Jewels of Suffering I

So many friends climbing rocky paths; so many under hard providences and severe mercies!  We can pray, we must pray, and we naturally long for their circumstances to change.  Sometimes it is agonizing to see a person go through deep waters.  But would we remove from them the calling to this particular suffering—the future grace and the blessing that would otherwise never be?  


And I fear that I’m sometimes derailed by thinking that a particular suffering either has no observable merit, or that the benefit of it has been lost since I’ve brought some aspect of it on myself through some haste, omission, foolishness, or lack of love.  But God knew we would thus, and still He moves inexorably onward in His own intentions and perfect plans.

A definition before continuing with the following excerpt:

Stupid:  insensible; dullness of perception or understanding.  (1828 Webster’s)

 "And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre" (Matt. 27:61)

How strangely stupid is grief. It neither learns nor knows nor wishes to learn or know. When the sorrowing sisters sat over against the door of God's sepulchre, did they see the two thousand years that have passed triumphing away? Did they see any thing but this: "Our Christ is gone!"

Your Christ and my Christ came from their loss; Myriad mourning hearts have had resurrection in the midst of their grief; and yet the sorrowing watchers looked at the seed-form of this result, and saw nothing. What they regarded as the end of life was the very preparation for coronation; for Christ was silent that He might live again in tenfold power.

They saw it not. They mourned, they wept, and went away, and came again, driven by their hearts to the sepulchre. Still it was a sepulchre, unprophetic, voiceless, lusterless.

So with us. Every man sits over against the sepulchre in his garden, in the first instance, and says, "This woe is irremediable. I see no benefit in it. I will take no comfort in it." And yet, right in our deepest and worst mishaps, often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resurrection.

Where our death seems to be, there our Saviour is. Where the end of hope is, there is the brightest beginning of fruition. Where the darkness is thickest, there the bright beaming light that never is set is about to emerge. When the whole experience is consummated, then we find that a garden is not disfigured by a sepulchre. Our joys are made better if there be sorrow in the midst of them. And our sorrows are made bright by the joys that God has planted around about them. The flowers may not be pleasing to us, they may not be such as we are fond of plucking, but they are heart-flowers, love, hope, faith, joy, peace--these are flowers which are planted around about every grave that is sunk in the Christian heart.

 --Lettie Cowman, Streams in the Desert

and my favorite Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs:

“There is nothing that befalls you but there is a hand of God in it…when a certain passage of providence befalls me, that is one wheel, and it may be that if this wheel were stopped, a thousand other things might come to be stopped by this…when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing?  God may have some work to do, twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or week…is God about to humble me?  Is God about to break my heart, and to bring my heart down to Him?  Let me join with God in this work of His."

--the streets of St. Andrews at nightfall

Outward Beauty From an Inner Life III

“Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.” I Peter 3:4

Precious:  of great price, costly; of great value or worth; highly valued, much esteemed.  

What other things in Scripture are referred to as precious?  Many references are made to precious stones, and gold--sought after by great kings and treasure-seekers.  Also referred to as precious: lady wisdom; the fruit of the earth that feeds us; the blood of Christ; the death of His saints;  those chosen and beloved of God; His promises; and faith.  These are the great treasures for which Scripture uses the word precious – treasures both in our eyes and God’s eyes.  He is saying that He counts your beauty, your gentleness, your quietness of heart amidst all circumstances, as having that kind of value – equal to the most precious of both earthly and heavenly things.  

Notice that both earthly and heavenly things are listed here! And one more thing to notice:  inherent in the definition of precious is that it costs somebody a great deal.  Does our gentleness and our quietness of heart cost us something?  Is it, in very fact, sometimes the very hardest thing we have ever done, to have a gentle response?-- to keep a quiet heart?  Did we think we might just die in the attempt? ----When our husbands make dubious or wrong decisions; our children fall into sin; relatives demean us; friends betray us;  God knows.  To Him, our response is even the more precious, just as a diamond is more precious than an opal.

“By Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks.” (Heb 13:15).  Sometimes it is a herculean task to offer praise, when we are tired or discouraged or trials beset us ; that is why it is called a sacrifice of praise.  One of Webster's definitions of sacrifice reads:  “the thing offered to God; surrender or loss”.  Praise is costly.  Beauty of the spirit is costly.  Quietness of the heart is costly. That also is why it is precious in the sight of our Christ, who gave at all costs His very life so that we could do this thing that is impossible for us in our own strength, by our own willpower, our own design. 

