Happy Friday
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. And whose trust is the Lord. Jeremiah 17
Trust Is > Trust In: We often trust in the Lord – or at least try. But we do so in order to get what we really want. We may not say, “God, I will do XY and Z if you will… heal me, get me a job, fix my marriage, etc.,” but that is the deal we are trying to cut. We are trusting in the Lord, but He is not our trust. Our hearts want something more than we want him. Jeremiah 17 highlights the need to push past trust in in order to make him our trust.
Stealing Pears: In The Confessions, Augustine famously writes about stealing pears. And his eventual realization that he did not do so because he was hungry or because he liked pears (he didn’t), but because he wanted to do what he had been told not to do. It was that simple. He wanted to assert his will over the will of others. Even God. Something deep inside him actually wanted to do wrong. Realizing that his heart was broken was a breakthrough for him. Have you reflected long enough to realize that we do not need God to forgive us for five or six really bad things we have done, but to heal our desperately broken heart?
Clarity About Jesus. In Matthew 10:37, Jesus says, “Whoever loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Only God – or a narcissistic monster – would make such a claim. Jesus is claiming to be God and demanding to be first. It is worth sitting with that for a while as we start a new year. Jesus claims to be God and demands to be first.
Perspective. In this week’s news are reports on the Hubble telescope, which is now a billion miles on the other side of Pluto and sending back pictures of Ultima Thule (a rock twenty miles long by ten miles wide). Over the next year we’ll receive pictures of Ultima Thule, but we need not wait for them to marvel. We can ponder this: after traveling for four years at 31,000 mph, the Hubble probe has journeyed 4 billion miles from earth – which means it has crossed 0.000645 percent of our galaxy. And the Milky Way is just one of more than two trillion galaxies in the known universe. Creation is amazing. Awe-inspiring. The Creator even more so. Isaiah reports that He “holds it in the palm of his hand”.
Articles Worth Reading:
- A few weeks ago I noted that the life expectancy of Americans dropped for the third year in a row – mostly because of the spike in suicides and drug overdoses. In this article, John Stonestreet discusses “deaths of despair” and despair in general.
- I am not a fan of everything Tish Harrison Warren writes, but I do like this piece about the church.
Predictions for 2019: As one who wrote a book about the future, I need to be careful what I say, but as 2018 wraps up – and predictions about 2019 roll out – it’s worth reminding ourselves how hard it is to make predictions:
- “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” So predicted Britain’s Post Office chief engineer in 1876.
- “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty–a fad.” This advice was given to Henry Ford’s lawyer by the president of the Michigan Savings Bank in 1903.
- Daryl Zanuck, a film producer and co-founder of 20th Century Fox: “Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
Last year at this time the predictions were that: President Trump would resign, Paul Ryan would become president, and the Patriots would win the Super Bowl.
Book Purge: Since shelf space is fixed, once a year I purge books. The process is painful but educational. Going through every book I own reminds me: how trendy topics are (eschatology was hot in the 70s and 00s), books on discipleship were big in the 80s and seem to be coming back; spiritual formation (especially silence) is big at the moment. I also see what ruts I live in. As an aside, for years, I kept reference books – encyclopedias, dictionaries and commentaries – and purged other things. Five years ago that started to change. I use online tools as references now.
Speaking of Trends: I am noticing a spike in books and articles about societal collapse.
Without Comment: The State of Iowa requires 132 hours of training for someone to become an Emergency Medical Technician. It requires 2,100 hours for a cosmetology license.
Favorite Onion Headline of 2018: Local Church Full of Brainwashed Idiots Feed Town’s Poor Every Week.
Gratitude: Christ Church finished 2018 strong, and is now in the strongest financial position it’s been in in the last twenty years. I do not like the fact that I have to pay attention to such things, but I do.
Prayer Request: Several sabbatical projects currently occupy my time, chiefly writing a book about loving and following God. I hate to admit that I am capable of writing about loving and following God without doing so. The irony is, if I am not careful, the act of writing about loving and following God will crowd out loving and following God. May it not be so!
Closing Prayer: Therefore, we ask that we many know what we love, since we ask nothing other than that you give us yourself. For you are our all: our life, our light, our salvation, our food and our drink, our God. Inspire our hearts, I ask you, Jesus, with the breath of your Spirit. -Columbanus (543-615)