by Elizabeth | Sep 19, 2011 | Learning Story
death has been swallowed up
I hate death. In fact, death (I will not honor you with a capital letter, even though John Donne did) – go to hell.
We’ve lost another teenager in our community, this time to a bizarre, untimely death – a 16-year-old died in his sleep. Our son and his friends have been wrangling with the matters that matter, and they’re winning the battle.
They know that indeed, their friend, is ‘in a better place,’ which is more than a place and so much better than better, more like – beyond best – a new beginning in the glory of being with Jesus. These young people value their salvation more than ever, , not just as a ticket to “get in,” but as a way of life, of being part of redemption and restoration until their day comes.
Still, their broken hearts are wrestling with deep questions, questions with no easy answers:
• What do we do with our pain, with our loss?
• What about our friends who do not trust in Jesus for salvation? We know that hell is a reality, for ‘the Bible tells us so,’ but what do we do with the fact that we can tell them, we can plead with them, we can love them, but we cannot force them to believe? What do we do with their struggle to grasp eternal existence when so many have been taught from their earliest days that there is no such thing? How do we make them see?
They are asking the hard questions for which we will only find complete rest when our minds are fully redeemed. For these dear hearts broken for their friends, I offer a few thoughts from Scripture that comfort and encourage me:
1. You can’t (make them see). That’s the Holy Spirit’s job (Romans 8:8). But you can live the real story, the gospel story in a way that its scandal is undeniable. You can pray without ceasing, and wait to see how God moves. And you can tell it and show it and most of all, listen to their stories and help them see the hope of the gospel.
2. Hate sin all the more. For indeed, it is sin, death, and evil whose source is Satan, the flesh, and the world that seek to kill and destroy hope both here, and hereafter.
3. GRIEVE. Weep, tear your clothes, and gnash your teeth. You are right – it does matter where your friend spends not only the next part of this eternity, but also this part. And know that until that day we go home, we will always yearn with a holy longing for the reconciliation of all things. That’s the image of God in us.
Through sin, death has entered the world, ravaged hearts, and destroyed life. (Hebrews 2:14)
By God’s extraordinary grace, Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. In this true story is the great reversal of death.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” I Corinthians 15: 55-58
by Elizabeth | Sep 15, 2011 | Learning Story
I like to talk about and teach on shalom. Though people aren’t always accustomed to the term to describe universal wholeness and delight for which God created the cosmos, I find that they quickly understand it as a structure from which to view the Christian story. One of my favorite writers on shalom is Cornelius Plantinga. Here’s an excerpt from an article on Christian higher education that I think applies to all human endeavors.
[The prophets] “They dreamed of a new age in which crookedness would be straightened out, rough places made plain. The foolish would be made wise, and the wise, humble. They dreamed of a time when the deserts would flower, the mountains would stream with red wine, a time when weeping would be heard no more, and when people could sleep without weapons on their laps. People could work in peace, their work having meaning and point. A lion could lie down with a lamb, the lion cured of all carnivorous appetite. All nature would be fruitful, benign, and filled with wonder upon wonder; all humans would be knit together in brotherhood and sisterhood; and all nature and all humans would look to God, walk with God, lean toward God, and delight in God, their shouts of joy and recognition welling up from valleys and crags, from women in streets and from men on ships.”
For reflection: Read the entire article and think about your own calling to be a part of God’s plan for renewal.
by Elizabeth | Sep 14, 2011 | Learning Story
God, the Master, The Holy of Israel,
has this solemn counsel:
“Your salvation requires you to turn back to me
and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.
Your strength will come from settling down
in complete dependence on me—
The very thing
you’ve been unwilling to do. Isaiah 30:15-17, The Message
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:8-11
As I finish preparations to head to Oak Mountain Pres on Friday for the Gospel-Call to Women retreat, I am reflecting again on rest as the essence of worship — returning to God, resting in God’s favor. Here’s a recycled post that brings together the ideas of kingdom-calling, rest, and worship:
This is the culmination of our time together. The two passages quoted are great reminders of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going. We are called to live and work in the kingdom; we are called to do so through resting in the finished work of Christ. In order to rest, we must remember both the past and the future. To remember redemption in the past is the basis of our faith. To remember resurrection and restoration in the future is the basis of our hope. We must remember God’s Big Story and the particular stories He is writing in us to rest in the present.
