1 Give ear to my words, O LORD,
consider my sighing.
2 Listen to my cry for help,
my King and my God,
for to you I pray.
3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice;
in the morning I lay my requests before you
and wait in expectation.
4 You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil;
with you the wicked cannot dwell.
5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence;
you hate all who do wrong.
6 You destroy those who tell lies;
bloodthirsty and deceitful men
the LORD abhors.
7 But I, by your great mercy,
will come into your house;
in reverence will I bow down
toward your holy temple.
8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make straight your way before me.
9 Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction.
Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.
10 Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.
11 But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
12 For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous;
you surround them with your favor as with a shield.
What I learned: Bad people=BAD. Forgiven people=GOOD. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and grace, renewed every morning.
For the director of music. With stringed instruments. A psalm of David.
1 Answer me when I call to you,
O my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
be merciful to me and hear my prayer.
2 How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?
Selah
3 Know that the LORD has set apart the godly for himself;
the LORD will hear when I call to him.
4 In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
Selah
5 Offer right sacrifices
and trust in the LORD.
6 Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?”
Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD.
7 You have filled my heart with greater joy
than when their grain and new wine abound.
8 I will lie down and sleep in peace,
for you alone, O LORD,
make me dwell in safety.
It sounds like a prayer in the night. I often pray at night: when I’m settling down to sleep, when I can’t sleep, when I awaken in the night. If I fall asleep in the middle of my prayer time, that’s OK. God is still there, watching, working, keeping the world turning.
I wonder how it sounded when David or his musicians played and sang this psalm 3000 years ago?
What I Learned: I could afford to search my heart and be silent, instead of nursing my anger and hurt feelings and rehearsing the real and imagined offenses I’ve experienced and what I wish I’d said or done in response. “Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord.”
Inspiring Stories of Courage from Christians Serving Around the World
When I received a copy of this book of daily devotional stories from Thomas Nelson’s Book Sneeze Program, I planned to use it to read aloud to the urchins each day about missionaries and their service. I had hoped to form a habit for our family of praying for others outside of our immediate circle and of caring for God’s people around the world.
It didn’t happen –for lots of reasons, mainly my lack of discipline and my faulty memory.
Nevertheless, I would still like to share this book with my family, and maybe if I can get my act together we’ll start this summer. I did browse through the book and I’d like for my yound students and disciples to hear about:
Danika who at age 90 heard about the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time—and at 94 years of age, believed in Him.
“Ratko” who came to English club to cause trouble and learned that God’s plan was to make peace with estranged sinners.
Daniel who prays daily for and writes letters to hundreds of missionaries around the world.
Walmiy who patiently endures the hardships of life in a hot, desert climate in order to share Jesus with the the nomadic tribal people living there.
And there are 362 more stories in this encouraging, convicting book. The missionaries who share their stories in the book and who live out the gospel all around the world are Southern Baptist missionaries working under the auspices of the International Mission Board of the SBC, but the stories and the people in them transcend denomination. If you are a Christian and you want to be challenged to live a life of sacrifice and service to the Lord, read these stories. If you want your children to be challenged in the same way, read the stories to them. Then, pray together, like Daniel, that God will continue to work through the missionaries of the International Mission Board and other missionary agencies to reach our lost world with the gospel good news that God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
I was reading this post by Doug McKelvey and the comments at The Rabbit Room about the depiction of grace in literature and art, and it led my thinking in a different direction. I started thinking not about grace, but about tragedy and the rejection of grace, redemption, and relationship. I began to think of all the stories, songs, and poetry that make me cry, that draw out my emotional response. Most of them have the theme of redemption not accepted, not pursued, or not completed.
I learned a long time ago that a classic dramatic tragedy ends with the hero’s death, usually as the result of some fatal flaw in his character. A comedy, however, ends with a wedding mirroring the marriage feast of the Lamb and the redemptive, resurrection reuniting of Christ with His church. In the marriage feast, all of the errors and mistakes and even sins of the characters are seen as comedy, errors that lead eventually (by the grace of God) to reconciliation and true relationship. Really, though, a story that ends in the death of the hero (and usually others) can be just a beginning, a first installment, that will ultimately end in resurrection. Or it can be a “too late” story in which the hero dies unredeemed and unrepentant. And a tragedy can end, not with literal death, but with the death of a relationship in a way that shows that it’s too late to resurrect or redeem the relationship. The latter story makes for the most heart-breaking ending. Truth is that it can be too late, too late to get forgiveness, too late to resurrect a broken life or a broken relationship, too late to live. And that is the essence of hell and tragedy.
