“I lay down and slept;
I wakened again, for the Lord sustains me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me round about.”
— Psalm 3:5-6
Reading through the Psalms is going to provide ample fodder for prayer—and encouragement and peace, I think, especially as I construe all the enemies involved as demons or anxieties or skeptics. Not that I will wish harm upon the skeptics as the psalmists wish about their enemies; but I will, as indicated in the above quotation, not be afraid of them.
How do good things in the ekklesia end up going bad? Often the road to corruption is paved with stones of well-intended pragmatism. Virtue is not always practical, nor profitable. Love is not pragmatic. There is no love column on a profit-loss statement or a balance sheet. Love cannot be analyzed. Love can be entered in to. Doing what is right does not always have an immediate practical outcome of benefit. When a spirit of pragmatism enters a community (especially regarding money) little incremental steps are taken choosing the practical and the profitable over the virtuous and honorable. Those little bricks of making pragmatism our God, pave the highway to corruption. Pragmatism wants to assure that a course of action turns out well for me/mine and ours. Love wants to make sure it turns out well for others, even if it costs me/us.
And you could always say: Well, I could have given that money to the missionary. And that is true. Every ice cream cone you buy you could have been sent to somewhere else. But I am thinking: Would you have? Has it gotten in the way of heartfelt calling to do a good thing?
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Galatians 3:13a).
Jesus be like, “S’alright. I got this.” And boom, with his execution, fulfills the requirements of the Law once and for all so that we don’t have to worry about it.
No, really. Paul writes that He bought us off a lender who was on our backs. You don’t need to do anything to inherit eternal life. He paid your ticket.
“Paul wanted [Timothy] to go with him; and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those parts, for they all knew that his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:3). Now that’s dedication.
— William Makepeace Thackeray, as quoted by Laurence Hutton as quoted by The Boston Herald, cited here in my journal with some emphasis on the “whatever” part
“Who is there among you who is wise and intelligent? Then let him by his noble living show forth his [good] works with the [unobtrusive] humility [which is the proper attribute] of true wisdom…But the wisdom from above is first of all pure (undefiled); then it is peace-loving, courteous (considerate, gentle). [It is willing to] yield to reason, full of compassion and good fruits; it is wholehearted and straightforward, impartial and unfeigned (free from doubts, wavering, and insincerity). And the harvest of righteousness (of conformity to God’s will in thought and deed) is [the fruit of the seed] sown in peace by those who work for and make peace [in themselves and in others, that peace which means concord, agreement, and harmony between individuals, with undisturbedness, in a peaceful mind free from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts]” (James 3:13,17-18, AMP).
Thank You, God, for reinforcing the lesson: If you think you’re wise, you’d better be able to prove it with deeds.
“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (Jesus, as reported in John 20:29).
I’ve always taken this saying of Jesus, along with several other beatitudes, as being some kind of moral judgment, in this case, that folks who trust Jesus without having to see Him are better people than those who need to see Him to believe. But that’s not what He is saying: Instead, it’s that the more credulous among us are happier, to be envied, as the Amplified Bible puts it. It’s true: If I didn’t feel impelled to study and intellectualize and apologize God, I’d be a much happier man.
Acts 26:8 is a phrase that contains the heart of the problems of using a Bayesian probability approach to the question of the Resurrection: “Why is it considered incredible among you people if God does raise the dead?” In other words, if you’re a theist, it isn’t that hard to believe in a resurrection. If you’re an atheist, then yes, obviously, it’s, um, unlikely, to say the least.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4).
and
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:3-9).
Hardship appears to be what New Testament writers have in mind when they talk about trials, tribulations, and endurance. But what about doubt in the face of rational critique? Could that count? Should I, easy-life white man, take these verses and those like it as my own?
Also, the Bible writers have this strange idea that trials bring perseverance rather than challenging it.
A simple experiment in making friends (and thus a community): Let’s gather for a potluck dinner on the second and fourth Thursday evenings of each month.
Open to anyone living in Houserville, Bathgate Springs, Clover Highlands—anyone at all, really, but intended for folks for whom, say, Spring Creek Park is a walkable destination.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured” (Kurt Vonnegut).
This write-up of mine describing the Houserville Social Club on the potluck sign-up sheet on SignUp Genius and the accompanying Vonnegut quote has taken on increasing value in my life recently. As if it really is my mission. Maybe it’s Robin Williams’ death and the admissions of depression that are being published everywhere in its wake that has helped galvanize it.
Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
— Titus 3:1-8
Methinks we cannot be qualified for salvation by our works, but we can be disqualified.
Jordan and Stephen divulged to me on our way up to Philipsburg for DiamondBack Christmas party day that playing vertical music for Keystone was the worst experience in their worship-playing careers. The motif of their report was that the people there were “mean.”
As Carla said upon my report of that revelation later this evening, “It’s good when wolves are wolves.”
Now may our God and Father Himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you; and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people…so that He may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.
— Paul in 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
A gentle sense of Your presence in my life suffused my soul today after work as I reflected on the verse above. Life was good today, and the verse above indicates that love makes us majestically holy. Wow.
“You don’t know in advance whether God is going to set you to do something difficult or painful, or something that you will quite like; and some people of heroic mould are disappointed when the job doled out to them turns out to be something quite nice.”
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (p. 53–54), in response to “Is it true that Christians must be prepared to live a life of personal discomfort and sacrifice in order to qualify for ‘Pie in the Sky’?”
The recent thing You’ve been emphasizing to me is the part he says about folks with the ‘heroic mould.’
“Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).
This is for you, friend: This verse is a greeting and general prayer for well-being for Gaius, not unlike what we would write in a letter today (if we really meant it), not evidence that all Christians should be wealthy.
