why should we trust anyone, when we have been hurt and seen other be hurt by betrayal of such trust? Why should we look for beauty in anything, when the startling filthy ugliness of sin has jumped out at us from so many seemingly beautiful people and places? How can we open our hearts again to beauty and light and truth when we have begun to doubt that they exist at all, when we have been crushed in the darkness and cruelty of this life? In our cynicism, we can feel that at least all this pain has made us wise enough to understand the darkness of the world. And we look down upon wonder and joy with cool and sneering disdain, because in the depths of our hearts we hate and despise them as cheats - even as we desperately crave what they pretend to give - but know how foolish it would be to reveal those true feelings. In wonder, every emotion is genuine and life, imbued with the light of truth, overflows with joy; in cynicism, no sincere feeling is revealed, and the heart, being covered with deceit, moulders in the dust of fear and the black rot of hate.
Nobility offers to take the pain and fight the evil, regardless of the consequences; its deepest desire is to do what is right, and not merely to do what is right but to pour itself out in the doing, and not solely to pour itself out in the doing, but to suffer all the pain of the doing in themselves. Nobility seeks to not to draw in, but to give out; not to obtain personal pleasure, but to do what is right that others might thus be uplifted:
"'If I were to be made a knight,' said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, 'I should insist on doing the vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.'
'That would be extremely presumptuous of you,' said Merlyn, 'and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.'
'I shouldn't mind.'
[...]
Merlyn wrung his hands. 'Well, anyway,' he said, 'suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?'
'I could ask,' said the Wart.
'You could ask,' repeated Merlyn.
He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely." - T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Wonder sees the world and rejoices that it is. If we can mourn a loss or complain at the downward path some things are taking, we can with wonder celebrate those things that are not lost, and praise those things that rise upward. While we know that all is not well now, that there is pain and darkness and sin, we do not have to be absorbed by those negative things: we can wonder and delight in the things that are good in opposition to the evil and in the things that are good simply in being themselves:
"This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. [...] These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. [...]
The wonder has a positive element of praise. [...] Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale." - G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy
We have dismissed King Arthur as a myth, turning him into a comic buffoon or an ignorant medieval warrior, so his nobility will not affront our flippancy. Chesterton we never knew - and what did he know about life, anyways, that deluded Christian author from a wealthy family in a privileged nation? God we have forgotten. And with Him we have forgotten how to conduct ourselves with the honor of a noble spirit and the joy of a wondering heart; we have forgotten how to be truly civilized, and so all things come apart.
Friday, January 20, 2012
In the beauty of holiness
"O, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!" - Ps. 96:9a
What makes our worship beautiful in the eyes of God? From this verse, I would say that it is our holiness before Him that fills our praises and sacrifices with beauty.
But I am not holy, I cry! Do You not see the petty selfishness in my heart, the irritation over trivial inconveniences, the all-too-ready sharpened words of anger, or the idleness with which I can approach my responsibilities? How can I ever hope to come before You, my God, with worship that is genuinely beautiful, that is not torn and stained by my unholiness?
Come to Me in My grace, He replies, in the soft whisper of love. Don't you remember, My child, that you are in My Son and He is in you? When I look at you, I see His righteousness; in Him, you are holy and blameless in truth and in love. Do not be afraid! And do not come in your own strength, dressed in the rags of your own righteousness - come clothed in the righteousness of My Son, which He freely gave to you. You are holy in Him, and in Him you are beautiful and your worship is beautiful to Me. I am Your God, and I have made You beautiful with the beauty of holiness!
"O come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand." - Psalm 95:6-7
What makes our worship beautiful in the eyes of God? From this verse, I would say that it is our holiness before Him that fills our praises and sacrifices with beauty.
But I am not holy, I cry! Do You not see the petty selfishness in my heart, the irritation over trivial inconveniences, the all-too-ready sharpened words of anger, or the idleness with which I can approach my responsibilities? How can I ever hope to come before You, my God, with worship that is genuinely beautiful, that is not torn and stained by my unholiness?
