"Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding." "Yes, we will come to you, for you are the LORD our God.
The surest cure for backsliding is never to slide forward in the first place, just as the surest cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree. What is an adulterous, prostituted people to do, though?
How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.' I thought you would call me 'Father' and not turn away from following me.
The one thing God most wants from us is the thing He will not force us into. There is no threat in the words "love me", no coercion. (Would constrained love really be love?) My year-old son leaves the chocolate cake alone when he sees his father guarding it, not because he loves to obey his father, but because he is persuaded of the consequences of disobedience.
God wants more than that, and in eager anticipation, He dreams, expects, longs for, and trusts us with an unstoppable faith - He wants a child whose heart loves the ways He has in mind for him. God is love, so always hopes. And his ways are chocolate. Desirable, beautiful.
Those who sit at the gate mock me, and I am the song of the drunkards.
But I pray to you, O LORD, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation.
It is funny, but this very thing happened to me tonight. I regularly walk a distance which takes me out of my way in order to pray for people who do not care that they will one day answer to God. This evening, the very people I was praying for, who were sitting at the gate of the place I go to pray for them, did ridicule me. On my way home, I became the song of two men, more drunk than sober.
Thinking of the incomparably greater indignities suffered by Jesus, I was struck by the thought which Paul enunciated in his letter to the Roman church, that God's kindness is meant to lead a person to repentance. People who have hard and impenitent hearts are storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
If you have an enemy who is at fault (by God's reckoning), and if you love your enemy, that kindness is wildly dangerous for him, because God is just, vindicating love over hate, and avenging wrongs.
If the things that you do for them are gracious in the face of their injustice, then God will justify, uphold and insist upon the goodness of your goodness, and punish the injustice of their injustice the more severely in the face of intransigence: an unwillingness to meet grace with brokenness is itself a sin. Kindness should lead to repentance, and Christians who are kind, are a visible, and obedient manifestation of God's kindness. We are called "sons of God" because we are worked within by the Spirit to work the works of God. When we lived in Aberdeen, this was a favourite expression of the minister in our church: "We worked within will work the works of God..."
Fortunately, we will not work all his works. God spares us the burden of his anger, though we must approve of that wrath in full holiness! In Christian hearts, the plea of imprecation is exclusively a sign of righteousness. "Vengeance is mine" is such a relief, that we should bless God for it, and regularly. When Jesus cleared the temple, his disciples remembered that it was written (in psalm 69), "Zeal for your house will consume me." The same Jesus who drove the menagerie from the temple, died for the sake of the moneychangers, telling them plainly, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
The complementary sign of glory is grace, because the cross, the ultimate symbol of God's grace, is made glorious in Christ's resurrection, and is made perfect through the Holy Spirit, in the inheritance of the saints. If it is dangerous for an enemy to receive kindness, it is more dangerous for them to risk wrath: to refuse grace is to discover, too late, the full terrible intensity of glory. It is a fearful thing to fall into God's hands.
There was war between Abijah and Jeroboam. Abijah went into battle with a force of four hundred thousand able fighting men, and Jeroboam drew up a battle line against him with eight hundred thousand able troops.
Abijah [...] said, "Jeroboam and all Israel, listen to me! Don't you know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt? Yet Jeroboam son of Nebat, an official of Solomon son of David, rebelled against his master. Some worthless scoundrels gathered around him and opposed Rehoboam son of Solomon when he was young and indecisive and not strong enough to resist them [...] And now you plan to resist the kingdom of the LORD, which is in the hands of David's descendants..."
King Abijah announces defeat to the men of Israel, but his words have something unpleasant about them, something like witchcraft. What makes me uncomfortable is the oblique understanding his message offers of what happens to the enemies of the king, whom God has set apart to rule.
"Men of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you will not succeed." What interests me in this passage is that Abijah, King of Judah, for all his high-sounding words, was little more than a religionist ruler. He was not committed to God, but to the observance of what he took to be the minimum requirements of God. His speech certainly suggests this, and the scathing observations of the writer who dealt with his reign in 1 Kings chapter 15 make it clear*: this king was someone who preferred sacrifices to holiness. He wore a paper crown.
