Creation, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection-His Love Endures Forever

Psalm 136
By Allison King

Black
Blank
Light
breaks:
His love endures forever.

Sky
formed
Earth
born:
His love endures forever.

To him alone
who
breathed me, breathed you:
His love endures forever

Sin brings death
God now flesh*:
His love endures forever.

Perfection walks among,
Illustrates Anointed One:
His love endures forever.

Skin breaks
as
Thin steaks
force their way through flesh:
His love endures forever.

He
cries
Then
dies:
His love endures forever.

Black
Blank
Hope
Sank:
His love endures forever.

Days change
Spirit flames
He renames
Death,
Life:
His love endures forever.

 *In more current versions of this poem this line is changed to "God in Flesh" based on the poet's own theological understanding of incarnation developing. However I first heard and fell in love with this poem in it's first "draft" and that is the one I'm posting. Thanks Ace for letting me use it.

In Honor of Good Friday, & the Few Faithful at the Cross

Funeral Blues

by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public dove,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest, 

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever : I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now : put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; 

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Lent, Suffering and The Tortures of Taking Sabbath

I've been reflecting on the parent stylings of Mary, Mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.

Reflecting on her experience at the foot of the cross.

Challenged by her ability to watch her son accused and tortured, staying silent, trusting Jesus to God.

And then, after all this is done. After Jesus is dead. Mary doesn't stay and watch over his body-like I would. She doesn't linger in her grief. She leaves Jesus' body to a religious leader,  whose name  happens to be Joseph, and goes home to get ready for the Sabbath.

Mary's relationship with her God is so strong and grounded that even the death of her son does not throw the rhythm of her faith. It doesn't takes precedent over her following the good and whole discipline of taking rest, as her God commanded her to.

Too often my kids become my little gods. Too often I put my love for them, my hopes for them, my passion for their happiness and success over my love, hope and passion for God and His kingdom. Too often I bow to the demons of materialism, selfish ambition, and pride in order to give them the life they ask for or that I am convinced they need. And I have to be honest that I would struggle with the Lord if one of my kids got sick or worse. My relationship with Him would become much more "complicated."

But as a mommy of little ones I wonder how Mary pressed into God the Father while Jesus was young. I wonder about her life and her faith when Jesus is just born and shepherds come and tell about the angels. When she takes Him to the temple to be circumcised and Simeon tells her that Jesus will cause the thoughts of many hearts to be revealed and that a sword will pierce her soul. I wonder how she moves toward God when the wise men come and offer the gifts. When she and Joseph and Jesus are refugees in Egypt. When they lose Jesus, only to find Him at the temple. I wonder how she took each of these moments and cultivated a faith life that was not centered on her son, but was centered on her God.

I wonder about those things and I ask God to cultivate a Mary heart in me.

I pray that the Father, Son, Spirit God would be my one consuming passion, and that He would teach me now, in the littleness of my mommy life, to put my relationship with Him above my relationship with my kids. And that no matter what comes in their lives or in mine, that at the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of my life, I'll be able to leave my Cecilia, my Gareth and my little Audrey in the hands of their True Parent, and take my rest.

Lent, Suffering, and the Dreaded Justin Beiber Fan Club

Yesterday I started a post series on Mary and her compelling parenting.

I've been dwelling on her place at the cross-on how Mary suffered there too. In a way, She suffered Jesus' suffering, and His suffering saved the world.

Watching a clip from "The Passion of Christ" and reading the Biblical account of Christ's passion has convinced me that Mary was a good parent. Not surprising right. I mean God did pick her to parent His one and only Son. And reading about her silent presence at the cross leads me to believed that she parented Jesus in a way that blessed Him, prepared Him for the cross.

At Cecilia's school there is a group of little girls who like to exclude. Occasionally, they use recess to "play" Justin Beiber Fan Club. I don't know what 6 and 7 year old girls do to play JBFC, but play they do, and Cecilia is not invited to join in. She does not own any JB clothes or lunch boxes. She is in essence not a fan, and therefore not included.