Come to Me in My grace, He replies, in the soft whisper of love. Don't you remember, My child, that you are in My Son and He is in you? When I look at you, I see His righteousness; in Him, you are holy and blameless in truth and in love. Do not be afraid! And do not come in your own strength, dressed in the rags of your own righteousness - come clothed in the righteousness of My Son, which He freely gave to you. You are holy in Him, and in Him you are beautiful and your worship is beautiful to Me. I am Your God, and I have made You beautiful with the beauty of holiness!
"O come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand." - Psalm 95:6-7
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Successes and failures and grace
I tend to see life in terms of successes and failures (to the point where it can be hard for me to understand how life can be seen in any other way). For example, if I haven't read my Bible for a week, let's say, I'll think of that as a failure in my walk with Christ, and then think of myself as a failure as a follower of Christ. Conversely, if I have been praying and reading and serving and witnessing, I think of each of those things as a success, and then maybe of myself as a success because I've accomplished those things (although I can almost always find some failure to focus on). It extends down to the most trivial things, too - if I have the house looking nice and dinner on the table when Paul comes home from work on Friday, I get so happy inside because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "good wife", but if dinner is running late or something is off, I feel like a failure because my self-evaluation tells me that I am a "bad wife". Similarly, I'll feel like a failure for showing up late to an event, or for being unclear in a conversation, or for not doing my laundry over the weekend. Everything that happens becomes a tally mark in either the column of successes or the column of failures, and then I base my feelings of self-worth on which column seems to be winning.
But you know what? This way of looking at life and of judging myself is, at its heart and in its very essence, opposed to the concept of grace. And I'm a Christian, right? And that means that at the center of my faith is the belief that I am a hopeless sinner saved by the undeserved love of a great God - in other words, the doctrine of grace, right? So how have I allowed my primary mode of operation - my dominant means of perceiving and evaluating the world around me - to set itself up in the enemy camp? My paradigm for understanding life is a bit of a traitor, apparently... it has chosen the old ways of judgment and law over the new covenant of grace in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So what does it mean to live with a worldview of grace rather than one of judgment?
Obviously I'm not too sure, since I don't do it very well! But I think it means that instead of trying to make myself perfect to earn God's love and approval, I choose instead to rely on Him to change me and rest in the assurance of the love and acceptance He has already given me and will never take away from me. That instead of trying to overcome every obstacle with the grit of my will and the strength of my mind, I admit my need and take refuge in the One who is my shield and strong tower. That instead of basing my self-worth on what I can do for God and others, I ground my identity in what God has done for me and in who God has declared me to be.
I'm thinking this is one of those things that is easier to say than to do, but most good things are, you know? And this time at least I can start off by admitting how hard it will be for me, and by asking God for His grace and strength to make it possible :)
But you know what? This way of looking at life and of judging myself is, at its heart and in its very essence, opposed to the concept of grace. And I'm a Christian, right? And that means that at the center of my faith is the belief that I am a hopeless sinner saved by the undeserved love of a great God - in other words, the doctrine of grace, right? So how have I allowed my primary mode of operation - my dominant means of perceiving and evaluating the world around me - to set itself up in the enemy camp? My paradigm for understanding life is a bit of a traitor, apparently... it has chosen the old ways of judgment and law over the new covenant of grace in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So what does it mean to live with a worldview of grace rather than one of judgment?
Obviously I'm not too sure, since I don't do it very well! But I think it means that instead of trying to make myself perfect to earn God's love and approval, I choose instead to rely on Him to change me and rest in the assurance of the love and acceptance He has already given me and will never take away from me. That instead of trying to overcome every obstacle with the grit of my will and the strength of my mind, I admit my need and take refuge in the One who is my shield and strong tower. That instead of basing my self-worth on what I can do for God and others, I ground my identity in what God has done for me and in who God has declared me to be.