Outward Beauty from an Inner Life II

One of God’s attributes is beauty, Scripture tells us.  There is an ultimate source of beauty – the character of God.  George Mueller asked, “Are you able to say, from acquaintance you have made with God, that He is a lovely Being?  If not, let me affectionately entreat you to ask God to bring you to this, that you may admire His gentleness and kindness, that you may be able to say how good He is, and what a delight it is to the heart of God to do good to His children.”

Isaiah 28:5  in that day the Lord of hosts will be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of His people.

Ps 27:4 One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek…to behold the beauty of the Lord.

Ps 90:17  And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands.

God is highly concerned about that which is beautiful, particularly in His people.


So the King will greatly desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, worship Him.  Ps. 45:11

Give unto the Lord the glory due His Name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.  Ps 29:2

Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness… Ps 96:9 

We see two powerful and piercing things in these Scriptures:  first, beauty resides in God and in his holiness.  He is a mighty and thundering God, but He is a God who is beautiful; secondly, He has taken great pains and delight to create stunning beauty all around us, and in each one of us.  And thirdly, He himself loves beauty and desires to behold it.  He desires to behold it IN US, and He has defined, described what He thinks beauty IN US looks like:  a gentle and quiet spirit.  He is not immune to the charms of this, for this is His love language from women; it is how He created them to be:  it says here He finds this what?  VERY PRECIOUS. 

Outward Beauty From an Inner Life I

“Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.” I Peter 3:4

I believe good definitions help our hearts get to the essence of things. To Adorn:  to deck or decorate; to set off to advantage; to make more pleasing; to display the beauty or excellence of;

We are called to adornment--We are called to this; as mothers and wives, we have a calling.  Not to making sure Joe gets to soccer practice and Millie has her homework done and something resembling dinner is on the table.  We are called to actively pursue adorning ourselves, and the only way to do this, according to the Truth of Scripture, is by cultivating our hearts.

For so many years I have felt the need to accomplish the demands of the day: having young children around, the constant din of “Mommy?  Mommy!  Mom!!”  Of teaching, and driving, and counseling teenagers.  But the preeminent thing as a wife and mother is our calling to cultivate beauty first of all in our lives: in our hearts and inner soul.  A gentle and quiet spirit is not a personality trait.  I know women who are gentle and of a quiet disposition, and they are lovely.  I am not one of them.  But here we are not called to change our personality.  We are called to live in peace of soul, despite all that annoys and troubles and angers us, despite all that frustrates our plans and brings us sorrow, we are called in our inner spirit to be gentle in our responses to others, to be quiet before the Lord in the ebb and flow of all our waking hours.

What have we accomplished?  All the fullness of our days is perishable stuff.  It comes and goes and very little of it is permanent.  It is a particular aspect of a woman’s life that so much of her work is not permanent.  I have found this to be very frustrating.  Do you have any idea the shocking amount of dishes we use that need washing?  The appalling amount of garbage and recycle that must be taken out?  The mountains of wash that pile up if we don’t do a load every 23 minutes?  And whoever is going to fold all that?  Over and over the cycles wash over us with unrelenting familiarity and yet none of it remains.  I do believe it is one of the reasons why women are in such a hurry to be making a name for themselves today out of the home, to be working on something out in the workplace that they can produce and that has tangible value.  Or that they work on in their homes rather than caring for their home.  We all want to actually see something that we have created that will endure, that has lasting substance.  We’re wired for this.

Last weekend our son kept wanting to go swimming up in the water by Deception Pass.  If you’ve vacationed around here, you know that shock that comes when you dive into icy waters that have come from some glacial stream.  It about knocks the breath out of you.  If we have an imagination, that’s what this verse ought to do for us.  It ought to give us a jolt awake.  What do we create that is imperishable?  Tangible and lasting and creative, something that bears our name?  Imperishable beauty.  The imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.  That is our magnum opus, our work of art, our lasting legacy, that which will bear our name after we are gone.  And we do not do this in our own strength, wisdom, stoic fortitude.  We do it as a product of living hidden in Christ, of walking closely with Him, of residing in His presence.  And we can only do this by cultivating time with Him, by discussing with Him and sometimes not complaining to others, what is on our hearts, and by finding constant prayer to be a way of breathing.  We adorn ourselves with this beauty by knowing more about the character of God, and by taking on the attributes of being in His presence constantly.  Who we are is who God is as lived out through us; everything we are speaks of something He is because He has done it in us and through us.

That One Thing

Today, a guest post from our daughter...

I want a thankfulness that freezes the moment because it delights in a present God.

 This thankfulness like the laughter of the universe, because every syllable screams worship.

It's hard to keep the gratitude flowing...but to Him who keeps the waves rolling, to this God of miracles and wonders beyond our imagining, nothing is impossible.