On nights when she is hurting from being excluded my heart wants action and justice. It wants to dislike those little girls, it wants to email her teacher or other mothers and put a stop to such silliness (which is silliness in itself).  At the very least it wants to tell Cecilia how much better it is not to be a JB fan and build her up.

But this heart is not an excellent heart. And it is not a good parent either.

This hurt is small, but as my kids grow, the hurts will too. They will be excluded from significant things. They will be misused by others, denied opportunities, hurt by brokenness. If the fullness of my hopes for them come about, and they each walk into a passionate relationship with God, they will have to die to themselves, and that hurts. And I will have to make a choice.

As a mom I have considerable power both in the world of my kids and in their hearts. And it is important that I am learning even in these small hurts of little-dom to follow the Spirit. I must ask how my parenting of her exclusion from a silly club now is preparing her for suffering with Christ later. And preparing me to suffer her suffering. Because Paul tells me loud and clear- To know Christ, really know Him and live in the fullness of that knowledge means my kids will have to suffer.

And I have to fight tooth and nail against the compulsion to protect my kiddo's from all hurt, to dry all tears, to work out their lives so that they live in happiness and peace-as if I even have this power.  I have to start preparing each of them now to take up their cross and to follow Christ. Not to run from pain, or attack when hurt, or to avoid suffering, but to trust themselves to their Good and True Parent. And I have to start preparing myself for the wild, glorious and painful ride that God is hopefully going to take my Cecilia, my Gareth, and my little Audrey on.

Lent, Suffering and the Parenting Example of Mary

A couple of Sundays ago, my pastor showed a clip from "The Passion of Christ." The clip showed one of the times that Christ was beaten and God used it to show me some hard things about myself which I wrote about in an earlier post.

But something else struck me while I was watching this clip. Jesus isn't the only one who suffered the cross. His mother Mary was there the whole time.

Please don't get me wrong. I know that the suffering our Lord endured on the cross was the most intense suffering humanity has ever known, but I think it is right to consider Mary's suffering there as well. Can you imagine what it was like to gaze upon your child in such agony? When I see my kids stumble and skin a knee my stomach turns. To see them tortured and killed...I can't comprehend that.

In the movie clip her presence gives Jesus focus and strength. He makes eye contact with her, and stands up to take more from the Roman thugs. And she stands there and silently watches her first born take the lashes that belonged to me, that belonged to the world, that belonged to herself. 

You might be thinking, "Yeah but that is just the movie..." Although when I read the biblical account, I'm drawn to the same conclusion: she was there, and she was silent.

Her parenting challenges me considerably. She doesn't shout out. She doesn't demand justice for her son. She entrusts Jesus to her heavenly Father. And when all is said and done, when her little boy is dead, she doesn't take care of Him. She doesn't stand guard over His dead body. She goes home, and takes the Sabbath rest that her God commands her to.

This leads me to two thoughts:

1. I firmly believed that Mary parented Jesus in a way that blessed Him, prepared Him for the cross.
2. Her love for her child does not define her relationship with her God

The next two posts will unpack these two ideas more.

But until then, how are you challenged by the parenting of Jesus' earthly mom?

Fearing God-Holiness according to Tozer and Lewis

I've been spending a few post talking about God's holiness.

A.W Tozer seems to have written a lot about the holiness of God. This quote helps me to dig into God's holiness in a fuller way--

"Holy is the way God is. To be holy he does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because he is holy, all his attributes are holy; that is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy."  

A.W Tozer

This really challenges me not to ignore God's holiness, but to consider it and discipline myself into knowing God as a Holy God. Tozer is telling us that we can't even consider God's love, His peace, or any part of Him without putting it through this filter of His holiness. I know that I don't naturally do this because when I ask myself what it means that God is Holy, the concept still seems foreign and vague. But without grasping and internalizing His holiness, I will never fully get His other attributes.


And lastly CS Lewis said this about holiness:

"How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible”

I think I worry that the opposite of this statement is true. That God's holiness is stuffy and will bore me, but that isn't true. That is false thinking. True holiness is intriging and refreshing!

How well do you know the Holiness of God?