I'm thinking this is one of those things that is easier to say than to do, but most good things are, you know? And this time at least I can start off by admitting how hard it will be for me, and by asking God for His grace and strength to make it possible :)
Sunday, January 15, 2012
A hurt and a healing (or, a sin and a repentance)
For the past week, I thought I was pregnant. I had all the right signs (which might be TMI given the regular tone of my writing here), and I was just waiting until Monday morning to take the pregnancy test (7-9 days after I would have expected to have natural evidence of no pregnancy) to make sure that I wouldn't have a false negative. By yesterday evening I was starting to let myself be really excited - I'd never been that late in my life, even when I was young and more irregular, or when I was hypothyroid and had longer cycles, and I hadn't even been close to being that late since I got married and started tracking my cycles more diligently. But this morning when I woke up, my body told me most definitely that I was not pregnant. So either I was just abnormally very late for some unknown reason, or I had an early pregnancy loss.
Emotionally, it doesn't really make a difference. As logistically difficult as having a child would be right now, it hurt so much to have those hopes dashed when I had begun to think a child was actually already here. Honestly, I was angry at God. It felt like He was teasing me, or mocking me - like He was blowing up my bubble of happiness and expectation so big just so He could shatter it. Because He is in control of all these things, you know? He knows that my cycle is like clockwork, and He knew how excited I would get at the thought of having a baby with Paul (like a living overflow of our love), and yet He still caused it to happen. It just didn't seem very fair or nice of Him to do something like that. So I simmered away all day, trying not to be angry at God but still feeling hurt when I thought about it.
Before we went to our church service at 5, while Paul was showering, I listened to an Adventures in Odyssey program that just so happened to be about Job. The part that has always confused me the most about Job was God's response to Job at the end of the book, because it doesn't really address any of the things that Job had been suffering or discussing throughout the rest of the book. God simply reveals Himself in His glory, wisdom, power, and love. In the Adventures in Odyssey, they point out that Job's primary sin is one of self-righteousness - he perceives himself as being righteous and thus perceives his circumstances as unfair, implying that God is unjust. And it struck me that maybe I was doing that same thing - thinking that I didn't deserve to have my hopes raised and then crushed, that God was unjust or unloving to allow that to happen. I was taking my belief about what should happen in my life and using that to judge God's character and actions - and at the end of Job, the question left hanging is "who am I, a man, that I should judge the God who made and sustains me?" So, ever so gently, through a humorous children's program, God began to point out my self-righteous and presumptuous attitude about the whole situation.
Then, when we got to church, the assistant pastor opened the service with a scripture reading (as is usual) from the book of Job (which is not) - and it was from chapter 38, where God is showing Job His power and asking him who he thinks he is. Okay God, obviously this is something You really want me to understand, and something that You want me to repent of. God doesn't do things flippantly or carelessly, as if He were playing games with our lives, nor does He take joy in our sorrows or cause us pain for no reason. Whatever happened, I ought to trust Him to have a good and holy purpose as He is a good and holy God, you know? And as we were singing the final song of the night, I realized that even though God did not give me this good gift now (like I had thought He was for a few days there) - and even if He never does, as hard and disappointing as that would be! - He has already given me the greatest gift He could ever give: His redeeming grace, through His own Son Jesus Christ. In that alone is undeniable proof of His goodness and His love towards me! A hurt like my situation this morning shouldn't make me doubt His goodness when I know that He has given His Son for my eternal salvation, blessing, and glory :) So as we sang (and as I sang with tears in the sorrow of repentance and the joy of being loved), "it is well, it is well, with my soul."
