Our Only Comfort

“I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.” ~ Exodus 23:27-30

I didn’t plan to do this, but I suppose this post continues the theme of the last post. Regardless, I was very encouraged to read these words a little while ago. We are indeed Canaan bound, and it is our Father, our King, Who is bringing and will bring us into that blessed Promised Land, that “beautiful inheritance.” We do not depend upon ourselves or our own supposed abilities — we rely on Him. It is He, our Lord, who will send the hornets, and drive out the enemy, and guide us unto green pastures, and provide us with milk and honey.

But He doesn’t do it all at once…and that’s for our good. “Little by little I will drive them out…until you have increased and possess the land.”

Instead, in His own, perfect timing, our King accomplishes what He has promised He will accomplish. Sometimes that’s hard to believe – when the Canaanites are still across the valley and we’ve not been able to plant our fields and vineyards yet, we can become discouraged and doubtful. But we forget that the Lord has already driven out the Hivites from the ground upon which we’re currently standing, and He’s been feeding us with manna all our lives, and He’s given us water from the rock, and He’s led us with pillars of fire and cloud, and He led us through the Red Sea. We forget, we doubt, we complain, we fret – and He remains faithful.

It’s comforting to know that our Lord does what He does in His own timing. And that timing is perfect. It is comforting to know that when the Lord has not fully driven out the Canaanites yet, it doesn’t mean He’s not going to – it just means the timing isn’t right.

Along with that, it’s also supremely comforting, and liberating, to know that Canaan, and the trek towards those green pastures, isn’t actually about me. I may be a part of the drama which is unfolding, and I may be a farmer who plants a vineyard or a soldier in the King’s army, but the focus is on the King and His glory, and how He, by His own power and love, has conquered His enemies, redeemed His people, and brought them to their Promised Land.

When I lose that perspective and life centers around me and my activity, the journey towards Canaan becomes discouraging, confusing, and overwhelming. However, when I will “be still,” as a friend recently said, and be content to gaze upon my King’s glory, all else falls into place.

This point is well made in what is probably my favorite catechism question in all of history – Heidelberg #1.

Q: What is your only comfort in life and death?

A: That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ;…

Take comfort Christian – we are not our own. We belong to the Lord and King of all eternity, and He is better, more loving, and more tender than we are able to comprehend.

So bid your troubled heart be still…

As we were finishing up in the kitchen tonight, for whatever reason, one of Andrew Peterson’s songs popped into my head, and I began to sing. The melody carried me through the last few tasks in the kitchen and then up the stairs as I headed for post-dinner activities.

I had forgotten how much I liked the song – how moving and beautiful the lyrics are – until I began to sing it again, and until my mom popped her head in.”That’s a pretty one” she commented, “what is it?” This being one of my all-time favorite AP songs, I was upset at myself for not having shared it with her previously. “You mean I haven’t let you hear this one before?! Oh goodness! It’s amazing!”  I made my way over to the music library and speakers. “This is one of those that has brought tears to my eyes… Alison Krauss sings harmony, and there’s an amazing cello in the background.” I cranked the volume up, and we both listened, and we both drank deeply.

If you ever get an opportunity to hear this song, please do. However, even without the music, the lyrics are wonderful. Our God will accomplish what He has promised He will accomplish. We also are “Canaan bound,” so, by grace, may we not let any present barrenness afflict us with despair.

I hope these lyrics encourage you.

Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan bound
Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron’s hills are amber crowned

So bid your troubled heart be still
The grass, they say, is soft and green
The trees are tall and honey-filled
So, Sarah, come and walk with me

Like the stars across the heavens flung
Like water in the desert sprung
Like the grains of sand, our many sons
Oh, Sarah, fair and barren one
Come to Canaan, come

I trembled at the voice of God
A voice of love and thunder deep
With love He means to save us all
And Love has chosen you and me

Long after we are dead and gone
A thousand years our tale be sung
How faith compelled and bore us on
How barren Sarah bore a son
So come to Canaan, come

Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron’s hills are amber crowned
Oh, Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan bound

“Canaan Bound”
Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive
From the Album Love and Thunder

He had compassion for them

As a disclaimer, let me admit that the following thoughts are not fully formulated or complete…instead, they are in a certain stage of development. I write these thoughts here because the process of writing often helps me identify and clarify ideas that are rolling around somewhere in my brain, but are not, as yet, particularly well connected or shaped. If my thinking or theology is off, please feel at liberty to correct me — I would gladly welcome it.

