Holiness and mercy

I have been studying the Old Testament since around the start of the year, trying to get a better grasp of the history of God's people Israel leading up to the birth of Christ. I'm hanging out in Leviticus and Numbers at the moment, reading them along with Matthew Henry's commentary and building a working understanding of the laws and sacrifices and ceremonies and procedures ordained by God at that time.

What continues to stand out is the combination of holiness and mercy. God is holy, perfect, set apart. No wicked thing can enter his presence, and He can tolerate no sin. He calls His people Israel to be holy as well, set apart from other nations because of His purpose for them. The consequences for sin are harsh. But He makes merciful allowances. Where He could have condemned, He offers atonement and second chances. He allows for poverty, asking only what the people are able to offer, not willing that any should perish. And, thousands of years down the line, along comes the Son of Man. The lepers who have for years shouted, "Unclean, unclean!" are healed by a touch of His hand. The woman who has bled and wept and wondered for over a decade is returned to community and fellowship again.

His holiness requires our holiness and can accept nothing less, but His mercy enables us to walk in holiness and provides a way for reconciliation.

Imaginary sinners

Everyone is a sinner. Everyone also sins. It's easy enough to admit that you are a sinner-- very few would claim perfection, if only for fear of having their closest friends point out just how far that is from being true. To admit your individual sins, though, and to see those specific sins as they play out very significantly in your life and the lives of others, hits harder. When our own specific instances of weakness and sin and failure are thrown in our faces, we so often want to crawl in a hole and give it all up. We daily claim our identities as redeemed sinners, but one individual sin is enough to finish us completely and make us doubt the grace of Christ. I know He forgives all, but can He possibly forgive this? Yes.

"The true Christian daily pleads guilty before God, and seeks forgiveness through the blood of Christ. And the gospel salvation is so free, that the poorest is not shut out; and so full, that the most burdened conscience may find relief from it."
-Matthew Henry, from his commentary on Leviticus 5

To doubt the power of the grace of Christ to forgive one sin is to impugn the power of the Cross. It is to say to the One who gave it all, "It's just not quite enough." His grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Grace is made perfect in the sin it covers over.

"God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world."
-Martin Luther

Service as a gift

"The more we do in the Lord's service, the greater are our obligations to Him, for the will, for the ability, and opportunity."
-Matthew Henry in his commentary on Leviticus 1

This, like so much of faith, is so backwards from the way we think. We feel that the Lord should be indebted to us for our service, that we are somehow giving Him something out of the goodness of our own hearts. But everything we have was given to us by His hands in the first place, even the very opportunities we have to minister! We really cannot believe that our cars and houses and food come out of His generosity (and indeed sometimes we don't even give Him credit for these) but then claim that our service to Him flows from our own resources. We have no resources. All is from Him, and He makes it ours to give or to keep, but let us not fool ourselves into thinking that we are especially good or generous. Only One is exceptional in His goodness and generosity, and every good and perfect gift-- including ministry-- comes from Him.

Drawing lines

"Wherever you draw the lines is where the battle will be."

The dean of a small Christian college in the 50s said this about setting rules and boundaries for the students, but I think it can be applied across the board. Life is not going to be easy. Maintaining any kind of discipline, killing off old habits, setting standards and rules for yourself-- it will be a battle. But where will you draw the lines? Will you draw them low and close to yourself, so you're fighting just to break even without falling over? Or will you draw them high and far away, requiring effort and energy and giving you the opportunity to stretch and grow and travel to new heights? Will you be satisfied with the same lines, the same old battles, or will you continually reevaluate, re-draw, and push yourself further?

The choice you make now affects where you will stand 1, 10, 50 years from now. Will you be in the same place, wrapped in cobwebs and unable to see the light of day? Or will you be on a mountaintop with a new vantage point?

Duty

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "
Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We exist to bring Him honor. He has made it clear how to do this: love God, love each other. If we live this way, our life is perfectly glorifying to Him and also perfectly satisfying to us.

But we don't. We sin. We seek to glorify ourselves instead of God, and we love ourselves above our fellow man. We can live a redeemed life and get closer and closer to holiness by the grace of Christ, but our nature is still sin. Our nature is sin, and our duty is holiness-- polar opposites. There is grace, oh praise the Lord, there is grace flowing down abundantly from the cross of Christ, and that grace will cover over all our sins, but let us not ever believe in our own achievements. Let us not ever say to God, "Give me the credit I deserve," for if He gave us all we deserved, we would be sadly surprised to find ourselves in Hell. Let us humble ourselves before Him, love Him and each other as He as asked, and ask nothing more than that our life would be a pleasant aroma to Him.

And in all of this, oh mercy of mercies, we truly find joy and peace.

