In the Flesh I Live by Faith

Ever since I became a follower of Jesus in college, Galatians 2:20-21 has been one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!  (NIV)

It's one thing to be excited about a Bible verse that captures the essence of the good news about Jesus when you're new in the faith.  But it's another thing to look back eleven years later and see more of this.  I guess that's one of the many things I love about the Word of God, too: it's so rich that it never ceases to be relevant.  As I learn more about life, it speaks deeper truths.

Paul wrote Galatians sometime between A.D. 48-52, at least 17 years after he met Jesus on the road to Damascus (see 1:18 and 2:1).  And what did he learn in those 17 years?  "It becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners" (2:17).  When I first began to love the gospel I think I had some idea I'd have grown a halo by now.  But instead I'm pretty sure the opposite has happened.

What I never saw before--and what I love now--is that Paul says that "the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith" (ESV).  For years I read "in the body" (NIV) and thought, Duh.  Of course he lives in the body.  He's a human.  He has a body.  I never understood why that was relevant for Paul.  But seeing "flesh" (Greek sarx) made sense of it: "flesh" is Paul's one-stop-shop for referring to the powers and postures of a fallen world and a sinful nature that tries to exercise every way of achieving hope and peace and life and joy except for submitting to God and trusting in him.  Our flesh represents our self-serving desires bent against God.

So why do I love this?  Because Paul just spent 17 years becoming an even bigger sinner, growing daily in his debt to God.  He knows he still lives "in the flesh."  He still has a "body of death" that perplexes him with his conflicting desires that rear their head without warning (see Romans 7).  And yet he can say that even in the midst of that--in fact, precisely because of that--he lives by faith in Jesus, God's Son.*  He sees he can't earn God's favor and love by his moral rectitude and just gives up, casting his worn-out soul on Jesus who loves him.

And if Paul can do that, so can I, because Jesus is not dead but alive.  In the middle of my perplexing, senseless sin that just grows every day, I can and must live by faith in Jesus.  I can know that Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me."  His death has not only fully paid for all my sins but also served as the culmination of a life of obedient sonship that became a fragrant offering to God (see Ephesians 5:2 and 1 Samuel 15:22).  And now, somehow, mysteriously, by faith his very life replaces mine before God--his obedience, his sonship, his place in the Father's love.

So I can go on living in the flesh, a stinkin' mess of sin and brokenness, knowing and trusting in Jesus.  The gospel is good news indeed.

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*Paul's argument in Galatians 2:17ff. goes something like this: Because Paul and his company are sinners, people are accusing them of using Jesus' grace as an excuse for sin: When people have Jesus, they don't need to be law-keepers to earn God's favor, so Jesus is a "servant of sin."  But Paul denies this, saying rather that they were "found to be sinners," people who by very nature cannot keep the law wholly and so cannot earn a right standing with God through it.  Rather, Paul sees how the law shows him his own sin and then how Jesus fufilled it for him, so that he can say "through the law I died to the law."  That is, the law itself showed him the law was useless but that Christ was faithful in every way Paul himself had failed.

Blog Theme Song?

This afternoon I was splitting duty between rocking my crying, fussy son and preparing for a class I'll be teaching at church next week about God's providence--his sustaining, governing, and directing of all things for the sake of his saving purposes.  Getting annoyed and frustrated, I thought, "Music soothes the savage beast; maybe Ephraim will chill out with some music ... and a bottle."  With providence on my mind, I put on--who else?--Caedmon's Call.  As I listened to "Before There Was Time" (on In the Company of Angels) I realized it sums up everything good this blog is about.  Not only is this song about how God set his affection on his chosen people from before creation in order to redeem them from the darkness of sin and how he works out his care in every detail of their lives.  The song also even mentions the Anastasis fresco in Istanbul that makes up the page backdrop (Jesus taking Abraham and Sarah or Adam and Eve by the hand from the grave).  The notes on this song from the Caedmon's Call website profess: "Simply awestruck by the depth and breadth of God's plan and provision, to know that we are in His grasp more tightly than we can possibly understand."