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“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” ~ Matthew 9:35-36

When I read this a little while ago, it struck me that Jesus had compassion for the crowds. This doesn’t say that Jesus had compassion for the believers in the crowds, or for the elect in the crowds, or for His disciples in the crowds, but for the crowds — that great mass of unnamed people, many of whom, I think it is safe to assume, never turned to Him in true faith and repentance. For those who were not and would not become believers, Jesus, being fully God and fully man, knew that they would never turn…and yet He had compassion on them.

I did a little bit of page flipping and came across other verses that intimate something similar:

“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” ~Matthew 14:14

“Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.’” ~ Matthew 15:32

Here, again, Jesus had great compassion and concern for a large crowd, a large mass of people, many of whom were following Him, not because they had bowed their hearts to Him in humble repentance and faith, but because they wanted something physical and temporal — and He knew that full well (see John 6:25-41ff; v. 66f). In fact, these people later  grumbled against Him (John 6:41), stopped following Him (John 6:66) and eventually participated in His bloody murder. Yet, our Lord had compassion for them, and He fed them, and He taught them…fully knowing what they would do in the future.

Similarly, our Christ healed hundreds – thousands – of people throughout His few years of ministry. How many of those ever even thanked Him, not to mention turned to Him in repentance and faith? Remember the ten lepers? Only one out of ten even returned to thank their Healer — and that one wasn’t even a Jew! And yet, knowing full well their hard hearts, our Lord had compassion on the crowds, the masses, and He healed them — He stopped their flows of blood, cast out their demons, opened their eyes, loosed their tongues, cleansed their skin, straightened their hands, raised their dead, restored their legs, removed their suffering.

My point is this: Jesus, God incarnate, demonstrated love and compassion for the world around Him, even the ones who were destined for an eternity of punishment and separation from Him, those He knew would never bow their knee to Him. He did not feed them and heal them — love them — with an agenda of getting something out of it…not even a good agenda of “saving” them. He showed true compassion as an end unto itself — not as a means to an end.

For a little while now, ever since hearing a Tim Keller sermon/lecture (see blog entry for May 9th “Evangelism and taking out the trash: what they should not have in common”) I’ve been convicted that my foundational view of loving the world was skewed. I’ve been taught that compassion and love for the lost are good and natural outworkings of the Spirit’s transformation in our lives — but somehow in my thinking, I’ve always equated that compassion and “love” with a nifty way to do evangelism — my assumptions have been something like “Just show genuine love to people and that will open great doors for Gospel conversations.”

While this may be true, I don’t think it’s the proper motivation, or at least not the only proper motivation, for truly loving others. Jesus loved the lost — showed physical, tangible compassion to them — knowing that many of them would remain “the lost.” He loved them because love, and grace, and mercy, are attributes of God, and loving people — any people, all people — glorifies God. Loving people is simply the way things should be. And though this does not negate all the other things we were also created for, we were indeed created to love. As images of God and followers of Christ, our love should not be discriminatory in any sense of the word, and neither should it have an agenda. We should love the lost not only to try and get them to repent and believe — although that would be wonderful — but simply because they should be loved.

As a clarification, what I mean by “love,” this intangible term I’ve been throwing around, is not — absolutely not — the weak, sentimental, emotional goo that Hollywood and Books-A-Million throw at us. Instead, it is the idea of self-sacrifice and service, living for something outside of “me.” This love should be both a lion and a lamb: fierce and tender, strong and gentle, valiant and compassionate — washing the feet of the dirty, bloodying self in defense of the defenseless, fighting for truth, showing long-suffering patience, standing in the gap for widows and orphans, binding the wounds of the broken, feeding the hungry.

Our Lord demonstrated this kind of love, and we should gladly strive to follow His example, not as an attempt to merit His favor, but as redeemed slaves, joyful to serve a loving, good, and compassionate Master.

Rest

After several days away, surrounded by heat and sand and sunscreen and Jr. High boys who, though wonderful, do not have a particularly keen sense of “cleanliness” regarding cramped sleeping quarters and shared bathrooms, it is good to be home. It is good to rest, to sleep in a room that is not full of damp towels, dirty cloths, exploding gym bags, and extremely squeaky bed frames and mattresses. Those things all added to what is a great memory, but it is still good to be home.

How much more will it be good to be home from the journey of a short life — a life that is sovereignly good and necessary, but is likewise surrounded by corresponding “unpleasantness’s” — and then enter into true rest.

