On the Edge of Canaan

Sometimes when I see more and more people spitting at God and His Holy law in our land, I am greatly tempted to fear. I feel like Israel on the border of Canaan. The giants are so big and the city walls so solid. But God sweetly met me this week with Deuteronomy 1:29-31: "Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place."
Two days after reading the above quote I went back to that passage. That's when I discovered that God had said these words BEFORE Israel was sent to take the land. Guess what? After hearing these words, Israel DID NOT GO UP to take the land. And then God calls them rebels and murmurers and unbelievers. They actually accuse God of hating them and plotting their demise at the hand of the Amorites!
Grant me, O Lord, the courage of Joshua and Caleb to take the land. I repent of hard thoughts of you. Keep me from deceiving myself into believing that I can be AWOL and a soldier of the cross at the same time.

Toward Revival

Evan Roberts, Welsh miner turned preacher, prayed 11 years for revival. It came with fire. He gives four short pieces of counsel that are a constant challenge to me:
1. Confess any known sin.
2. Put away any doubtful habit.
3. Obey the Spirit promptly.
4. Confess Christ publicly.

I, Myself and Me

I had a wonderful friend in Canada who has since died. She had lived through tough pioneering days in my village, and was a fine, generous Christian. One day she quoted this poem about selfishness:

I, Myself and Me

I, myself and me
Had a little tea party
In the afternoon at three.
T'was very small
Three friends in all,
I, myself and me.

Myself ate all the sandwiches
And I drank all the tea.
T'was also I
That ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.

Isn't that a wonderful little poem to use to teach our children about selfishness?

My friend also told me that when she was younger, her sister and her had gotten the rare treat of an apple to share. When they each got their half they began to quarrel about whether the halves were cut fairly. Their wise father looked at the apple halves.
"Yes," he said "this one looks bigger," and proceeded to take a large bite. He then looked at the second half and said "Now this one is bigger," and took a large bite from that one. In a professed attempt to even out the size of the halves, their father took another bite from the first and then the second, and third and fourth bites from each until the apple was gone. After that, do you think Reika and Minnie ever complained about their half of the apple being smaller?

Thinking "Gross about God"

I wanted to take up John Piper's challenge to read through John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in one year (one of the most significant books ever, an explanation of Protestant theology addressed to the King of France, Francis I, written when Protestants were being killed by the thousands), but it felt a little ambitious.
Instead I have a book called 365 Days with Calvin. Calvin was an incredibly clear thinker and communicator, deeply and passionately committed to God's Word, and a lover of the church. Here is a short excerpt from yesterday's reading to whet your appetite: "'To lift up prayer,' therefore, is to pray in such a manner that our hearts do not grovel on the earth or think anything earthly or gross about God but rather ascribe to him what is suitable to his majesty."
Consider the Greeks with their wicked gods. One can live quite comfortably with that kind. But in Psalm 50 God rebukes the wicked who "thought that I was one like yourself." If you find yourself defaulting to an earthly view of God, you may want to be especially careful to begin prayer with some acknowledgment of God as the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, majestic, holy, and Almighty. It fits the model for prayer that Jesus gave.

Haiku for Grant

Mark and Tami Pehrson made a strong pro-life statement when they held a funeral for their baby Grant who died in the womb. It was touching to see the small coffin. After, I wrote this poem:

Grant

See, one pall bearer
The knitting is unfinished
in divine wisdom

If you love haiku poetry, Canon Press sells a book called breathmarks by Gary Hotham. Lovely.
Here is one of the ones I love:

music two centuries old ---
the color flows
out of the tea bag

An emerald in Job

Eight years ago the Bahia Emerald, worth $400 million, was found in Brazil.
Last week I found an emerald in Job 5:8,9: "As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number."
No price can be put on that gem.

Scraping the mud off the Puritans

Recently I ordered Leland Ryken's Worldly Saints via interlibrary loan from the public library. The adjectives in the introduction by J.I. Packer alone are worth the price of the book. (I have since ordered it.) Splattered as "wild men, fierce and freaky, religious fanatics and social extremists", "superserious, overscrupulous, majoring in minors, and unable or unwilling to relax", the Puritans have not been honored as they should be. In fact, Packer maintains that we desparately need the Puritans today. Calling them "sober, conscientious, and cultured citizens, persons of principle, determined and disciplined, excelling in domestic virtues," Packer says we could learn from their maturity. He goes on with specifics which I suggest you discover by reading the book. Or read the Puritans themselves. Dr. Joel Beeke has a fabulous book called Meet the Puritans which gives excerpts and an overview. Go feast.