"As for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken him. The priests who serve the LORD are sons of Aaron, and the Levites assist them. Every morning and evening they present burnt offerings and fragrant incense to the LORD. They set out the bread on the ceremonially clean table and light the lamps on the gold lampstand every evening. We are observing the requirements of the LORD our God. But you have forsaken him. God is with us; he is our leader. His priests with their trumpets will sound the battle cry against you. Men of Israel, do not fight against the LORD, the God of your fathers, for you will not succeed."
In reality, Abijah committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to God, as David's had been. He maybe claimed that God was his leader, but it was David's God-honouring ways which saved the people, and which made Jerusalem strong: God showed mercy and faithfulness to David's descendants, even when they did not deserve it. Abijah was like a man having an affair who had not yet left his wife.
So too, at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if God's favour comes by grace, then it is not by works; if it were, grace would not be grace. In particular here, we see that a king who was half the strength of his enemy was able to defeat him because he had been set apart by God. Even though Jeroboam laid his plans carefully, and set a trap for Abijah, he was not successful. The fact that Abijah was not someone who was personally in step with God was a separate matter. To resist the kingdom of the Lord is an affront to God which will not stand. The men of Israel were slaughtered on that occasion, but the men of Judah were victorious because they relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers. Those who persist in rejecting the one that God has set aside to rule as good as damn themselves: what else can God do? I think about this when I read that Jesus said: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
The story feels incomplete, though. What of the effects of Abijah's sin? These were not dealt with until Asa became King. Asa finally did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his ancestor David had done. Whereas Abijah had allowed male shrine prostitutes and had preserved and added to the number of idols in the land, Asa removed these. He even deposed his powerful grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive Asherah pole. (Asa cut the pole down and burned it in the Kidron Valley.) Although he did not live to complete the work of cleansing Judah of foreign religion, Asa's heart was fully committed to the Lord all his life. He showed this by bringing treasure to the temple. Will the evidence of my life be as conclusive?
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
"My dad was a joker," says Emo Philips. "Whenever I misbehaved, he would bury me in the back yard. Only up to the waist, but you can get real dizzy when all the blood rushes to your head." This reminds me of learning to swim. You learn fast when your dad tips you out of the boat in the middle of the ocean. (The hardest part is getting out of the suitcase.)
What do we do with this proverb, then? It is clearly about more than smacking. The bible talks of a land flowing with milk and honey. If you give a young baby honey, it can become sick. Honey sometimes contains a spore of the bacterium Clostridium Botulinum. This can cause a rare form of food poisoning (botulism) in babies. That can be less fun than you might think. Milk first, and afterwards honey.
It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames. Only after we have received life through faith in God's promises can we become strong enough to come into a much greater inheritance. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and children grow up as they consider the brevity of life: this is the rod of discipline. Adults grow up as they consider the length of eternity: this is the distance to which the rod of discipline drives folly. As Billy Graham once said: Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion. It is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ. So pray with me: forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation...
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the tradition you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
Paul isn't dispensing recreation and diet advice. It's instruction out of the culture that gave us: "Sleep faster, we need the pillows..." What people want from a man is steadfast love, and a poor man who works is better than a liar who shirks...
My favourite country and western singer, Dolly Parton, buys celebrity exercise videos. She loves to sit, eat cookies and watch them. Indeed it is hard to idle properly unless you have something to do, and someone strenuous to watch. Lazy people get out of breath playing billiards. For them, the maxim is "no pain, no pain".
Ephraem the Syrian, the Syriac church father and poet once wrote this prayer: "O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of laziness, faint heartedness, lust for power, and idle talk." It seems to me that the grouping of such things is just right - the three more damaging evils proceed from the first. By contrast, the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love proceeds from honest, tiring work. Ephraem also prayed: "Sunrise marks the hour for toil to begin, but in our souls, Lord, prepare a dwelling for the day that will never end..."
Rudolf Bultmann once observed that "as an ethic of obedience, the Jewish morality was not designed from the human standpoint; that is, its purpose is not the realization of an ideal of man or of humanity. It is definitely opposed to all humanistic ethics, for in it, not man but only the glory of God is important."* Although this misses the point that man's glory and importance is to reflect divine luminescence, it is true that the Jewish tradition of work, which Paul advocated for Christians, cuts against an individualistically anthropocentric view of work. Paul and his friends worked night and day, so that they would not be a burden, handing down a model in the name of the Lord, who Himself works in all things to create and to sustain. One day this creative work will put an end to the groaning which accompanies labour and toil, and the very earth will work with us, working God's work, brought to completion on the cross. ---
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
I hate nuisance phone calls. They really put the bills up.
