Splendor

Our culture is obsessed with finding “the right person,” and in Christian circles we are taught to not be “unequally yoked,” but rather to wait for a Godly person to marry. But the main concern of single young adults (or singles of any age) should not be to find a Godly person, but to be a Godly person. Readiness for marriage is not about knowing another person completely, but about earnestly humbling yourself by submitting to God's view of sin in marriage, marriage in love, and love in sin. We should know what unconditional love really means, but we should also accept that we cannot offer it on our own. Truly, it is only through the indescribable grace of God that we are able to love regardless of the good and bad aspects of someone's character and actions.

I think that we should marry someone only under deep consideration, but God did not give us the ability to foresee the future. Most of marriage will be compromised of issues that we didn't not expect, life and marriage changing circumstances that we are not equipped to handle, and problems we could not have ever anticipated. Just as we cannot deal with our own sin in our own strength, we cannot cultivate a God-glorifying marriage (which is the union of two very sinful people) without recognizing that no amount of our own effort and preparation will get us there. Thus, our understanding of what sin is, and how we deal with it, directly affects our marriage.

Love, by it's very nature, is a joyful commitment to one person that never falters, even in extreme situations such as the loss of mental capabilities, or paralysis. When we love the soul, the eternal being that God created, then we can truly delight in the personality and talents of the one we love, because it is no longer the justification of our love, but the splendor.

We do not know what is Wrong, because we do not know what is Right.

From a reading done in preparation for a weekend retreat:

"She longs for spiritual hygiene itself - and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.

"She is a person of character consistency, a person who rings true wherever you tap her. She keeps promises. She weeps with those who weep and, perhaps more impressively, rejoices with those who rejoice. She does all these things in ways that express her own personality and culture but also a general "mind of Christ" that is cross-culturally unmistakable.

"Her motives include faith - a quiet confidence in God and in the mercies of God that radiate from the self-giving work of Jesus Christ. She knows God is good; she also feels assured that God is good to her. Her faith secures her against the ceaseless oscillations of pride and despair familiar to every human being who has taken refuge in the cave of her own being and tried there to bury all her insecurities under a mound of achievements. When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spirit of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again."

~ Plantinga, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be; a breviary of sin.

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work

     Work is a surprisingly divisive subject, and most views are incredibly destructive, including the common “Christian” dichotomy. How pitiful that we short-list God into the truly

valuable callings, which we have named “Full-time Christian Ministry.” There is no such differentiation! If there is, then at all costs avoid being a pastor or missionary, since people are driven away from the gospel by their ignorance of beauty, lack of transparency, disregard for those with other vocations, and the sad truth that many PKs and MKs fall into sterility and diffidence, if not worse. No, all vocations are a calling, and are inherently gospel-centered if conducted in view of our complete restoration from the fall.

     Fine, then. All vocations are equally important. But doesn't that merely form an excuse not to share the gospel outright?!

Three points come to mind:

1. We talk about sharing the gospel, which then leads people to be saved from future separation from Christ, and for them in turn to do the same (Everyone, reach one!). So the gospel is reduced to a chain letter instead of LIFE, the ability to be fully human again, to delight in God and His creation because of the death of Christ.
2. People do not arbitrarily come to the gospel. We speak and write and proclaim the “God sized hole in everyone's heart,” but it doesn't mean that when people hear the good news they simply say “Yes! This is what I have been looking for all my life!” Why should the death of a man 2000 years ago – simply carrying the promise of a future spent with a God we do not know or care about – matter to anyone? Our modern experience fools us into thinking that “knowing” can be separated from “knowing experientially.” If we want people to know God it must be made manifest to them through our lives, the natural continuation of Jesus' manifestation.
3. I have found that those who are the most likely to speak of the importance of explicitly “sharing the Gospel,” are the very same whose lives I cry over. Moreover, they stress the gospel by saying “I seem to be ashamed of Christ, I ought to share the gospel more.” Is your initiative for the gospel because you feel guilty and ashamed of your lack of desire to serve God?

     There is so much more to be said about particular callings! Each person can interact with his or her vocation so that individual talents and passions are brought to bear. Life is so much richer and fuller when you see the extraordinary opportunities we are given for helping people understand the entirety of the gospel, at work, in your home, alongside your spouse, or with your kids, to name a few!

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     Other people tolerate their job as a necessary nuisance, a way of earning a living, and a tedious consequence of the Fall. [. . .] This second attitude to work, which regards it as either meaningless in itself, or at best a necessary means to some quite different end (e.g., facilitating leisure pursuits), is the same in principle as the view held by some Christians that work is a useful sphere of witness. To be sure, the Christian should be a witness to Christ in every situation, but it is very inadequate to see the workplace as having no Christian significance in itself, but only as a well-stocked lake to fish in (pp. 16).

