Jon Bloom's Blog, page 48

Remember

Memorial Day, as Americans have come to know it, began in the years immediately following the Civil War. But until World War II, most people knew it as “Decoration Day.” It was a day to decorate with flowers and flags the graves of fallen soldiers and remember those who had given, as Lincoln beautifully said, “the last full measure of devotion” to defend their nation. It was a day to remember what the honored dead had died to defend.

A century and a half has passed since Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending a national nightmare that filled over 625,000 American graves with dead soldiers. Since then, other international nightmares have ravaged the world and put more than 650,000 additional Americans into war graves in Europe, North Africa, the Pacific Rim, Asia, and the Middle East.

Remembering Is for the Future

Memorial Day is an important national moment. It is a day to do more than barbeque. It is right and wise to remember the great price some have paid to preserve the historically unprecedented civil and religious freedoms we Americans have the luxury to take largely for granted.

But the importance of Memorial Day is more for our future than it is for our past. It is crucial that we remember the nightmares and why they happened. We forget them at our own peril. The future of the United States depends in large amount on how well we collectively remember and cherish what liberty really is and the terror of tyranny. There is a high cost to forgetting. In the words of George Santayana’s famous aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

A Memorial People

Christians, of all people, understand the crucial importance of remembering. Christians are “memorial people” because the whole of our faith depends upon remembering. Those who persevere into the glorious future are those who remember the gracious past.

That’s why God has surrounded us with memorials. The entire Bible itself is a memorial. We meditate on it daily to remember. The Sabbath was a memorial to Israel’s freedom from Egyptian slavery (Deuteronomy 5:15), and the church switched it to Sundays as a memorial to Christ’s resurrection and our freedom from sin. Israel’s great gathering feast days were memorials (Exodus 13:3). And now each time a local church gathers, each Lord’s Supper celebration (1 Corinthians 11:24–26), each baptism, each Christmas celebration, and each Easter celebration is a memorial.

Remembering God’s past grace is necessary to fuel our faith in God’s future grace for us.† This makes the memory one of God’s most profound, mysterious, and merciful gifts granted to us. God designed it to be a means of preserving (persevering) grace for his people. We neglect it at our own peril.

The future of the church, globally and locally, and of each Christian depends largely on how well we remember the gospel of Jesus, all his precious and very great promises, and the successes and failures of church history. Scripture warns us that if we fail to remember, we will be condemned to submit again to sin’s and hell’s enslavement (Hebrews 6:4–8). Such warnings are graces to help us remember.

So as we commemorate Memorial Day as Americans, let us do it with profound gratitude for the extraordinary common grace given to us when men and women laid their lives down for the sake of America’s survival. And let us remember the past evils that we may not repeat them in the future.

And as Christians, let us make every day, as long as it is called today, a memorial day (Hebrews 3:13). Let us “take care lest [we] forget the Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:12).

Let us “remember Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:8).

† The most worshipful meditation on the human memory I’ve ever read is in Augustine’s Confessions, Book Ten, sections Vlll–XXV.

More on Memorial Day from Desiring God:

The Unmarked Tomb of a Well-Known Soldier

Setting Our Minds on Things Above in Summer

How Summertime Helps Us Pray

The End of Books

Why is reading so important to Christianity?

How is the Internet changing the way we read?

How can we become better readers?

These questions, and other critical topics about literacy, were addressed by Desiring God’s own Tony Reinke in an interview with Cees-Jan Smits today in the newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad (Dutch).

Tony is the author of Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, or as it’s known in the Netherlands, Lees!.

What follows is the original (English) version of today’s interview.

1. What is the use of reading for a spiritual life in general? And can illiterate Christians (e.g. in the medieval age) also be faithful Christians?

These are important questions, so thank you for the opportunity to talk about reading.

In his wisdom, God ordained literature and literacy to play a central role in revealing his unfolding plan throughout the ages. Literacy is so central to God’s design that more than 300 verses in the Bible speak of what is written, a reference to what has been recorded previously (e.g. “It is written . . .”). Scripture is consistently looking back and re-evaluating what has been written as a guide and guard for the future. God’s written word is the hallmark of biblical spirituality.

The apostle Paul penned this truism: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). As we look back on the ancient revelation recorded on the pages of Scripture, we find a fresh vision for the unseen future ahead of us. Literature and literacy unite historical reflection and future anticipation into one noble, transcendent purpose.

But is it possible for illiterate Christians to be faithful Christians? The answer is yes — and many of the first Gentile Christians would stand as proof of this point. While literacy among first-century Palestinian Jews was quite strong, the literacy rates in Roman provinces hovered around 10 percent; meaning most of the first Gentile Christians were illiterate and solely dependent on oral communication (Harris, Ancient Literacy). However, this inability to read, in itself, did not prohibit their fidelity to the gospel.

