As talk heats up about Bill Ayers in this campaign season, it is unknowingly bringing a measure of blessing to Christ’s church. How so? It is bringing the word ‘unrepentant’ into the consciousness and delivering it without nuance. Unrepentant is simply understood in the context; one who does not repent of their past sins.
Perhaps, as the word sinks in, we might also ask ourselves if the label belongs to us?
Wesley’s sermon ‘Salvation by Faith’ opens like this:
All the blessings which God hath bestowed upon man, are of his mere grace, bounty, or favor; his free, undeserved favor, favor altogether undeserved; man having no claim to the least of his mercies. It was free grace that “formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul”, and stamped on that soul the image of God, and “put all things under his feet”. The same free grace continues to us, at this day, life and breath, and all things. For there is nothing we are, or have, or do, which can deserve the least thing at God’s hand. “All our works, thou, oh God, has wrought in us.” These, therefore, are so many more instances of free mercy; and, whatever righteousness may be found in man, this is also the gift of God….
If then sinful men find favor with God, it is “grace upon grace”…Grace is the source, faith is the condition, of salvation.
It’s tough to argue with the Bible, or Wesley’s exegesis.
Ring Of Fire, originally uploaded by wrachele.
When the struggles and disappointments of life pile one upon another our minds can wander easily into the territory of “where is God?” Not being naive, we all know that He has not promised a life of ease, with all of the bumps and dips smoothed out before use. Rather, a life of trouble lies before us, sometimes growing greater the closer we draw to God and away from the world. How we react as we face the travails is indicative of how our maturity is proceeding and perhaps, how much further it needs to go.
David offers a valuable scriptural lesson in this arena. Faced with unprovoked attacks he pleads with the Lord for a greater understanding in Psalm 22. He begins with this lamenting cry to the heavens:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent.
Does David truly believe God has forsaken him after all that he had seen and experienced? He recalls the Patriarchal and nation history that both precedes and includes his own:
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel.
In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
They cried to you and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
Especially mindful of the fact that that trust in the Lord was always properly placed, David appropriately praises God despite his immediate troubles, knowing that God so willed it, he too could be saved. This pattern continues as David openly pours out his troubled heart while never blaming God for his condition or situation. Each struggle in David’s mind is countered by an infinitely superior trust in the goodness of God and faith, that good or bad, the events and challenges in our lives deserve nothing but praise to the God who oversees it all. Even if his personal situation were not to improve, David knows that the overarching good of all the world will be seen to be the Lord, and for this He is to praised through the groans and tears.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness
to a people yet unborn—
for he has done it.
Amen.
Is it just me or are the Cole/Pike books getting shorter and faster?
The latest from Crais in the Elvis Cole series is the fine Chasing Darkness, a tale that jostles the reader back and forth, all the while watching the L.A. skies turn from the tawny hues of fire season to the crystalline azure of the conclusion. The story is filled with false conclusions and suspects that we have come to expect in Cole’s work but with some easy-to-miss changes that allow him to emerge as more of a thinker; the unexpected tranquility of Pike for example, has he entered a Zen state where the arrows on his biceps no longer point to trouble?
Cole is roused by the suicide of a murder suspect he previously helped to exonerate. The death itself was not personally jarring, the photo album of a serial murderer found at the feet of the corpse was. It held the carefully framed pictures of seven dying women, images only the killer could obtain from his immediate presence and one of which caused the law firm that had used Cole to provide the evidence of the suspects innocence to move him back into action. Now, in addition to the pounding in his head from the suspicion that he might have been wrong, he receives beating on his head from the family of a women killed later in the serial killer’s sequence.
Page turner barely describes the pace at which the investigation proceeds as Cole interacts with some old names in the LAPD and finds himself at odds with some new antagonists in the department and in L.A. city government. Your own detective skills will be put to the test as you begin to sort and dismiss some suspects while being sure, as Elvis is occasionally, that you are on the right path to solving the mystery. Of course, you’ll be wrong but that’s half the fun in following Cole’s escapades.
