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Showing posts from December, 2018

What to Share Guided by Why We Share

My wife and I watched the 1950s period piece Quiz Show last night. It proved once again that beneath the outward conformity and stability of the decade lay a lot of tension and insecurity. It also spoke to trends which I find outlast the Cold War or that particular burst of consumerism. The movie spoke powerfully to what one generation tends to pass on to the next. Herb Stempel is an ex-G.I. with a photographic memory. He is also a Jew from Queens. On the quiz show 21 , he believes he has found his entrée to social acceptance and admiration. As he continues to find an outlet on the show for the fact he has stored, between outings he peppers his son with similar questions. His wife protests, "You're going to give him your ulcer." She would prefer that her son develop his own ulcer rather than inherit his father's particular fixation. The Bible doesn't have quiz shows on which its characters can show their strengths and weaknesses. Neither does it offer us historie

Three of Worship's Uniting Capacities

From Psalm 147 – 11 ... Kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, 12 young men and women, old men and children. 13 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor above the earth and the heavens. "Praise unites us with one another. Here is," reflects Tim Keller in the Songs of Jesus (page 363) quoting Derek Kidner's book Psalms 73-150 (page 488), "the only potential bond between the extremes of mankind: joyful preoccupation with God." Keller and Kidner point us to a passage which compactly and gloriously shows the Lord's reputation makes the differences between cultures and countries all but irrelevant by comparison. All nations, the psalmist is certain, foreshadowing the fulfillment revelation promises with a gathering of the faithful from every tribe and tongue, will worship. Because of this certainty of a common origin of all men and common destination for His worshiping elect, Paul can

Renewal Reflected in Culture

From Psalm 147 – 12 Extol the Lord, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion. 13 He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your people within you. 14 He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat. In the Ken Burns documentary Baseball I'm looking forward to undertaking again as an imagination warm-up for the new season, a sportswriter comments on the beguiling state of the game in the 1990s. As it was beset by steroids and yet more popular than ever before, he queries, "Is it possible to have a renaissance and a calamity at the same time?" Biblically, yes. Cities are often the recipients of God's judgment for their collective self-assurance apart from Him. Cain was told to rely on God but built the city instead. The denizens of Babel tried to reach the Heavens on their own terms. Even Jerusalem, according to Isaiah 1 and many other places, can co-opt biblical vocabulary and rituals and use them to reinforce a national, regional, and munici

God of Every Star, and Every Individual Scar

From Psalm 147 – 2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 He counts the number of the stars; he calls them all by name. 5 great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite. My predilection for 1990's television holds a particularly fond space for Doogie Houser, M.D . I would never claim the intellectual distance between the teenage doctor and his peers for my own. Still, I especially appreciated the way he processed a particularly complicated adolescence and distilled its lessons in writing. But even Doogie could be obtuse. In one episode, he made much of his efficiency in processing patients when compared to his physician father's more deliberate approach. With all the words signified by a perfect SAT score to choose from, Doogie even trumpeted that his father's practice was a crop duster compared to his own advanced technological approach. I consider this when

The Compounding Power of What We Say to Self

"4 Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is distressed. 5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on Your works; I muse on the works of Your hands." Psalm 143:4-5, New King James Version I was thumbing through the beginning of Gary W. Moon's promising Becoming Dallas Willard . The author roots one of the philosophy professor and Christian author's earliest realizations in a spelling lesson. Willard's older sister hints that little Dallas can imprint the spelling of a word on his mind by saying it to himself several times. Oh, what a gift of grace it is, and what a momentous impact it has to be able to choose what we continually think about! It is no exaggeration to say that the cumulative impact of these tiny choices changes us. The author of Psalm 143 knows this. He understands that more than success in the school room is at stake. In Psalm 143:4, he takes an honest appraisal of the state of his heart, and God sees fit to preserve it for

Grandeur in the Gradual and the Granular

From Psalm 144 – 1 Blessed be the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle – 2 my loving kindness and my fortress, my high tower and my deliverer, my shield and the One in whom I take refuge, who subdues my people under me. 3 Lord, what is man that you take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that you are mindful of him? 4 man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. Jonas Blaine was the grizzled but wise veteran master sergeant on the television show The Unit . He checked any draft toward complaining about the grind of improving in the soldierly profession with the observation, "The more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in combat." King David in the Bible knew something about the sweat of training for high-stakes excellence. Like Jonas, he saw beyond the pain and present rigors. His gaze went past Jonas's, past success and preservation in battle. Few jobs have more dramatic downside than that of a soldier, yet even in t

Engaging Hearts

Wisdom cries aloud outside; She raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses, at the openings of the gates in the city she speaks her words. Proverbs 1:20-21 At my church's business meeting, one of the elders announced some major construction changes to the sanctuary. He likened the leadership's reasoning to that which keeps Wheaties among the bestsellers on the cereal shelves. Partly because what's on the outside of the box keeps adapting to the tastes of the culture, what's inside the box goes home with consumers. Likewise, the Gospel adapts its idiom in order to be where the culture is. Even within the relatively brief Earthly ministry window within which Christ demonstrated so many aspects of His righteousness, He applied the Hebrew Scriptures by quoting them directly, He used events current to His listeners, He told stories, and He engaged bravely in direct confrontation. He was not wedded to fondness for a particular format. Inst