Even still, the true Church is never satisfied with illiteracy, and robust Christianity has fostered learning throughout history. Where the reformers brought the gospel of Jesus Christ, education blossomed (see John Calvin in France and John Knox in Scotland). The spread of the gospel carried both a warm embrace of the poor but a sanctified impatience with ignorance and illiteracy.

We see indications early in the New Testament Church that literacy was intended to take on an increasingly normative role in the Christian life. The skill of discernment grows when Christians have access to Scripture, in their own language, to use in evaluating the spiritual climate in which they live (Acts 17:11). Skillfully living by the Book means illiteracy in culture is one problem, but biblical illiteracy within the Church is another problem altogether. Many early Christians were biblically literate in spite of widespread illiteracy. Today I fear we face the opposite problem.

2. What do you think is the impact of the common practice of reading, i.e. the quick scanning of dozens of short Internet articles a day, for our spiritual life?

We are flooded daily by information in our digitally-driven world: social media updates from our friends, blog posts from many different voices, breaking news articles from journalists, and dozens of emails from everyone else. To manage the daily deluge of digital data, scan-reading is a modern necessity to help discern what requires our more thoughtful attention (and what we can safely skip).

Even right now, I imagine some readers are scanning this interview to see if it is worth the time commitment. I take no offense. Scan-reading is an essential survival skill in the digital age, but we must also remember scan-reading is best used as a first-level separation mechanism between the necessary information we need and the un-necessary information we don’t need (and for many of us, 90 percent of the data we scan on a daily basis is of little or no consequence to our lives).

Unfortunately, for many people inside and outside of the church, scan-reading can become a default method of literacy for everything, and this poses all sorts of problems. As I recount in my book (Lit!), even professional readers who formerly enjoyed reading long novels have found their minds so shaped by online scan-reading they can no longer read the very same novels they once enjoyed. This attention decline is a detrimental problem for Christians who possess God’s eternal word, which stands alone in its proven value.

3. More specifically: what do you think, in contrast, would the impact of a practice of slow reading be for our understanding of God?

The purpose of reading is to learn new things, experience new truth, and change for the better. The content that has most challenged and changed my own life are the resources I have invested the most time. The faster I scan, the less enduring impact is made. By default, this puts ephemeral blog posts and short articles at a disadvantage. Short online materials appeal to scan-readers, but the low time commitment and focus it asks of the reader actually makes the piece unlikely to permanently alter the reader. Short blog posts or social media updates are meant to be read quickly, and they can affirm (or offend) our thinking, or they can bring clarifying affirmation to our thinking, but they do not require the time investment necessary to change a reader’s thinking. Changing minds will continue to be the work of long-form journalism and patiently read books.

More tragically, I fear very few Christians invest any meaningful time trying to discover God’s ultimate purposes for literacy and literature, and therefore we do not rise very far from the world’s use of literacy. In reality, the highest purpose of reading is communion with God. As Christians we believe God is here, he speaks, he listens, and he desires to commune with us. Literacy is transformed from an information ingestion to a spiritual discipline intended for us to hear from God, to slowly dwell on him and the significance of Jesus Christ, his creation of all things, his death for sin, his resurrection over death, and his ascension and ongoing cosmic reign.

Reading slowly and meditatively is how the Bible confronts us, reproves us, corrects us, and thereby changes us and trains us for action (2 Timothy 3:16–17). As this is happening, our slowed reading pace protects the meditative time our affections need to keep pace with our minds. If we fail to delight in God, our literacy is proven defective. Spiritual reading is not merely about personal illumination, it’s about offering us space to “taste and see that the Lᴏʀᴅ is good” (Psalm 34:8). God is glorious and worthy of all our delight. We are to rejoice in Christ always. Scan-reading about Christ cannot accomplish this.

Scripture is a banquet feast for the soul. Scanning through the Bible in haste is like jogging through a gourmet buffet. Such haste leads to information indigestion and biblical illiteracy — the inability to resist the waves and wind of a culture hostile to God. But most sadly, scan-reading the Bible leads to spiritual malnourishment. God invites us to feast and enjoy him. For the Christian who is a patient reader, God offers the heart-satisfying joy in the beholding of the glory of Jesus Christ. Delighting in the Word made flesh is the consummation of God’s highest purpose of literacy (2 Corinthians 3:12–18).

4. Is not a plea for reading and meditation just a kind of conservatism? Should we not instead look for new ways of finding God, for example like with the old Roman-Catholic “books for the layman” (religious art)?

Intuitive spirituality is reckless, but we’re all guilty. We are drawn to seek God apart from his revelation. As men intuitively grasp for God, one grabs the leg of an elephant, another grabs an ear, another the snout, but with our intuitive spirituality we can do little more than gather in a circle around an animal we presume to be our god. God is never far from us, and yet we follow our intuition and think it will lead us to God — when in reality our intuition only leads us into the temple of ignorance built for ‘The unknown god’ (Acts 17:16–34). If Christ has been raised from the dead, we have no excuses for God-ignorance (Acts 17:30–31). God is close to us, so close he can be found in his Son, Jesus Christ, as revealed in Scripture.

