A revealed hope

The voice of Solomon was one lamenting the limitations of understanding the ways of God. He knew that God was the source of life and the destiny we would face, but he was troubled about how to make sense out of the erratic way life so often unfolds. Good happens to bad people and bad happens to good people. Obvious principles of the benefit of diligence over indulgence have plenty of exceptions. How can anything be known about God????

Ultimately God reveals God. We receive to the degree we submit to what God is revealing. That revelation is encouraging. This crazy world where rebellion is definitive of our experiences will be replaced. Christ, the Lord of glory, died to put a death to rebellion and all that goes with it. The resurrection is the good news that there is a new order which has begun, on prepared by God for those who love him. It will be good and we are called to live out that hope now.

1 Corinthians 2:6-10 Yet among the mature (telos) we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. (7) But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. (8) None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (9) But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"-- (10) these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

from flakey to fruitful and fresh

The voice of Solomon is in places the voice of overcooked wisdom. He goes back and forth between indulgence and diligence, devotion and despair, idealism and realism. Fortunately there is an integrated perspective at the end: live is hard (and gets harder as your body starts to fall apart) and wisdom is limited (though talk of wisdom isn't) so just keep focusing on what God actually wants you to do. That is what will count. So what should I do?

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (14) For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Psalm 1 is an image I go back to over and over. Chaff (the flakey organic wrapper around grain) is what I will be like if I just follow the typical worldly pattern. No weightiness, just trivial excess in the world waiting to be blown away. The alternative is to get connected to a source which will cause me to grow in ways far beyond what would be expected, to actually be like a fruit bearing tree that is strong and fresh. That is a life rooted in God and his revelation of what I am to do.

Jesus models this in his baptism with John, showing that he believes in the rightness of God the father and his ways. His declaration is tested physically, relationally and spiritually in the desert. He then goes about stating clearly that we can change our thinking and actually live with trust that God is in charge of our very real lives right here, right now. He also shows it by caring for many and then explains it to apprentices he is showing how to do likewise.

The talk on the hill is a sit down and sort it out time. Hard realities are stated. There is a life that is good, but it is not easy or obvious. Ways of coping with the complexities of life have to be broken down to be replaced with a genuine reliance on God as the source of everything. Only then will there be enough to experience the confidence of actually doing the conclusion of Solomon's pondering.

Matthew 6:31-34
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Redeemed from vanity AND presumption

Looking at Ecclesiastes this week has clarified the dangers on each side of the narrow way. On the one side is the precipice of despair: all is vanity, nothing makes sense, might as well get addicted to t.v. and junk food 'cause nothing really matters anyway. On the other side is the unscaleable cliff of religious surety; the hyper confidence that all is good and clear and fine and obvious and in reach (as long as we keep side-stepping actual experiences in life, church history and even scripture). 

The narrow way is that realization that we know enough not to indulge in vanity, but we don't know enough to justify the spiritual Botox look. We live in a gap. We know that God is there and working out good and it is wise to follow him and receive his provision. What we don't know is how all the details fit together. We come close, like medieval astronomers, but there are too many exceptions. What we are left with is the humility to say: the Messiah is our hope, we will trust in who he is, what he has done and what he says we are to be about. The way of real faith is humble gratitude and openness to surprises, good and bad, while we wait.

Ecclesiastes 12:11-14 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. (12) My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (13) The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (14) For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

1 Corinthians 13:9-13 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, (10) but when the TELOS (complete) comes, the partial will pass away. (11) When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. (12) For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

English idioms

salt of the earth

light of the world

jot and tittle

Eye for an eye

Turn the other cheek

Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing

Our father who art in heaven

Treasures in heaven

Lilies of the field

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God

Don't judge lest ye be judged

Pearls to swine

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

The straight and narrow

Wolf in sheep's clothing

Know them by their fruit

House built on the rock

Learning practical wisdom from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount

What is this course for? This course is designed to show the condensed teachings of Jesus on how life should work. The main point is that a good life (a blessed life) is one where we are appropriately growing in our character with God's help.

How will it be done? We will gather on Thursday nights to highlight the main points of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5, 6 and 7) and to interact about how it can be understood and then applied in our lives.

What do I need to do? You will need to decide how much you want to get from it. The more you work with the message and consider how it can work in your life, the more you will get from it. Your participation level is up to you. If you would like to work at a more advanced level arrangements can be made for supplemental study between sessions.