Chasing Darkness is a solid entry in the Crais catalog and well worth the few hours of escape that it offers. Cole is as charming as usual and Pike, well, he’s Pike. The question I’m left with at the last page was why Carol Starkey was involved. We know she’s in love with Cole making her usual profane and clumsy come-on’s to him but what purpose does she serve in the story except to be the dues ex machina?
An odd event occurred last night as enjoyed a family meal together; out of nowhere, we heard the long building wail of the surrounding emergency warning sirens. Unlike the jarring, ever shifting emergency tones used by the police and fire department which immediately grab your attention and move you to some rapid response, the public warning doesn’t move us quite as quickly. How many people even notice the sound every Tuesday at 11:00 AM?
Why the slow reaction to the warning tones? Much of the passivity comes from two factors that creep into our lives and cultures. First, we become deaf to the sound, like a rattle in our cars that we have heard so often that we have tuned it out. Surrounded by constant noise and other distractions, the odd siren blends into the cacophony of life and doesn’t grab our immediate attention. The second reason that the siren has such little effect is that it tells us nothing without interpretation. Last night, as the siren reached its second crescendo, we followed the people on the surrounding streets out into the backyard. We looked at the thunderheads that had built through the day, scanning in all directions for anything unusual. No hail, no rain, no lightning – nothing but dark clouds and temperatures that had dipped into the pleasant 70s. We turned on the television to a local channel to see if there were any crawls and the talk radio stations continued the lead up to the baseball game. False alarm, who knows, maybe stars were going to fall from the sky.
So, why this observation? Our spiritual lives can become some cluttered by busyness or lack of attention that we can miss the warnings the Spirit springs within us. More importantly, when we do notice the sirens we need to be prepared to interpret the message rather than looking blankly about. Our time in the Bible and in prayer, and the wisdom that we attain by ingesting the teaching of others all contributes to the growth in our interpretive abilities. Our goal is to get the point where the leading edge of the wail causes us to move into action immediately, searching our thoughts and actions to determine exactly why the warning has come at this exact moment. Instead of running blindly outside only find mammoth hailstones falling from the sky, we can make life corrections without suffering the pain that comes from being soul-blind.
How easy it is to start well but finish in disgrace because we take our eyes off of the ultimate objective. Such is the story of Uzziah, one of the kings of Judah. He became king at the age of sixteen and in humility, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. The Chronicler tells us of Uzziah’s early devotion to seeking the word and ways of the Lord for which he was duly blessed. Successful in conquest, construction, and provision for his people, Uzziah gained fame and power.
Ultimately, it proved too much…
But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests of the Lord followed him in. They confronted him and said, “It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the Lord God.” (2 Ch 26:16-18)
It is so easy for our hearts to turn inward and see ourselves as the source of our own blessings, looking away from the true source in the Lord. The depraved core of our souls tells us to “look at what we did!” and begins the subtle musings of our own greatness. Gradually, our initial dependence on the Lord is replaced by thoughts of our own greatness; look at the church I built, the book I wrote, the number of speaking engagements I’ve had – the list is endless. As our hearts go, so go our eyes and soon we have lost sight of the purpose in the successes we are allowed, that is, the greater glory of our God.
When we peer into this vignette of Uzziah’s life we see that his prideful heart has placed his own desires above the glory of God. The desecration of the standards for temple worship are clear to us and spelled out in the passage. Only the priests were to handle the sacred objects and conduct this aspect of worship. Uzziah, his pride on full display, felt that his blessings had moved him into a far more rarified strata in God’s eyes, allowing him to assume the unction necessary to parallel the priesthood. From a distance, we might see him swinging the censer in an act of worship but God, who searches all hearts and knows our true motives, saw it differently. He saw Uzziah’s usurping of his Law as a challenge to His Glory.
And God shares His glory with no one…
Blossoming Health, originally uploaded by wrachele.
The Governor of Colorado, when questioned about rumors that he was on the list as a Democratic vice-presidential candidate, replied “I’ve only been Governor for eighteen months and that’s not enough experience to qualify me for vice president.”
18 months x 30 days = 540 days experience insufficient for vice president.
143 days of service in the Senate = qualified to be president.
Ooops! I guess he’s off the list now.
The late, great Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. Perhaps Mr. Obama could learn something from Mr. Lynott? He certainly faced much worse odds than Barack ever did.
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LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 