So as the math problem frustrates, the brother whistles shrilly, the sister messes up a tidy bed, the dishwasher beeps, and I feel hot and ready to let the world know just how bad all this is---in the midst of this, He catches me before the edge, and it would just be easier to fall, but that is not the way of the cross, of the crucified self.

So I open that gratitude journal, and my heart--write the words: "The math lesson I can't figure out", engrave them on the moment; change it thus from defeat to victory. Funny how a watermark on this instant creates ownership, not simply marks it. If He wakes me up, any moment could be watermarked for Him.

Everything seems ordinary to my thankfulness-starved heart. Aren't I about done with school? Why do I have to hang up that load of wash? Why couldn't anyone thank me for bringing up the dried bananas? And I wonder where I'm going, what I'm doing that this magic globe, this wonder-filled planet has grown old. I ask for glory, to see glory, to know glory, to be filled with glory--and He says its right here, right now. "Really, couldn't it be more exciting?" "Really", He says, "this life would be too exciting for you to bear if you knew the half of it."

This is His moment, His life, His time. He has allowed me to borrow it for only a lifetime--Father, teach me usefulness in Your kingdom so that at the end of everything Your Mighty Name will be lifted up in me, that I might grow small.

~~~~

“One thing have I asked of the LORD . . .” (Psalm 27:4)

“. . . but one thing is necessary.” (Luke 10:42)

“But one thing I do . . .” (Phil. 3:13)

