a view of history

...history is like a giant piece of fabric with very intricate and complex patterns. During the limited span of our lifetimes we see only a tiny fraction of the pattern. Furthermore, as has been observed by others, we see the pattern from the underside. The underside of the weaving usually makes no sense. Even the upper side makes little sense if we view just a tiny piece. Only God sees the upper side, and only He sees the entire fabric with its complete pattern. Therefore, we must trust him to work out all the details of history to his glory, knowing that his glory and our good are bound up together. — J. Bridges, Trusting God

A quick remedy for pride here.

If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

The story of you. Me. Everyone.

Yes, it is. From Desiring God.

The Story of You
This is the story of your salvation. This story includes your conversion, but extends through time-twisting dimensions, immeasurable privileges, and lavish gifts beyond anything our brains can contain.

Start Here

Scripture’s first words capture creation’s first moments: “In the beginning, God. . .” (Genesis 1:1). And before the beginning — God. Before anything at all, before the first light shot through to introduce history’s first tick of the clock, God was enjoying eternal, trinitarian relationship with himself.

Then at some “point,” the Father, the Son, and the Spirit decided to make history — literally. This point happened “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). And there you are, at the beginning. God knew you before there was a “before,” at a time when the Father loved the Son, also “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). You begin as part of a trinitarian plan, not yet as a created reality, but with the people whom the Father gave to the Son from out of a world he had not yet made (John 17:6). During this pre-creation era, God directed his will at you. You were chosen.

Go Down

But history had to happen first, in time. Your story continues when God formed Adam, his first jar of clay, from the dust of the ground (Genesis. 2:7). And you were there in Eden too. Before you were born, God anointed Adam to represent you specifically, and the rest of humanity with you (Romans 5:18–19). But our first king Adam failed, so you and the entire nation of humanity failed with him. That first sin heard ‘round the world kickstarted the long, checkered story of the Old Testament people — murder, floods, slavery, plagues, wars, and exiles.

And while that wild rush of redemptive history was unfolding, God knew you. With Jeremiah we say God knew us before he formed us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). God knew you in eternity before anything was made, and he knew you in history, before your arrival here on earth. And through the sometimes sordid story of God’s Old Testament people, all the authors of the Old Testament told the greater Story about the Redeemer who would some day fulfill every ancient promise (Luke 24:27; 44–48).

The Entrance

Then it happened. After thousands of years of waiting, the Father sent his Son down to his people, to walk around in history (John 5:36). The Son was to be the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45–47), the final King. Long ago, when the first Adam sinned, God told the serpent that his head would be bruised (Genesis 3:15). Later, as the last Adam’s cross punctured into the top of the “Place of a Skull” (John 19:17), history’s oldest redemptive promise came true.

But suffering on the cross was part of a bigger task Christ needed to accomplish (1 Corinthians 15:17–19). Even more was needed for your full redemption. Sin’s death grip on us demanded everything of Christ — his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Christ needed not only to suffer, but to be glorified. And as difficult as it is for us to understand on this side of heaven, Scripture tells us that just as we were there in Eden with Adam, we were there in Israel with Christ — crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6), buried with Christ (Romans 6:4), raised with Christ (Romans 6:5), and as he ascended into heaven, seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). You were there.

You Are Here

Then came the day when God personally knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). You show up in redemptive history for the first time, your arrival planned and anticipated for ages. And at some point in your life history, you were brought out from under God’s wrath and united to Christ under God’s grace; from being represented by the first Adam to represented by the last Adam, Christ. Throughout the story of the world and the story of you, God has gathered his cloud of witnesses together (Hebrews 12:1), whether a child’s time on earth lasts for one minute or one century.

Start Again

And here you are, somewhere along the course of your Christian life. At some point in either your earthly or heavenly future — a few minutes from now, a few years off, or after a few more centuries have come and gone — the Son will come back to this alien land, this first earth (Revelation 21:1). He will gather together you and everyone else whom the Father has given to his Son (Mark 13:27), and you will finally be home. If you are in Christ, in one sense, you are already there.