Likewise, visual-oriented spirituality is incomplete. Images can present to us the world as it is, but pictures cannot interpret what we see. Language communicates to our minds the meaning behind the images we see with our eyes. This explains why old silent movies needed text slides, why new movies need writers and dialogue, and why newspaper photographs need captions. Language brings precision and clarity of meaning to what we see with our eyes.

For example: Jesus Christ was nailed on a Roman cross between two robbers, one on his right and one on his left — this is a reality we can depict in a bloody movie, on a graphic poster, or in a classic painting. But go one step further. “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” — this is a reality that must be expounded with Apostolic words (2 Corinthians 5:21). The crucifixion’s meaning was invisible and cannot be shared without a common language. Only for one who has come to know the theological meaning of the cross (by words), can a painting of the crucifixion finally take on its fullest meaning (in the form of image). So visual spirituality, which can appreciate a lot of the visible created universe, is severely limited in communicating theological meaning.

Ultimately, it is irrelevant to pin the rise or decline of literacy on the opinions of conservatives or liberals. What matters are the words of Jesus Christ. He tells us in plain language true spirituality is not experienced by intuition or by aesthetic taste, but rather it comes about in a vibrant relationship of knowing God and being loved by him, abiding in his love, and honoring him in an organic union that thrives off concrete revelation. True spirituality is measured by our honest life-response to the articulated words of Jesus (John 15:7–12). Such a definition helps to clear the fog of intuitive spirituality that creeps into our postmodern thinking.

5. For readers who identify themselves as “scan readers” and now struggle to slowly and patiently read entire books, what are some practical ways for them to grow?

If all of us are now being forced to develop a bi-literacy — skillful in scanning information, and patient in slowly reading important texts — then all of us are faced with the challenge of cultivating the patient pace of slow reading. Here are three practical tips.

First, find ways to separate yourself from digital distractions. If you read books on a device that comes packaged with social media apps or email, and you find your attention with books frequently broken and lured to check things online, you may need to put the device aside entirely. I do this often. I turn off my phone, pick up a printed book, grab a pen, and go to a place where I can be separated from the bells and whistles of digital distractions and sit and read for an undistracted 45 minutes. This exercise may be painful for the first few times, but gradually you will notice a difference if this time can be protected.

Second, read challenging books slowly. I find it helpful to occasionally read the works of Shakespeare or a 17th century Bible translation (KJV) in order to encounter unfamiliar words. This discipline forces me to slow down and decipher word meanings, often reading a paragraph two or three times until the author’s sense becomes clear. Who has time for reading at such a slow pace? The reader who knows that some writings — the Bible — are of infinite value and require the highest mental discipline we can offer the text. Escaping to another century with the intent of understanding will necessarily slow your pace and develop your sustained, linear reading attention.

Third, for parents, it is important that mom or dad model the slow reading of important texts for their children. If you have young children at home and you engage in some form of devotional reading of the Bible together, it’s wise to read slowly and not skim over unfamiliar words. Stop and help explain hard words, and then help everyone understand the author’s meaning. Patient understanding is essential if we are to respond with the appropriate joy of discovery that fuels our communion with God.

Parents and pastors are custodians of literacy for future generations of Christians who will come to discover the invisible God of the universe is speaking directly to us through his Son, in the pages of the Bible, by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. Such a view of literacy is glorious and worth protecting at all costs.

Related resources:

Book, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books
Seminar, The Pastor and His Reading: Why You Are the Key to Building a Church That Loves Books
Blog post, Four Reasons Men Don’t Read Books (with a Practical Suggestion)

Escaping the Slavery of Selfish Ambition

Selfish ambition is a sin that always seems to be “crouching at the door” (Genesis 4:7). It contaminates our motives for doing just about anything. It shows up even in the most holy moments, like it did for Jesus’s disciples in Luke’s account of the Last Supper (Luke 22:14–30). But in that account we also see how Jesus frees us from the suicidal slavery of selfish ambition.

Jesus’s final meal before the cross was perhaps the most ironic time for the Twelve to debate over which of them was the greatest.

The greatest human being who would ever walk the earth, the Founder and Perfecter of their faith (Hebrews 12:2), was reclining at the table with them. He was the only one in the room without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He was the only one there who always did what was pleasing to the Father (John 8:29).

This Person had just led the Twelve through the last Passover meal before his death — the death that would be the propitiating sacrifice for their sins (Romans 3:25). And he had just instituted the new Passover meal, which they and all future disciples were to observe regularly until he returned so that they would always remember that their sins were forgiven only through the substitutionary, atoning death of the true Passover Lamb (Acts 10:43).