When are the sessions? There will be 7 sessions, starting Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. 26 February.

Where are the sessions? We will host the sessions at 110 St. John's Road, Isleworth, TW7 6PG.

Can I bring a friend? Yes, this is offered free of charge to anyone who would like to learn.

One Ring to rule them all

A cheerful heart sees good where others can't. Energy, more than metabolism, just rises up out of nowhere. The power of a good mood is such a rush. It is fun seeing people on FaceBook swing the world toward sunshine when something goes right. The status of a cheerful person is strength to the weak.

But what happens when pressure mounts and the sun is eclipsed by the moon? There is a ring of power to rival the one discarded by nine fingered Frodo:

 THE INFAMOUS MOOD RING

The voice of Solomon does it throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. Swinging wildly from joy to despair he observes life under the sun. Yes, God has placed eternity in our hearts, but we can't fathom how it all works. When our mood is good, God is enough. When our mood turns, the problem of evil, the invisibility of God, the goofiness of the brethren are almost too much to bear. Life under the sun is hard; hard on our mood which in turn is hard on our faith.

Ecclesiastes 2:15-23 Then I said in my heart, "What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?" And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. (16) For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! (17) So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. (18) I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, (19) and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. (20) So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, (21) because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. (22) What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? (23) For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

Lord, be gracious to us; in dark days be our light!

God’s gift to man (no, not a super-model)

I am supposed to teach wisdom. It sometimes feels like a burden. Why? Ultimately the closer I get to figuring something out the more distance I discover between me and the ideal. Arrggghhh.

When I do regular chores, all I can think about is life, and meaning and mystery. But when I actually get paid to think on these things, it's different. Then I have a half-baked idea of doing something more concrete, though I avoid the specifics (because that might ruin the delusion). Is it o.k. just to do honest work and be grateful to God even though you can't figure it all out? Actually… yeah.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-13 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. (11) He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (12) I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; (13) also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man.

• Busy = living amidst diverse beauties waiting to be revealed at the right time (could be anything)
• Eternity in the heart = can't escape dreaming about meaning and the ultimate.
• Cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end = can't solve the puzzle
• Nothing better = just remember God holds the missing pieces of the mystery and get on with living joyfully.

God's gifts are more common and familiar than we sometimes realize. There, I've cranked out some awareness of someone else's wisdom. Now can I join these guys for a nice meal at the pub?

how fuzzy is our faith?

There is a weird healing in Mark 8. Jesus heals a blind man, but does it in two tries. The first try isn't enough:

Mark 8:23-25 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, "Do you see anything?"
(24) And he looked up and said, "I see men, but they look like trees, walking." (25) Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Right after that Jesus asks about the various ways in which people 'see' Jesus. Maybe he is this or that… but Peter says Jesus is the Messiah. Good, he sees Jesus correctly; well, sort of.

Jesus goes on to say more about what the Messiah (Christ) does and it freaks Peter out so much that Peter corrects Jesus (whom he just declared was the Messiah). Jesus famously rebukes Peter for being Satanic and helps the disciples to see life with a little more clarity:

Mark 8:34-9:1 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (35) For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. (36) For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (37) For what can a man give in return for his soul? (38)  For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." (9:1) And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."

The deal is not comfortable. We kinda see Jesus as our good hope, but honestly, it is all a bit murky. Then, when we get direct challenges that call us to sacrifice (pain, loss, etc.) we really get uncomfortable. To top it all, Jesus gives a confrontational warning: your soul's security is linked to how you deal with the counter-cultural call to be loyal to him. 

Gratefully the warning is followed with and assurance that some will see clearly. Unfortunately, we aren't told directly if we are one of those.

So, will we see clearly? Is our initial vision of Jesus too murky? When we do hear the challenge to abandon the ship we are on and give all, truly all, to Jesus, what will we do? 

Uhhh, I dunno.

I know not who sent me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am terribly ignorant of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul and that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects upon itself as well as upon all external things, and has no more knowledge of itself than of them.

I see the terrifying immensity of the universe which surrounds me, and find myself limited to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am set down here rather than elsewhere, nor why the brief period appointed for my life is assigned to me at this moment rather than another in all the eternity that has gone before and will come after me. On all sides I behold nothing but infinity, in which I am a mere atom, a mere passing shadow that returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I understand least of all is this very death which I cannot escape.