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!

Before there was time, 
There were visions in Your mind. 
There was death in the fall of mankind, 
But there was life in salvation's design. 
Before there were days, 
There were nights I could not see Your face, 
But the night couldn't keep me from grace 
When You came and took my place. 

So I cry, "Holy, only begotten Son of God, 
Ancient of Days." 
I cry, "Holy, only begotten Son of God." 
And sing the praises 
Of the One who saved me, 
And the promises He made. 

He Who Is Forgiven Little, Loves Little

If you're a true Christian, you've surely found yourself, like me, wanting for love and enjoyment of God, a love that overflows into selfless service and adoration. We want to be full of love for God and our neighbors, because we know that's what will truly satisfy us. But the moments where such delight and zeal become reality are all too few and fleeting. How, then, can we overcome this conundrum?

One day, Jesus went to dine with Simon, a leader in the religious sect called the Pharisees. Contrary to the normal custom of honoring a guest by greeting him with a kiss and washing his feet, Simon received Jesus with neither. As dinner went on, a woman renowned for her promiscuity interrupted the meal to anoint Jesus' feet with perfume. Even more, she began to wash Jesus' feet with her tears and--gasp!--she let down her hair (a gesture reserved only for lovers and husbands) and wiped his feet and kissed them (Luke 7:36-38). I bet you could hear the handfuls of chickpeas and bread drop to the floor. Simon then sneered at Jesus in his heart, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner" (v. 39).

Jesus responds with a parable pointed at his smug, ingracious host to illustrate the simple fact--so simple that even Simon caught it--that the extent to which our burdens have been relieved and our guilt is pardoned determines how grateful our response is. "I tell you [Simon], her sins--and they are many--have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love" (v. 47, NLT). Then he turned to the woman and assured her, "Your faith [in me as loving Rescuer] has saved you; go in peace."

In other words, the extent to which we love and adore God is determined by the extent to which we appropriate the forgiveness he bestows through Jesus. The praise, adoration, and service that were once drudging obedience are transformed into glad reflex when we experience the God's grace, his free removal of all our stains and shame, and calls us "My beloved child, with whom I am well pleased."

It's true that the believer is freely, fully, and forever released from the condemnation of his sin from the moment he embraces the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ as his Savior (Romans 8:1). But that doesn't mean that the experience of our forgiveness lasts forever, or that we stop sinning and needing God's forgiveness. Accordingly, we must continually and openly bring our need to God. Only to the extent that we open up, get honest, and expose our dirt to the God Who Sees and to some brothers and sisters we trust, will we experience the faithfully-forgiving, never-failing love of our heavenly Father. And when his forgiveness and his Word of justification penetrate our souls and lift them out of despair and out of the deluding fog of self-justification, we will find worshipful, obedient gratitude right there as well.

John 17: Given to the Beloved to Be Loved

In my previous post I mentioned this idea of an ancient plan within the Trinity, one that even antedates creation: the Father's plan to redeem sinners through the sacrifice of his Son, who would receive those sinners as a gift and indwell them through his Spirit, to bring them into the unending life and joy of God. Of all things that could have been on Jesus' mind in the hours before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, it was this plan upon which Jesus dwelled and brought to his Father in prayer.

²⁰"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, ²¹that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: ²³I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

²⁵"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17:20-26)

Who are we? We are today those who believe in Jesus through the message of his apostles (v. 20). We are also those who are given by God as a gift to Jesus (v. 24). Those given to Jesus believe in Jesus.

To whom are we given? We are given to the Beloved. Jesus reveals in this prayer that he was loved with an everlasting love, one that existed before the world was (vv. 23, 24, 26). A loving Father gives gifts because he is good and because he longs to see his child's joy. Jesus the Son is completely full of his Father's own glory and excellence (John 1:14, 18; Colossians 1:15; 2:9; Hebrews 1:3). Because there is nothing more admirable or beautiful in the whole universe than God himself, God must enjoy and behold and love his Son with an unsurpassed love.