This was no time for any disciple to assert his own greatness, except the greatness of his sin.

Even more ironic is what ignited the debate.

Preoccupied with Prominence

Jesus had just revealed that one of them that very night would willingly participate in the most spectacular sin in history: the slaughter of the Son of God. And yet somehow the introspection and inquiry that followed ended up in a competition over who was greatest (Luke 22:24).

It was a moment that displayed the terrifying blinding power of pride in sinful people. How quickly the moon of selfish ambition eclipses the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2).

Jesus was about to die for their sins. One of them was about to betray him to that death. Their response to such horror and glory should have been mourning, repentance, and worship. But instead each disciple was suddenly and absurdly preoccupied with his own place of prominence in God’s plan of salvation.

Grace to Change Their Gaze

But what grace Jesus displayed in this moment. This sin too would be paid in full. Therefore, Jesus did not condemn his disciples for thinking far too highly of themselves at the worst possible time (Romans 12:3).

Instead, Jesus mercifully drew their gaze off of themselves and back to him:

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves. (Luke 22:25–26)

Keep Looking to Jesus

God was so merciful to move Luke to include this account of the disciples’ sin, because we too are frequently tempted to sin in this way, even in the most sacred moments.

The secret to freedom from slavery to selfish ambition is to keep looking to Jesus. When our focus is on ourselves and each other we begin to compare and compete, which leads us into a black hole of demonic evil (James 3:14–15). But looking to Jesus reminds us that we have nothing that we haven’t received through him (1 Corinthians 4:7). Past and future, world without end, all is God’s grace toward us in Christ. Looking to Jesus reminds us that loving and serving each other just as Jesus has loved and served us is the path to full joy (John 15:11–12).

We will have to fight against selfish ambition as long as we live in this fallen state because it’s right at the core of our fallen nature. Our sinful desire to be like God (Genesis 3:5) and pursue others’ worship. We don’t need to feign shock when we see it in ourselves (as if we’re surprised that we’re selfish!) and, like Jesus, we should be patient when we see it in others.

Looking away from ourselves to Jesus is the key to walking in joyful freedom from selfish ambition. Because God designed us to be satisfied with Jesus’s glory, not our own.

More from Desiring God on fighting pride:

How To Fight the Sin of Pride, Especially When You Are Praised (article by John Piper)

Think Hard, Stay Humble: The Life of the Mind and the Peril of Pride (message by Francis Chan)

How Much Do You Own? (sermon by John Piper)

Your Most Courageous Resolution for 2014

Pursue love. (1 Corinthians 14:1)

Resolutions are good things. They’re biblical: “may [God] fulfill every resolve for good” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). And I think developing New Year’s resolutions is a very good idea. A year is a defined timeframe long enough to make progress on difficult things and short enough to provide some incentive to keep moving.

A resolve is not a vague intention, like “one of these days I’m going to get that garage cleaned” or “I’m going to read the Bible through this year,” but without any clear plan to do it. Resolves are intentions with strategies attached to them. You don’t just hope something is going to happen; you are planning to make it happen. To be resolved is to be determined.

Make Love Your Aim

But resolves can either be rooted in our selfish ambitions or in the love of God. We must think them through carefully. So as we make our resolutions for 2014, God wants them to all serve this one great end: “pursue love” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

“Pursue” is a very purposeful word. The Greek verb has an intensity to it. It means to “seek after eagerly,” like a runner in a race seeks eagerly to win a prize.

The RSV’s translation of this phrase is clearer: “Make love your aim.” It has a sense of single-minded focus to it. The NIV falls short: “Follow the way of love.” It has no edge to it. It sounds like a platitude that the most polite company could smile and nod to without feeling unnerved. It does not capture Paul’s intensity.

No, this is an aggressive verb. In fact, it can mean to “pursue with hostile intent.” That’s why in the New Testament, it is frequently used to mean persecuting or harassing someone.

That sounds like Paul, the former persecutor who became the persecuted. What he is saying to us is that we should pursue love with no less fervency and determination that he once pursued Christians to Damascus — only our aim is not to stop love, but to unleash it and be captured by it, or, I should say, by Him (1 John 4:8).

Plan to Make Love Your Aim

Let this be the year that we pursue love. Let this be the year that we stop talking about love, that we do less regretful moaning about how little we love and how much we need to grow in love and actually be determined to love more the way Jesus loved (John 15:12). Let this be the year we actually put into place some strategies to help us love.

Each person’s situation is so unique that we can’t craft strategies for each other to grow in love. It’s something that we must each do with God, though some feedback and counsel from those who know us best are helpful.

But here are some of the Bible’s great love texts to soak in during 2014 that can help loving strategies emerge:

1 Corinthians 13: soak in or memorize it and let each “love is . . .” statement in verses 4–7 search your heart. With whom can you show greater patience, kindness, and more?

