Piper on Grieving the Loss of a Child

“But there is another way God is honored in our grieving. When we taste the loss so deeply because we loved so deeply and treasured God’s gift — and God in his gift — so passionately that the loss cuts the deeper and the longer, and yet in and through the depths and the lengths of sorrow we never let go of God, and feel him never letting go of us — in that longer sorrow he is also greatly honored, because the length of it reveals the magnitude of our sense of loss for which we do not forsake God. At every moment of the lengthening grief, we turn to him not away from him. And therefore the length of it is a way of showing him to be ever-present, enduringly sufficient.”

—Read the whole thing.

Tuition Craziness: Enslaved to Student Debt

I wrote an article for Bethlehem College and Seminary that can be read here.

Middle-aged Git Goes to Switchfoot

I may be a middle-aged git, but I also love rock-n-roll (especially the classic rock genre; I’m in good company, so does Carl Trueman). Therefore, I jumped at the chance to take my awesome kids to see Switchfoot on Thursday night.

On Doubts and Questions

From Douglas Wilson:

“The point is that questions, even tough questions, can be answered. And when they are answered, the questioner grows in his knowledge and understanding. Don’t worry whether the Bible can stand up to your questions. It is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.”

Read the whole post.

Things I am thankful for...

the mischievous grin of my 13-year old son … a sudden hug from my 10-year old daughter … Burgerville cheeseburgers with extra spread … a hot shower at the end of a cold day … a steaming mug of freshly ground Sumatra … worship led by Dan Holst with all of Bethlehem singing exultantly … the warmth of my wife’s hand in mine … Kayleigh’s happy declaration of the number of books read this year … the sizzle of perfectly seasoned ground chuck on a charcoal grill … a sharp intellectual argument from my oldest daughter … a long conversation about literature with a close friend … the “But God” in Ephesians 2:4 … praying before every meeting … the silence of a fresh snow … twenty-one years of marriage to my best friend … the solidity of the safety net of God’s sovereignty … hearing my children pray with intensity and emotion … the generosity of strangers …

Memorial Day Freedom

We spent today, Memorial Day, with our dear friends, the Crutchmers, who are longing to help provide theological education to pastors in Finland. We played soccer, barbecued, ate, laughed, and generally enjoyed a pleasant, if a tad too warm, day.



We thanked the Lord Jesus Christ for his many blessing to us, including our freedom, earned for us by those who have fought and died so that we could enjoy a day like today. It was not lost on us, however, that our greatest freedom was gained through Jesus’ birth by a virgin, his perfectly obedient life, his cursed death on our behalf, and his victorious resurrection.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).

The Evident Wonder of God's Great Provision

“Sometimes it’s books or songs that tear away at the carefully crafted shackles we have allowed around our wrists, the bonds that blind us to the evident wonder of God’s great provision. Sometimes it’s a holy encounter with a saint. Sometimes it’s math, basketball, corn dogs, Victoria Falls, making love, babies, adoption, a painting, a person failing well, a fancy car, poetry, or water, or bread, or wine.”

—I’M FINITE, HOW ARE YOU?, by S. D. Smith

Seeing Sin Rightly

Two things came together yesterday to cause this post. The first was a paragraph quoted by Alan Jacobs on his common-book website, More than 95 Theses, and re-tweeted by my friend. Here’s the quote:

“The Lenten season is devoted especially to what the theologians call contrition, and so every day in Lent a prayer is said in which we ask God to give us ‘contrite hearts.’ Contrite, as you know, is a word translated from Latin, meaning crushed or pulverized. Now modern people complain that there is too much of that note in our Prayer Book. They do not wish their hearts to be pulverized, and they do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders.’ I once knew a regular churchgoer who never repeated the words, ‘the burden of them (i.e. his sins) is intolerable’, because he did not feel that they were intolerable. But he was not understanding the words. I think the Prayer Book is very seldom talking primarily about our feelings; that is (I think) the first mistake we’re apt to make about these words ‘we are miserable offenders.’ I do not think whether we are feeling miserable or not matters. I think it is using the word miserable in the old sense — meaning an object of pity. That a person can be a proper object of pity when he is not feeling miserable, you can easily understand if you imagine yourself looking down from a height on two crowded express trains that are traveling towards one another along the same line at 60 miles an hour. You can see that in forty seconds there will be a head-on collision. I think it would be very natural to say about the passengers of these trains, that they were objects of pity. This would not mean that they felt miserable themselves; but they would certainly be proper objects of pity. I think that is the sense in which to take the word ‘miserable.’ The Prayer Book does not mean that we should feel miserable but that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity.”