Fearing God-Holiness (Mother Teresa and Dirty Robes)

I've been thinking about what it means to fear God. Isaiah 6 is helping my heart to understand the God whom invites me to fear Him, and yesterday I talked a bit about the first attribute of God that we see in the passage, God's Holiness, and how that holiness draws me closer to Him.

But this holiness makes me pause as well. When I really consider it, think about a God who is completely different, wholly other-I am humiliated (in the best idea of the word).

I can't love like He loves. I always will love others because I want something in return. I will always think about my own self-interest in a relationship. I can strive to be like Him, but in the end the best of me doesn't even get close to comparing to His greatness.

The passage illustrates this in verse one. It says that Isaiah sees the Living God on a throne, and the train of His robe is filling up the temple. The temple was the best that Israel had to offer. It's beauty and glory brought people from all over the ancient world to see it. It was the a high point in the history of the people of God-a place where they were the obedient and generous in their constructing God's dwelling place on earth.

And the train of God's robe easily fills it up.

The train of a robe is the lowest part of the garment, and subsequently when you are imagining someone garbed in a robe with a train, the train is the lowest point of that person. Dragging on the ground, getting dusty. See the idea with this image. The "lowest" part of God is so far beyond the best part of Israel that it fills it up, consumes it with His glory.

I think about the best that modern Christianity has to offer and I think about Mother Teresa. I'm having a love affair with her right now. Everything I read about her fascinates and challenges me. She understood what it meant to know Jesus and that deep and real knowledge pressed her to care for the poorest of the world's poor. And still the amazing Mother Teresa comes no where close to the hem of God's glorious robe.

Who are your hero's of faith? Billy Graham? Elizabeth Elliot? Jim Wallis? The best of the best. But when compared to the Best that is God all that we have to offer is consumed by His best-ness.

I can see why Paul said that the best parts of himself, of all of us, are basically crap. Because compared to a HOLY God-well you can't compare anything to a Holy God, there is no comparison.

And that is humiliating. That gives me perspective. That calls me to respect and reverence.

"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty

and the whole earth is full of His Glory"

Fearing God-Holiness (The Good News)

A passage of scripture that is helping me cultivate a fearful and reverent heart toward God is Isaiah 6.

 ¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:
   “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
   the whole earth is full of his glory."

Here we see one of the main descriptors of God in the Bible-Holy.

But what does it mean that God is Holy?

The "holy" used to describe God means "set apart" or I think of it as "wholly other", completely different. And this is actually a great thing about God, one that draws me more fully into His embrace.

All the junk that goes here, all the things that happen to me that I hate. All the drama I end up in that I want free from, all the ways that people break me and I break others. God is wholly above that. He is completely different. He doesn’t approach me to use me for His own advantage. He doesn’t try to consume me for Himself, and He doesn’t hold a grudge against me for all the ways I’ve screwed up. He is set apart from all that. 

He is wholly other, set so apart from us and our world, that we don't have to worry about Him abusing us the way others here have abused. When we think of His fatherhood (especially if we have had lousy fathers) we can press into the fact that He is a wholly different, a completely perfect Father, and we can rest in this bold and new Fatherhood. That His holy Love is completely different that any love I've experienced. Being in a relationship with Him is so wholly refreshing because I'm not having to wade through His junk, his insecurities. He is Holy, set apart, completely different, and His holy love is freeing to my soul.

How does thinking about God (His love, His peace, His hope) as wholly other bring you refreshment and freedom?

Lent, Suffering, and giving my Husband the Silent Treatment

I'm taking a break from writing about fearing God to talk about silent suffering.

This week the sermon at my church was powerful.

My pastor (Dodd) spoke out of 1 Peter 2:18-25. His call to suffer as Christ suffered was challenging! But then he took it to a whole other place. He showed a clip from "The Passion of Christ." And not the "oh look, Jesus built a chair" clip, he choose the section where Jesus is getting beaten by the Roman soldiers.