John chapters 13–15: soak in or memorize them. Ninety-five verses are very doable. You can memorize them in 3–6 months and be transformed.

The First Epistle of John: Soak in or memorize it. You can do it! Forcing yourself to say the verses over and over will yield insights you’ve never seen before.

Take 2–4 weeks and simply meditate on the two greatest commandments according to Jesus (Matthew 22, Mark 12, Luke 10). Look and look at them and pray and pray over them. You will be surprised at what the Lord shows you.

Read Hebrews 13:1–7, take one verse per day and prayerfully meditate on what you might put into place to grow in each area of loving obedience. It may be one thing or ten things.

You get the idea. We don’t need all our strategies in place by January 1st. But we can make 2014 a year where we pursue love with more intentionality than we ever have before. And as we meditate, letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16), the Holy Spirit will guide us in creating the strategies we should use.

The Most Courageous Resolution

But let’s also be clear: making love our aim in 2014 will demand more courage and faith than any other resolution we can make. Nothing exposes the depth of our sin like really seeking to love God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27).

So we must let our pursuit of love drive us to the gospel. None of us has ever perfectly kept either of the two great commandments. Ever. Our very best efforts have been polluted by our prideful sin. And we have rarely been at our very best.

We can only love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and sent his Son to become sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ has kept the greatest commandments (and the rest) perfectly for us! So we are forgiven of our constant failure to love as we ought and are given grace to grow in the grace of love. And because of Jesus, someday we will love perfectly just as we have been loved.

So let’s make our resolution to pursue love this year more than we ever have, knowing that we have been loved with an everlasting love (Psalm 103:17).

Recent posts from Jon Bloom:

The Greatest Blessing Mary Received

When a Sword Pierces Your Soul

Making Christmas Melancholy Point Hopeward

The Greatest Blessing Mary Received

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! (Luke 1:42)

Mary was unique in human history. It is absolutely true. She was “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42), and among men as well. She received the singular holy gift of being the mother of our Lord (Luke 1:43). God dwelled inside of her body in human form. Then he lived in her home and was under her care until adulthood.

Focusing on the Wrong Blessing

The mystery woven into Mary’s calling as Jesus’s mother has tempted some to attribute near divine status to her and worship her. It was a temptation from the very beginning, even when Jesus was still walking the earth. We get a glimpse of this when a woman in a crowd shouted out to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed” (Luke 11:27)!

We don’t know exactly what was in this woman’s mind when she said this. But the human heart, which makes idols out of almost anything, can easily progress from considering a womb blessed by Jesus’s presence (which it was) to believing that the womb must have somehow been worthy of such a blessed presence (which it was not).

What Jesus Calls Blessed

Jesus knew the woman’s line of reasoning was dangerous. So he responded to her, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27–28)!

Do you see the guarding grace in Jesus’s response? In a single sentence he was protecting Mary’s true blessedness and protecting us from idolatry — if we listen to him. The blessing is not in bearing the Son, it’s in believing the Son. The blessing is not in caring for the Word of God made flesh (John 1:14) but in keeping the Word’s word.

Mary’s Greatest Blessing

Gabriel told Mary that she had “found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). Certainly bearing and raising the Christ Child was an incredible favor. But it was not the greatest favor God bestowed on Mary — not by a long shot. Though he gave Mary a completely unique calling, the most important way God favored her is the same way he favors you and me and all his children.

The biblical canon nowhere teaches that Mary was sinless. She was not immaculately conceived. Like us, she “was brought forth in iniquity” (Psalm 51:5). Unless God did something to remove her sin, his wrath would have remained on her like any other fallen human.

This means that God’s favor on Mary was unmerited. The grace he showed to her was of staggering proportions, and I’m not even referring to her calling as the mother of The Child. The greatest blessing Mary received was that her Child saved her from her damning sins (Matthew 1:21) so that he could bring her to God (1 Peter 3:18) — the same blessing that is given to everyone who believes in him (John 3:16).

That’s why Jesus directs our attention away from Mary, whom he loved, to his Word in Luke 11:28. He wants our attention on the gospel he came to proclaim: the free gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23) to all who believe in him (1 John 5:13). Mary’s vocational calling as the mother of Jesus was a great blessing, but it was nowhere near the blessing of having her sins paid for by the fruit of her womb.

God was “Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14) to Mary in a way no one else has experienced and in that way she was “blessed among women.” But the most important way God dwelled with Mary was the same as he dwells with all his children: through faith (Ephesians 3:17).

So as we ponder Mary’s experience this Christmas, let us join her relative, Elizabeth, and say of her: “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45). Because God’s greatest blessing is given to those who believe him.

Recent posts from Jon Bloom:

When a Sword Pierces Your Soul

Making Christmas Melancholy Point Hopeward

Lay Aside the Weight of Christmas Expectations

When a Sword Pierces Your Soul

Simeon had a painful message for Mary. But she discovered that for those who trust God, he uses soul-piercing events to unleash more grace, salvation, and joy into the world than we could have ever imagined.