Born again

Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'"
John 3:3-7

Several friends or acquaintances of mine have had babies in the past couple weeks. For the families, it's a time of excitement and joy, the fulfillment of long months of waiting. The babies themselves are beautiful, intact and perfect, perhaps with their mother's nose or their father's eyes. But so much of the joy of this occasion lies in anticipation: the baby is a clean slate, humble and full of possibility. It is a life just begun, with no long list of sins and no pride keeping it from dependence on God and family. There is no claim to wisdom or greatness in a baby, nothing but potential.

So, too, must we be. We must come to a place spiritually of humility and dependence, letting the blood of Christ wipe away the sins of the past and declare us new. And, in that place, we are full of beautiful potential in the eyes of our own Father.

Ash Wednesday

I wrote before about the discipline of fasting bringing a person to a point of recognizing his or her own weakness and thereby knowing more of his or her need for God. Another aspect of fasting is the righting of a person's relationship to material goods. By choosing to fast from certain foods or activities, or from food altogether for a time, two things are accomplished: misplaced worship is abolished and godly appreciation is established. (I am talking, of course, about fasting from things that are not evil in and of themselves-- fasting from sin is actually just called repentance. It's worth your time as well.) When we fast from the God-given things we love and sometimes worship as idols, we return them to their rightful place below God. And, conversely, we also cease to take them for granted. God is Lord of our lives again, and we are duly grateful for His gifts.

Learning as a lifestyle

I have a to-do list. Actually, I have a lot of to-do lists, ranging from "Do ASAP" to "Do When You Are Bored" to "Do Because You Should, Come On Now" to "Do Before Dying." The last one is the one I'll focus on today. There is actually a document on my computer titled "To Do Before Dying." In it are places I want to visit, skills and languages I want to learn, experiences I want to have, and challenges I want to face and overcome. This week was a good week for the list, as I was able to cross off two items: make soup (confidently and successfully, without a recipe) and be able to do a pull-up. Items already accomplished include driving a motorcycle and going to Africa.

I started officially keeping the list a few years ago as a result of conversations with a new (now "old") friend. When I graduated from college, the list took on new importance. No one was watching me anymore, checking my assignments and making sure I was learning the things I had signed up to learn. I was, for the first time in 17 years, not a student. At this juncture in my life, I realized something. I could go with my instinct, which told me to shy away from challenges and stay safely within my comfort zone, and arrive at the end of my life some fifty years hence (Lord willing) with basically the same set of skills and knowledge that I have now. Or I could make a commitment now to push myself and be always a student, always learning, always growing. If I learned or tried or accomplished just one thing every year for the rest of my life, I would arrive at the end with some fifty (Lord willing) new and exciting skills and experiences beyond what I have now.

So I'm knitting a sweater, making soup, learning the guitar, and doing pull-ups. I'm planning for the big trans-America train journey someday and looking for opportunities to sharpen my French. I am a student of life, and I will be until the day I die.

Equipped

Forgive as I have forgiven you.
Love one another.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Be holy, as I am holy.

Hard words. They sound good, certainly, on skimming over them. We generally agree that forgiveness is a positive thing, we like to love and be loved, and we don't mind having joy. Holiness is a little tougher to get behind sometimes, but we could accept it. But always? The command to rejoice is the only one that explicitly includes the always, but it's implicit in the others. These commands are to fuse together into the lifestyle we live. We are to forgive every offense, love every fellow human being, and rejoice in every circumstance. We are to be holy, blameless, and set apart by our faithfulness in following these commands. Every day.

The secret is this: if He demands it of us, He equips us for it. If He sends us down a path, He has walked it before and will walk it again by our sides. We do not have to follow these commands on our own strength; in fact, we cannot. But He lived them once in a perfect life, died for our failure to live them, and will live them again through us if we let Him. And we, through dying to ourselves and living to Him, will benefit. Everything is to be gained-- forgiveness, love, joy-- and nothing is to be lost except those things that will only cause us sorrow in the end.

Betsy Scott Stam

"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, send me where Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever."
-Betsy Scott Stam, quoted in the introduction to Elisabeth Elliot's book Let Me Be A Woman

Elisabeth Elliot copied that prayer into her Bible at age 10 or 11, and look where it took her. Where will it take me?

Humility

One of my new year's resolutions this year was to ask questions. For me, this meant two things-- first, to learn to listen (another resolution) more and talk less. I love hearing from the hearts of the people around me, but I have never been good at asking questions to initiate that sort of conversation. I am very good at talking about myself. And second, to humble myself and acknowledge willingly that I do not know everything. I want to learn from the wisdom and experience of the people around me, whether in web design or walking with the Lord.

In reading Matthew Henry's commentary on Leviticus 4 today, I was reminded of this resolution. Henry writes: "That which I see not, teach thou me, and, Show me wherein I have erred, are prayers we should put up to God every day; that if, through ignorance, we fall into sin, we may not through ignorance abide in it." When I was in a position of supervising summer staff members at Jonah, the question I loved most to hear was "What could I be doing better?" It invited teaching, encouraged growth, and showed a truly humble heart. How much sweeter must that question be to the One who has everything to teach us, when we have everything to learn?