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Meditation on 2 John
If I had to summarize the main theme of 2 John into one sentence, I think I would say that it is about the importance of truth and the eternal and relational aspects and consequences of holding to the truth or failing to do so. Specifically, he makes these claims about truth:
- it is the foundation of our love and unity as members of the body of Christ (v1)
- it is eternal in essence and will be with us forever (v2); it will not change or fade
- it abides in us (v2); it has personal significance and presence in our lives as followers of Christ
- it is one of the defining characteristics of the blessings God gives us, along with love. The grace, mercy, and peace that He promises and gives are not an illusion or a deceit; He gives them in truth (v3)
- it is how we should live - colored all through with the light of truth, in obedience to God's commandments which are true (v4-6)
- it is centered on the doctrine that Jesus is God and came into the world as a man, that He might die for our sins and give us new life in His resurrection - for our lives, as Christians, this is one truth we absolutely cannot forsake, and it is the kernel of doctrine at the center of every use of the word truth in 2 John, I believe (v7)
- it is essential to the value of the good works we do and crucial to to pleasing and honoring God, and thus receiving a reward from Him in heaven (v8)
- it is proof of the legitimacy of the relationship we claim to have with the Father and the Son - if we do not abide in that central truth of Jesus Christ, we are not His (v9)
- it takes precedence over social norms, tolerance, personal comfort, etc. - it is so important that we must take all precautions not to share in the works of deceit, even if that means conflict and "intolerance" (v10-11)
- it is the source of joy, because it is the foundation of genuine love (v12)
One of the beauties of 2 John, however, is that he doesn't make a list like this about the nature of the truth of our faith, and proceed to lecture us philosophically. Rather, the whole book is glowing with deep, warm, godly love; all the points that I extracted were clothed in the rich garments of the love and personal concern that John had for the lady to whom he was writing and for her children, and I think this too is crucially important for us as we try to live in truth. It shows up a bit in my first and last points, but I would phrase it differently now: if a claimed belief in the truth of Jesus Christ does not outwardly manifest itself in the growth of genuine love for others, it is not true belief or it is at best belief that is neglected and dying. If we take root in the soil of His truth, we will bear the fruit of love. In our faith, the two are inextricably linked; any effort to hold to one while compromising the other is a failure and in some cases even a heresy. The issue is not one of finding a middle ground between the two where both truth and love can be uneasily and half-heartedly expressed, because this assumes that they are in conflict, and the whole wonderful point of 2 John is that they not in conflict at all, but are rather joined together in their work and in their very essence. Truth and love, exulting in the beauty they restore to our broken, sin-ridden world - this is the picture John paints for us in this little book, and it is glorious indeed.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Reading the Bible in 2012
Our church recently put a very helpful post up on their website encouraging us to read the Bible this year and giving us some practical guidelines and plans for doing so, at various levels of intensity (you should go check it out if you are in need of a Bible reading plan - they have a lot of good ideas over there). One in particular stood out to me because it seemed a little different from any other reading plan I've seen in the past and because it claimed to be a way to "master" the Bible - which is a rather extravagant claim, I would think! Basically, the idea is to choose one book of the Bible at a time and read it all in one sitting, continuing to do so until you've read the book twenty times. I think of a book like Genesis and I quail at the thought of reading it in one sitting... but the purpose is to grasp the primary messages and principles of each book as a whole, instead of getting lost in the details and the depth and never coming to a full, complete, and coherent understanding of the whole book.
So I thought, well, there's really no loss in trying this even if it doesn't turn out to be that doable, and I'm starting with the smaller books and working my way up to the more intimidating and lengthy ones. 2 John, at only 13 verses, took the prize for first, so I've been reading it repetitively for the past few days (I'm at 15 times through right now). And I do feel like I'm finally beginning to understand the point of the book. Each time I read through it, it's like I'm putting a piece into a puzzle, and the themes begin to emerge from the text, becoming clearer and more beautiful as I go. Maybe I'll write about it when I've made it through all twenty reads :) I'm finding treasures in that little book that I never knew were there, which really encourages me to do my best to follow through with the rest of this crazy plan to read the Bible! The beauty of the wisdom of God's word is breathtaking.