Joy is Forever

from her writings on The Rabbit Room:

Anxiety is the devil. Fear is a taste of hell because it cuts us off from the ever-offered rest of God’s love. And fear cannot do one damn thing to avert the thing feared. Sorrow, on the other hand, is a kind friend, and when it comes, grace comes, too, and all the tender mercies of God. All fear is the fear of loss and death; all love comes with a price tag of pain; all true sorrow has its counterpoint of joy. And it’s real. We’re living it in the most vivid way. And if we’re running along the beach laughing at one moment and weeping over the grief that is coming the next, well then, this is life abundant, the full package. And the joy is more real than the grief because the joy is forever and the pain is for but the passing shadow of this life.

—Lanier Ivester

Willie's Amazing Grace

It's going to get better. It is.
All this pain (that feels now like everything there is in all the world to feel) is going to roll up into a blink.
You will flip back through these pages and know how the story ends. You will smile because beauty chased you down in this present darkness. You will see how it found a way to surprise you when you least expected it.
You will look back at these terrible mountains you're climbing, the ones that take up all your hope and strength. You'll catch them in the corner of your eye while walking long and far from this despair.
Looking over your left shoulder, you will stop, sit in the grass, and trace the tops of this year with your finger. You will whisper, "Even still, I made it through."
Look how far you've come already. Look how much you've learned. You're growing through this. Your grief is not wasted. None of this is. In these fires you are deepening. You are being refined. The dross is being burned off. You are learning what love really means.
You are coming into the ranks of the holy worn, those blessed, ravaged few who have weathered mighty loss and found what remains.
Yes, you are dying, but there is life enough to sustain this death.
Yes, you are weak, but there is grace enough to sustain this weakness.
Yes, you are devastated, but there is strength enough to sustain this devastation.
There is stability enough for your anger and your confusion. In this breaking, you are upheld. In the terror that comes at the end of finding your own end, you are yet safe.
And there is a second gift, besides. There is something good for you to do next. Tomorrow when you wake, there will be someone in this world who needs your love.
Love will be an option, and you may choose it trembling. You may choose it second. You may choose it after hating first, and weeping, and lashing out.
But when you do choose love, your heart will grow from that choice.
Friend, this battle rages on and on and on, and it is full of blood, and earth, and sorrow, and fallings down. Let me kiss your wounds. I will cry over them tears of seeing.
I have been broken, too. See my scars.
Love, it is dark for you now. It is dark. But your enemies would have you quit fighting. They would tell you it is hopeless.
It is not hopeless. There is a way. There is a path that you can't see yet, just around the corner. It will open up to you like a yellow clearing in a black woods.
Tomorrow there will be one good thing for you to do, and then another good thing the next. Your hands will find good work. Step by step, it will fall like bread from ravens.
And then again, so very soon it will all be over. These days will be a sweet old song sung in a golden room, and your eyes will be clear, and your heart will be warm.
Hold fast, dear heart. Hold fast.
Listen while I whisper over you your true name. I remember who you are. I've seen you, royal one. You have the countenance of a child of a King.
Sleep now then tonight, because your body is tired and weak from the day.
Sleep knowing that I have prayed for you. And when I wake up in the night, I will pray for you again.
Remember that you are seen. Remember that you are known. Remember that you are loved.
Hold fast, dear heart. Hold fast. You are very nearly home.

—Rebecca Reynolds
http://www.rabbitroom.com/author/rebeccareynolds/

The best thing i've read in weeks. A month since the death of my mom.

"Whatever comes, we shall endure"

This song is an encouragement this morning. And the words O come O come Immanuel are good, year round!

Tim and Tullian today

Dust.

I came across these two excerpts within a few hours of each other. I only read authors with two initial first names.

"No man by nature and left to himself has ever sought God...If you and I can claim as Christian people that we are seeking God, there is only one explanation for it, and that is that God has first sought us...Show me a man who can say honestly that he is seeking after God, and I will show you a man who has been quickened by God's Spirit, whom God has sought." 

-Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Romans - The Righteousness Judgment Of God

from a blogger named Kelly

I just stumbled across this writer via The Rabbit Room. Such a great word!

Hope you enjoy.

Heard at Hutchmoot: Shiny Things

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Kelly

Heard at Hutchmoot: A Series on Words From Our Weekend in Nashville

The keynote speaker at Hutchmoot was an author by the name of Leif Enger.  His most notable works are the bestseller Peace Like a River and So Brave, Young, and Handsome.

Leif gave us some encouragement to see from his life on a Minnesota farm.  He and his wife like to take walks at sunset when the weather is warm.  Leif usually carries some change in his pocket, and there’s a certain rock where he will leave a coin or two.

Why?  Because the crows like shiny things.  When the couple passes by that rock later on, the coins are always gone.  Leif said it gives the birds happiness to have shiny things in their nest, and it gives him joy to think of those coins making their way into trees around the property.

He said, “Look for the shiny things. Store them away.”

What’s a shiny thing for you?

A shiny thing this time of year is my husband’s faithfulness to turn on the Christmas tree lights early in the morning. The kids’ eagerness to shop for their siblings. The Behold the Lamb of God concert.

A shiny thing anytime of year is the light filtering through the trees a certain way. The smell of homemade soup. Times with friends when you laugh until you cry. Words from a familiar Psalm.

When I was eager to look at those crows as hoarders, Leif Enger turned that image on its head and said I should be a hoarder of shiny things.  Shiny things make us grateful to the Giver of all good gifts.

 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. James 1:16-18

P.S. Those books mentioned above? Check them out. That man that my husband now calls his “friend” is a wonderful storyteller.

Advent moon

Good Friday --> Christmas

Here's another wonderful song I can't get out of my head if I wanted to:




This played in my head as I read an Advent devotional this morning. From John Piper:

December 11

WHY JESUS CAME

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,

he himself likewise partook of the same things, that

through death he might destroy the one who has

the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver

all those who through fear of death were subject to

lifelong slavery. —Hebrews 2:14–15

Hebrews 2:14–15 is worth more than two minutes in an Advent devotional. These verses connect the beginning and the end of Jesus’s earthly life. They make clear why he came. They would be great to use with an unbelieving friend or family member to take them step by step through your Christian view of Christmas. It might go something like this…

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood…”

The term “children” is taken from the previous verse and refers to the spiritual offspring of Christ, the Messiah (see Isaiah 8:18; 53:10). These are also the “children of God.” In other words, in sending Christ, God has the salvation of his “children” specially in view. It is true that [Here's our song plug! AND in Good Ole KJV, no less!] “God so loved the world, that he sent [Jesus] (John 3:16).” But it is also true that God was especially “gathering the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:52). God’s design was to offer Christ to the world, and to effect the salvation of his “children” (see 1 Timothy 4:10). You may experience adoption by receiving Christ (John 1:12).

“…he himself likewise partook of the same things [flesh and blood]…”

Christ existed before the incarnation. He was spirit. He was the eternal Word. He was with God and was God (John 1:1; Colossians 2:9). But he took on flesh and blood and clothed his deity with humanity. He became fully man and remained fully God. It is a great mystery in many ways. But it is at the heart of our faith and is what the Bible teaches.

“…that through death…”

The reason Jesus became man was to die. As God, he could not die for sinners. But as man he could. His aim was to die. Therefore he had to be born human. He was born to die. Good Friday is the reason for Christmas. This is what needs to be said today about the meaning of Christmas.

“…he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil…”

In dying, Christ de-fanged the devil. How? By covering all our sin. This means that Satan has no legitimate grounds to accuse us before God. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:33). On what grounds does he justify? Through the blood of Jesus (Romans 5:9).

Satan’s ultimate weapon against us is our own sin. If the death of Jesus takes it away, the chief weapon of the devil is taken out of his hand. He cannot make a case for our death penalty, because the Judge has acquitted us by the death of his Son!

