...help others!
Turn the world's wisdom on it's ear and remake yourself. Use your self and resources to help others; lay down your life that another might live, and find God as your partner.
Selah.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
God helps those who...
...help others!
Turn the world's wisdom on it's ear and remake yourself. Use your self and resources to help others; lay down your life that another might live, and find God as your partner.
Selah.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
If I am an island, you're the sea
Oh God, my God, surround me
Oh God, my God, surround me
With earth and fire and sky,
And raise me on your spirit like the wind.
And carry me to heaven,
Wherever that may be.
For if I am an island, you're the sea.
Selah.
Iain Whyte, from the poem/song, "I wrap my thoughts around me."
Oh God, my God, surround me
With earth and fire and sky,
And raise me on your spirit like the wind.
And carry me to heaven,
Wherever that may be.
For if I am an island, you're the sea.
Selah.
Iain Whyte, from the poem/song, "I wrap my thoughts around me."
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Life lessons from children
To My Unborn Child
Jane Tyson Clement
I carry life or death within me;
this little stirring, blind and pushing creature
is the sweet paradox
inevitable
weighing me down with either joy
or sorrow.
Teach me, my little one, the slow acceptance,
whether death or life is born within me.
I am in God’s hands, and you
in God’s hands
through me—
all of it God’s: the light, the dark,
the winter,
and this wild, petal-drifting,
sun-dazed May.
Selah.
Jane Tyson Clement, No One Can Stem the Tide
Jane Tyson Clement
I carry life or death within me;
this little stirring, blind and pushing creature
is the sweet paradox
inevitable
weighing me down with either joy
or sorrow.
Teach me, my little one, the slow acceptance,
whether death or life is born within me.
I am in God’s hands, and you
in God’s hands
through me—
all of it God’s: the light, the dark,
the winter,
and this wild, petal-drifting,
sun-dazed May.
Selah.
Jane Tyson Clement, No One Can Stem the Tide
At the Lamb's high feast we sing
At the Lamb's high feast we sing
Words: Ad regias Agni dapes -- Anonymous Latin, Robert Campbell (1814-1868)
Tune: Salzburg
At the Lamb's high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who hath washed us in the tide
flowing from his piercèd side;
praise we him, whose love divine
gives his sacred blood for wine,
gives his body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.
Where the paschal blood is poured,
death's dark angel sheathes his sword;
Israel's hosts triumphant go
through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed,
paschal victim, paschal bread;
with sincerity and love
eat we manna from above.
Mighty victim from the sky,
hell's fierce powers beneath thee lie;
thou hast conquered in the fight,
thou has brought us life and light.
Now no more can death appall,
now no more the grave enthrall:
thou has opened Paradise,
and in thee thy saints shall rise.
Easter triumph, Easter joy,
sin alone can this destroy;
from sin's power do thou set free
souls new-born, O Lord, in thee.
Hymns of glory and of praise,
risen Lord, to thee we raise;
holy Father, praise to thee,
with the Spirit, ever be.
Alleluia!
Words: Ad regias Agni dapes -- Anonymous Latin, Robert Campbell (1814-1868)
Tune: Salzburg
At the Lamb's high feast we sing
praise to our victorious King,
who hath washed us in the tide
flowing from his piercèd side;
praise we him, whose love divine
gives his sacred blood for wine,
gives his body for the feast,
Christ the victim, Christ the priest.
Where the paschal blood is poured,
death's dark angel sheathes his sword;
Israel's hosts triumphant go
through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed,
paschal victim, paschal bread;
with sincerity and love
eat we manna from above.
Mighty victim from the sky,
hell's fierce powers beneath thee lie;
thou hast conquered in the fight,
thou has brought us life and light.
Now no more can death appall,
now no more the grave enthrall:
thou has opened Paradise,
and in thee thy saints shall rise.
Easter triumph, Easter joy,
sin alone can this destroy;
from sin's power do thou set free
souls new-born, O Lord, in thee.
Hymns of glory and of praise,
risen Lord, to thee we raise;
holy Father, praise to thee,
with the Spirit, ever be.
Alleluia!
Monday, April 20, 2009
A faithtful look at recovery
Recovery or renewal?