While this quote is really directed at the reception of the Prayer Book, what is says about modern people is worth noting. How much of the reality that modern people “do not wish their hearts to be pulverized,” and “do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders’” is because we, modern people, do not feel the horror, yes, horror of sin.

If a man lusts in his heart, what are the consequences? If a man yells at his children or struggles with pride or wastes time when he should be working or is not grateful to the Lord for all the good gifts he has received, how does he feel the weight, the significance of his sin?

If a woman gossips to her friends or doesn’t return the five dollars the clerk mistakenly gave her at the checkout counter or doesn’t honor her husband or isn’t thankful that the Lord has sustained her family for another day, how does she feel the force of her sin?

The reality, I think, for Christians in this modern era, is that we don’t, no, we can’t, comprehend the hideousness, the disgust, awfulness of our sin, until we understand that sin is hideous, disgusting, and awful. How often have you heard someone cluck about so-and-so, “He won’t really wake-up until he hits bottom”? The point is that modern people seemingly have to be confronted with dire consequences of sin before they realize the seriousness of the sin. A woman has to divorce her husband before he realizes that his addiction to pornography is hideous. A man has to go to jail before he realizes that cheating on taxes is a breaking of Jesus’ command.

The second thing was reading from the first chapter of Leviticus. Note the use of the personal pronouns in these verses.

The LORD called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock. 

“If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the LORD, and Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Then he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces, and the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire” (Leviticus 1:1–7).

What shocked me was that the person who leads the male animal from the herd to the tent of meeting is the sinner. The person who lays his hands on the head of that animal is the sinner. The person who takes the knife in his hand and with a nervous jerk tries to slice the animal’s throat, feeling its warms blood spill out over his hands and the animal jump and kick and try to get free, all the while getting weaker as its life-blood drains away into the priests pot.

He shall kill the bull before the Lord.

I had previously thought the priest did all the killing. How do I know it is the sinner and not the priest? Because of the pronouns. “He shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron’s sons the priest shall bring the blood….” In the first paragraph God says, “When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord…. If his offering is a burnt offering….He shall bring it to the entrance…, that he may be accepted….He shall lay his hand on the head….Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.”

Aaron’s sons aren’t doing the killing, they are catching the blood and flinging it against the alter, but the sinner is doing the slaughter. Keep reading in this chapter and see how in each case the sinner kills the animal, except for turtledoves and pigeons, where the priest twists off its head. (I talked with the BCS OT professor and he tentatively agreed with me. Granted, Hebrew pronouns can be difficult, but it seems that the sinner leads the animal, kills it, and from then on the priests do all the rest of the ritual work.)

When was the last time you slit an animal’s throat?

So, putting these things together, it seems that the sacrificial system had a built-in way to help people feel the hideousness, the disgust, the awfulness, the weight of sin, in a way we moderns can’t comprehend. Some animal really had to die when they committed sin.

The truth, for a New Testament Christian, is that someone had to die when we sin as well. This One’s death was hideous, disgusting, and awful. The weight of his death brought darkness upon the earth for hours and tore the veil between the people and the Holy of Holies. The weight of his death broke open graves and caused the dead to walk alive. The force of his death changed the reality of the universe from that point forward. His death is the determining factor for the fate of humanity.

Jesus is the spotless lamb upon whom believing Christians placed their hands and drew the knife across his throat.

Praise God.

Hate sin.

