Posts by Mark

This is one of the coolest images I’ve heard in quite some time. quoted in Tullian’s book Unfashionable, Puritan Arthur Bennett describes how paradoxical the Christian perspective really ought to be. These timeless reminders (written in 1975) are put beautifully in his prayer:

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to this valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. 

Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, 
that to have nothing is to possess all, 
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, 
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.

I’m looking for your answers and discussion:

I’ve been considering this quarter, how, in busy times, at work, in class, doing homework, etc., I can be intentionally glorifying God.  Sufficed to say, I have not arrived at a good answer, but it would be interesting to hear examples of how any one of you might answer the aforementioned question.

It is difficult to get my head around 1 Corinthians 10:31, which says,

“whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

All my posts are commentable, so answer/respond below to the question, “How do you glorify God?”

Oh my soul! Oh my Jesus
Judas sold you for thirty; I’d have done it for less
Oh my soul! Oh my Savior
Peter denied you three times; I have denied you more

As the nails went in, 
I was standing right there
And you breathed your last 
I shook my head and I cried,

“Oh my God, what have we done?
We have destroyed your Son!
Oh my God, what have we done?
We have destroyed your Son!”

Oh my soul! Oh my Jesus
Judas sold you for thirty; I’d have done it for less
Oh my soul! Oh my Savior
Peter denied you three times; I have denied you more

And the blood ran down
I was standing right there
And the water poured
I shook my head and I cried,

“Oh my God! What have we done?
We have destroyed your Son!
Oh my God! What have we done?
We have destroyed your Son!”

I am trying too hard. this is not always to be applied directly at me. the Bible was not written for me. how silly are we to think that it is a self-help book in times of denial, pain, and lament. as if God only gave us the most authoritative text in order to make people feel better. this is to reveal his glory, his perfection, his majesty. I am a dull rock who has avoided these truths, sitting at the bottom of a riverbed while the streams of life pass over me. I don’t resist on purpose, but I don’t try to follow either; I just sit.

what would it take to follow the man who is infinitely more to life than bread? how would I reflect him if I put my trust in this invisible Jesus who calls me to himself? this man was sent to preach the good news of the kingdom of God—I should run to him!

I choose other narratives ahead of this one. like it is a narrative at all! oh, might I view this book as a collection of things God decreed, that he meant for the world to read and hold onto forever until one day we will see him and the only thing we care to hear is his voice. and still I love to spend time reading other books. oh, God! I look to feed my desires without considering you who gave them to me. my perspective often has me looking through a telescope, searching for the narrowest of things, trying to fine-tune the thing to solve my problems. I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for, but I adjust the levers and alter the lenses. why can’t I see? time is moving and I am failing; I am an imperfect telescope operator! I step away, remembering for the first time that i was looking through a telescope at all. I didn’t create this machine, but I took for granted its ability to help me, for now I am surely blind. I didn’t quite get there, but with its help, I was closer.

may the Bible be like a telescope that I am continually looking into to know God, to learn his attributes, and to change my perspective. rather than searching for my pleasures, I’m taking my hands off. may I never forget who made the telescope—these are all God’s words in the first place, and he can operate the instrument for me. this is not another book in the library; it is the shelf the others sit on. this is not another song I can enjoy; it is the very radio station that judges, chooses, and plays how it likes.

God, play the songs you want, and get my preferences out of the way to amplify yours.

C.S. Lewis can often word situations in such an elegant way that I prefer to write them verbatim.  Regardless of the beautiful metaphors, he has so accurately described the state of himself and our tendencies toward trivial desires, that I found this all worthy of quoting from the book The Problem of Pain.  Indeed I could use my name in place of all the “I”s, because there is a truth beneath this writing that spans the human condition, connecting both our shortcomings and thus our hope to one person who, with one life, one death, and one resurrection, has redeemed all of these things, making himself our only worthy obsession.

“My own experience is something like this.  I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down.  At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys.  Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times.  I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ.  And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.  But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days.  Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear.  God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me.  Let Him but sheathe the sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed.  And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”