Brian McLaren raises a serious point: in all our discussions of 'economic recovery,' just what are we trying to recover? Are we merely trying to go back to an unconstrained, greedy mentality? If so, recovery is idolatry. And it will not succeed long term.
Important words.
A believing person has an obligation to stand up and be counted whenever s/he sees agendas and actions that will destroy the nation -- whether economics or politics or metaphysics --; however, believers also have an obligation not to accept terms of 'recovery' that refuse to acknowledge the responsibility of life before God.
All of life is spiritual if God exists.
Therefore all our answers must be spiritual in nature, giving clear account before God, never allowing ourselves to say, 'Oh, this is just politics,' or 'this is just economics.'
Selah.
Brian McLaren raises a serious point: in all our discussions of 'economic recovery,' just what are we trying to recover? Are we merely trying to go back to an unconstrained, greedy mentality? If so, recovery is idolatry. And it will not succeed long term.
For many people, economic recovery means getting back to where we were a few months or years ago. That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life. I'd like to suggest another kind of recovery, drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he doesn't want to go back and recover the "high" he had before, or even to recover the conditions he had before he began using drugs and alcohol. Instead, he wants to move forward to a new way of life---a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction. He realizes that his addiction to drugs was a symptom of other deeper issues and diseases in his life---unresolved pain or anger, the need to anesthetize painful emotions, lack of creativity in finding ways to feel happy and alive, unaddressed relational and spiritual deficits, lack of self-awareness, and so on.
Similarly, I'd like to suggest whenever we hear the word "recovery," we as a nation see it not as a call to get back our old addictive high, but rather as a call to face our corporate and personal addictions...
Important words.
A believing person has an obligation to stand up and be counted whenever s/he sees agendas and actions that will destroy the nation -- whether economics or politics or metaphysics --; however, believers also have an obligation not to accept terms of 'recovery' that refuse to acknowledge the responsibility of life before God.
All of life is spiritual if God exists.
Therefore all our answers must be spiritual in nature, giving clear account before God, never allowing ourselves to say, 'Oh, this is just politics,' or 'this is just economics.'
Selah.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Acuerdate oh Señor -- Holy Week
I'll share this video with you all, created for use in our special Tenebrae service. Part of my ordination vows say to serve the people with "intelligence, imagination, creativity and love." Well, this service [including video slideshow] took every ounce of that! Lots of effort and imagination, finding, creating, choosing pictures and then choosing the right song: my first attempt at creating multi-media for worship. But I absolutely couldn't have done this without integral help from Patrick. He was the technical brain behind this video. He worked so hard to make the Tenebrae service a success: thanks, Patrick! Way above the call of duty -- heavenly.
So, friends, enjoy this prayer song and video.
Make sure to click the full screen version, second button from the right.
God bless you this Easter season!
Loy
p.s. Translation of Acuerdate oh Señor
Acuerdate oh Señor
Acuerdate oh Señor
De las naciones de la tierra acuerdate
Que tu favor y tu amor
Sean derramados sobre el mundo oh Señor
En tu bondad acuerdate
En tu bondad acuerdate
Remember, oh Sir!
Remember, oh Sir!
For the nations of the earth remember
That your favor and your love
Are spilled out on the world, oh Sir!
In your kindness remember…
In your kindness remember…
Selah.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Jesus laughing with Mary in the carpenter shop
Jesus had the best sense of humor ever: it was perfect, loving life, seeing irony without cynicism, bringing others into the fair dance of Life.
If you know Him, you just have to love Him. If you don't know Him, what better time of year to make His acquaintance? He's smiling and laughing, beckoning you onward and home!
Selah.
Monday, April 06, 2009
The One who brings prisoners out of darkness
Servant of Yhwh, the Chosen One
Isaiah 42:1-7
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Selah.
Isaiah 42:1-7
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
Selah.
Grace is free but not easy
God in Christ: teleology and theodicy
There was an occasion when Christ was asked a question of theological curiosity—if the goal of salvation would include few or many. And His answer, nationally viewed, was disappointing—as if for Him such an inquiry was academic, or only inquisitive. He convened it at once into a religious occasion. He turned it into the central and primary theology, where we are not merely curious but concerned. He said that such inquiries could only be solved practically only if a greater question were first settled for our own soul; that eschatology was a matter of soteriology, and soteriology a matter of personal salvation; that we had no key to the eternal future of others except what we had for our own; that our interest in the saving of the world might be perverted to submerge our own salvation; that, in the desire to know, or even in our haste to effect, the destiny of the race, we might miss in our soul the certainty which was the root of all other.