Hallelujah

"Hallelujah, hallelujah... whatever's in front of me, help me to sing hallelujah."
-Bethany Dillon

It's certainly been a week. A lot of things I thought were settled have become unsettled, things I thought were finished have become unfinished, things I thought were certain have become uncertain once again. It could have been an awful week. I could have cried a lot more tears than I did (granted, I did cry some). I could have become bogged down and overwhelmed and frustrated.

But, by the grace of the Lord, I instead spent the week becoming deeply acquainted with peace. Tangible peace, sweet peace, peace like a river. I'm back in a place (should be dear and familiar-- or at least just familiar-- to me by now) of having no idea what the future holds more than 6 months out from where I stand. I don't love this place. But I love Jesus, and I do trust Him, and I know what I need to do. Micah 6:8 again-- do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with my God. Not out in front of my God, not where my God tells me to go, but with my God. Study His word. Listen for His voice. Walk with Him throughout my days. Hallelujah.

And yes, whatever's in front of me, help me to faithfully sing hallelujah.

My Father's world

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world,
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas,
His hands the wonders wrought.
Maltbie D. Babcock

I guess I'm on a bit of a hymn kick the past few weeks. Not a bad thing. The weather has been just lovely the past couple of days here-- it's warming up and thawing everything, bits of blue sky peeking out of the clouds, the snow melting. It's the kind of weather that makes me want to spend every moment of daylight out exploring the woods or walking or just sitting in the sun.

Yesterday after church I went up the hill behind my cabin (and the house where I grew up) to run around and get a bit of exercise. I do this pretty often when the weather is like this, and every time this hymn by Babcock comes to mind. Having grown up in the woods, the sights and sounds and smells of wet moss and singing birds and dark pines reaching out of the fog are home to me like few other things in this world. I have lived in cities, and sometimes even loved living in cities, but nothing quite sings the grandeur and majesty of God like His untouched creation-- it's good to be home.

Roberta Montgomery McKinney

Evening Thought

The place wherein I labor is remote,
Strange scenes about me, loved ones distant far;
But work, though often long, hath much that's sweet,
Since all is wrought for Thee. I only ask
A little respite, when the day is done,
To kneel with those who round Thine altars wait,
(O blest communion, that, of severed hearts),
And in the stillness know that Thou art God,
While rise, like incense from the sunset fires,
The best which this day men have thought and done.
Enough, if aught from mine own hand shall worthy be
To mingle there, and I, with them, to worship Thee.

Roberta Montgomery McKinney
Kiating, West China, 1905

Roberta was my great grandmother, a missionary to China with her husband William Ayer McKinney before they had my grandfather and his two sisters. In rooting around our attic today, we found a box of family genealogies and odds and ends, including a little card with this prayer written on it.

A calm and thankful heart

I admire Anne Steele quite a lot. I may have mentioned her before, but she's worth mentioning again. Loved the Lord, lost her fiance to drowning the day before her wedding, devoted the rest of her life to assisting her father in ministry and writing beautiful hymns of surrender and devotion to God. Here's one of my favorites, a simple prayer:

Father, whate'er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign will denies,
Accepted at Thy throne, let this,
My humble prayer, arise:

Give me a calm and thankful heart,
From every murmur free;
The blessing of Thy grace impart,
And make me live to Thee.

Let the sweet hope that Thou art mine
My life and death attend,
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey's end.

This is my prayer, in this time as in all times. Let me be calm and thankful, blessed by Your blessings and fixed on Your hope. Walk me through this life until death, and be there to meet me in glory at the end of it all.

Waiting quietly

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,
for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for Him."
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him,
to the one who seeks Him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
Lamentations 3:22-26

For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though He brings grief, He will show compassion,
so great is His unfailing love.
For He does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men.
Lamentations 3:31-33

The valley is filled with sorrow and worry at the moment. Grief is almost uniform, with so many people in the church hurting in so many ways. It was striking at the Bible study this morning to discover just how many people had come in the door with heavy hearts, myself included.

But when all of our hopes and plans and the things in which we trust are stripped away, we are left with one question: do we trust God? Faced with trials, will we curse Him or cling to Him? Will we proclaim His goodness or doubt it? We don't have to put on a facade and pretend everything is fine when all is not fine, but will we stand with God as we look at our circumstances and ask our questions, or will we turn on Him and be quick to blame and slow to accept His comfort? He offers it so freely, and it is so good.

Refuge

Since around the new year, I've been pushing myself hard spiritually, seeking to grow and learn and minister, and it has been good. I've met God in new ways through prayer and His words. I've developed some discipline. I've built a stronger base of knowledge about the Old Testament, among other things. I've challenged myself to be really getting something from all of the routines in my life-- reading the Bible, church, prayer, work-- and the outcome has been well worth it. I plan to continue with this endeavor in the coming months.

But sometimes you just need to rest. So last night I set aside Leviticus and picked up the psalms:

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."
Psalm 91:1,2, & 4