“…and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

So we are free from the fear of death. God has justified us. Satan cannot overturn that decree. And God means for our ultimate safety to have an immediate effect on our lives. He means for the happy ending to take away the slavery and fear of the now.

If we do not need to fear our last and greatest enemy, death, then we do not need to fear anything. We can be free: free for joy, free for others.

What a great Christmas present from God to us! And from us to the world!”

Excerpt from: John Piper. “Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent.” iBooks. 

The Lamb and Gift of Gifts.

This time of year is a perfect occasion to gorge on beautiful old music. I've been doing so on various Rdio, Pandora, and iTunes Radio stations as well as our wonderful local public radio station 91.1 in Nashville.

This tune in the video above, composed by Sir John Tavener, isn't particularly old, but the verses are by William Blake in the 18th century. Not exactly Christmas music but in a way, it is.

The excerpt below is from a favorite book, Valley of Vision, and dovetails nicely with our pastor's Advent sermons on the humanity and deity of Jesus. This is from "Gift of Gifts":

Herein is wonder of wonders:
He came below to raise me above,
He was born like me that I might become like Him.

Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to Him He draws near on wings of grace,
to raise me to Himself.

Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
He united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to Him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
He came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

Ah Lewis

This signature on each soul may be a product of heredity and environment, but that only means that heredity and environment are among the instruments whereby God creates a soul. I am considering not how, but why, He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you—you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction. The Brocken spectre ‘looked to every man like his first love’, because she was a cheat. But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

From The Problem of Pain
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain. Copyright © 1940, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright restored © 1996 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Cloudy with a chance of joy.

Yes, Yes, a thousand times YES. Thank you, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and the Cloud Appreciation Society! Proud to be a card-carrying member of the CAS. . . tens of thousands of members now!

"Clouds are not something to moan about...they are the most diverse, evocative, poetic aspect of nature."

Keeping Life in Perspective

Most people who will read this reflection lead busy lives, seeking to achieve a variety of personal, family, and career goals. To be fully engaged in life is a good thing, but sometimes our daily existence can become so filled with good things that we lose sight of an important reality that helps us remain grounded in our life with God. As C.S. Lewis reminds us, maintaining a daily awareness that Jesus Christ is coming back is needful for a healthy soul.

The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery: you may be maturing great social and political reforms. Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short? Not now, of all moments!

But we think thus because we keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. The Author knows. The audience, if there is an audience (if angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven fill the pit and the stalls), may have an inkling. But we, never seeing the play from outside, never meeting the characters except the tiny minority who are “on” in the same scenes as ourselves, wholly ignorant of the future and very imperfectly informed about the past, cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come. That it will come when it ought, we may be sure; but we waste our time in guessing when that will be. That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it. When it is over, we may be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely.

The doctrine of the Second Coming, then, is not to be rejected because it conflicts with our favorite modern mythology. It is, for that very reason, to be the more valued and made more frequently the subject of meditation. It is the medicine our condition especially needs. 

Jesus himself says that when he returns, people will be “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.” Preoccupied with the busyness and distractions of life, most will be unprepared to meet him. If we want to live sober, godly lives in this corrupt generation and to “play our part well,” a daily discipline of reminding ourselves of his imminent return can do wonders for us.

“Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Matthew 24:44 (ESV)


from the C.S. Lewis Institute, April, 2009

Let my armies....

One must train...

from J.I. Packer

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er he doth;
And follow where he guideth.
He is my God: though dark my road.
He holds me that I shall not fall.
And so to him I leave it all,
He holds me that I shall not fall.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He never will deceive me.
He leads me by the proper path;
I know he will not leave me.
I take, content, what he hath sent.
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait his day,
His hand can turn my griefs away.

Whate’er my God ordains is right,
Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it all, unshrinking.
My God is true; each morn anew.
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart,
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart.

Whate’er my God ordains is right.
Here shall my stand be taken.
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet am I not forsaken.
My Father’s care is round me there.
He holds me that I shall not fall,
And so to him I leave it all,
He holds me that I shall not fall.