It was mid-morning when Joseph and Mary and their infant son entered Jerusalem’s Fountain Gate at the city’s southern tip. They passed the pool of Siloam where the disabled and diseased hoped for a healing stir of the water. They walked northwest up the street that led to the Temple Mount. It bustled with the rattle and hum of morning chores and commerce.

It had been forty days since Mary had birthed her boy. Under the Jewish law, this had made her unclean and required a purification sacrifice on the fortieth day. She and Joseph had made the nearly ten-mile trek from Bethlehem the previous day, camping with a few others a half-mile or so outside the holy city.

Outside the temple complex Joseph bartered with merchants for two turtledoves. The inflated prices angered him. Profiting from purification! He also felt shame that he couldn’t afford a lamb. Doves were a poor man’s sacrifice. He was barely eking out a living in Bethlehem, taking whatever odd job he could find.

Mary watched Joseph return with the cloth bag, its erratic movements divulging an inner turmoil. Sorrow flashed through her. She always recoiled at the sacrifices: the struggle, the fear, the violence, the blood — innocent life killed because of another’s guilt. These two frightened creatures would soon die to make her clean. She held Jesus tighter.

They entered the complex and made their way across the noisy Court of the Gentiles toward the Eastern Gate of the inner wall. Hundreds were praying, men with covered and women with uncovered heads.

Suddenly, in front of them, an old man appeared. “Let me see the child!” He sounded almost distressed. Joseph stepped up and shielded his wife. The man looked up at Joseph first confused and then smiled. Taking Joseph’s prohibiting hand in both of his, he patted it and said, “I’m sorry, my son. You must forgive old Simeon. Please don’t be afraid. Your child is in no danger from me. I’ve just been waiting for him so long.”

Mary knew immediately that he knew. The old man looked to her and gently asked, “May I see your son?” Mary smiled and nodded. Joseph stepped back. The man moved near and looked in awe at the child. Barely audible he muttered, “The salvation of Israel. The glory of Israel.”

Without taking his eyes off Jesus, he asked, “May I hold him?” Mary felt no fear as she placed Jesus into Simeon’s arms. He gently rocked him and mouthed silent praise with tears streaming. Mary glanced at Joseph who was wordless too.

Then the old man broke into a half sobbing prayer, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel (Luke 2:29–32).

Mary again felt the shivering wonder that her baby, this one she nursed and changed and bathed and cradled, was “Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

Simeon, still gazing adoringly at the child, said, “Years ago the Lord promised me that death would not come until I had seen his Christ. Today, I opened my eyes while praying and there you were — an infant! I had never thought you would be an infant!” Looking to Joseph with laughing eyes, he said, “One never thinks of the Christ as an infant!”

With a kiss of blessing Simeon softly placed Jesus back in his mother’s arms. He dried his eyes with a sleeve and turned to Joseph, laying a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35).

Then turning back to Mary, he gently cupped her head with his hands and said tearfully, “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). He kissed her forehead and with one last look at the child, he moved away slowly through the crowd.

“A sword will pierce through your own soul.” The most wonderful, gracious event in human history was God sending his Son into the world — to the cross — to “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and this gracious event caused indescribable grief for Mary. This is important to note.

As God works out his salvation of sinners, he leads us along unexpected paths that result in unexpected and sometimes agonizing pain. When it does, we can remember Mary. The darkest moment of her life, the sword that stabbed deepest into her soul, was the moment that God used most to bring salvation and joy to the world — and to her!

That’s how he works with us too. When the sword pierces, all it feels like is terrible pain. But later we discover that our deepest wounding often becomes the channel through which the most profound grace flows.

Recent posts from Jon Bloom:

Making Christmas Melancholy Point Hopeward

Lay Aside the Weight of Christmas Expectations

How Can We Give Thanks in All Circumstances?

Making Christmas Melancholy Point Hopeward

Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling melancholic. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we sit in the messy aftermath watching the taillights and music of another Christmas fade into the distance.

Christmas Melancholy

Such melancholy is common — known as “Christmas let-down.” Everyone feels sad for different reasons. Younger children are sad that the excitement is over and next Christmas might as well be a decade away. Teens and young adults feel sad because as they’ve matured, beloved traditions have changed or the magical delight these things held not too many years ago has dulled.

Adults feel a mortality-sadness. The older we get we realize how few Christmases we really get. There is now one less to enjoy when our children are young, or when they are still living at home, or when our elderly or ill family member is still with us, or when we are still with our loved ones.

Or maybe the sadness was from a chair or a place at the table painfully empty this year.

Making Melancholy a Pointer

The truth is that this melancholic moment might be the most poignant teaching moment of the whole season. Because as long as Christmas is pregnant with anticipation — the beautiful gifts remain unopened and feasts and fun events are still ahead of us — it can appear to be the hope we’re waiting for.

