Coming Up For Air

"Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation." Isaiah 10:5 "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…" Hebrews 1:1-2a Myth, says George Lucas, is always located just over the hill. So it is that God uses various people and stories, myths not in the sense of being untrue, to point to Himself. He kept the people of His covenant looking just over the hill for the revelation to come. In times of good kings, He showed them aspects of His forbearance. In times of correction, like the use to which He put the king of Assyria as referred to in Isaiah 10:5, He used human rulers to point to the ultimate reckoning before Him that was just over the hill. The opening of the Bible's book of Hebrews would keep us from making too much of these types. They are, as John the Baptist himself said, forerunners of the One, but they are not...

From 1 Corinthians 1 – 23 But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. In the quest for the social ideal, C. S. Lewis admits in Mere Christianity , "Most of us are not really approaching the subject  in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party." To this kind of purposefully partial perspective, Paul thunders in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24. Christ's righteousness, His glorious reputation, confronts each society's sense of scandal. His Gospel calls for individuals to come out from that society, for the Jews to be willing to stumble over there pride of appearances on the way to Him, and for the Greeks to be able to embrace a faith they can't entirely reason out beforehand. What of us? Where do we approach Christ for neg...

From Philemon – 4 I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers, 5 hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints, 6 that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. 7 For we have great joy and consolation in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother. 8 therefore, though I may be very bold in Christ to command you what is fitting… On the television show Madam Secretary , the Secretary of State's husband has recently been asked to serve as an ethical advisor to the President of United States. In this role, he confronts the President's Chief of Staff for an unwillingness to convey ethical concerns to their mutual boss with full force. When the Chief of Staff assures him that the President is getting the message and takes offense, the ethical advisor redefines. "It's not WHAT you say, but how you ...

 "I love You, Lord, my strength." Psalm 18:1 “Gratitude is not something we give to God because he wants to make sure we know how much trouble he went to over us," distinguishes John Ortberg Jr. in When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box . Instead, he proclaims, "Gratitude is the gift God gives us that enables us to be blessed by all his other gifts, the way our taste buds enable us to enjoy the gift of food. Without gratitude, our lives degenerate into envy, dissatisfaction, and complaints, taking what we have for granted and always wanting more.” So it is, then, that a Psalm 18:1 state is a work of His grace. Without that perspective, needing and finding strength part from my own is disconcerting, even dis-embodying. I've been taken over, my flesh will rankle. Here I go again, my introspective measures will complain. Maybe soon, I aspire, I'll have built up the character to boast in my own brand. In place of that pride, the psalmist has le...

"Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14b Separate observers in the Ken Burns Baseball series style Babe Ruth as a parade all by himself and as erupting like an Everest in Kansas. But before there was the Babe, there was the brother. When the boy George Herman Ruth was declared incorrigible and consigned to St. Mary's reform school, Burns relates that his family rarely visited him. His classmates derided him with pejorative labels. But then there was Brother Matthias. Ruth biographer Robert Creamer channels a little of the priest's apparent enthusiasm when describing him. Creamer says brother Matthias was a big, strapping Irishman whose skill at hitting a baseball with a shimmy stick seemed to inspire his young charge when little else in his life did. The priest seems to have been Ruth's first window on a sense of positive possibility. I doubt skill at and passion for baseball were laid out alongside poverty, ...

From Psalm 16 – 4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips. 5 O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. 6 the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance. Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Option B of her husband's unexpected death in middle age, "While grief would have to run its course, my beliefs and actions could shape how quickly I moved through the void and where I ended up." The psalmist in that songbook's sixteenth chapter could identify with that future-focused resolve. He is grieved not by personal loss but by the indignity his God suffers as the humans made in His image pervert the religious instincts He placed within them. They hasten to other gods, he observes accurately. They drink offerings of blood and call them pleasing to God. He states fallenness as it is, but then he pivots in his...

From Titus 2 – 11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Sweet regard and wonder, says Dante in The Divine Comedy , were the cause of holy thoughts. Just so, as Paul coaches Titus in the letter's second chapter what to deny and avoid, he doesn't stifle wonder, but feeds it. Look backward, Paul says in Titus 2:11, and focus your thoughts on the evidence of the grace of God you've already known. Look forward with the holy longing of Titus 2:13 to the blessed hope and glorious appearing of the eternal communion with Christ for which we were created. Even in the narrow scope of our own lives as Christians, we can with a Titus 2 focus, feed wonder. Honest reflection reminds us that the grace of God isn't an abstract conc...

From Isaiah 2 – 12 For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come down upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up – and it shall be brought low – 13 upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon the oaks of Bashan; 14 Upon all the high among, and upon all the hills that are lifted up; 15 Upon every high tower, and upon every fortified wall; Upon all ships of Tarshish, and upon all the beautiful sloops. "A state is not a mere aggregate of persons," defines Aristotle in Politics , "but a union of them sufficing for the purposes of life."  By analogy, he reminds us that cities, states, and civilizations are not merely a collection of people who happen to live in the same place. Individuals impact each other such that he often makes the point that states function as living things. Good character in individuals can strengthen the unity of the state. A dissipated character in the same individuals weakens the body politic dreadfully. The...