~ John Stott, Our Social and Sexual Revolution. 

     First, work is intended for the fulfillment of the worker. That is, as important part of our self-fulfillment as human beings is to be found, according to God's purpose, in our work. We can affirm this with confidence in view of the very first instruction which God addressed to man and woman: 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it' (Genesis 1:28). Here are three successive commands, each leading logically to the next. They could not subdue the earth without first filling it, and they could not fill it without first reproducing themselves. This original and composite commandment expresses, then, a basic aspect of our vocation as human beings. Our dominion over nature is due to our likeness to God. Or, to express the same truth in different terms, our potential for creative work is an essential part of our Godlikeness. Our Creator made us creative creatures (pp. 17).

~ John Stott, Our Social and Sexual Revolution. 

     Human beings are very unbalanced and prone to go off on tangents. In every area of life - with too great emphasis on one thing, leaving out another important thing altogether. None of us will ever be perfectly balanced in our spiritual lives, our intellectual lives, our emotional lives, our family lives, in relationships with other human beings, or in our business lives. BUT WE ARE CHALLENGED TO TRY, WITH THE HELP OF GOD. We are meant to live in the scriptures.
~ Edith Schaeffer, What is a Family

     It is true that all men are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for us.

~ Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking 

Value in resting, or resting in value?

     Life is full of curiosities, adventures, heartbreaks, surprises. But somehow in the end, life can settle into a exhausting battle of day after day. I get tired of fighting against my harmful tendencies. I have ideals and dreams for the future, projects that I want to complete, characteristics that I desire to cultivate – yet nothing seems to really change, and that's why I give in.

     Yet I'm sitting here now in my living room, surrounded by a couple nephews, three napping dogs, three dear visiting sister-friends, my brother and his wife. It has been an exhausting two weeks of traveling, and at the moment I am not capable of exerting my will to change anything, and vacillating between wondering if I can ever live with purpose and surrender to God, and feeling that despite my weak nature God is remarkably kind and delights in me. This is the sort of rest I'm looking for.

     I work hard at doing what God delights in, whether it be schoolwork, relationships with friends and family or trying to create an environment of grace and beauty for those I love. But the hard work is not what makes me weary or disappointed in myself and despairing of lasting change. The lack of desire to serve God has an inverse relationship with being utterly confident that I have been placed exactly in time and history with my particular “selfness,” life experiences, vocation and relationship to others. I do not have to strive for my position with others or with God.

     Is God not transcendent? Is He not gentle? Is He not omnipotent? Is He not merciful? Is He not wise? It is only my own pride that sets up my actions as the determining factor of how much God delights in me, or how valuable I am to other people.

A great sermon to listen to is Tim Keller's “Blessed Self-Forgetfulness.”

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Unless the Lord builds the house,

those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is in vain that you rise up early

and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Psalm 127:1-2

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

Crazy Mirrors

     

     I've always thought that I knew what it meant to be made in the image of God, but my construct was shaken slightly during a discussion in my Readings in Classic Christian Spirituality class this past semester. One of my classmates kept pressing us to find a definition that can be applied to unborn babies and those with mental deficiencies. It was more difficult than I anticipated and I never reached an answer that I was satisfied with.

     Usually the definition that I use is that we, unlike the rest of creation, have the capacity to be creative, to plan and execute, to communicate at a high level, and to make choices, etc. But my classmate pressed me to apply those to an unborn baby. I argued that it is the capacity that delineates us from animals, but that seemed an insufficient explanation to both of us.

     Then over Christmas, my brother Jack (I believe it was him, I had a plethora of conversations with my siblings, so I can't be sure :P) and I began talking about mirroring the image of God. Comparing ourselves to a mirror is nothing new, of course. But what got me was that the reason we can reflect God is because we are spiritual beings, unlike the animals. In a way, it is about capacity. Yet we are separated from exercising this ability fully, like one of those crazy mirrors that skews the image drastically. . .the image is still there, but isn't accurate. The beauty of the gospel is that Christ once again made it possible for us to reflect God undistorted.

I later included in my customary written prayers:

The idea of the mirror as the image of God really changed my definition. That because we are the only spiritual beings here on earth, we are the only things capable of reflecting you. How marvelous!

     And it really is marvelous, isn't it? The implications are dazzlingly pervasive in the way we view each other and view ourselves. For instance, it is what allows me to acknowledge my strengths and those of others without usurping God of his glory – indeed, exactly the opposite!

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     We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Cor 3:13-18