But when the wrapping paper lies in tatters and the events are over and the guests are gone and the retail stores are setting up for Valentine’s Day, we realize that Christmas didn’t deliver what we really long for: a happiness that doesn’t end.

And surprisingly this is how our Christmas celebrations might actually serve us best: as pointers to, not providers of, lasting Joy.

We know our Christmas celebrations (should) point us to Christ’s first coming, when he came to “deal with sin” (Hebrews 9:28). But a way to think of the various healthy enjoyments we experience in the events themselves is as pointers to Christ’s second coming when he will “save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28) and bring them “everlasting joy” (Isaiah 35:10).

If we can see Christmas as a foreshadowing of future lasting joy and not an attempt to fulfill our dreams, we can unburden it from unrealistic expectations and transpose the melancholy of its passing into hope.

It might help to give this some thought before the sad mood sets in so you can serve your loved ones when it hits them. Here are a few ways that Pam and I have tried to make post-Christmas melancholy point to hope for our kids:

Gifts and events can’t fill the soul. God gives us such things to enjoy. They are expressions of his generosity as well as ours, but gifts and celebrations themselves are not designed to satisfy. They're designed to point us to the Giver. Gifts are like sunbeams. We are not meant to love sunbeams but the Sun.

Putting our hope in passing joys will leave us empty. Many people live their lives looking for the right sunbeam to make them happy. But if we depend on anything in the world to satisfy our soul’s deepest desire, it will eventually leave us with that post-Christmas soul-ache. We will ask, “Is that all?” because we know deep down that’s not all there is. We are designed to treasure a Person, not his things.

It is more blessed to give than receive. What kind of happiness this Christmas felt richer: getting the presents that you wanted or making someone else happy with something that you gave to them? Receiving is a blessing, but Jesus is right — giving is a greater blessing (Acts 20:35). A greedy soul lives in a small, lonely world. A generous soul lives in a wide world of love. This is what heaven and the new earth will be like.

You also might want to save till Christmas night watching with your family (or watch again) the video of John Piper reading “The Innkeeper.” It is such a wonderful pointer to both the first and second comings of Jesus.

It’s just like God to let the glitter and flash of our celebrations (even in his honor) pass and then to come to us in the quiet, even melancholic void they leave. Because often that’s when we are most likely to understand the hope he intends for us to have at Christmas.

Recent post from Jon Bloom:

Lay Aside the Weight of Christmas Expectations

How Can We Give Thanks in All Circumstances?

We Are Far Too Easily Displeased

For All Who Ever Lost a Child

Suffering. Evil. Death. All of us experience them. They consume the lives of our precious loved ones — sometimes in unspeakably horrible ways. They bend us to the ground and produce tearful groanings too deep for words.

Jesus was not immune from these realities. Nor were those who found themselves caught in the cosmic crossfire surrounding the Incarnation. In Bethlehem, babies were killed because Jesus was born.

Reading what is perhaps his most loved story, The Innkeeper, Pastor John has us look into the face of tragedy, as experienced by Herod’s brutal slaughter of little boys. Then he turns us toward the shining face of hope. If we have the eyes of faith to see it, the sting of futility will be forever removed from death.

A year since it debuted, we post this video once again as a Christmas gift from all of us at Desiring God, especially for all who ever lost a child.

Related resources:

What's the Story Behind Your Poem, "The Innkeeper"?

Christmas as the End of History

When There's Crisis at Christmas

Lay Aside the Weight of Christmas Expectations

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

At Christmastime, it’s good for us to remember just how dangerous fantasies are.

I’m not talking about Narnia-type fantasies. I’m talking about how out of our self-centered desires we construct ideas and expectations of the way we want things to be and project them on to people and events. If those people or events don’t meet our expectations we grumble and sulk and lose our tempers.

Fantasy-fueled expectations can easily become tyrants. At Christmas they are often the Scrooges and Grinches of our celebrations. Less flatteringly, they are the devils in the garden of God’s gracious love.

Christmas for Christians is a celebration of the Incarnation, that wonderful, impenetrable, mysterious moment when the Word who spoke all things into being (John 1:3) and held them all together by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). When YHWH “for a little while was made lower than the angels” (Hebrews 2:9). When he who knew no sin entered the world as a bloody infant to become sin for us on a bloody cross that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Selah.

Not Like They Expected

If there ever was a holiday to celebrate and worship God in his sovereign control over things not going the way we planned, it’s Christmas. Very little went as Joseph and Mary expected. Joseph hadn’t expected the painful decision to divorce Mary. He hadn’t expected all the difficult unplanned detours that took them to Bethlehem, then to Egypt, then eventually back to Nazareth. Neither of them had expected this holy Child to be born in a stable of desperation.