As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I only know that on leaving this world I fall for ever into nothingness or into the hands of a wrathful God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be everlastingly consigned. Such is my condition, full of weakness and uncertainty. From all this I conclude that I ought to spend every day of my life without seeking to know my fate. I might perhaps be able to find a solution to my doubts; but I cannot be bothered to do so, I will not take one step towards its discovery.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées 11 

(referring, apparently with frustration, to views of some of those around him)

Freedom!!

A scene from the movie: Braveheart

The defiant Scotsman, William Wallace (Mel Gibson) is being tortured to call out for mercy from the cruel regime of Longshanks…

Royal Magistrate: (leaning over to whisper to William) It can all end, right now. Peace. Bliss. Just say it. Cry out mercy.

(In the crowd, Hamish and Stephen are suffering along with William, while around them the women start chanting "mercy." Longshanks and the Prince wait inside the castle. Robert the Bruce leans against a parapet of Edinburgh castle, suffering. A tear falls down Isabella's cheek.)

Royal Magistrate: (still bent over Wallace) Cry out. Just say it. Mercy.

Hamish: Mercy, William, mercy.

Stephen: Jesus, just say it.

Royal Magistrate: (to the crowd) The prisoner wishes to say a word.

William: (after much struggle, shouting with all his might) FREEDOM!

To William Wallace, there is no need to call out for mercy from evil; for they have none. For him, mercy was found in Christ, and now he follows Christ in choosing to die for what is right rather than live for what is wrong. The seduction of compromise, of passing comfort and lightness of commitment, fails with those who surrender to God. His mercy is their strength as they abide in the meaning of life. To those who watch, not knowing the essence of such conviction, it is a troubling sight. But history looks back kindly on those who chose wisely. Their investment in right, whether observed in history or not, will not be lost.

 

In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields at Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.

Dallas Willard on cinema's fumbled vision of freedom

Here is the first and last paragraph of a paper about satisfaction and cinema by Dallas Willard:

The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory—that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules, and American Beauty, and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The basic idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity. What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings, the true elixir of life.

The broader and more basic problem underlying the tendency in contemporary movies I have tried to bring out here is the problem of establishing a certifiable knowledge of human goodness that gives us a third way between the two alternatives noted. Since the dominance of a refined version of Judeo-Christian ethics vanished at the end of the Nineteenth century, we have had nothing that could pass as moral knowledge in Western culture. Nietzsche saw clearly the cataclysmic nature of the historical passage beyond that ethics into Nihilism, but neither he nor anyone else has been able to find a replacement for it in human life. In the vacuum that remains, there is little we can do but vacillate between outward conformity to rules (that’s what "political correctness" is, a secular Phariseeism) and the indulgence of feelings. Neither comes to realistic terms with the human heart and personality. This explains many things about out culture, such as how highly addictive we are, how our essential individual and communal covenants cannot be maintained, the abysmal failure of education, and the incredible percentage of our population that is ensnared in the legal and penal system. Cinema and TV can, of course, only reflect this sad situation. They cannot correct it. But we should at least understand what they are offering to us and not mistake the vision of liberation through sensuality as a vision of reality.

Mosaic

Revelation 5:9-10 And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, (10) and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth."

The broken bits of human communities are ultimately to be gathered to form a redeemed work of art. The story is too vast to be told thoroughly, and so it is told in imagery. At various times in life the imagery affects me, effectively launching me into a greater vision. At other times, the signs are flat and the fonts pedantic and it all sounds like sloganeering. The challenge in times like that is stop fixating and to allow the peripheral vision of the mind to participate once again. We see through tinted glass, but there certainly is something to see.

Or else what?

Psalms 10:1-18 Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (2) In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. (3) For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD. (4) In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, "There is no God."
(5) His ways prosper at all times; your judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them. (6) He says in his heart, "I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity." (7) His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under 

his tongue are mischief and iniquity. (8) He sits in ambush in the villages; in hiding places he murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless; (9) he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket; he lurks that he may seize the poor; he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net. (10) The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might. (11) He says in his heart, "God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it."

 The invisibility of God, both literally and in times of evil, is the most constant source of angst for those asking about God.  It seems terribly inappropriate of God to exist in such a mysterious way.  But we assume much.  Shakespeare simplifies it this way: "To err is human".  What scriptue tells us is that our inability to see God is very closely related to our inability to see and renounce our own sin.  We take our failures to be part of the mix, no big deal.  Hoever, the human rejection of divine wisdom is the most compelling answer for a cruel and lonely world.  We regularly dismiss God, claiming our right to live our own lives, and then lament his absence when our ways our found wanting.