Soli Deo Gloria

For those creative, and not-so creative types:

But as the mists of my dullness gradually cleared, the truth broke with a light that pierces to this day: she was praying for inspiration, for the choreography and for the execution of it. She was entreating the favor of God upon this endeavor and imploring His ability to procure it. She had the spiritual vision to see that this was not just a workshop recital for families and friends at a little performing arts school—it was a chance to honor the God of the universe. To love God with the heart, soul, mind and strength. To create something beautiful out of love for Him and to lift it up as an offering of praise.

That moment changed everything for me, in the way that small, seemingly trifling moments often do. All my loves—writing, music, dancing, homemaking, gardening—have since been charged with the influence of it. And not only by the ‘glory’ side of the equation; by the appeal, as well, if not more so.  I have in that memory of my beloved and respected teacher, face down before the God she adored, an image of the creative process that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Creativity is a giving, an offering to others and a glory to the Creator-God. But it is also a receiving. And the courage to create and not valuate our offering by the market standards of the world is, I believe, a gift in itself, and one to be sought most earnestly by the likes of such frail co-creators as we humans prove ourselves to be.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Rabbit Room

Lost Opportunity

This is simply a re-post from Alan Jacobs, but it ties nicely with the reality of our opportunities growing thin as time marches on...

“Such wistful desire to evade responsibility exposes the childishness of the adults now preaching the good news of emerging adulthood. They have decided that taking responsibility for other people — spouses, children, employees and subordinates, neighbors, friends, eventually even parents — and relying on them in turn is the heaviest burden that can befall a person. But what if this is instead the means to happiness? Advocates of emerging adulthood share in common with children a proclivity to see the future as nearly infinite and themselves as, for all practical purposes, immortal. In their view of themselves and their world, it is never too late and there is never any rush. But a few-year increase in the average life expectancy has bought us much less time than they think, and it has done nothing to mitigate our potential to make irreversible errors and experience gnawing regret. The indefinite extension of childhood doesn’t even approximate the immortality required to free us from these miseries. In the meantime, putting off all responsibilities and commitments as long as possible to avoid hard realities may only result in missing the opportunity to make these decisions at all.”

—The New Atlantis » Slacking as Self-Discovery

Read more than 95 theses

Football Example of Opportunity Costs

A paragraph from a recent Run of Play post—A Wrinkle in Time—that wonderfully portrays the reality of opportunity costs. And, no, he is not talking about American Football.

When we are young, the stars of the football world tower over us, not least because, well, at that age any adult evokes a certain amount of awe. (To an eight-year-old, every adult is wise.) Throughout most of our childhood, we think ourselves invincible, and the world ageless; only as our teenage years end do we start to see that choices are coming down the road, closing off certain paths. Yet even then these decisions seem far away, mere abstractions that teachers and parents have conjured up to entice us to do a little extra work. Rarely do the millions playing rec soccer in high school possess the self-awareness to realize that already the dreams of scoring in the World Cup final (and, in many Americans’ cases, finally vaulting soccer to its rightful place at top of the sports heap) ended when we didn’t go for the travel team in elementary school. Even the most devoted young fans, when following the U-17 and U-20 World Cups, or their favorite clubs’ youth teams, see those players just as contemporaries, classmates if we’d gone to a different school. It’s only when we finally see a true up-and-coming star younger than us, whether Gareth Bale or Andy Najar or Josh McEachran or Juan Agudelo, that the real, physical evidence confronts us: those dreams are well and truly over.

Update: A friend noticed that today’s post on Run of Play was a bit inappropriate, so I removed the link to the main Web site to help you avoid running into something you didn’t want or intend to see. The link to the quoted post should be fine.

Pride and Guilt

Tony Sumpter wrote an excellent post over at Credenda.org about pride and guilt that ties in with much of what has been both in and behind the posts on this blog. It would be good to read his entire post; but if you want the summary version read on.

Tony explains the relationship between pride and guilt...