‘Are the saved few?’ ‘Few enough to make you afraid you may not be there. See to your entry. The religious inquisitives may be eternal failures. So may the religious bustlers. You must taste salvation to discuss it. You must experience the world’s salvation to deal with the saving of the world’ (Luke xiii. 23). As if He should say: ‘Acquaint yourself with what God has done. Immerse yourself in it. The consummation will not come by man’s gradual organization under a law of love, but by the consummating Act and Gift of God in His Kingdom and its righteousness—by that and each man’s part in it.’
But that Act it was far from easy to take home. Grace is free but not easy. It was not in the growth of man’s delectable breadth and charity that Christ found the way to heaven; He cast His inquirers upon a narrow way ending in a strait gate. It was not to a wider knowledge or a larger vision that He looked for the central and final theodicy. The only final theodicy He knew was God’s saving Act, in which He Himself grew more and more straitened till it was accomplished. To know and taste that was everything. The world’s history did not make for Him the world’s final judgment; it worked up to such a judgment, where He is Himself on the bench. Love’s straightening for a tangled world was a cure for its sin – it was propitiation, the mercy of the Cross. ‘Herein is love—that He gave His Son as propitiation.’
Love that meets need finds that to be the chief need. Its first and last gift to man is the Cross. This Cross became not only a rescue from a strait but the principle and measure of the whole world. The Lord of the Cross is the final trustee of universal judgment. The whole purpose of history, if we are to believe Christ, was something more than the disentangling of a moral muddle, the evolution of a moral order, or even the growth of a moral personality; it was the redemption of that personality. Its final ethic is that involved in faith with its justifying, regenerating power. It was to bring every man to deal with Him as Savior, to plant every man at last before the judgment-seat of His Cross and Grace, to work in every man the supreme conviction of belonging to Him, and finding in Him his own new soul—new, yet his own. So that no man comes to himself till he come to Him, and the world does not’ arrive’ till it settle to rest in Him.
That is the Christian teleology of history, whether we accept it or do not. Christ, judge and justifier, is the one theodicy. The whole race says, ‘for me to live is Christ.’ Everything exists for Him—love, culture, war, tragedy, glory. He is the one moral touchstone of God and man for ever, the crucial point of the eternal and immutable morality of the Holy.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God, 54-44.
There was an occasion when Christ was asked a question of theological curiosity—if the goal of salvation would include few or many. And His answer, nationally viewed, was disappointing—as if for Him such an inquiry was academic, or only inquisitive. He convened it at once into a religious occasion. He turned it into the central and primary theology, where we are not merely curious but concerned. He said that such inquiries could only be solved practically only if a greater question were first settled for our own soul; that eschatology was a matter of soteriology, and soteriology a matter of personal salvation; that we had no key to the eternal future of others except what we had for our own; that our interest in the saving of the world might be perverted to submerge our own salvation; that, in the desire to know, or even in our haste to effect, the destiny of the race, we might miss in our soul the certainty which was the root of all other.
‘Are the saved few?’ ‘Few enough to make you afraid you may not be there. See to your entry. The religious inquisitives may be eternal failures. So may the religious bustlers. You must taste salvation to discuss it. You must experience the world’s salvation to deal with the saving of the world’ (Luke xiii. 23). As if He should say: ‘Acquaint yourself with what God has done. Immerse yourself in it. The consummation will not come by man’s gradual organization under a law of love, but by the consummating Act and Gift of God in His Kingdom and its righteousness—by that and each man’s part in it.’
But that Act it was far from easy to take home. Grace is free but not easy. It was not in the growth of man’s delectable breadth and charity that Christ found the way to heaven; He cast His inquirers upon a narrow way ending in a strait gate. It was not to a wider knowledge or a larger vision that He looked for the central and final theodicy. The only final theodicy He knew was God’s saving Act, in which He Himself grew more and more straitened till it was accomplished. To know and taste that was everything. The world’s history did not make for Him the world’s final judgment; it worked up to such a judgment, where He is Himself on the bench. Love’s straightening for a tangled world was a cure for its sin – it was propitiation, the mercy of the Cross. ‘Herein is love—that He gave His Son as propitiation.’