Does that mean that those who suffer do so directly because of their failures?  Yes and no.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Yet, God's view of reality is interconnected.  We do not live in careful columns.  My acts affect yours and yours mine.  I suffer from my own contributions to pollution, but I also suffer from everyone else's contribution to pollution.  A sin stained world is dangerous and unhealthy place.  It is not the garden in which only good dwelt.  We wanted to know more, and now we do.

 

TGIM

Monday starts a new week. Temptations toward depression for some: more work than they can keep up with, or conversely, not enough direction to feel useful.  Mondays are not universally welcomed.

Then again, Monday is a fresh reminder that we are alive, and even though life is not easy, good happens as we live. So the temptation toward depression needs to be resisted. Gratitude for goodness, and the hope of sharing it, should be my attitude. I'll have plenty of time to deal with problems and chaos and dissatisfaction… right now, I just need to breath in life.

Psalms 50:14-15 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, (15) and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."

photo:   http://www.maniacworld.com/three-bird-smiley-face.html

The Puzzling Faith of Abraham Lincoln

Excerpt from: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/1992/issue33/3311.html?start=4

“But three historical circumstances help explain the nature of Lincoln’s religion—with its unusual belief in God’s sovereign power—that came to fullest expression in the Second Inaugural Address.

First, Lincoln grew up in a poor dirt-farming family in the upper South and lower Midwest without privilege, position, or much formal education. The world of his upbringing was much closer to the culture of Puritanism than the culture of narcissism.

Common people were often deeply religious, believing without question in God and the unseen world. Yet they were not much troubled about doctrines, ecclesiastical affairs, or the glorious prospect of the millennium, which then preoccupied some of America’s religious elite. Rather, the common people tried to accept their fate, to overcome guilt, to enjoy the fleeting comforts of love and family, to survive the uncertainties of birth, to eke out existence on an often brutal frontier, and to come to terms with the ever-present reality of death.

As with many other such families, Lincoln’s had very few books. But it did have the Bible, which Lincoln evidently read with great care. His later speeches and ordinary conversation were peppered with biblical quotations and allusions.

This family history provided the backdrop of Lincoln’s religion. It had nothing to do with modern ideas about “finding oneself” or about “God’s wonderful plan” for life.

The second circumstance was Lincoln’s experience with denominations in the Indiana and Illinois of his youth. He found the harsh infighting among Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Universalists, and “village atheists” repulsive. As a consequence, Lincoln several times professed willingness to join a church that required nothing of its members but heartfelt love to God and to one’s neighbors.  The competing creeds of the churches were not for him.

The third circumstance was instruction in reality by the coldest master—death. The passing of his mother when he was 9, the death of a beloved sister shortly after her marriage, the death of two sons (in 1850, and at the White House in 1862), the death of several close friends in the early days of the Civil War (his Civil War), and increasingly, the heart-wrenching lists of casualties from the battlefields—these left him no taste for easy believism, no escape from the mysteries of God and the universe.

The truly remarkable thing about Lincoln’s religion was how these circumstances drove him to deeper contemplation of God and the divine will. The external Lincoln, casual about religious observance, hid a man of profound morality, an almost unbearable God-consciousness, and a deep belief in the freedom of God to transcend the limited vision of humanity.”

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/abraham-lincoln-egyartist-johnmourad.html

Return of the King

http://www.zimbio.com/World+Politics/articles/2457/India+Pakistan+Ambassador+Munir+Akram+speech

Titus 2:13-14 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, (14) who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

What happens when the King returns? We were saved from lawlessness (no reason to do one thing over another) to be pure (clear and consistent, not muddled and mixed) so we have our identity in him and are really ready to do good any chance we get. So when he gets here will we have more work to do? It seems like it. Now we seem to be fighting on two fronts.

Front 1: all that random confusion and indulgence we are supposed to be saved from.

Lawlessness: I still like using randomness to whatever I want to do…. gotta fight that.

Purity: I still like a little of this AND that AND… gotta fight that.

Identity: I still like not having anyone tell me what to do… gotta fight that.

Works: I still get tired of being a "do-gooder" … gotta fight that.

Front 2: actually living out the faith for the King here and now.

    Gotta deal with everyone else's lawlessness, impurity, divisiveness and non-cooperation with the right stuff.