One of the ways pride poisons his victims is through false guilt. One of the unintended consequences of thinking too highly of yourself is the reality of not meeting your own expectations. What does a proud person do when he or she knows that they are not as smart, not as gifted, not as diligent, not as beautiful as they have positioned themselves to be? What do you do when you look in the mirror and you realize that your projection of yourself doesn’t match reality? Well, like the idiot sons of Adam that we are, we frequently take what we think is the path of least resistance and we feel bad for ourselves. We feel guilty. But instead of feeling guilty for setting up legalistic super-standards for ourselves, we feel guilty for not meeting our legalistic super-standards. And we do all of this with Bible verses and pious thoughts and prayers. O, I know I should be sharing the gospel with every person I come in contact with, but I’m just so cowardly and selfish. Or I know my house should look like a model home on HGTV, but I’m just not as organized as I should be. Or I know I really should be using my theological gifts to write books and speak at conferences, but I just don’t use my time as wisely as I should. I know my children should recite Bible verse on command and never have a resistant look in their eyes, but I just don’t spend enough time with them or discipline them consistently enough.

The good news that repels this relationship between pride and guilt is the gospel.

But the good news of Jesus is freedom from guilt and sin. And this means in part that we are freed to be human. We are freed to be us. We are freed to be finite creatures. We are freed by the gospel to get tired. We are freed by the gospel to say ‘no’ to some things and ‘yes’ to others. We are freed by the gospel to be filled with the love of Christ to the very brim of our souls and spilling over, and then we can be fruitful in the tiny plot of planet earth that we’ve been given. We are freed to plant a garden, open a business, and have a family. We are freed to work hard and harvest the field that God has called us to. And since we’re sinners, we’ll screw that up sometimes too, and we’ll fall down on our faces. But the good news is that we can get up, ask for forgiveness and get back to work. But a big, sovereign God frees us to be little, humble people with bright eyes and laughing hearts.

I pray that the Lord will give me the grace to be fruitful and content in the tiny plot of land he has given me.

What Camp Are You In?

There are activities that seem to fall into a few different camps. The camps are Love to Do, Hate to Do, Good At, and Bad At. Any activity can have the following permutations...

1. Love to Do and Good At
2. Love to Do and Bad At
3. Hate to Do and Good At
4. Hate to Do and Bad At

Camps one and four tend to take care of themselves. Sometimes people are stuck in camp three and need to figure out a way not to be there.

But what about camp two? How much effort should we put into those activities that fall into camp two? If we love to sing, but can’t sing, should we do it? If we love to run or write or fish or swim or study or whatever, but really stink at it, should we continue to put energy into it for the sake of our joy, or should we bag it and find things that only fall into camp one?

How Now Shall I Live?

In many of my recent, apparently varied posts (i.e. Harry Potter, opportunity costs, and even grilling) there has existed—in my mind, at least—a common theme. This common theme really is a serious question, with associated thoughts rattling around in my head that have become posts.

Carl Truman, when blogging on the early church fathers, wrote…

In many ways, the fundamental questions they asked were akin to those we face today. For example, “What does it look like here and now to be a committed disciple of Christ?” is one of those hardy perennials that Christians have asked throughout the years. In the ancient church, it looked rather ascetic and monastic. We might today deem such an answer as wrongheaded; but we cannot avoid the legitimate demands the question places on us; we too have to answer it in our day and age and perhaps, 1,500 years from now, our answers will look rather odd.

This is a similar question to the one Francis Schaeffer asked in the title of his famous book How Should We Then Live?

My asking this question—What does it look like here and now to be a committed disciple of Christ?—stems from several personal realities…

1. Not becoming a pastor after moving to Minnesota and spending 6 years in theological training,
2. Accepting the (happy) reality that I am a college administrator for the foreseeable future,
3. Turning 40,
4. Having some discretion over free-time now that I am no longer taking classes.

How now shall I live?

In addition to these realities, there is a significant amount of pressure—real or perceived—at my church and in my circles to “not waste your life,” and to do everything with “undistracting excellence.”

For a sinful person like me, this pressure can be very real. A logical result of this pressure for me, and probably many others, is that there is no such thing as leisure (without feeling guilty), because accomplishing something meaningful for Christ to bring him glory is all important, and one certainly cannot waste any time in life on a hobby (i.e. carving ducks or collecting seashells).