Both Sunny and Soldierly

"Who is she who looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?" Song of Solomon 6:10 Spurgeon finds in Morning and Evening , "To a great extent in spiritual things we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone can bring us to see Jesus." Likewise, Song of Solomon 6:10 finds much of our grounding in our perspective. One of the virtues that the male bridegroom finds in his betrothed is that she looks forth as the morning, that she radiates a deeply rooted optimism. As he continues to expound on the impact of this outlook as it works its way outward into her person, he arrives in an interesting result. She is, he says, as awesome as an army with banners. We split, I find, this duality of the righteousness of Christ and rob ourselves in the process. There are, we bifurcate, those who give off sunny optimism, who have experienced nothing but good from a fallen world and who expect nothing but good in the future. Th

Parenthood's Purest Desires

"Then Elkanah her husband said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?" 1 Samuel 1:8 "I wanted to be the fourth member of the Trinity," admits Steven Curtis Chapman in Heaven in the Real World , "in my wife's life." He has company in that unholy aspiration. Yet, for instance, in Elkanah's thoughtless marital obtuseness in 1 Samuel 1:8, I find a strange comfort today. Elkanah was unfit to fill all the broken places in his wife that fulfillment in child rearing might have addressed. Steven Curtis Chapman already knows he cannot aspire to be the fourth member of the Trinity as husband to his wife. And yet, Scripture rightly sets the Lord Jesus as the fulfillment of what from Elkanah's lips was a hollow boast. In a desire for children, men and women want to leave a legacy. In Christ, this is already fulfilled whether we have physical children or not. Do we know

Christ Beyond Compare

From Psalm 135 –"14 The Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants." The sweeping wholeness of God's character might be encompassed in two ends of this short verse. Or, as Spurgeon stretches wide and wondrous his theology to include in According to the Promise , "Gracious things are as sure as terrible things in righteousness."  To our inspired text, the psalmist's sure hope that the Lord will, to use his verb, vindicate has a clean, hot, hard edge reminding us we can await His perfect and detailed justice.  No wrong, no matter how gaping or how granular, has been done His honor or His people which He will not set right. And meanwhile, in what state does the psalmist wait along with his justly aggrieved brothers and sisters in Abraham's faith? We don't finish with the perfect balance of Psalm 135:14 before he tells us. God Who uproots and exposes the shams which entrap His own will come to us with compassion, a balm as soothin

The Inherited Expression

"… that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, 'What do these stones mean?'" Joshua 4:6, New King James Version On the show This Is Us , middle-aged couple Toby and Kate are finally expecting. Toby perceptively notices that a great deal of tension surrounds possible problems that could still accompany the pregnancy. He challenges Kate on this, suggesting a counterintuitive remedy that she pursue another life goal of finishing school while she waits for the baby's arrival. The reasoning for his prescription is memorable, as he connects that the expression on their faces when they talk about the baby is going to be the one he or she inherits. So it is with us. The narrative we relate, and especially the emotion we attach to it are contagious. If we are discontent, suspicious, defensive, these attitudes are caught at least as much as taught. If, on the other hand, we follow through with the fullness of our story to the extent

Shepherding As Soulcraft

Song of Solomon 1:7 (To Her Beloved): Tell me, O you whom I love, where you feed your flock, where did you make it rest at noon. For why should I be as one who veils herself by the flocks of your companions? Song of Solomon 1:8 (The Beloved): If you do not know, O fairest among women, follow in the footsteps of the flock, and feed your little goats beside the shepherds' tents. "Labor anywhere," decrees Spurgeon in Morning and Evening , "can have royal dignity if Jesus is involved." So it is in Song of Solomon 1:7-8 that such and ordinary activity as feeding a flock of demanding animals can be a setting for courtship with the ultimate Shepherd. He places in us, His beloved, a desire to see and be close to His glory – the public demonstration of His character. Sunday is not enough. Date night is not enough. We want, like the beloved in verse seven who will eventually be a bride, to see our Man in action even in the setting which is otherwise so mundane to us

Seeing as the Savior Sees

Song of Ascents. LORD, remember David and all his self-denial. He swore an oath to the LORD, he made a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob: “I will not enter my house or go to my bed, I will allow no sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.” Psalm 132:1-5, NIV John Donne focuses himself and his readers in Letters to Several Persons of Honour , "When we think of a friend, do not count that as a Wass thought, though that friend never knew of it." He continues, "If we write to a friend, we must not call it a Wass letter, though it never find him to whom it was addressed; for," he concludes, "we owe ourselves that office, to be mindful of our friends." If Donne's mindfulness is good, the pastor and poet would agree that the grace-saturated, prayer-propelling mindfulness of Psalm 132:1-5 is even better. What is this author and petitioner's synonym when he thinks of his brother ps