No one expected the Messiah to come from Galilee (John 7:52), no one expected him to be (formally) uneducated (John 7:15), and no one expected him to literally be the Son of God (John 10:30–33).

Christmas is the celebration of the coming of the unexpected Jesus.

Selah.

Beware the Hollow Echoes

That’s why we need to be aware of how much we are influenced by the American cultural holiday we call Christmas, because it is almost entirely a fantasy-fueled expectation factory. It’s a hodgepodge collage of images and tales from Dickensian England, Rockwellian America, our own childhoods, and consumer marketing. It’s trimmed with vague notions of joy and peace (hollow echoes of their Luke 2:10–14 origins), and sometimes includes sentimental scenes of a wise, glowing Child in a manger surrounded by serene livestock and European-looking Semites and Persians. And all of this is set to a trans-generational pop superstar soundtrack.

The false myth of this Christmas is that if we can get it to look like the whimsical hazy collage in our minds, we will experience the “Christmas spirit” and be happy.

The problem is, of course, that everyone’s collage is different. The result is that Christmas fantasy expectations are disappointed. And all too often selfishness suffocates love, lashes out in some form of aggressive or passive anger and destroys whatever joy and peace there may have been.

That’s what makes fantasies so dangerous. They are almost always self-centered attempts to seek happiness by forcing reality to conform to our imagination, which we have no power to do. They make unattainable demands and leave us and others disillusioned.

The True Christmas Spirit

So as our celebrations approach, let’s resolve to lay aside the weight and entangling sin (Hebrews 12:1) of selfish Christmas fantasies and look to Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6–8)

This is the true Christmas spirit. Christ did not grasp; he served. And oh, how he served.

Advent season is the celebration of the unexpected Jesus coming at an unexpected time in an unexpected place to pay the unexpected, unfathomable price to give us unexpecting sinners the undeserved gift of complete forgiveness of sin and unimaginable gift of eternal life.

Christmas is not about fulfilling our holiday expectations. It’s about celebrating Jesus’s overwhelming accomplishment for us and following in his humble servant footsteps.

So when things don’t go the way we expect them this season, let us rejoice in the God who rules the unexpected and,

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than [ourselves]. (Philippians 2:3)

Recent post from Jon Bloom:

No One Ever Said It Would Be This Hard

How Can We Give Thanks in All Circumstances?

Don’t Raise Good Kids

No One Ever Said It Would Be This Hard

Nobody said it was easy;

No one ever said it would be this hard. (Coldplay, “The Scientist”)

O Christian Hedonism! That ancient, beautiful, biblical truth that our treasure is what most captures our heart (Matthew 6:21), that what measures our treasure is our pleasure, that if God is our “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4) then God’s pursuit of glory and our pursuit of happiness are one wonderful, wild pursuit! Because God is actually most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

For many of us, putting the scriptural pieces together and seeing this truth was almost like a second conversion. We saw more good in the gospel than we had ever seen before: God doesn’t merely want us holy; he wants us happy! In fact, true happiness is true holiness.

And then Christian Hedonism left us devastated. Not because it was untrue, but because we were. It exposed us. We did not value the Pearl anywhere near his worth (Matthew 13:45–46). We found ourselves still too attracted to mud pies and too neglectful of the Sea.

We had set out to pursue the deepest, purest, most satisfying Joy that exists and found the world, the flesh, and the devil (Ephesians 2:1–3) fought us tooth and nail. They yielded no ground without a fight. Instead of experiencing joy, we often felt weary and discouraged.

All we were after was happiness. No one ever said it would be this hard, did they?

Indeed they did. We just hadn’t quite understood the extent before. In fact, the Pearl himself said:

“The way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14);

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23);

In order to have joy we must gouge out our eyes and cut off our hands if we need to (Matthew 5:29–30);

Holy, maximum happiness may cost us our family relationships and we will need to hate our earthly life in many ways to get it (Luke 14:26).

This is why the author of Desiring God wrote the book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. The former helps us understand what “the good fight of the faith” is all about (1 Timothy 6:12) — what is the good we’re fighting for. The latter is a field manual. The former shows us the panoramic view. The latter is for the ground war where we live, in the trenches with snipers shooting and mortar shells exploding. When an enemy attacks or when we’re strategizing to take a hill or when our stubborn darkness just won’t lift, what we need is very practical help.

The way is hard that leads to life. But let’s remember that the emphasis is not on “hard” but on “life.” The eternal (John 3:16), abundant (John 10:10), exceedingly joyful (Psalm 43:4) and forever pleasurable (Psalm 16:11) life is so worth the fight that we will someday look back at the very worst, darkest, horrible battles and see them as “light and momentary” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

And in the meantime, with the fiery darts still flying, let’s keep close at hand the Bible and field manuals such as When I Don’t Desire God to help us keep the shield of faith in place.

Get a new copy of John Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God, or download the free PDF.