His Bride

I spent almost eleven hours in a tux today — I think that’s a record for me. To clarify, I’m not saying this is a bad thing…it wasn’t necessarily the most comfortable thing…but it was a good thing (which, come to think of it, is a neat illustration: just because something isn’t comfortable doesn’t mean it isn’t wonderful). Eleven hours in a tux was indeed a wonderful thing — it was wonderful because friends were getting married and starting a new life, and a very visible representation of Christ and the church was portrayed in those incredibly tender moments.

In fact, being a very close spectator to the journey that brought this husband and wife together, the journey that traversed mountains and valleys and deserts and fertile fields, gives me great hope and joy in thinking about our Christ and His bride, the church. It is a very special thing to realize that, just as this groom, who is not perfect,  has, out of love, pursued and won his bride, and just as this bride, who is not perfect, has been won by her husband and loves him deeply and fervently, so also our Savior, who is perfect, will one day draw His church to the most blessed marriage feast in all eternity. Then, we, His bride, will love Him deeply and fervently, and we will be beautiful, because He has made us beautiful.

That day will come, for it is our God Who has guaranteed it. And it will be perfect…for it is our God Who will accomplish it.

May that day come quickly, and may our Father grant us the grace to be faithful until that day.

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

‘Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure’—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”
~Revelation 19:6-8

“Fear thou not, nor be ashamed;
All thy sorrows soon shall end,
I, who heaven and earth have framed,
Am thy husband and thy Friend;
I, the High and Holy One,
Israel’s God, by all adored,
As thy Savior will be known,
Thy Redeemer and thy Lord.”

~ John Newton, 1779
“Pensive, Doubting, Fearful Heart,”
Taken from the Gadsby Hymnal

A List

A friend recently related to me the blessings of simply listing the delights and good things that God pours on us in His bounteous grace. Since graduate school looms right around the corner and I will most likely not have time to blog as much, and since today was a perfect day from which to make a list, and since this day is still fresh on my mind, I shall now write such a list. However, the hour is late, so this list will have to be much shorter than it should be. Still, it is what it is, and I thank my gracious God for these things:

1) Good conversation and good laughs over a late Chick-Fil-A breakfast.

2) A large group of inner-city boys who enjoy the swimming pool very much, who want to be helped into the pool and out of the pool, who want to climb onto your back and onto your shoulders, who want to learn how to “float” (tread water), who want to do flips and chew gum and make plans for who gets the front seat on the way to lunch.

3) A smaller group of those same boys riding in my little car, turning the radio to a local hip-hop station and  “dancing” (the type that can be done in a car), and then being rather humored at the totally uncoordinated white-boy who is also trying to “dance.”

4) Enjoying the realization that if I too were black, I just might have rhythm and might successfully pull-off car dancing. (Unfortunately, I am not, and I did not).

5) Enjoying the realization that if I too were black, I wouldn’t have to be too concerned about the amount of time I spend in a swimming pool sans sunscreen. (Unfortunately, once again, I am not, and I should be).

6) ESL students who can see their own hard work paying off.

7) Korean households that have a very particular smell and feel to them.

8) Dinner with dear, faithful friends – remembering the past, enjoying the present, and looking forward to the future. Watching the children of those friends play and squeal and enjoy life.

9) A long drive home with the windows down on a cool, June evening.

10) The intoxicating smell of summer air at night, complete with honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms.

11) Being greeted at home by a bull-frog, crickets, and a perky little dog who loves it when her people come home.

12) Aloe Vera gel.

13) Having the time to write a list of delights and blessings.

I am Mustafah

Last night I finished reading Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Christianity. Written by Mark Noll, it is a lucid, interesting, insightful, and inventively organized work. In addition, Noll opens every chapter with a hymn from the period he’s writing about, and he closes each chapter with a prayer from that period. The final chapter closes with two prayers, one of which you will find below, and the other of which will most likely show up on this blog at a later date.

The following prayer is by a Muslim convert to Christianity. I find it wonderful, moving, and convicting; I pass it along, hoping it will be a blessing.

“O God, I am Mustafah the tailor and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali. The whole day long I sit and pull the needle and the thread through the cloth. O God, you are the needle and I am the thread. I am attached to you and I follow you. When the thread tries to slip away from the needle it becomes tangled and must be cut so that it can be put back in the right place. O God, help me follow you wherever you may lead me. For I am really only Mustafah the tailor, and I work at the shop of Muhammad Ali on the great square.”