Intellectually, I understand that this is not what is being taught, and that I am being overblown and somewhat crass, but the pressure can be very real. I understand that leisure is important, and it is OK to not be “on” 24 hours a day. None of the reality behind Christian Hedonism or Don’t Waste Your Life is wrong. It is gloriously right.

However, the intellectual understanding and the culture of the circles I run in are two different things, which is why hearing and living this message can be so deceptively dangerous. I also understand that for the most part, people outside my bubble don’t struggle with this pressure; they need to be pushed to not waste their life and do everything with God-glorifying excellence. All of this is why, now that I have accepted the reality that I am neither a pastor nor a scholar, I must ask “How now shall I live?” (It is very encouraging to me that Trueman thinks this is a perennial question.)

Attempting to answer this question is why, fundamentally, I just read Luther’s Freedom of a Christian, and why I have asked questions about whether it is OK to read Harry Potter, and why I have just started another new book titled Living In God’s Two Kingdoms, by David VanDrunen. I have high hopes for this book. Here is a paragraph from the introduction…

In presenting this two-kingdoms vision, I hope to provide encouragement to ordinary Christians—to ordinary Christians who work, study, vote, raise families, help the poor, run businesses, make music, watch movies, ride bikes, and engage in all sorts of other cultural activities, and who wish to live thoughtful and God-pleasing lives in doing so. I hope that this book will be an encouragement for many readers to take up their many cultural activities with renewed vigor, being convinced that such activities are good and pleasing to God. For many readers I also hope that this book will be liberating, freeing you from well-meaning but non-biblical pressure from other Christians to “transform” your workplace or to find uniquely “Christian” ways of doing ordinary tasks. For all readers I hope that this book will serve to focus your hearts on things that are far more important than a promotion at work or the most recent Supreme Court decision: the sufficiency of the work of Christ, the missionary task of the church, and the hope of the new heaven and new earth.

Consequently, somewhere in all this is another explanation for why I love to barbecue.

The Value of all the Foregone Alternatives Summed Together

2010 has been a big year. Wendy and I celebrated 20 years of marriage, I turned 40, and I entered fully into my second career. (The first career was in civil engineering, the second is in higher education.) As can be read in previous posts, I have been working through this major life transition for the last year or two and am quite surprised at where the Lord has placed me. Through this career shift, I have pondered many of the other things that I want to do or desire to accomplish in this life. Matt and I call this our pipe-dream list.

For example, today I saw an announcement of a new masters degree at another college that I would love to pursue. Yet, as I look around at my wife and kids and think through my various responsibilities—like loving my wife as Christ loved the church and gave up his life for her, and providing food and education for these children—it is clear I won’t be packing my bags for Moscow (Idaho) anytime soon. Life-long learning is a good thing. I can’t wait to keep learning unfettered once we get to the next great life.

Alan Jacobs, who I increasingly admire and enjoy reading, quoted Robert Nozick in his essay, “Opportunity Costs,” from his book Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant.

As Robert Nozick once wrote, “Although [young people] would agree, if they thought about it, that they will realize only some of the (feasible) possibilities before them, none of these various possibilities is yet excluded in their minds. The young live in each of the futures open to them….Economists speak of the opportunity cost of something as the value of the best alternative forgone for it. For adults, strangely, the opportunity cost of our lives appears to us to be the value of all the foregone alternatives summed together, not merely the best other one. When all the possibilities were yet still before us, it felt as if we would do them all” (Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring, p. 67).

The key sentence, and the one which has caused the most reflection is, “For adults, strangely, the opportunity cost of our lives appears to us to be the value of all the foregone alternatives summed together, not merely the best other one.” Several points regarding the opportunity cost of my life have surfaced out of the pool of thinking over that sentence.

First, the opportunity cost is only getting higher with each passing day. Recently, Pastor Sam blogged…

At this stage of my life, I must admit I am never going to be on the high school debate team, play on the college basketball team, pay off that mortgage in my forties, run that marathon in my fifties, and so on. For example, the evaporating number of days remaining in my life implies that I will have less and less time to read many of the great books.