So I thought, well, there's really no loss in trying this even if it doesn't turn out to be that doable, and I'm starting with the smaller books and working my way up to the more intimidating and lengthy ones. 2 John, at only 13 verses, took the prize for first, so I've been reading it repetitively for the past few days (I'm at 15 times through right now). And I do feel like I'm finally beginning to understand the point of the book. Each time I read through it, it's like I'm putting a piece into a puzzle, and the themes begin to emerge from the text, becoming clearer and more beautiful as I go. Maybe I'll write about it when I've made it through all twenty reads :) I'm finding treasures in that little book that I never knew were there, which really encourages me to do my best to follow through with the rest of this crazy plan to read the Bible! The beauty of the wisdom of God's word is breathtaking.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Eternal hope
"... sagacity says, 'Surely one must not kill hope.' 'You hypocrite,' replies the eternal, 'why do you talk so equivocally; of course there is a hope that should be killed, just as there is a lust, a craving, and a longing that should be killed - the earthly hope should be killed, because not until then is one rescued by the true hope, and that is why the sufferer should not even want to "accept release" (Hebrews 11:35) on temporality's terms.'" - Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits
Earthly hope is very pleasant to the mind and the heart, even when it so improbable as to be more of a desperate wish than a hope, because it fills the imagination with beautiful pictures of everything temporal healed and set right - of health and wealth and happiness, of the fulfillment of life's "little dreams" (like a house in the country with a wrap-around porch, or a home full of children, or a long and loving marriage, or recognition and respect). But to make those hopes the great desire of one's heart - to think of "the temporal as the highest and the eternal as a kind of desperate standby" (Kierkegaard again) - is in the end to lose these hopes themselves, and their fulfillment, or even if one does experience the happiness of their fulfillment in a temporal sense, it is still in the end to lose the highest hope of all: that which is eternal.
So it is better not to hope for those things at all - to kill them when they appear - that one may set one's heart on the greatest and highest hope without distraction or reservation. Is there a sense of loss, at the thought of killing these hopes and thus not pursuing their fulfillment and obtaining their promised happinesses? Yes, there is; but it is a better loss than the alternative, which is to never become alive in the eternal hope, to never pursue that eternal fulfillment and obtain eternal happiness.
Earthly hope is very pleasant to the mind and the heart, even when it so improbable as to be more of a desperate wish than a hope, because it fills the imagination with beautiful pictures of everything temporal healed and set right - of health and wealth and happiness, of the fulfillment of life's "little dreams" (like a house in the country with a wrap-around porch, or a home full of children, or a long and loving marriage, or recognition and respect). But to make those hopes the great desire of one's heart - to think of "the temporal as the highest and the eternal as a kind of desperate standby" (Kierkegaard again) - is in the end to lose these hopes themselves, and their fulfillment, or even if one does experience the happiness of their fulfillment in a temporal sense, it is still in the end to lose the highest hope of all: that which is eternal.
So it is better not to hope for those things at all - to kill them when they appear - that one may set one's heart on the greatest and highest hope without distraction or reservation. Is there a sense of loss, at the thought of killing these hopes and thus not pursuing their fulfillment and obtaining their promised happinesses? Yes, there is; but it is a better loss than the alternative, which is to never become alive in the eternal hope, to never pursue that eternal fulfillment and obtain eternal happiness.
Friday, January 6, 2012
A Prayer
In the midst of the world's chaos, may we find peace in Christ.
When all around us society crumbles, communities fall apart, and people's lives are broken, and everyone seems hell-bent on progressing in the course that brought us to this place, may we find hope in the faithfulness of our Lord. May we remember that His promises are true and that His Word cannot be shaken.
When all our civil leaders are tainted by corruption and greed, and political campaigning becomes political mudslinging with no hope of integrity or improvement, may we remember that we are ultimately citizens of heaven, and may we find strength in the knowledge that God's throne is founded on righteousness and justice.