Love that meets need finds that to be the chief need. Its first and last gift to man is the Cross. This Cross became not only a rescue from a strait but the principle and measure of the whole world. The Lord of the Cross is the final trustee of universal judgment. The whole purpose of history, if we are to believe Christ, was something more than the disentangling of a moral muddle, the evolution of a moral order, or even the growth of a moral personality; it was the redemption of that personality. Its final ethic is that involved in faith with its justifying, regenerating power. It was to bring every man to deal with Him as Savior, to plant every man at last before the judgment-seat of His Cross and Grace, to work in every man the supreme conviction of belonging to Him, and finding in Him his own new soul—new, yet his own. So that no man comes to himself till he come to Him, and the world does not’ arrive’ till it settle to rest in Him.
That is the Christian teleology of history, whether we accept it or do not. Christ, judge and justifier, is the one theodicy. The whole race says, ‘for me to live is Christ.’ Everything exists for Him—love, culture, war, tragedy, glory. He is the one moral touchstone of God and man for ever, the crucial point of the eternal and immutable morality of the Holy.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God, 54-44.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Blackout: A metaphor of spiritual darkness
A parable for Lent
A prophetic word by Emil Brunner
During wartime blackout practices we noticed what life would be like without light, how weird everything was, how one took uncertain steps, how quickly one lost his way, how easily one collided. The blackout is said to have cost more lives in England than the war.
That may be a parable for us of what darkness in the spiritual sense means in the individual life of man and in the life of nations. You know, indeed, how it is when it is simply dark in us and around us, when we do not know in and out, when it is like a devilish darkening over our mind, and we ourselves think, feel, and do what the light shuns. That the Bible calls 'wandering in darkness.' But it can happen that one becomes accustomed to this darkness so that he does not notice how terrible, how inhuman, how contrary to sense all life then becomes. And as in individuals, so in the life of nations. Now is a blackout time in the whole world of nations, as perhaps never at all before.
For earlier one still knew that there is a God, that there is a righteousness, that finally a retribution comes, that there are holy laws and orders. But today there are millions and millions of Europeans – about the others I do not wish to speak – now who no longer know all that, who have radically struck God from their hearts and lives and who therefore live entirely in darkness and who do the works of darkness.
We see today and thank God; many who did not see it are now finally beginning to see it that one cannot live without God. But perhaps it is already too late; perhaps the darkness of godlessness must first give vent to its fury before better times can come. The power of darkness seems today to have received a free night from God that it may crush to pieces what it wills so that the nations realize to what place one comes when he abolishes God.
Selah.
Emil Brunner, I Believe in the Living God, 43-44.
A prophetic word by Emil Brunner
During wartime blackout practices we noticed what life would be like without light, how weird everything was, how one took uncertain steps, how quickly one lost his way, how easily one collided. The blackout is said to have cost more lives in England than the war.
That may be a parable for us of what darkness in the spiritual sense means in the individual life of man and in the life of nations. You know, indeed, how it is when it is simply dark in us and around us, when we do not know in and out, when it is like a devilish darkening over our mind, and we ourselves think, feel, and do what the light shuns. That the Bible calls 'wandering in darkness.' But it can happen that one becomes accustomed to this darkness so that he does not notice how terrible, how inhuman, how contrary to sense all life then becomes. And as in individuals, so in the life of nations. Now is a blackout time in the whole world of nations, as perhaps never at all before.
For earlier one still knew that there is a God, that there is a righteousness, that finally a retribution comes, that there are holy laws and orders. But today there are millions and millions of Europeans – about the others I do not wish to speak – now who no longer know all that, who have radically struck God from their hearts and lives and who therefore live entirely in darkness and who do the works of darkness.
We see today and thank God; many who did not see it are now finally beginning to see it that one cannot live without God. But perhaps it is already too late; perhaps the darkness of godlessness must first give vent to its fury before better times can come. The power of darkness seems today to have received a free night from God that it may crush to pieces what it wills so that the nations realize to what place one comes when he abolishes God.
Selah.