Who are we (again)? We are therefore given to Jesus as a gift coming from the overflow of God's own love for his Son. If we are given to the Son as a result of God's love, then we must know two things: First, the Father would not give his Son what is not valuable or prized. No loving Father would give junk to his children (see Matthew 7:11); he gives the best. So we are truly precious to God. This shocks me, because in my theological tradition (Reformed) it is the lowliness and sinfulness of humanity that are so often emphasized that we neglect the value we have in God's eyes.

Second, we can know that just as fully as the Father wants his Son's good and happiness, and as we belong to the Highest in Heaven, we know that God can only be for our good. He would not scorn his Son nor disparage his own gift to him. We can know that God is ever for us, because possessed by his Son we too are to become Christlike children.

For what purpose are we given? Given to the Son and belonging to him, Jesus reminds his Father that "you . . . have loved them even as you have loved me" (v. 23). In Christ we are loved by God to the same extent as Christ himself! We too, in Christ, have been loved before the creation of the world, before the beginning of time (v. 24). We are now also the object of God's joy and held fast near his heart. He will fight for us until the end of time, to purify us as a bride for his Son, and to bring us home to dwell with him and drink forever from his river of delights (v. 24; Psalm 36:8). We are given to the Beloved to be loved.

On what basis are we so dear, co-equal with Christ? "I [am] in them, and you [are] in me," Jesus says (v. 23; cf. v. 26). The Son is in perfect fellowship with his Father, and we share in communion with the Son by faith and through the work of the Spirit (John 14:16 ff.). How can we, so ugly and marred by sin, be loved? Because this perfect Son has taken upon himself the stain and deformity of our sin and has put it to death forever in God's sight. In Christ we too rise out of the grave and stand upon Mount Hermon in radiant white and hear "This is my son, whom I love" (Mark 1:11; 9:7).

What does Jesus do for those he loves? At the end of his prayer Jesus proclaims that "I have made you [Father] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them" (John 17:26). Jesus, who is endowed with the fullness of God, makes God's name--all that God is--known to us. This he does by having purchased the Holy Spirit with his blood and sending him to illuminate God's Word to us. Jesus' greatest desire for those he loves is that we would know and see God's glory, a glory and wonder and beauty made known through Jesus (v. 24). As we know God better and better, we trust him more and more. This faith-life, this fear-of-the-Lord, is the very life of Jesus as God's perfect servant, the true Man. And so the more and more we know God through Christ, we find that the love God has for Christ is also in us (v. 26).

But beyond that, as Christ dwells in us and is formed within us, something else happens: we find that we love the Father more and more too. When Jesus prays "that I myself may be in them," he is praying that we would be filled with obedient, glad love for the Father. And because Jesus' prayers are always effectively heard by the Father (John 11:41-42), we can know this for sure: one day we will be free from all lesser affections and, beloved in Christ, we will see and love our tender Creator and Redeemer and find our heart's home in him.

What Wondrous Love Is This?

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9)

I was listening to this early 19th-century hymn, "What Wondrous Love Is This?" by Alexander Means on my drive home tonight. I must have sung it five times. I love it because it captures the gospel of God so well.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb Who is the great “I Am”;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

In the arrangement to which I was listening, between the third and fourth stanzas was added this bridge, which is what really gave me the chills:

What wondrous love is this!
Though I raised my clen-ched fist,
He opened up my hand to receive His gift!
And what wondrous love is here!
The God immortal has drawn near
And shed His blood to close the rift.

Now that is real grace! That even though we were hostile toward God and shook our fists at him in defiance and spit on the face of his Son, he still gave his life so that we would be forgiven and reconciled. And if that weren't enough, God even himself granted us the faith he requires of us in order to receive the gift of Christ!