~~~

 

~~~

"A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing.

It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He sees only one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God.

Whether he lives, or whether he dies – whether he has health, or whether he has sickness – whether he is rich, or whether he is poor–whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offense–whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish – whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise – whether he gets honor, or whether he gets shame – for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God’s glory.

If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it – he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if he is consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him." (J. C. Ryle, Home Truths)

Weaving Wild Imaginations III

“The imagination seeks out the ideal, and beholds its beauty.  In doing so it penetrates farther to the truth than does the sloth of cynicism.” 

And Anthony Esolen continues tongue-in-cheek, 

“If we want to ensure that our young people grow up with the cramped imagination of the cynic, we should if we cannot ignore the past completely,  at least magnify the tarnish on those who came before us.  We should emulate God’s creation of man in His image and likeness, but in reverse, as through the wrong end of a telescope.  We should make everything small – like ourselves.  That will leave us with quite a sense of moral and intellectual superiority.  And that’s more deadly to the imagination than were the spears of Hannibal’s soldiers to the Romans at Cannae, centuries ago.”

--from Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of your Child

--statue of David Livingston, missionary and explorer, near his boyhood home

Creating Culture

“Neither culture nor leadership… can really be understood by itself.  In fact, one could argue that the only thing of real importance that leaders do is create and manage culture and the unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture.”   --Edgar Schein

Every now and then something from a business model or, in this case a book on business leadership, shines a brilliant light on other aspects of our lives.  My thoughts immediately flew to a family dynamic, in particular a home schooling environment, although one could take that out of the equation and still have it stand.

I’ve been intrigued by the power of creating a family identity, a family culture.  When each person feels respected and enjoyed, feels a strong belonging to a group that is woven together with a million inside jokes, daily laughter, adventure memories, trip stories, days walking in humility and gentleness amidst the battlegrounds of each other’s sins and shortcomings, ministering together to others, helping each other and sometimes hindering,  weathering pinnacles of accomplishments and depths of failures, efforts to be encouraging and profferings of forgiveness and repentance both, a tangible thatch to stand on is woven underneath the feet.  And those feet don’t stray into the byways of an enticing world culture promising alliances of another sort.  They’re too focused on the dance they’re in.

So if we identify that a family can have its unique culture, the obvious leadership is from the parents.  Do we have on our mother-resume, “Create and manage culture”?  I’ve wondered about thinking carefully on what it means to create and manage a culture in the home.  Authenticity in pursuing a life in Christ, remaining in awe of His character revealed through nature, history, people, and the doctrines are a start.  Working hard, playing hard, adds depth and flavor.  Loving each other fervently doesn’t hinder, but it is messy and it is hard sometimes, and those little ones have to be taught to lose the whine and the “Mine!” and self besides, just when they think it couldn’t get any worse.  And do they have examples in the leadership-- those leaders who are creating and managing their culture?

In this rich context, the most basic of all societal fellowship, stories can be discussed and Story comes alive.  The doctrines are adorned with shades and nuances of reality; and that’s when our doctrines really begin to dance.

Having a dog who doesn't mind being buried in the sand, and a cat who doesn't mind being put in the drawers for company while studying, we find are necessary culture-builders.

Speaking my Language Today...

Lifted from Ann Voskamp' blog, just because I need to repeat it to myself:

For the life of me?

I can’t get it all right.

Heaven and earth both know I am a miserable mess away from perfect. This is exactly why the bruised knees just have to bend at the table of communion, and say, yes, please.

I need Jesus.

I need His life.

I need the perfect, sinless sacrifice of Jesus Christ who can take all the broken messes and make them into mosaics of Grace.

And what I really need? Is to come to the table of communion so I can celebrate this messy life! Because this is how the dictionary defines a celebrant:  The person who stands at the table of Communion is a celebrant.  

The person who lives in communion with Christ is a celebrant. A celebrant is the one keeping company with Jesus.

A celebrant is one who celebrates the extravagant grace of Christ.

A celebrant is the one keeping her eyes on Jesus and His perfect sacrifice —precisely because she isn’t perfect.

The sinners and the sick, the broken, the discouraged, the wounded and burdened — we are the ones who get to celebrate grace!

Weaving Wild Imaginations II

“There’s no question that stories for children form their moral imagination…children see in stories that we live in a world where what we do matters, and that there is real good and evil.  And they know that. Children’s stories are simple, but they’re not naïve.  They’re profoundly true…stories call out of us the best that God puts in us. 

“This includes compassion.  Because what is compassion?  Compassion means to suffer with…you put yourself in their story—and that takes imagination.  I have to imagine what it’s like to be you and to be in need.  It draws out of me what is necessary to break out of self-consciousness and solipsistic pure interest only in myself in order to put myself in someone else’s shoes.

“So I think story or imagination is at the core of morality, the core of our moral natures.  And of course that’s the ultimate story.  That’s the greatest story ever told—that God had compassion for us.  What did He do?  He joined our story in a physical way.  He started our story.  He initiated it.  But from the foundations he knew that at some point in history and in time He was going to radically join with His creation.  And that’s called the incarnation.

“I think all great artists take good and evil seriously, even if they don’t know where it came from.  And if they don’t take it seriously, then they’re not great artists.  No great work of literature or art is produced by someone who doesn’t take evil and good seriously.  So we can learn from those people who haven’t put it all together, who don’t know or haven’t accepted that God has incarnated Himself.  God still made them, and God has given them at least limited insights into the human condition.  So I love any story that brings out of me what God intended from me.”

--excerpted from an interview with Dan Taylor, Bethel University, in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God (recommended)

And as we develop discernment, a thought very worth adding here, from Doug Bond, author of many historical fiction books:

"Beware redemptive tales that turn us to ourselves and not to Jesus, that sacrifice Christ and the gospel on the altar of social justice metaphor. Weep, yes, "but drops of grief can never repay the debt of love I owe...""

--Sir Walter Scott's home (speaking of someone with a taste for the imagination of reality

And these are just photos of his study - before we entered his actual library!

----the gatehouse to Sir Walter Scott's home

Great Peace

"Great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing shall offend them."  Ps. 119:165


"Yes, a true love for the great book will bring us great peace from the great God, and be a great protection to us.  Let us live constantly in the society of the law of the Lord, and it will breed in our hearts a restfulness such as nothing else can.  The Holy Spirit acts as a Comforter through the Word, and sheds abroad those benign influences which calm the tempests of the soul.


Nothing is a stumbling block to the man who has the Word of God dwelling in him richly.  He takes up his daily cross and it becomes a delight.  For the fiery trial he is prepared, and counts it not strange, so as to be utterly cast down by it.  He is neither stumbled by prosperity, as so many are, nor crushed by adversity, as others have been; for he lives beyond the changing circumstances of external life.  When his Lord puts before him some great mystery of the faith which makes others cry, 'This is a hard saying; who can hear it?' the believer accepts it without question; for his intellectual difficulties are overcome by his reverent awe of the law of the Lord, which is to him the supreme authority to which he joyfully bows.  Lord, work in us this love, this peace, this rest, this day." 
--CH Spurgeon

Gold By Moonlight

"Hammer this truth out on the anvil of experience--this truth that the loving thoughts of God direct and perfect all that concerneth us' it will bear to be beaten out to the uttermost.  The pledged word of God to man is no puffball to break at a touch and scatter into dust.  It is iron.  It is gold, that most malleable of all metals.  It is more golden than gold.  It abideth imperishable forever.  If we wait till we have clear enough vision to see the expected end before we stay our mind upon Him who is our Strength, we shall miss an opportunity that will never come again: we shall never know the blessing of the unoffended.  Now is the time to say, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise," even though as we say the words there is no sense of exaltation.  "It is possible to gather gold, where it may be had, with moonlight," by which I understand something less helpful than daylight would be in the searching and finding of gold.  By moonlight, then, let us gather our gold."


And what manner of person wrote these words? "It is twenty-one years this year since I could sit up, and for nineteen years it has been this one position in bed; but isn't it wonderful that He enables us to triumph, and to rejoice in Him?"  Amy Carmichael began a home for girls destined to be abandoned or sold to temples in India for their ritual worships.  It is easy to imagine she would be needed on her feet, hugging these little ones, walking actively about and managing the affairs of the busy home.  Our Almighty Father had different thoughts concerning her, and in this she learned to praise Him.  This past weekend we saw a wonderful film about the modern-day Dohnavur Fellowship she began so long ago: it still thrives and throngs with happy and safe Indian children, in a beautiful setting amongst the mountains, and her influence is still strongly felt.  The girls she took in as newborns are now ancient women, but they remember her love and her mothering of them with ageless gratitude.


And who wrote the quote about gathering gold by moonlight?  The faithful Scottish minister Samuel Rutherford, in 1637, "out of much trouble of mind."  


As surely as the sun rose this morning, we serve the same loving Father as they, who can transform every anxiety and sorrow of our hearts into finest gold. 

--view opposite Samuel Rutherford's church ruins

--Ruins of Samuel Rutherford's church, Anwoth, Scotland

He Is! Risen

O, Happy thought - we join with all the saints from all the ages, the immortal refrain:


HE IS RISEN!
--HE IS RISEN INDEED!


May we share the immeasurable love He has lavished on us, children of the Most High God!!

Our Intercessor's Gifts

Guest post from our daughter, so fitting for this day between the remembrance of the horror of Good Friday and the unbounded joy of Resurrection Sunday...

That minute white dot there in the middle---is us---our whole world, the air we breath the ground we walk on, the wisdom we claim, the love we say we have, the truth we say we speak, the hate and selfishness and pride we're so good at-----that little speck is us. And He laid Himself down for that speck, for the little ants crawling, around on it, sinning around on it, falling away on it--us. The grandeur of that love screams out to us of this "God who takes delight in that which He does not need but nevertheless desires." 

taken by Voyager 1 from 4 billion miles away before it left the solar system

"Only God can love in absolute freedom, desiring the other without needing the other." 

That's why "He loves even those who do not return His love, and He loved us eternally even while we were enemies". 

"God's goodness is evident in creation and providence, of course, but the clearest evidence of the complete consistency between God's goodness and His sovereignty, justice, wrath, and righteousness is Christ's cross. There we behold the face of the God-Man who cries out, "It is finished." There, with unparalleled clarity, we see how far God is willing to go in order to uphold all of His attributes in the simplicity (God's attributes are identical with His being) of His being."