Some examples of too-lateness that make me want to cry:
“–I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it.
He was grave and silent, and then he said sombrely, I have only one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.”
~Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
“Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I lived. . . . I wish I could care what you do or where you go but I can’t. . . My dear, I don’t give a damn.” ~Rhett Butler in Gone With the WInd
Saddest movie. No one dies, but the movie is all about the death of relationship.
The king asked the Cushite, “Is the young man Absalom safe?”
The Cushite replied, “May the enemies of my lord the king and all who rise up to harm you be like that young man.”
The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! O Absalom, my son, my son!”
~2 Samuel 18:32-33 (Saddest story in the Bible)
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. ~Romans 1:28-32.
It’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died and I can’t hide
And I just can’t fake it. ~Carole King
It’s not too late now. But someday it will be. Repent. Return. Believe. Love.
“The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.†~Dorothy Sayers
This post necessarily combines thoughts about the book of Esther in the Bible and about Chuck Swindoll’s commentary on Esther, titled Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity. Mr. Swindoll’s book is the January selection for the Semicolon Book Club, and I chose it because the women of my church will be discussing and studying the book of Esther in early March at our yearly women’s retreat.
The first observation I read in any commentary, Bible study guide, or study of the book of Esther I picked up was that Esther is the only book in the Bible that never mentions God.
Ray Stedman (quoted in Swindoll’s Esther): “For many this little book is a puzzle, for it seems to be out of place in the Bible. There is no mention in it of the name of God; there is no reference to worship or faith; there is no prediction of the Messiah;there is no mention of heaven or hell–in short, there is nothing religious about it, at least on the surface.”
Matthew Henry (also quoted in Swindoll’s book): “But though the name of God be not in it, the finger of God is directing many minute events for the bringing about of His people’s deliverance.”
Swindoll: “When I come to this book that never mentions God, I see Him all the more profoundly and eloquently portrayed throughout it. It’s there in invisible ink. Just like life. I’ve never seen skywriting that says, ‘I’m here, Chuck. You can count on me.’ I’ve never heard an audible voice in the middle of the night reassuring me, ‘I’m here, My son.’ But by faith I see Him, and inaudibly I hear Him on a regular basis, reading Him written in the events of my life–whether it be the crushing blows that drive me to my knees or the joyous triumphs that send my heart winging.”
It’s probably not an original thought with me, but one of the things this “God-in-the-background”, God as the Silent Orchestrator of all things, made me think of was the writing of fiction by Christian authors. Why wouldn’t the book of Esther be a wonderful model for Christians who write fiction?
I’m not saying that the book of Esther is a fictional account. I believe it’s true history. I also see the hand of God very clearly in the events that are recounted in Esther. However, the human author of Esther felt no need to point out to his readers that God was the one who moved the heart of King Xerxes to love and listen to Esther, that it was God who preserved the Jewish people from annihilation by their enemies by manipulating events and moving people to do His will. And yet it’s so obvious. God is the main character in the book of Esther without his ever being named.
Wouldn’t it be a challenge to a Christian author to see if one could write a God-permeated book without ever mentioning God or prayer or worship or faith? Even better, what about a book filled with the teaching and person of Jesus that never tells the reader exactly what to think and what words to use and how to define Jesus’ presence in the world?
I’m not talking about a book with some vague new-age spirituality. I just wonder if a book that presented the gospel of Jesus Christ without ever telling the reader exactly what it was doing and what to think about it might be more of a paradigm shifter than a book that preaches explicitly. Fantasy can do something like this if it’s done skillfully (Tolkien, C.S.Lewis), but I believe it can be done with regular realistic fiction, too. I just don’t know of very many Christian authors who are writing that kind of book.
So Esther made me think about how we write and read and present stories. It also made me think about how God works in our wold and how often we can miss His presence if we’re not looking with eyes of faith. God is at work all of the time. But we don’t always have eyes to see or ears to hear. I have people I’m praying for who seem as lost as they’ve ever been, in whose lives I see nothing of God’s hand. That doesn’t meant that God isn’t at work. But it may be a while before I can see it. I may never see the complete picture this side of heaven. Esther may not have had any idea that God was at work in her elevation to the position of queen. But He was.