"And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him." (Colossians 1:21-22)

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Brothers of the Same Family

This morning as I read Hebrews 2:5-18, I was struck by how Jesus, the Son of God, who is the effulgence of God's own eternal glory, so gladly emptied himself to take up our cause before his Father. In a true familial solidarity far surpassing the utopian ideals imagined by Marx and others, in his incarnation and baptism Jesus bound up himself with sinful, enslaved, derelict mankind, even calling us "brothers," and suffered the agonies of temptation, rejection, shame, and death so that we might be set free from fear, death, deception, and futility and share in his place of glory and love as co-sons and co-regents before the Father.

A beautiful 15th-century Latin hymn, "O Love, How Deep" (author unknown, translated by Benjamin Webb), captures this story well.

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
It fills the heart with ecstasy,
That God, the Son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortals’ sake!

He sent no angel to our race
Of higher or of lower place,
But wore the robe of human frame
Himself, and to this lost world came.

For us baptized, for us He bore
His holy fast and hungered sore,
For us temptation sharp He knew;
For us the tempter overthrew.

For us He prayed; for us He taught;
For us His daily works He wrought;
By words and signs and actions thus
Still seeking not Himself, but us.

For us to wicked men betrayed,
Scourged, mocked, in purple robe arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death,
For us gave up His dying breath.

For us He rose from death again;
For us He went on high to reign;
For us He sent His Spirit here,
To guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

To Him Whose boundless love has won
Salvation for us through His Son,
To God the Father, glory be
Both now and through eternity.

Imitating God

Being a high school science teacher demands a lot of patience. I mean a lot. Many students come into my room sometimes two or three years behind in math, have difficulty finding main ideas when reading, and don't know what a complete sentence is. On top of that, they're often raised in households with only one parent, who probably works two jobs and leaves the child-rearing to their teenager. Even if a steady male figure (live-in boyfriend or stepdad) is around, it's not uncommon for anger to be the sole disciplinary tool.

Yet when I ought to have compassion and patience, instead I find myself exasperated by minimal efforts, lack of prior knowledge and skills, and torpid progress. Some of my students are honestly just plain lazy. A few are even, yes, stupid. On top of that, they often want every day in class to be like an episode of CSI, yet my school lacks the funding to obtain much lab equipment which is considered pretty basic. And then--the lack of respect teens have for others and their sense of entitlement can really put me over the top.

But the gospel addresses me to live differently, to bear with my students as God has borne with us in Christ. I immediately thought of my students when I was reading Paul's letter to Titus yesterday.

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.
At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:1-5)

I was reminded that if it weren't for God's merciful re-creation by his Holy Spirit, I too would be in the same mess: foolish, disobedient, and ruled by self-centeredness. God didn't wait until I cleaned up my life and paid respectful attention to him before pouring out his kindness and love.

In the same way, then, I need to live out this gospel with my students. I need to encourage them and build them up instead of belittling them in exasperation. I need to be patient and considerate of their needs instead of giving up, dumbfounded. I need to be gentle and gracious with them when they disappoint me or anger me, persisting to be for them and on their side. After all, it's only when "kindness and love" appear that change happens.

"Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 4:32 - 5:2).

You have need of perseverance

“You have need of perseverance,” the author of the letter to the Hebrews urges his audience (10:36). But why?

This past weekend during the first week of class, we were talking about the truth that God saves sinners. (This teaching is put forth in what has somewhat unfortunately become called the Five Points of Calvinism.) When we were talking about the doctrine of the Preservation of the Elect (a.k.a. Perseverance of the Saints), Dr. Griffith asked us, “Why is perseverance in faith necessary? Why can’t we just be justified at some point upon making a ‘decision for Christ’ and then live as we please?”

