by Elizabeth | Jun 8, 2010 | Learning Story
Today, an encouragement to reflection. I am awed as I meditate on the Beatitudes. They tell us about kingdom life, about how a citizen in this new world lives. How easily we forget that we do not belong to this world. If you read these carefully, you’ll see that growing these heart habits will not lead to making you ‘so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good,” as the old saying goes. No, indeed. Try one or two. Ponder it, chew on it, ask the Spirit to help you live it. Think about how being ‘poor in spirit’ or ‘merciful’ or ‘mournful’ (of your sin, of the brokenness of this world) will change the way you live in your story today and season others with the salty taste of grace.
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
by Elizabeth | Jun 7, 2010 | Learning Story
A while back, as I was struggling with some relational brokenness, I turned to a good friend, someone much older and deeply seasoned in Scripture and the gospel, who suggested I spend some time in the Beatitudes. I’ve been there again recently as I’m reading N.T. Wright’s new book, After You Believe. Not sure yet what I believe about N.T.’s new book, but I like what he says about the Beatitudes:
“…the key point about ‘bless,’ ‘blessing,’ and ‘blessed’ — one source and driving energy of the ‘virtues’ — is that this includes ‘happiness,’ but it includes it as the result of something else — namely, the loving action of the Creator God. ‘Happiness’ is simply a state of being for a human, as a self-contained unit. You might, in principle, attain it on your own and develop it for your sake. ‘Blessedness,’ however, is what happens when the creator God is at work both in someone’s life and through that person’s life. Likewise, blessedness is what happens when this same God is fulfilling the promises he made to his ancient people, the promises contained in the ‘covenant’ as set out in the closing chapters of Deuteronomy. And both of those — the human blessing and the Israel blessing — are evoked by Jesus’ remarkable words in the opening of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3 -11;”
Suggestion: Read Matthew 5:3- 11. How can we develop these habits of the heart? What happens as a result? How is this NOT the same as a modernistic approach (i.e., do A and B results?)
by Elizabeth | Jun 5, 2010 | Learning Story
We are at the beach. Pensacola Beach, to be precise. We had this week scheduled for our yearly tradition months before anyone knew tarballs would be due to clutter the beachside on our check-in date.
Last night, after working vigorously through the day to load and unload all of the Powerades and Mojo bars and beach towels and other provisions it takes to get our family through a week at the beach, my husband and I rested on the balcony. We had the odd joy of not only watching a thunderstorm roll in, but feeling ourselves in the middle of it. (The truth is, we refused to concede our cigars, so we kept moving around the deck to escape the bits of rain that found us as the wind shifted.) I wish I could make a fancy slideshow w/ IMovie and post it, but, after all, I am at the beach, writing this poolside, where the closest internet access is:)! Instead, I will post a few of the pictures from beginning, middle, and end of the story. My kids always tease me about my propensity to look for and proclaim signs in all sorts of circumstances. But the sign in the next to last photo is undeniable, and, I will remind them happily — BIBLICAL:)!
Let’s keep looking for beauty in darkness:
“And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set cmy bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 And I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember ethe everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” Genesis 9:12- 17
by Elizabeth | Jun 4, 2010 | Learning Story
Oh, my dear friends — so many have written or called this week to ask how we feel as the oil moves closer to Pensacola Beach. Many, many answers. Depressed. Grieving. Angry. Hopeful???
It has been a rough week in the ongoing pursuit of the ever-elusive mother-and-wife-of-the-year-award. Not only have I blown it pretty big time with my husband and children, but I have been aching with the pains of a friend’s illness and the sorrow of hearing the latest oil scuttlebutt. It is heavy stuff. So where do I go? Many places, but one place that centers me is Heidelberg, question #1. It’s not magic, nor a mantra. These words proclaim the story I believe. Listen to them, say them, fill in the blanks for where they meet you with the story of God’s sovereign grace in your broken world.
What is your only comfort in life and in death:
My only comfort in life and in death is that I (my friend, our beach) am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins (every unkind word spoken, every unkind thought thunk) with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head (not a drop of oil can touch our land??) without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things (broken bodies, broken relationships??) work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
So, how am I with the oil? Ready. We head to the beach this afternoon for our yearly summer week there. I will sit high above, watching from the balcony, and instead of just searching for signs of oil, I will search for signs of hope. Hope for restoration. Hope for shalom. Because I believe it is really, really true.
by Elizabeth | Jun 3, 2010 | Learning Story
Back to this week’s theme. As sin-wrecked shalom pools around me in many stories, from the global — oil creeping its way toward our white sands, to the personal — a soul-shredding tone creeping into my voice in moments of stress — I am reminded again by Bierma, of the marvel of restored shalom. My emphasis.
“The marvel of the new earth, promised in Isaiah and 2 Peter and Revelation, is this: God is not giving up. The heavens and earth, soiled as they have been by sin, are not a failure, not a wreck, not irretrievable. The shalom – the heavenly wholeness, the right alignment of everything – is not beyond recovery. God, it turns out, has a holy stubbornness, a refusal to accept ruin.
Christianity is the only religion in which God reaches down to human beings and stoops to our level. Other religions worship a god whom humans must continually try to please, try to impress, try to elevate themselves to earn his favor and approach his level. God is the only god in all of human religion who lowers himself, as a way of exalting himself. (56)
“Shalom’s repair is achieved by reversing the process, with the improbable demotion when God becomes human.” (56)
“Nature itself will be free from sin. Not just souls, but also soil. Not just people, but the theater in which God performs for them and reveals himself to them.”
Nathan Bierma, Bringing Heaven down to Earth
by Elizabeth | Jun 2, 2010 | Learning Story
It’s not really so surprising that neither the author of the guest post nor I had very shalom-y days yesterday. Shalom, sadly, is wrecked in our world ever since the Fall, but thankfully, that is not the end of the story.
In Bringing Heaven down to Earth, Nathan Bierma talks about how we become too accustomed to shalom being violated…
At its root, the word violence relates to “violate.” And violate means to cause something that shouldn’t be. This nuance is often lost when we hear the word over and over in news reports. To us, violence means the use of weapons and t resulting destruction of places and people. Its numbing regularity gives us the illusion that violence is one of the natural rhythms of the w world.
But it is not. It is the opposite – violence and sin are awful, agonizing, bloody, evil interruptions and perversions of the natural rhythms of the world. Sin, says Plantinga, is ‘the culpable disturbance of shalom,’ the interference with the way things are supposed to be. Sin makes a mess of what God made to be right and good. Sin can only be understood in terms of what it distorts and destroys: shalom.
What we need instead is a holy awareness—what psychologists call cognitive dissonance – of the fact that we are living in a world that is in many ways wrong, a world that is different from what was intended, what was established. The results of the sin that started when humans invited disorder into t he world – the pain and injustice that we see around us – are not just too bad, they are wrong. They shouldn’t be.” (Nathan Bierma, Bringing Heaven Down to Earth, 54)
For reflection:
What violated shalom have you come to expect as “normal,” or “to be expected”?
What do you do about this kind of wrecked shalom? (Shrug your shoulders, rant, bury your head, weep, pray, work toward restoration?)
What do you do with a day filled with things that are “not the way they’re supposed to be”?