Key passage from the book of Esther: Esther 4:12-16
When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”
Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”
Where has God placed you for just such a time as this? What is He calling you to do?
If you read Esther, either the book in the Bible or Mr. Swindolls’ commentary or both recently and posted about it, here’s a linky where you can leave a link to your post. (Scroll down for the Saturday Review.)
Question #1: What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
My enjoyment of God. My enjoyment of God? I’m not sure where or how it happened, but in the past few years I’ve lost a lot of the Joy I used to have. A radio host I listened to several years ago signed off with the catchphrase: “Don’t let anyone steal your joy!”
Unfortunately, I’ve not heeded his words. I’ve let the world, the flesh, and the devil come in and steal my joy, tempting me to despair at times. I looked at this list of fourteen things that can steal your joy from John MacArthur, and I believe my chief joy-stealers are “prayerlessness” and “not understanding God’s sovereignty.” I don’t pray enough. I don’t know how to pray sometimes. I have a particular situation in my family that I want God to fix, and I’ve asked Him to do it, but nothing has happened. And I don’t know where to go from here.
You see, there’s a particular person in my life who has made some decisions that I consider to very destructive and displeasing to God. I want God to to change that person. Do I keep praying to that end? After all, God knows what I want. I know what I want. What good does it do to keep repeating myself? Do I pray about other things and ignore the elephant in the room? All this confusion hinders my prayer life and makes me unsure of what I believe about the sovereignty of God. And that steals my joy.
As for one thing I can do to “increase my enjoyment of God,” I think I need to take a step back and remember my first love. Remember that He first loved me and that I need to trust that He also loves those I hold dear. However, “his ways are not our ways,” and I hope to recover my joy by patiently trusting in His sovereign will even when I don’t understand what He is doing (or not doing). I can learn to pray again. And maybe the discipline of prayer will bring me back into a joyful communion that I’ve been missing for a while.
To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”
Revelation 2:1-5
Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29, 1898. On Christmas Day 1931, C.S. Lewis joined the Anglican Church and took communion.
“The White Witch? Who is she?
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”
“How awful!” said Lucy.
~The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
It was a sledge, and it was reindeer with bells on their harness. But they were far bigger than the Witch’s reindeer, and they were not white but brown. And on the sledge sat a person whom everyone knew the moment they set eyes on him. He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as hollyberries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest. Everyone knew him because, though you see people of his sort only in Narnia, you see pictures of them and hear them talked about even in our world–the world on this side of the wardrobe door. But when you really see them in Narnia it is rather different. Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.
~The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
“In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas, and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival, guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the market-place is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.
******
Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas, which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. . . . But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For the first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in.”
~God in the Dock, A Lost Chapter from Herodotus. Read the entire “lost chapter.”
I feel exactly as you do about the horrid commercial racket they have made out of Christmas. I send no cards and give no presents except to children.
~Letters to an American Lady.
He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, . . . to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.
Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover.
~Miracles.
The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.
~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.
Author Note:
Methodist preacher and theologian E. Stanley Jones went to India as a missionary in 1907. He began by preaching to the lower caste Indians, the Dalits, but found his mission as he began to give talks and seminars for the more educated classes. He subsequently became friends with poet Rabindranath Tagore and with Hindu leader Mohandas Gandhi.
Jones sympathized with the burgeoning Indian independence movement. He saw Christianity growing among the Indian people, but it was a Christianity that leaned toward syncretism, a philosophy Jones was sometimes accused of holding himself. However, Jones maintained that he held firmly to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, especially to the person and work of Christ. “I don’t hold my faith,” he said; “my faith holds me. It’s Christ or nothing, and you can’t live on nothing. I’ve been a very ordinary man doing extraordinary things because I was linked up with grace.” (TIME magazine, January 1964)
Mr. Jones wrote many books and articles, but his most popular book, The Christ of the Indian Road, was published in 1925. The book gives an account of of Jones’s work among the Indian people and his presentation of the gospel to them.
Quotations:
Life is bigger than processes and overflows them.
A very severe criticism is beating upon this whole question of missions from many angles and sources. Personally, I welcome it. If what we are doing is real it will shine all the more. If it isn’t real, the sooner we find it out the better.