Second, now that I have crossed the 40-yard line, I need to be ruthless about what things I spend my time doing. If with the passing of every day, the opportunity cost of my life keeps increasing, then the importance of using my remaining time wisely increases. If I ever want to accomplish any of the items on my pipe-dream list, I need to be ruthless in cutting out the things that are not on the list.

Third, I need to make the most of my career. There is no longer time to reboot—like we have done in the last six years—unless the next opportunity stands on the shoulders of this one. The time is past to start over (again). I do realize that the Lord will lead as he is pleased, but you know what I mean.

Fourth, Pastor Sam is right, I cannot grieve over the things that have passed; instead, I must be thankful that a sovereign God who ordains my steps loves me. If I am in Christ, God is 100% for me, and he has designed my life to display the glory of his son in me. I should be thankful, not regretful.

Fifth, as my inevitable death draws nearer, the importance of doing everything—whether it is eating or drinking—to the glory of God increases exponentially. I will face the Judge of the Universe in the relatively near future. I do not want to have wasted my life.

All of this, then, causes me to sincerely wonder what it means to not waste my life. This is not as simple as it seems. If you are familiar with the circles I run in, then please don’t write off this question. It is worth thinking about. More to follow.

Starting “The Freedom of a Christian”

In 2004, when we moved to Minnesota, I was convinced that I was coming to train to be a pastor. It is difficult to explain how convinced I was of this. Not only was I personally convinced, but I felt that God had specifically called me to this new vocation.

Now, over six years later, I don’t believe this anymore. I do not believe that I was called to pastor a church. This significant transition in my thought is a long story, and if you have an afternoon and like coffee I would be happy to recount it in great detail. Suffice it to say that there has been emotional pain and family turmoil around this shift in vocational direction. Ultimately, God is sovereign and he will do what he will do; we trust him. But the realization that we moved here for a dream that was ultimately not to be reality has been most difficult.

Out of this pain has slowly emerged the realization that God is much wiser than I am. However it was that I came to believe I was called to pastor, God has revealed that it was not the wisest course of action given my personality. I am moody and prone to extremes, as much of this blog will attest, which is a perfect example of God’s infinite wisdom. It is precisely these traits—moodiness and a penchant to go to extremes—that disincline me from pastoring a flock of imperfect people.

So, now what? Well, by God’s providence I am currently employed by Bethlehem College and Seminary as the Vice President of Administration. In this strange and unique position I can play to my strengths. It really is a tailor-made position for me. God is good indeed. But what about the Bible and my once strongly held opinion (whether a true and correct opinion remains to be seen) that once embarking on the trail into full-time ministry one should never leave it? I used to think less of people who went into a “normal” vocation after spending years training for ministerial work. The irony of God’s providence is that I am now in that precise position. I look upon those situations with significantly more patience and understanding. O what a hypocrite.

As usual, I turn to a book for answers to these questions. In this case, I am turning to Martin Luther’s The Freedom of a Christian. I have often heard this treatise quoted, usually something about the worthy role of changing diapers. My uninformed assumption was that this treatise by Luther was all about Christian vocation. Maybe it is, maybe not.

My experience in the pages penned by Luther so far is not one of vocation, but of justification. Because I am a bit brain-cell challenged, it takes me 20 minutes to get through each densely packed paragraph. The going is slow, to say the least, but having read the first three or four pages of Luther’s 30-page work, it seems he is spending all his time on the doctrine of justification.

“It is evident that no external thing has any influence in producing Christian righteousness or freedom, or in producing unrighteousness or servitude. A simple argument will furnish the proof of this statement. What can it profit the soul if the body is well, free, and active, and eats, drinks, and does as it pleases? For in these respects even the most godless slaves of vice may prosper. On the other hand, how will poor health or imprisonment or hunger or thirst or any other external misfortune harm the soul? Even the most godly men, and those who are free because of clear consciences, are afflicted with these things. None of these things touch either the freedom or the servitude of the soul. It does not help the soul if the body is adorned with the sacred robes of priests or dwells in sacred places or is occupied with sacred duties or prays, fasts, abstains from certain kinds of food, or does any work that can be done by the body and in the body. The righteousness and the freedom of the soul require something far different since the things which have been mentioned could be done by any wicked person. Such works produce nothing but hypocrites. On the other hand, it will not harm the soul if the body is clothed in secular dress, dwells in unconsecrated places, eats and drinks as others do, does not pray aloud, and neglects to do all the above-mentioned things which hypocrites can do.”