Emil Brunner, I Believe in the Living God, 43-44.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Eternity as the solution to private problems
Hoarding manna vs. trusting and walking
The problems of the private Me are often so intractable because they are not conceived in any but private relations; which is to judge the house from a sample brick. The manna so hoarded goes wrong. The soul’s lot lies in the eternal and universal counsel of God. And the first question still is man’s chief end, and the collective destiny of every soul there. The eternal does not begin on the other side of time; rather all time and space is the content of eternity. Faith is really faith in that eternal destiny as present, and then in our part and place therein by God’s grace.
Immortality means living on in Eternity; it is Eternity living on in us. It is God thinking Himself, living Himself in us. But we are apt to treat God as if He were only a patron saint magnified, whom we expect to attend to our affairs if He is to retain our custom and receive our worship.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God (New Creation Publications: Blackwood, S.A., 1988), 10-11.
The problems of the private Me are often so intractable because they are not conceived in any but private relations; which is to judge the house from a sample brick. The manna so hoarded goes wrong. The soul’s lot lies in the eternal and universal counsel of God. And the first question still is man’s chief end, and the collective destiny of every soul there. The eternal does not begin on the other side of time; rather all time and space is the content of eternity. Faith is really faith in that eternal destiny as present, and then in our part and place therein by God’s grace.
Immortality means living on in Eternity; it is Eternity living on in us. It is God thinking Himself, living Himself in us. But we are apt to treat God as if He were only a patron saint magnified, whom we expect to attend to our affairs if He is to retain our custom and receive our worship.
Selah.
P.T. Forsyth, The Justification of God (New Creation Publications: Blackwood, S.A., 1988), 10-11.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Faith at the edge of a cliff
Hope. Trust!
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? — He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. — My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
If God is for us, who can be against us? — The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? — Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us. — We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
“Arise and work! The Lord be with you!”
Ps. 27:1; Isa. 40:29-31; Ps. 73:26; Rom. 8:31; Ps. 118:6; Ps. 44:5; Rom. 8:37; 1 Chron. 22:16
O Champion of all Loves
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves,
who for our sake endured the cross,
encountered the enemy and tasted death.
Glory be to you, O King of all kings,
who for our salvation
wrestled with principalities and powers,
subdued the forces of hell
and won the greatest of all victories.
To you be all praise, all glory and all love;
now and for ever. Amen.
Alleluia!
Selah.
Glory to you, O Champion of all Loves,
who for our sake endured the cross,
encountered the enemy and tasted death.
Glory be to you, O King of all kings,
who for our salvation
wrestled with principalities and powers,
subdued the forces of hell
and won the greatest of all victories.
To you be all praise, all glory and all love;
now and for ever. Amen.
Alleluia!
Selah.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Divine life
Lord God, whose Spirit drives us out
Lord God, whose Spirit drives us out
Beyond convention's rules and laws
To walk on water for your cause
And test what faith is all about:
Nerve us for risks the Spirit asks,
Strange venturing and daunting tasks.
Lord God, whose Spirit advocates
Structure and form which will endure
That generations may secure
Gains which past faithfulness creates:
Order our ways that we may find
Order consistent with your mind...
Firm boughs and moving sap entwine
To make true branches of the Vine!
Selah.
Words: Ian M Fraser (born 1917) © 1994 Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Lord God, whose Spirit drives us out
Beyond convention's rules and laws
To walk on water for your cause
And test what faith is all about:
Nerve us for risks the Spirit asks,
Strange venturing and daunting tasks.
Lord God, whose Spirit advocates
Structure and form which will endure
That generations may secure
Gains which past faithfulness creates:
Order our ways that we may find
Order consistent with your mind...
Firm boughs and moving sap entwine
To make true branches of the Vine!
Selah.
Words: Ian M Fraser (born 1917) © 1994 Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
De colores -- sing today!
De colores, de colores the fields love to dress in all during the springtime.
De colores, de colores the birds have their clothing that comes every season.
De colores, de colores the rainbow is vested across the blue sky.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry.
De colores, de colores we witness the sun up on clear and bright mornings.
De colores, de colores the sun gives its treasures, God's light to his children.
De colores, de colores the diamond will sparkle when brought to the light.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry.
Joyfully Joyfully we will live in God's friendship because He has willed it
Faithfully, Faithfully we will drink at the fountain of Living Water,
Joyfully, Joyfully we will bring to our Savior a harvest of souls
Pouring outward the light from within, the grace of Our God His infinite life.