The hope is that when the King arrives I won't be fighting against myself, I will only be fighting towards some kind of goodness in the new creation. I honestly cannot imagine it, but the promise of having a focus that I love (zealous for) and am effectively led to pursue… that's hopeful.

Truth serum

There is a whacky scene in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies. Arnold's super tough character is juiced up with truth serum and tied to a chair awaiting a torture facilitated interrogation. The serum works well enough for Arnie to answer his tormentor's question truthfully:

SAMIR: Is there anything you 

would like to tell me before we start?

HARRY: Yes. I'm going to kill you pretty soon.

SAMIR: I see. How exactly?

HARRY: Well, I thought I'd break your neck, then use you as a human shield, then 

kill the guard with that knife there on your table and take his gun.

SAMIR: And what makes you 

think you can do all that?

HARRY: Because I picked the lock on these handcuffs... 

And then he did what he said he was gonna do.

The gospel is about truth, but it is also about doing what it says. Paul wrote to Titus with a different plan to deal with Cretans than Arnold's character.

Titus 1:1-5 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, (2) in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began (3) and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior; (4) To Titus, my true child in a common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (5) This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you—

The idea is to have truth about God result in actions which correspond to that truth.

Titus 2:11-14 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, (12)training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, (13) waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, (14) who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The truths of God, and man, and sin, and judgment, and so on are not just idle interests and speculations. They are revealed action plans intended to be lived out. Transformation, from being driven by our cravings to being driven by a character shaped by God's revelation of who we are in his world, is how we know the truth serum is actually working. 

SAVED!

http://www.artintime.com/images/Original%20Paintings-Gene%20Gould/grief.jpg

Psalms 6:1-10 To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David. O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. (2) Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled. (3) My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O LORD--how long? (4) Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. (5) For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? (6) I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. (7) My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes. (8) Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. (9) The LORD has heard my plea; the LORD accepts my prayer. (10) All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

I remember an early effort at electronic translation, from the Spanish for "Jesus saves!" = "Jesús is thrifty!" Uhh…

So what do we mean by 'saved'? Insiders mean a lot of things which have massive cosmological assumptions. In talking to someone without those assumptions the message is lost. What is shared in our understanding of 'saved' and general human experience?: grief, conflict and ultimately death.

David is straight up (and not too theologically precise in regard to how sheol might work). Whatever else may be true about the world we don't see, the world we do see hurts more than it should. In that pain there is a sense of treasure that is worthy of being rescued from ruin. Our lives resonate with internal 'ought-ness'. We ought to live and not die. We ought to enjoy relationships, not have people out to get us. Our souls should be driven by delight, not… languishing.

So how are we saved in this sense? God reminds us that there really are two sides. Those who end up yielding in hope to the Creator as Lord, and those who, in defying God as Creator and Lord, are actually allied to the service of evil.

God, save me from being evil! Let me cry out to you in hope, faith and love.

T.S. Elliot: FOUR QUARTETS and chasing the wind

excerpts from http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/janfeb/15.41.html

What Eliot is saying, according to Howard, "has something to do with the odd business of being mortal … existing here and in time, when all the while we are profoundly dissatisfied with this dismal sequence of past, present, and future … that … drains things away." This situation is all the more maddening when we are blessed—or cursed—with glimpses of something beyond time, something more than the "Years of living among the breakage." Eliot calls these glimpses "timeless moments,

" and he experienced such moments of sight and insight at the four places celebrated in Four Quartets.

Eliot presents a ride in the London subway as an emblem of the modern condition:

strained, time-ridden faces

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Filled with fancies and empty of meaning

Tumid apathy with no concentration

Men and bits of paper, whirled in the cold wind

Ecclesiastes 2:23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.  (24)  There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God,  (25)  for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?  (26)  For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Ahh, just right!

Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, (25) for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Thinking deeply and all has its place… between episodes of regular life. I tend to get too caught up in the edges of knowledge and am invariably left unsatisfied. Some of the things I learn when I probe can be helpful, but for what? Life is lived in all the daily stuff. Work, meals, fun. I have been guilty, more than once, of being contemptuous of the 'mundane', but slowly I am coming back to the truth: wisdom is not just for its own sake, it is for guiding how we make the most of the mundane.

God is good and has made a good creation. With his wisdom used according to his purposes, I should and can have some enjoyment along the way. In fact, I will!