The question stumped me somewhat. But then I realized this: The very nature of faith and salvation demands it. How so? Because God’s saving work—not only in what happens to us, but also the prize we receive—is fellowship (union; Greek koinonia) with Christ. “God . . . has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9). Salvation is, by its very nature, a relationship. And we exercise this relationship by a life of obedient faith in the Messiah’s sufficiency as Savior and Mediator and his supremacy as Lord and King. “Believers are called into the fellowship of Christ and fellowship means communion," explains John Murray. "The life of faith is one of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer” [1]. As long as we have salvation, we must have a humble, repentant faith; the presence of God’s gracious in-Christ redemption can never be divorced from trust in him. So if we are to inherit eternal life, we must have an eternal faith.

But this is glorious news, comforting news, filling me with a “joy unspeakable and full of glory." Left on our own, the demand for persevering faith would be but “dismay and Christless dread” [2]. But we forget: it is the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—with whom we have fellowship; it is to a Person we are united. Salvation does not exist as an abstraction or a philosophical construct; it is not a lofty idea or an mechanical process. It is a gracious covenantal bond between a Shepherd and the flock under his care, a Bridegroom and his bride, a Father and his son, a Lord and his servant. The word used throughout the Scriptures for this is chesed, a word so full of meaning that English translations fail to pin it down. Try as they might—“unfailing love” (NIV), “steadfast love” (ESV), “lovingkindness” (NASB), “loyal love” or “merciful love” (The Message)—they can but dance around it. Perhaps only the tongues of angels are fit for its expression.

So we’re not stuck to persevere on our own. We have the full backing and upholding and undying, self-binding love of the very heart of God himself. I cannot stress enough that salvation belongs a Person. His name is Everlasting Father, whose desires and commitments are never fickle and never revoked. His name is Almighty God and King of Kings, wielding omnipotent power and authority to crush all enemies and secure the future of his loved ones. His name is Compassionate Priest, who sympathizes with us, deals tenderly with us in our weaknesses, and who ever lives to make intercession for us (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). His name is Advocate, Counselor, and Pledge, an indwelling guarantee who keeps us secure and breathes into our hearts his very own life and glory.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Christ Jesus our Lord, is faithful." (1 Cor. 1:8-9)

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[1] John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1955) 169. Murray continues beautifully: “The life of faith is the life of love, and the life of love is the life of fellowship, or mystic communion with him who ever lives to make intercession for his people and who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. It is a fellowship with him who has an inexhaustible reservoir of sympathy with his people’s temptations, afflictions, and infirmities because he was tempted in all points like as they were, yet without sin. The life of faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent. It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion. ‘Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:3)” (Ibid., 169-70). So much for calling Calvinists cold, dour, mechanical folk!

[2] Ibid., 165.

In this is love

You can't avoid it: Valentine's Day. Try as you might, red hearts and Teddy bears and shmoopy wares fill the shelves. (I've read that there was actually a Saint Valentinus, a Christian saint of old whose deeds of love and mercy while in Roman prison form the basis for this day of love.) But if we are to consider saying the words, "I love you," we need to first consider what love is: a voluntary choice to give yourself sacrificially for the good and joy of another. To say those three words means to follow the way of Jesus: "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers" (1 John 3:16).

"God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Ephesians 4:32 - 5:2)

"God is love. In this the love of God was manifested among us, that God sent his only Son in to the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation [wrath-appeasing sacrifice] for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:8-11)

"It is the spectacle of Gethsemane and Calvary . . . that opens to us the folds of unspeakable love. The Father did not spare his own Son. He spared nothing that the dictates of unrelenting rectitude demanded. And it is the undercurrent of the Son's acquiescence that we hear when he says, 'Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done' (Luke 22:42). But why? It was in order that eternal and invincible love might find the full realization of its urge and purpose in redemption by price and by power. Of Calvary the spirit is eternal love and the basis eternal justice. It is the same love manifested in the mystery of Gethsemane's agony and of Calvary's accursed tree that wraps eternal security around the people of God." (John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied)

"We know that those who truly love are only happy when those whom they love are truly happy also. So it is with God in his love for us. . . . Through setting his love on human beings God has voluntarily bound up his own final happiness with theirs. . . . God was happy without humans before they were made; he would have continued happy had he simply destroyed them after they sinned; but as it is he has set his love upon particular sinners, and this means that, by his own free voluntary choice, he will not know perfect happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours." (J. I. Packer, Knowing God)

How precious to me are your thoughts!