When we remember, not only do we rest, but we also restore. We hear our call to live as kingdom servants, and we see every moment and every setting in its possibility for restoration. It can be as simple as a highly educated pediatrician who engages a young private she meets in an aiport eatery. She offers a kind word to this soldier more wounded by the war of living in his own family than by the war he has fought overseas . It can be as complex as designing a community of beautiful and livable homes in the hard section of town. As long as we are living in the memory of the anticipated day to come and working to bring Christ to the broken-hearted, it doesn’t really matter how simple or complex, how acclaimed or unnoticed our kingdom work is.
When we remember, we also re-member. (This idea offered to me by Rev. Scotty Smith, who gave me permission to use it.) When we remember that redemption accomplished reconciliation for us, we rest in that reconciliation and we work toward reconciliation with friends and enemies. We remember that one day we will re-member with every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group for an eternal story of kingdom worship, and we work toward building that community now.
In remembrance we rest, and in remembrance we do. Because we remember what Christ has done for us, we drink his body and eat his blood. We do so to remember that we can rest from our labors to be acceptable in God’s sight. And in resting from our labors to be acceptable in his sight, we are freed to labor and love for the sake of spreading the good news of this kingdom to others. As you eat the body and drink the blood, Christ says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
by Elizabeth | Sep 13, 2011 | Learning Story
“O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old — what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us.” Psalm 78:1-3
I love love love Psalm 78, which is why I began the Bible study, Learning God’s Story of Grace with an entire chapter based on it. It is a narrative historical poem about the ridiculosity of forgetful sinners — the equal hilarity of a prodigally merciful God. Who knew history could be so compelling?
It begins with a call to to hear “parables” and “hidden lessons.” The words in the Hebrew, mashal and chiydah suggest lessons, puzzles, enigmas, riddles. It turns out that the history of God’s chosen people, like the history of a redeemed sinner, is indeed puzzling.
The conundrum goes something like this, “Listen to this history. Then explain to me why people would repeatedly reject a God who not only performs such signs, wonders, and miracles but who bothers to retrieve this stubborn, disobedient people. What kind of sense does it make for us to be so faithless and fickle in the light of the Lord’s unfailing love and kindness? And what kind of sense does it make for God to be so faithful and loving in the light of the Israelites’ faithlessness and forgetfulness?”
For reflection: Read Psalm 78. What wonders of God in your own life have you forgotten? Tell one story today of God’s miraculous work in your life.
by Elizabeth | Sep 9, 2011 | Learning Story
God is at the center of 'how to be'
Good friend, take to heart what I’m telling you;
collect my counsels and guard them with your life.
Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom;
set your heart on a life of Understanding.
That’s right—if you make Insight your priority,
and won’t take no for an answer,
Searching for it like a prospector panning for gold,
like an adventurer on a treasure hunt,
Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;
you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.” Proverbs 2:1-5
ng.” Proverbs 2:1-2, The Message
Proverbs, as many know, is a book of Wisdom. Sometimes Wisdom (especially when capitalized) seems so far off, so intangible. And yet, it’s really a simple way of living. Listen to what Eugene Peterson says:
“Proverbs is a how-to book. The problem we have with it is that tells us how to do something we aren’t particularly interested in doing. It isn’t that we can’t understand what the proverbs say. It’s that we don’t want to do what they say, which means we have a motivation problem.
One of the ways to deal with that problem is to see that the goal of the ‘Fear-of-God’ isn’t competing with other legitimate goals in our lives but is rather a completing goal. It puts guts into the other things we’re doing. In a sense, what is being said here is that all of us want more than we have; all of us are nagged by an inner sense of incompleteness. What is missing, according to Proverbs, is the ‘FEar-of-God’ and the ‘Knowledge-of-God.’ Eugene Peterson, Conversations
by Elizabeth | Sep 7, 2011 | Learning Story
Artists go to museums and sketch the great paintings, I think, hoping some of the genius will seep into their bodies and souls. In a similar way, I sometimes type out great books, but the added benefit is I have files on my computer with wonderful writing on matters that matter. Today I discovered my Bringing Heaven Down to Earth file. I love the way Nathan Bierma brings together lots of different authors writing about THE STORY, explaining the whole of Scripture and using the language of shalom. Here’s a great quote on “a BIG gospel.” How do you see Jesus?
“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Col. 1:16-17
Nathan Bierma:
“When we live in the hope of a big gospel, we see Jesus Christ not just as a serial intruder on people’s souls but the one in whom ‘all things hold together,’ in the words of Colossians 1. All things – not just people’s hearts but the infrastructure of nature, culture, and relationships. So the hope of a big gospel is not just going to heaven to be with God, but a vision of the new earth and the heavenly city as the place where God’s authority over all of life is made complete. Living in the hope of heaven means seeing glimpses of such a place already, and wanting more.” Bringing Heaven Down to Earth