I have been reading a book of essays on public figures written by Alistair Cooke, the BBC correspondent who died in 2004. As a journalist, he struggled weekly for fifty-eight years to render American life intelligible to a British audience. In one essay, Cooke wrote of his meetings with Bertrand Russell, who comes off as a pretentious, belligerent man given to taking himself too seriously. He spoke only after he had composed everything he wanted to say in his head. Russell's habit of delivering pronouncements with a melodious, if nasal, finality amused Cooke, who observed that his tapes "would sound like examples of a Dial-an-Aphorism service". Remarking on Russell's insatiable appetite for low-grade detective fiction, he recalled his somewhat cheerless maxim that "Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim."
Such is true of the life lived without reference to the word of truth. It's a very pompous, competitive, brutish life. People who live that way are good at playing the role of an unfrivolous putter-to-right of the world's evils in the same way that a stuck-up ignoramus is good at being priggish.
James sets out two ways to live, and states neatly how they turn out in the end. These two births, the birth of sin and the birth of truth, lead to death and fruitful life respectively. The logic of his understanding is unimpeachable, and demonstrable with countless specific examples, into which we need not go.
Bertrand Russell was much more optimistic about man's capacity to live well under his own steam than I am. In one of his lighter moments he said this: "If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years." This secular utopian manifesto can never function without the new birth, which proceeds from God, and was initiated by Jesus. By His own will He brought us forth, by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. The thing about fruit is that it grows off a branch. The root is the important thing: the firstfruits are the promise of a future harvest, an offering for better things: a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live.
But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower.
I am unbelievably, eyewateringly, against-the-odds rich. This fact crosses my mind again and again. I quite often find it disquieting, when I read things about needles and camels. I have a low position. How do I take pride in that? Actually, since you can read, have access to a PC and the internet, and have the leisure time to meander through the blogosphere, you are almost certainly mind-meltingly rich too, so this isn't as academic as you might have supposed...
A couple of months back I watched as an amaryllis that I bought on special offer out of the local co-op came pushing through the earth. It rose up and up and up, became more and more gorgeous, and suddenly wilted, fell over, and has now rotted. A voice says, "Cry out." And I said, "What shall I cry?" "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
The trouble with wealth is that it is an optical illusion. Victor Kiam pioneered the Remington shavers with nose hair clippers. He was made famous by his adverts in which he told viewers that he liked the shaver so much he bought the company. Although it's probably a good rule never to trust a man who lacks nasal hair, I have been intrigued by what I read of his thoughts on life. "What's really important in life," he asked. "Sitting on a beach? Looking at television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we're alive for only a limited period of time, and we'll spend most of our lives working. That being the case, I believe one of the most important priorities is to do whatever we do as well as we can. We should take pride in that."
Isaiah tells us that the grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. For certain: people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. There's a thinker.
Currently
listening
:
Stereotype Be
By
Kevin Max
Release date: 2001-08-28
Do not speak to a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom of your words.
I visited a quotations website today, as I was thinking about this proverb, and this is what I read: "To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other." Should we tell Jack Handey that his caveats leave us little to compare? Euripides' quote is also on the website: "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish"...
But Handey is no fool: it takes a certain low cunning to come up with material like this--
I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
It takes a big man to cry. It takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man and an ever bigger man to ask why he is laughing.
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason...
The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
God does some really amazing things, which a person might be more inclined to notice in the summer than in the winter, when the weather is more of a personal experience. (It's sleeting on everyone, but you're the one getting cold and wet...)
He's done life, old people, animals, trees, rocks, seas, skies, stars, atoms, fish, birds, moons, rocks, children, babies, teenagers, and some other amazing things too. It's great to be full of enjoyment, enjoying God. Whatever happens, that is great. Whatever happens, however bad it is - no matter how we should suffer: God is good, and whatever the reason is that people suffer, the reason is not because God lacks love for us. The evidence is stacked against that conclusion. Even in earthquakes, in cyclones and in frustrations, rejoice in the LORD.
From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
When some of those standing there heard this, they said, "He's calling Elijah."
Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him."
And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, "Surely he was the Son of God!"
Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.
rockin
loved
animated
happy
pleased