Luther’s argument is astonishing. Read the last italicized sentence again. How often do you cluck your tongue at other Christians for the way they dress or drink or eat or pray? Yet, Luther is arguing that these things have nothing to do with producing Christian righteousness or freedom, unrighteousness or servitude.

This may have a lot more to do with vocation than I thought. Stay tuned.

20 Years of Joy

Today is the 20th anniversary of being married to my best friend, lover, and partner in everything. She has put up with a lot in the last 20 years. She is God's greatest physical embodiment of mercy, grace, forgiveness, love, joy, partnership, and perseverance to me. I can more easily believe that God is real and good by looking at the gift of my wife. I exalt Christ and thank him for her, all the while striving (not so well) to love her like Christ loved the church (Eph 5:25-33).

Happy Anniversary, my love.

Deadly Serious

“Life is deadly serious and wonderfully joyful.”

—Pastor David Livingston during Wednesday morning prayer.

The Last Enemy

One of my elders at Bethlehem is one of those Godly men that you point to when someone asks you what a Christian is. At this point in my life, I know I don't trust Christ as much as he does. I pray that if and when I face suffering that God will be gracious to give me a heart like Mitch's. Here is what Mitch posted last night on his wife’s Caring Bridge site.

There are times when the question why is not going to be answered. We just need to move forward trusting in the path God leads us. The LORD gives and the LORD takes way; blessed be the name of the LORD. At 6:39pm on May 14th my beautiful wife while in my arms, went to be with the LORD. As only God could plan Phillip, Emily, Cassie and I were all present when the LORD took her from us. Janelle was at one of her friend’s house and we were able to get her soon after and we gathered around our Mom, my Wife and prayed for the mercy, grace, and strength to move forward. It is strange how fast things change, and over the last few days we knew the treatment was not going as planned. There is only so much a body can take and after fifteen and a half months of chemo, drugs, and infections, her weakened body could take no more. The nurses and the Doctor tried to do all they could, but Jesus was calling and Mary answered. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. The days ahead will be difficult and we will need to make many adjustments. We are thankful to be the children of God. We have a hope in things to come when we will put on an imperishable body when things like Leukemia will be gone forever. We will have no more tears, no more death, and we will reign in His kingdom, worshiping the King with Mary and all the saints forever.

Worshiping through tears,

Mitch, Phil, Emily, Cassie, and Janelle

I Threw a Tomato at the Wall Yesterday

Conversation overheard at a local high school:

“I threw a tomato at the wall yesterday, but my parents didn't do anything. Nothing I do anymore phases them.”

If we, as parents, do not set boundaries, then we are doing a disservice to our children. In fact, Solomon says we hate our children: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (Proverbs 13:24; cf. 5:23, 6:23).

I am sure that many well-meaning parents have withheld the rod, listening too much to outside voices, thinking that by being lenient their children will come around. Unfortunately, this is not true. Solomon wrote, “Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death” (Proverbs 19:18). Avoiding discipline is akin to putting your child to death.

One might ask how this could possibly be true? The answer is given a couple chapters later, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15; cf. 23:13). Original sin is a reality.

As Solomon said, there is hope. It is possible to raise children and have your heart full of delight. I am not unaware of the reality that our children’s hearts must be regenerated, but God uses means, and one of those means is discipline. Again, Solomon writes, “Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart” (Proverbs 29:17).

My heart goes out to this child; she wants her parents to discipline her. I believe that the cry of her heart can be heard in that last simple sentence, “Nothing I do anymore phases them.” In other words, “I have tried. I can't seem to get their attention.”

Parents, discipline your children. They need you.