When people we know, in the face of society's brokenness, still tell us that supporting marriage and family is "weird", may we learn to feel compassion rather than contempt for the blindness - and may we remember that God has power both to open their eyes and to heal the torn fabric of our nation's families. May we remember that no obstacle is too great for Him to overcome, no wrong tradition so firmly entrenched that He cannot uproot it.
When the pain in the eyes and the bitter words of others reveal the despair and empty loneliness of their hearts, may we, by Your grace, Lord, be ministers of that grace to them in their hurt and in their lostness. May we remember that Your grace has saved us out of the depths of our sin! - and thus is more than sufficient to save and heal these others also.
In the valley of the shadow of death, may we find comfort in Your guiding presence.
When all around us society crumbles, communities fall apart, and people's lives are broken, and everyone seems hell-bent on progressing in the course that brought us to this place, may we find hope in the faithfulness of our Lord. May we remember that His promises are true and that His Word cannot be shaken.
When all our civil leaders are tainted by corruption and greed, and political campaigning becomes political mudslinging with no hope of integrity or improvement, may we remember that we are ultimately citizens of heaven, and may we find strength in the knowledge that God's throne is founded on righteousness and justice.
When people we know, in the face of society's brokenness, still tell us that supporting marriage and family is "weird", may we learn to feel compassion rather than contempt for the blindness - and may we remember that God has power both to open their eyes and to heal the torn fabric of our nation's families. May we remember that no obstacle is too great for Him to overcome, no wrong tradition so firmly entrenched that He cannot uproot it.
When the pain in the eyes and the bitter words of others reveal the despair and empty loneliness of their hearts, may we, by Your grace, Lord, be ministers of that grace to them in their hurt and in their lostness. May we remember that Your grace has saved us out of the depths of our sin! - and thus is more than sufficient to save and heal these others also.
In the valley of the shadow of death, may we find comfort in Your guiding presence.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Establishing my path in eternity
This month, I'm attempting to read a chapter of Proverbs each day, as an easy reading schedule to remember but primarily as a means of soaking up wisdom and being challenged to put it into practice. Today, I noticed that the main theme of Proverbs 4 seems to be to follow wise instruction and stay on the right path - as v27 puts it, to "ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established;" that is, to be discerning and intentional about the way in which you live and about the direction and destination of the road you choose to travel.
From there I turned to Colossians 3 (as part of my more erratic attempt to read from the New Testament regularly as well) and was struck by how it seemed to perfectly complement Proverbs 4. First there were the encouragements and warnings to live by God's instruction and wisdom; then there were the practical details of how to do so. Of all those practical directions and commands, however, the one that struck me the most was, ironically, the least practical in appearance, in v2: "Set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth."
Now, both Proverbs and Colossians are rich with wisdom on how to live in this earth, with the things on this earth, so I doubt that this verse means we are to neglect our earthly relationships and responsibilities in order to meditate solely on eternity and on God. God did create us as physical beings and place us in a physical and temporal world, after all! Instead, I think it means that our desires, aspirations, intentions, and motivations - those things which are in our mind but which affect every action we take - ought to be focused on the eternal and the heavenly rather than the temporal and the earthly. When I plan dinners for Paul and I, do I do so out of love and respect (qualities eternal and heavenly in their essence, and relating to the good and right interaction between two eternal beings), or do I do so simply because cooking is something I enjoy and we need to eat? In other words, do I make dinner simply to satisfy my physical needs and experience temporal pleasure, or do I make dinner with eternity in my eyes? We have responsibilities regarding these temporal things, most certainly, but the mind behind our actions regarding the temporal must be gazing into eternity.
With an eternal perspective, the importance of ensuring the road we choose to walk through time is established and founded becomes more immediately apparent: it is not merely a temporal road, ending at death, destined to become a forgotten nothing; rather, it reaches past time and thus choosing the wrong fork in the road now could have eternal consequences (beyond affecting our eternal destination, our choices now shape who we will become for all eternity, to borrow an idea from C.S. Lewis). So even when the things we must think about and do seem almost entirely temporal in nature, by doing them for God and because of God we set our minds on things above. By pondering the path of our feet, we are able to choose the path which perceives and gives life to the eternal essence of all good and godly things, and thus can learn to live on the earth with our minds and hearts full of the glow of heaven.