Something powerful happened in me while I watched that clip. I was reminded of moments in my marriage over the past three weeks where Joshua wounded me, "wronged" me, and I was sickened at my response. Each of these acts, that I deemed un-loving, were varying degrees of silly and all of them small. Joshua has also confessed where he needed to and we have talked through each of them. But what I did in the moment is what the Lord used to overwhelm me.

I used each of these moments as an excuses to lash out and tell Joshua exactly what I thought of his "mistake." I spoke to him with hostile tones and careless words. To put it into simple language- I was disrespectful and un-submissive.

As I watched this clip of my wonderful Lord getting beaten, I was so shamed by His silence. I was so humbled by His restraint and control, by His ability to "entrust Himself to God who judges justly." (1 Peter 2:23). Here Christ was innocently beaten and He did not make sure that his attackers knew the mistake they were making. I was moved to tears and confession.

Somewhere along the way, I have convinced myself that if I am "wronged" I must take up the charge and defend myself. At some point, I put myself in charge of taking care of myself, especially when it comes to getting the marriage I want, the life I feel I deserve. But I'm not in charge of taking care of me. When I came into a relationship with God, I gave this right over to Him-My True Father, My True King.

But I still live much of my life in the gear of "it's up to me; I have to take care of myself." And when I hit into hard moment with Joshua or the kids or work, I don't know how to downshift into the more life giving gear of "it's up to God; He will have to take up my case." It normally takes a blowout fight to get me to call out to God for help. My disrespect is really a sign that I don't live for the kingdom of God, that I live for the kingdom of Lee. It reveals that in my heart I don't trust God fully with my whole life, and that I think I can take better care of life than He can.

Respecting others comes from a deep understanding that God, all Powerful and Good, will take up your case. That He is on the move in others and in the world, and that if we follow the dynamic and difficult example of our big brother Jesus, then He will be glorified and we will be taken care of-embraced into the fullness of God's pleasure and made like Christ.

So I need to learn to give Josh the silent treatment when I feel disrespect bubbling up. I need to learn to press into my Just Judge and let Him deal with how I am "wronged." And I need to learn to be like the Spirit and say only that which flows from my Father.

Fearing God- A Quote

"The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge"

                 Proverbs 1:7                          

As I was reading about fearing God, I came across this quote:

“ that mingled fear and love which, combined, constitute the piety of man toward God; the OT places its emphasis on the fear, the NT...on the love, though there was love in the fear of God’s saints then, as there must be fear in their love now” (Vine's Expository Dictionary quoting Trench's New Testament's Synonyms-pg 230).

Love and fear have always been connected. They've always worked together to make us into whole people. Together (and only together really) our love for God and our reverent fear of Him press us toward His fullness and toward our good and right end—our ultimate goal-being made like Christ. 

Somewhere along the way we stopped allowing these two to be mingled. We want to focus more on the loving nature of our relationship with God, and not on the qualities of God that demand our profound respect. And that produces an arrogant people. Because without fear, we begin to think that God's love and mercy, His Grace, is our right. Without a healthy understanding and practice of Fearing God, we start acting entitled in our sin, annoyed in our suffering, lazy in our service. 

I experienced this over the past week. My home group at church is studying peace and what it means to really know peace with God and experience the peace of God. Romans 5 is one of the places we've been camping out. "Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand." vs 1-2

To have peace now means we were once at war with God. Tim Keller puts it like this: 

"When we disobey God, there are two things that happen. You not only break His law, but you assume the right or authority to do so; you claim kingship over yourself and your world. But God claims kingship over the same thing. Whenever two parties claim absolute (kingly) control over something, there is war."

How does this apply to fearing the Lord?

When I read about my peace with God, my gut reaction is this, "You bet there's peace with me and God! He is loving. He loves me. Christ died so I could be reconciled to Him. He has to be at peace with me." To get the full effect you need to imagine me saying that with a slightly smug, slightly annoyed look on my face. 

In my gunked up heart, I feel I have a right to peace with God because He is loving. But when I press myself toward fearing the Lord, toward this other, bigger understand of Him, then I am humbled and overwhelmed by this peace I have with God. I am deeply grateful to my big brother, Jesus, who ended the war between me and my good King. I am brought to the throne and I worship with tears and joy.