From 1 John 4 – 16 And we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so we are in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been perfected in love. Dallas Willard was nearing his eternal home, as relates Gary Moon in Becoming Dallas Willard . The actual, intimate sense of the Presence of Christ in which the Christian could walk, a constant, golden thread throughout Willard's ministry, was very much on his mind in his last public appearance. He taught on the Aaronic blessing and challenged his audience which radiates with the reality that God tells us His face shines on His people. Willard counsels, "If you have trouble with a shining face, find a grandparent somewhere." The apostle John in the fo...

In this morning's New York Times, David Brooks relates in the headline atop his editorial, "Students learn from those they love." He says the relationship with a class he taught was stronger and the class more engaged when he was vulnerable enough to admit that he had to cancel class for personal reasons. From this admission of weakness, of humanness, he says the effective, humble educator leads students to new things to love. I have been swimming in the Paul-Timothy relationship in their New Testament books for a couple of months, so it's not surprising that the latest worthwhile thinking I encounter should direct me there. As early as the first five verses of 1 Timothy 1, Paul gives a practical directive that Timothy should stay engaged in the Lord's work where he is, but then pivots to remind him of the paramount affections beneath. 1 Timothy 1:5 explains, "Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience." The ...

For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 2 Timothy 3: 2-5, New King James Version Nathan Foster might be said to have grown up in the house that discipline built. His father Richard wrote the Christian classic Celebration of Discipline . But in The Making of an Ordinary Saint , his own memoir reflecting on the power and application of Christian habits, Nathan connects, "The moment disciplines become an end in themselves, they have failed." Paul concurs on just how easily we can keep the outward motions of a habit or discipline without a heart connection and transformation for which it really exists. Given the company that this dualistic reality ke...

From Isaiah 2 – 12 For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up – and it shall be brought low – 13 upon the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon the oaks of Bashan; 14 upon all the high mountains, and upon the hills that are lifted up "Wake me up to Your glory," pleads I Am They in the appropriately named song "Over and Over Again." God's Word to Isaiah offers just such a wake-up call, and testifies to its necessity. The lofty looks and hearty demeanors of men which that Word confront in the previous verse show the symptoms of heart sick unto death, pride clogging the arteries which maintain life altogether if not for some intervening grace. Since pride manifests itself in the eyes, God deigns to address the eyes first. He shows His willingness and ability to demonstrate mastery of the unseen by moving the seen first. Surely eyes that have beheld high mountains, sturdy oaks and ce...

The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. Isaiah 2:11, New King James Version The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart – these, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:17, New King James Version Applying Psalm 51:17 in his book Songs of Jesus , Tim Keller pleads, "Lord, create in me true brokenness – not the counterfeit ones of discouragement, bitterness, or despair." He differentiates, "Let me know liberation from always needing to defend myself, always standing on my dignity, always smarting because I've been snubbed. Give me the quiet peace of a broken spirit." Isaiah 2:11 takes us to that quiet place, nearly drives us there, by contrast. Isaiah's inspired word look is the same one used for the eye itself. The very organ by which we perceive is itself diseased. How can our looks, then, not be distorted? Confronted with the Divine O...

From Psalm 8 – O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your Name it all the Earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens! 2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. From Proverbs 6 – 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, 7 which having no captain, overseer or ruler provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. "Father," Tim Keller prays openly in his book on the wisdom literature centering on Proverbs God's Wisdom for Navigating Life , "help me to use the gospel on myself to weaken the perfectionism that makes work a burden." Keller provides a particularly apt entrée to a balanced approach on what's left undone. If we have lived any time at all, we have accumulated lists of such oppressive and intermittent apparitions that have haunted us for decades. Even a blessed pause in life's ongoing oblig...

Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction. Proverbs 29:18, New International Version The opposite of vision, warns Mike Ashcraft, is not blindness but scatteredness. When he looks to Proverbs 29:18, then, he sees the reason why the people perish, not listlessness but lack of focus in one paramount direction. Without discipline, the desires of the moment reign in turn. Without a central idea of our purpose submitted to the God Who made us, no external, man-made cues are going to keep us from chasing the latest gratification we think will make us happy. The secret to concentration, coaches Howard Hendricks by way of Ashcraft, is elimination. Time and experience, if we reflect on them, teach us what is not worth pursuing, what doesn't yield results. Concurrent with this realization, so often, is the new mercy of God which allows us to put the wisdom gained by wrong choices into action. With our humble ref...

Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Matthew 6:16-18, New King James Version A friend of mine described her daughter's discouragement in an adversarial work situation. As a mother, she advised her to fix her mindset by dressing especially nicely and spending an extra minute on her makeup. When the daughter was thus commended for the makeup by a coworker, she said volumes with the epithet, "Warpaint." Sometimes discipline in our outward forms and rituals can be disparaged too much by Christians. These bodies are not eternal, and the motions they go through will not save us. Nevertheless, discipl...

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. 1 Timothy 6:11 In what has become my annual ritual, I'm restarting the Ken Burns Baseball documentary series in methodical, relishing preparation for the new season still almost four months off. Baseball's spread at the earliest stages, the show points out, is being assisted by the intermingling and scattering of the Civil War. One contemporary letter writer marvels that men are gathered for a game who 15 minutes later will join a game of a very different kind in battle. It is astonishing, says this erstwhile civilian, the indifference we can develop to danger. The apostle Paul would not have us indifferent to danger with even more long-lasting consequences than physical battles, no matter how willingly benumbed the culture around us. So it is that he stirs Timothy to alertness in 1 Timothy 6:11. From the opening of that letter, he has been distinguishing between...