From there I turned to Colossians 3 (as part of my more erratic attempt to read from the New Testament regularly as well) and was struck by how it seemed to perfectly complement Proverbs 4. First there were the encouragements and warnings to live by God's instruction and wisdom; then there were the practical details of how to do so. Of all those practical directions and commands, however, the one that struck me the most was, ironically, the least practical in appearance, in v2: "Set your minds on things above, not on things on the earth."
Now, both Proverbs and Colossians are rich with wisdom on how to live in this earth, with the things on this earth, so I doubt that this verse means we are to neglect our earthly relationships and responsibilities in order to meditate solely on eternity and on God. God did create us as physical beings and place us in a physical and temporal world, after all! Instead, I think it means that our desires, aspirations, intentions, and motivations - those things which are in our mind but which affect every action we take - ought to be focused on the eternal and the heavenly rather than the temporal and the earthly. When I plan dinners for Paul and I, do I do so out of love and respect (qualities eternal and heavenly in their essence, and relating to the good and right interaction between two eternal beings), or do I do so simply because cooking is something I enjoy and we need to eat? In other words, do I make dinner simply to satisfy my physical needs and experience temporal pleasure, or do I make dinner with eternity in my eyes? We have responsibilities regarding these temporal things, most certainly, but the mind behind our actions regarding the temporal must be gazing into eternity.
With an eternal perspective, the importance of ensuring the road we choose to walk through time is established and founded becomes more immediately apparent: it is not merely a temporal road, ending at death, destined to become a forgotten nothing; rather, it reaches past time and thus choosing the wrong fork in the road now could have eternal consequences (beyond affecting our eternal destination, our choices now shape who we will become for all eternity, to borrow an idea from C.S. Lewis). So even when the things we must think about and do seem almost entirely temporal in nature, by doing them for God and because of God we set our minds on things above. By pondering the path of our feet, we are able to choose the path which perceives and gives life to the eternal essence of all good and godly things, and thus can learn to live on the earth with our minds and hearts full of the glow of heaven.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
As you have received, so walk
A very short and simple verse caught my attention this morning:
Unfortunately, I don't think I walk with Christ now with those same qualities. It's easy to forget that I still need God to help me live rightly, and to start thinking that I can do something in my own strength to please Him and earn God's acceptance and approval (forgetting what should be obvious - that through Christ I am already accepted and approved!) And it's easy to become discouraged and saddened by my own failures and by the general state of the world, and lose sight of the joy that comes through Christ. But realization is the first step towards change, right? :) Moreover, when we're striving to remember these things and live life in this way, we're striving to make our perception of reality concur with what is actually real, which gives us a firmer foundation for our thoughts, decisions, and actions.
"As you therefore have received Christ, so walk in Him" - Col. 2:6When we received Christ - when we put our faith in Him - we did so with a recognition of our own great need and desperate sinfulness (why else would we be asking someone to save us, after all?). We received Him with lowliness of heart, throwing ourselves in utter dependance upon the grace He offered us (we had no illusions about our own inability to be righteous and blameless before God). And we received Him with incredible joy, with wonder and thanksgiving (how could we not have joy, when we saw that our sins were forgiven?).