On Saturday evening I went to West End Presbyterian Church to see an Indelible Grace concert. (If you're not familiar with them, they take old hymns and set them to newer musical arrangements.) But it was perhaps the opener, Richmond-area native Chris Lucas, whose music left the most memorable moment of the night. His first song was about how nothing ever "occurred" to God. Our omniscient and all-wise Father has never had a moment of ignorance, has never thought in his mind, Gee, I never thought of that before!

After a very taxing week of school--a large number of my biology students are non-native English speakers struggling to read simple sentences, and the rest lack much of anything in the way of motivation--I felt nearly swept away in a torrent of unwarranted, faithless anxieties. How will I make it another 178 school days? How will I help these teens to succeed? How can I get them engaged and interested? And on top of that, being down to a few hundred dollars and not getting paid until the month's end, Will I have enough to pay my hospital bill from last month and still have food and gas this month?

But Chris's song put some life back into my heart; nothing ever "occurred" to God--the God who keeps watch over me and who never slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121). That evening I read Psalm 139:17-18, and a passage of it finally clicked that I was always somewhat perplexed by:

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

Of all the thoughts and worries that race through my mind and upset it, they are worries that are the fruits of but my puny, finite understanding and experience. I worry because I can't see the future. But my Father sees and knows vastly more than I can comprehend or imagine, and it is he who watches over me to guard my steps and supply nourishment for all facets of my faith and life. There is no thought, no situation, no circumstance in my life that escapes the All-Knowing, whose thoughts toward me are as innumerable as the grains of the shore's sand. Even the fact that daily I awake and am still with him ought to give me rest and peace. After all, I spend six or seven hours every night completely void of any activity. During the night I neither provide for myself nor protect myself from illnesses and from Satan's attacks. Yet morning by morning I rise again, not because of my own agency or because my fretting achieved something fruitful, but because the Lord watched over me and kept me alive.

So with Hagar I can call upon Lahai-Roi* and say, "Truly here I have seen him who looks after me" (Genesis 16:13).
_____________________
*"The living one who sees me"

Minneapolis

1 Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices [presumably murders that squelched a rebellion at the Temple]. 2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? 3 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:1-5)

I have friends who live in Minneapolis with their families. I don't know if they or any of their family was involved in yesterday's bridge collapse in which so many died or were severely injured. Situations like this beg the question, Where is God in a disaster like this? Isn't he supposedly in control? What manner of king is this Christ, who claims to be extending his rule and reign over all things in the universe? But that's not the question Jesus himself wants us to hear. He wants us to ask ourselves, "Have you repented? Are you going to embrace me, my reign, and my ways, or are you going to keep living your own way in disbelief?" If so, he warns, just as quickly as a tower collapsed or a highway bridge fell into the Mississippi River, so too will we be crushed under the weight of his fury.

All of the death, disorder, and tragedy in this world is the direct result of humanity's fall into sin. We can blame Adam all we want and shirk our own responsibility, but we forget one thing. We forget that we, too, sin every day as active participants of the rebellion that began that infamous day in Eden. Minneapolis is supposed to be a divine wake-up call, a backwards gift of God's patient mercy that says, "Get serious! Get off the path you're on! If you don't, I will kill you with a death far worse than drowning in a river, for I am a consuming fire."

I'm sure that this won't be the popular message in churches across American this Sunday. Most instead will probably preach some sort of heretical message about how this wasn't from God's hand (even insurance companies get it right by calling it an "act of God"); it was a random event incompatible with a loving God, instead of seeing God's love that slaps us in the face with events like this that call us repentance, and who has offered his very own Son to bear every last ounce of the wrath due to sinners, due to you and me.