~~~~~~~~~

For Him, there was a beginning of the misery but no end.

Every day was as an old beginning, never new, never ending. Day after day there was no time, like an athlete pressing on in a race, straining, hurting, running, pressing, foregoing looking up in the pain of running, but hopeful—yet this was different. In this place there was no hope. All the pain and strain and exhaustion were there, but there was nothing to run for—the prize had already been won. This prize of all the ungodly—it was merited before the race began. The prize was ease in this first life; the right to do and live and love and deride and curse and hurt and sin as one chose. That was the reward. The earning was destined to take eternity.

This perfect Son, having lived the perfect life, now endured the judgment due for a flagrant life. All this, this world, this eternal life, He bore for us, when He yielded up His Spirit--the Son of God entered this realm of sweat and no hope, pain and no comfort, bleakness and no sunshine, claws, but no birds, and He existed eternity in this state. He took the rejection of His Father, His Light went out.

The Father saw Him and said “No”. That small, piercing, gut-wrenching word. He said no to His Son because His Son had given His holiness to us, and He stood before His Father in my sins. He was black and the Father turned away. For me.

He was cosmic, infinite, eternal, glorious, holy, perfect. I am human, mortal, weak, small, horrid, dirty, sin-loving, pride-clinging. And He descended into hell for me. Three days, thirty six hours—in human time. In God-time, it was the entire span of time. It was all of eternity.

And then the Father raised him from the dead, brought Him up out of hell. Where did He go from there? Did He celebrate and fly through the sky and fling off all the uncomfortable, itchy humanness, and soar with the eagles and teach the stars to dance? He sat down at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us now. He is there when we bring our requests. He makes sure they go through. And the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning which cannot be uttered.

And we don’t pray because we don’t have time? What an extravagant gift we are we letting fall into dilapidation!?


(quotes from Michael Horton's "The Christian Faith", pgs 265,6)