Unfortunately, I don't think I walk with Christ now with those same qualities. It's easy to forget that I still need God to help me live rightly, and to start thinking that I can do something in my own strength to please Him and earn God's acceptance and approval (forgetting what should be obvious - that through Christ I am already accepted and approved!) And it's easy to become discouraged and saddened by my own failures and by the general state of the world, and lose sight of the joy that comes through Christ. But realization is the first step towards change, right? :) Moreover, when we're striving to remember these things and live life in this way, we're striving to make our perception of reality concur with what is actually real, which gives us a firmer foundation for our thoughts, decisions, and actions.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Resolutions
With the New Year come New Year's resolutions, and despite being relatively busy and rather knocked down by this head cold, I have done some thinking about taking on a few of my own. There are a lot of things I'd like to improve upon during this next year, you know? I'd like to exercise more and eat healthier (the two most typical resolutions here in the US, I would wager), and I'd like to keep my house cleaner. Oh, and I'd like to finally decide upon some future plans for my life! But since God is involved in making that one happen, and since He seems to like me to proceed one step at a time, I probably shouldn't resolve on solidifying plans unless I'm looking for a resolution to break...
This morning, though, I started thinking that while all these resolutions are good, they are purely temporal. They exist in time, only touching eternity tangentially or indirectly, and they will pass away with time. But I, a human being and a child of God, will not pass away with time; eternity awaits me. If I am going to make New Year's resolutions (an idea very much rooted in the cyclical passage of time), maybe I should make them such that they draw my mind and my heart towards eternity and towards God. Maybe I should use this celebration of time itself to endeavor to remember specifically those things in time which are eternal in essence: the Lord God in whom I place my faith, the future glory and restoration for which I hope, and my fellow eternal souls with whom I walk through time and whom I desire to love as God has loved me.
So what do I resolve? First, to seek the Lord my God - to make knowing Him my highest priority and my greatest joy - and to do so in the strength of His grace, remembering that He always loves me and always desires me to try again to follow Him, no matter how often or how spectacularly I have failed. Second, I resolve to live with hope, resisting the temptation to despair that is for me so strong and attacks such a weak place in my armor, remembering that God has made His dwelling place within me - that He is always with me, will never forsake me, and has prepared a place for me with Him for all eternity, in the glory of His presence. Finally, I resolve to better love the people with whom I interact every day of this new year, to replace my irritations and criticisms with patience, compassion, and thankfulness, remembering that the God who died for my salvation died for them also and loves them with an unfailing love - that they too are eternal beings in need of Him, with their own deep sorrows and high joys.
In the end it all comes down to faith, hope, and love. Like the apostle urged the church of Corinth, I desire to let these three abide within me, that they might through the work of the Spirit transform my heart and come to characterize my life, that my life (though existing now, in time) might take on the aroma of eternity.
This morning, though, I started thinking that while all these resolutions are good, they are purely temporal. They exist in time, only touching eternity tangentially or indirectly, and they will pass away with time. But I, a human being and a child of God, will not pass away with time; eternity awaits me. If I am going to make New Year's resolutions (an idea very much rooted in the cyclical passage of time), maybe I should make them such that they draw my mind and my heart towards eternity and towards God. Maybe I should use this celebration of time itself to endeavor to remember specifically those things in time which are eternal in essence: the Lord God in whom I place my faith, the future glory and restoration for which I hope, and my fellow eternal souls with whom I walk through time and whom I desire to love as God has loved me.
So what do I resolve? First, to seek the Lord my God - to make knowing Him my highest priority and my greatest joy - and to do so in the strength of His grace, remembering that He always loves me and always desires me to try again to follow Him, no matter how often or how spectacularly I have failed. Second, I resolve to live with hope, resisting the temptation to despair that is for me so strong and attacks such a weak place in my armor, remembering that God has made His dwelling place within me - that He is always with me, will never forsake me, and has prepared a place for me with Him for all eternity, in the glory of His presence. Finally, I resolve to better love the people with whom I interact every day of this new year, to replace my irritations and criticisms with patience, compassion, and thankfulness, remembering that the God who died for my salvation died for them also and loves them with an unfailing love - that they too are eternal beings in need of Him, with their own deep sorrows and high joys.
In the end it all comes down to faith, hope, and love. Like the apostle urged the church of Corinth, I desire to let these three abide within me, that they might through the work of the Spirit transform my heart and come to characterize my life, that my life (though existing now, in time) might take on the aroma of eternity.
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