PS. 65 Years…

It would be a shame not to mention, even briefly, that today is June 6. Sixty-five years ago, thousands of men — British men, Canadian men, American men, German men, French men, other men — young and not-so-young, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons — farmers and teachers and mechanics and barbers and office workers — all men who had been alive on June 5th, ended their lives along a string of beaches in northern France and in the land beyond.

In writing about war and soldiers leaving for war, Willa Cather says “…the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase…” (One of Ours). Even though Cather was writing about the First World War, I think her words are applicable here, for all men — in all wars — die for ideas and sentiments and the sounds of phrases.

Today is a good day to remember that wars are tragic realities. They are tragic realities, which are started by tragic ideas and sentiments that were born of a tragic fall. But the very fact that wars are tragic, that we even have a notion of the reality of tragedy, means that there must be a standard, a reality which is juxtaposed to and contrasted against tragedy. And therein lies hope — real, joyful, abundant hope — for we know that, although this fallen life and this fallen earth will continue to be polluted by the carnage of tragic ideas and sentiments, our future home, our real home, will not.

May we remember the fallen ones and their blood-stained beaches, but more than that, may we remember the Risen One and His blood stained cross — and may we exult that one day there will be no more fallen.

“O Lord God,
Thou has commanded me to believe in Jesus;
and I would flee to no other refuge,
wash in no other fountain,
build on no other foundation,
receive from no other fullness,
rest in no other relief.“

“But my love is frost and cold, ice and snow;
Let his love warm me,
lighten my burden,
be my heaven;
May it be more revealed to me in all its influences
that my love to him may be more fervent
and glowing;
Let the mighty tide of his everlasting love
cover the rocks of my sin and care;
Then let my spirit float above those things
which had else wrecked my life.”

Excerpted from “Jesus My Glory” and “The Love of Jesus,” The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritain Prayers and Devotions, Ed. Arthur Bennett

The One Who Reigns

It’s been raining on and off since last night — sometimes strong and heavy, sometimes steady, light, and tender — always wonderful. Our house has a tin roof, so, even inside, the rain produces a certain kind of music — a melody or theme that only the Lord could compose.

I love the rain.

For the past several years, until late last summer, our entire region was in a drought. The summers were tough — it was hot and dry and dusty, and the air was heavy and almost oppressive. Over consecutive years, we watched our ponds shrivel and shrink until one was turned into a virtual mud-hole; the other dried up entirely, and its muddy bed grew copious amounts of tall, wispy field grass that promptly withered and turned pale and brown in the intense dryness and heat. The mud eventually dried completely and then cracked and splintered into thousands of small “plates” that looked curiously like various pictures I had seen of deserts.

During those years, farmers from the whole region were suffering. I vividly remember driving past a field where someone had planted corn — it was dead. Brown and brittle and dead. Profoundly dead.  Our own creek had become little more than a very small trickle in a bed of sand, surrounded by a woodland that was screaming out from thirst.  Forest fires burned out of control, people fought over water rights, and scientists talked of the water table being in trouble. We needed rain…badly.

It was during that time that I realized how much I loved the rain. I missed it. Yearned for it. Prayed for it.

And now the Lord has given us rain once again. Our ponds are full, everything is green and alive, and I’m guessing that the water tables are in much better shape.

I think one of the reasons I love the rain so much is that, for me, it has come to symbolize the way God pours His blessings out upon His people. I can’t help but think of our Father raining down blessings upon our heads — quenching thirst, bringing life, cooling and nourishing dry and weary lands. This is certainly a theme and metaphor we see throughout the Scriptures — and it is beautiful:

“…for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.”
~ Isaiah 43:20b-21

And of course, there’s the Lord’s confrontation with Job:

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war?
What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?”
~ Job 38:22-27

The rain is a blessing. Two nights ago, though, we had rain that was violent. A necessary, life-giving violence. Our wonderful, nourishing rain was accompanied by hurricane-strength wind bursts and fierce, sudden flashes of lightening. We lost three large trees. Benches and chairs were overturned, one side of the house was spattered with leaves and dirt, garden plants were decimated, and countless limbs were blown out of various trees. And yet, the rain was still a blessing, still nourishing, still necessary for life.

And so, our God rains His blessings down on us. Sometimes those blessings are gentle rain showers, adding strength to already nourished land. Sometimes those blessings are wonderful torrents, pouring from the clouds after long stretches in a desert. And still, sometimes those blessings are violent, fearful, and earth shattering — but they are still necessary, and they are still blessings.

Thanks be to our God for His faithful, gentle, and violent blessings. All praise to the One Who reigns.