Pouring outward the light from within, the grace of Our God His infinite life.
Sings the rooster, sings the rooster with his kiri-kiri, kiri, kiri-kiri,
And the cluck-hen, and the cluck-hen with her kara-kara, kara, kara-kara,
And the babe chicks, and the babe chicks with their pio-pio, pio, pio-pi.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry.
De colores, and so must all love be of every bright color to make my heart cry. Ole!
Lenten lessons from prodigal sons
Younger brother
This surely is also what the Book of Revelation means when it speaks of the "first love." The charm of this first love is that it has not yet become habit and second nature, but comes into our life as an amazing surprise. That there should be someone like Jesus, that he should gain the Father's heart for us, that he should rescue us from the frustration of our personal lives and snatch us away from this horrible vegetating on the edge of the void -- all this is indeed a tremendous surprise. But one must have cried out from the depths, one must have been at the end of the tether, one must have realized the fragility of all human consolations to comprehend what it is when it comes.
For how many a soldier in a concentration camp, weak with hunger and smarting under the knot of the torturers; for how many a person huddling in the last extremity of ghastly dread in a bomb shelter; for how many on the endless gray road of a refugee trek was it not the great experience suddenly to know: I am not in the hands of men, despite everything to the contrary; another hand, a higher hand is governing in the midst of all man's madness and canceling all the logic of my calculations and all the images of my anxious sick imagination? I am being led to the undreamed-of shore, the harbor, the Father's house. And always when things grow dark, suddenly that marvelous helping hand is there. If there is anything that is really bombproof, then it is this, that God is there, on the spot, punctually and with the most amazing precision!
Elder brother
What a wretched thing it is to call oneself a Christian and yet be a stranger and a grumbling servant in the Father's house. And what a glorious thing it is to become aware every day anew of the miracle that there is Someone who hears us. Someone who is waiting for us. Someone who wonderfully sets everything to rights and finds a way out for us when all we can do is to wear ourselves out with worry. Someone who one day, when our last hour comes and we go back home from the far country and the hectic adventure of life, will be waiting for us on the steps of the eternal home of the Father and will lead us to the place where we may speak with Jesus forever and ever and where we shall be surrounded by that joy which here we have only begun to taste.
Selah.
Helmut Thielicke, "The Prodigal Son, Part 2," The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, translated by John W. Doberstein (Harper & Row: 1957)
This surely is also what the Book of Revelation means when it speaks of the "first love." The charm of this first love is that it has not yet become habit and second nature, but comes into our life as an amazing surprise. That there should be someone like Jesus, that he should gain the Father's heart for us, that he should rescue us from the frustration of our personal lives and snatch us away from this horrible vegetating on the edge of the void -- all this is indeed a tremendous surprise. But one must have cried out from the depths, one must have been at the end of the tether, one must have realized the fragility of all human consolations to comprehend what it is when it comes.
For how many a soldier in a concentration camp, weak with hunger and smarting under the knot of the torturers; for how many a person huddling in the last extremity of ghastly dread in a bomb shelter; for how many on the endless gray road of a refugee trek was it not the great experience suddenly to know: I am not in the hands of men, despite everything to the contrary; another hand, a higher hand is governing in the midst of all man's madness and canceling all the logic of my calculations and all the images of my anxious sick imagination? I am being led to the undreamed-of shore, the harbor, the Father's house. And always when things grow dark, suddenly that marvelous helping hand is there. If there is anything that is really bombproof, then it is this, that God is there, on the spot, punctually and with the most amazing precision!
Elder brother
What a wretched thing it is to call oneself a Christian and yet be a stranger and a grumbling servant in the Father's house. And what a glorious thing it is to become aware every day anew of the miracle that there is Someone who hears us. Someone who is waiting for us. Someone who wonderfully sets everything to rights and finds a way out for us when all we can do is to wear ourselves out with worry. Someone who one day, when our last hour comes and we go back home from the far country and the hectic adventure of life, will be waiting for us on the steps of the eternal home of the Father and will lead us to the place where we may speak with Jesus forever and ever and where we shall be surrounded by that joy which here we have only begun to taste.
Selah.
Helmut Thielicke, "The Prodigal Son, Part 2," The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, translated by John W. Doberstein (Harper & Row: 1957)