If those who have not the spirit of Jesus are none of his, no matter what outward symbols they possess, then conversely those who have the spirit of Jesus are his, no matter what outward symbols they possess.
The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones is one of the books listed in the book 100 Christian Books That Changed the Century by William J. Peterson and Randy Peterson. SInce I’m planing a detailed study of the twentieth century sometime in the next couple of years, I think this book would be an excellent resource. In the meantime, here’s the list of 100 books. Of the 100, I’ve read 35 or so, dabbled in a few more. It looks like a good list of what influenced evangelical Christianity, in particular, for better or for worse.
Jeanne Damoff, one of the writers at the blog The Master’s Artist, writes about how C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra “Can Powerfully Inform the Practical Application of Truth.”
Part 1: “The plot basically answers this question: “What would happen if God created reasoning beings on another planet and gave them the same opportunity Adam and Eve had in the garden?†Except, in this case, The Fall has already happened on Earth, The Cross stands as a turning point not only in our world but in all the cosmos, and Satan (The Bent One) is determined to thwart God’s desire to establish perfection and experience unhindered fellowship in a new world.”
Part 2 (aka The Post I Do Not Want To Write): “As far as I can tell, same-sex marriage is as much a threat to the traditional family as drinking bleach is a threat to water. God forbids practicing homosexuality for one reason only: because it destroys the homosexual. Our perspective is all askew. We ask how a loving God could condemn any, when we should be asking how a just God can save any. We live as though the world is our playground and God is supposed to bring the snacks, when in reality we were created by and for His glory and pleasure. We make life about us, when it’s about Him.
God is good in what He forbids. That is what the church should be saying. That is what I should be saying. But apparently we don’t believe it.”
You really should read both parts of Ms. Damoff’s post before you read what I have to say. Maybe you should read Perelandra, too
So, I’m asking myself today: do I believe it? Do I believe that homosexual behavior and gossip and hatefulness and sexual immorality and gluttony and materialism and that other stuff God forbids are all really, really evil and destructive both to the sinner and to the society in which he lives? If I do, why do I keep on doing some of those things? And why do I look the other way and smile ruefully when people I love and care for do them?
And why am I afraid to yell, “Poison!” when I see these things condoned and presented as harmless in the context of children’s and young adult literature. I’m afraid to yell, afraid to even whisper, because someone will accuse me of being homophobic when I say that we ought not be giving books to our young people that present homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle. (And those young people ought to throw them back in our faces when we do.) I’m afraid of being called elitist if I complain that Gossip Girls and other bitchy teenage books marketed to teen girls are teaching them that it’s OK to live self-centered, malicious lives, that they can live that way and still avoid the tragedy of broken relationships. I’m afraid that when I call it like I see it and say that these two young people who are having sex outside of marriage in the latest YA bestseller should be headed for disaster, according to all the statistics and according to God’s Word, I’ll be called a prude or a book banner or an old lady who just doesn’t understand the beauty of the writing in this bodice ripper or that scifi macho potboiler.
Who am I to say what someone else should read? Nobody, really, just a blogger and a Christian and a reader. And one who has her own struggles with malice and envy and a multitude of other sins, sins that but for the grace of God would destroy me and mine just as surely as other sins, to which I am, thankfully, not tempted, destroy the lives of other people. But when authors lie and say that black is white and evil is good and that a little bit of sin won’t hurt you, shouldn’t I say something, even if it gets me banned from the next BBAW or from the lit blogosphere in general? We’re talking about real lives here. Kids and adults are reading books that say things that are untrue and harmful, and I’m not even trying to have the poison in these books taken off the market or banned in Boston; I just feel called to warn some of those who are headed for a cliff (to mix my metaphors unmercifully) that “something wicked this way comes.”
God forgive me. When I care more about the opinions of people I’ve never met and may never meet than I do about the Truth, I am a coward of the worst sort. I may get banned in Boston myself, or at least not read, but God help me, I will tell the truth about the books that I review. Because GOD IS GOOD all the time, in what He forbids as well as in what He affirms, in His justice and in His love. And I am being a disciple of Christ when I call evil what He calls evil and good what He says is good.
Now go out and get you copies of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, especially books two and three, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and read some True stories. Amazing stuff.
