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September 29 - November 3, 2017
The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
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agnostic indifference constitutes, nevertheless, surprisingly formidable opposition.
sorts the difficulties we face in the life of faith into the categories of world, flesh and devil.
the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes faith, dissipates hope and corrupts love,
It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest.
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There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
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Gore Vidal has analyzed as “today’s passion for the immediate and the casual.”
It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.
Disciple (mathētēs) says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ.
Pilgrim (parepidēmos) tells us we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.
the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God,
Singing the fifteen psalms is a way both to express the amazing grace and to quiet the anxious fears.
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Christians will recognize how appropriately these psalms may be sung between the times:
They are songs of transition, brief hymns that provide courage, support and inner direction for getting us to where God is leading us in Jesus Christ.
Thomas Szasz, in his therapy and writing, has attempted to revive respect for what he calls the “simplest and most ancient of human truths: namely, that life is an arduous and tragic struggle; that what we call ‘sanity,’ what we mean by ‘not being schizophrenic,’ has a great deal to do with competence, earned by struggling for excellence; with compassion, hard won by confronting conflict; and with modesty and patience, acquired through silence and suffering.”7
“Come, let’s climb God’s mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob. He’ll show us the way he works so we can live the way we’re made” (Is 2:3).
Scripture of note
Difference between a footprint and a monument
A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.
A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
it is pain that penetrates through despair and stimulates a new beginning—a journey to God that becomes a life of peace.
Convinced by the lie that what we are experiencing is unnatural, an exception, we devise ways to escape the influence of what other people do
to us by getting away on a vacation as often as we can.
from the lies of religionists who “heal the wounds of this people lightly,” from the lies of moralists who pretend to promote me to the office of captain of my fate, from the lies of pastors who “get rid of God’s command so you won’t be inconvenienced in following the religious fashions!” (Mk 7:8).
Rescue me from the person who tells me of life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit.
a good prayer to pray
our origin in God and our destiny in God.
we can participate in new life as we believe in him, accept his mercy, respond to his love, attend to his commands.
the transition from a dreamy nostalgia for a better life to a rugged pilgrimage of discipleship in faith, from complaining about how bad things are to pursuing all things good.
The usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance.
Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.
Repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts. It is a feet-on-the-ground kind of word.
The whole history of Israel is set in motion by two such acts of world-rejection, which freed the people for an affirmation of God: “the rejection of Mesopotamia in the days of Abraham and the rejection of Egypt in the days of Moses.”
So Israel said no and became a pilgrim people, picking a path of peace and righteousness through the battlefields of falsehood and violence, finding a path to God through the labyrinth of sin.
But they were now going someplace—they were going to God.
Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, sets us on the way to traveling in the light. It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving, a no to the world that is a yes to God.
to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise,
It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.
But there are times when finding out we are wrong is sudden and immediate relief, and we can lift up our heads in hope.
Psalm 121 is a quiet voice gently and kindly telling us that we are, perhaps, wrong in the way we are going about the Christian life, and then, very simply, showing us the right way.
For many, the first great surprise of the Christian life is in the form of troubles we meet.
Psalm 121 is addressed to those of us who, “disregarding God, gaze to a distance all around them, and make long and devious circuits in quest of remedies to their troubles.”
We take precautions by learning safety rules, fastening our seatbelts and taking out insurance policies. But we cannot guarantee security.
Help comes from the Creator, not from the creation.
no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us.
On every page of the Bible there is recognition that faith encounters troubles.
Three times in Psalm 121 God is referred to by the personal name Yahweh, translated as GOD
None of the things that happen to you, none of the troubles you encounter, have any power to get between you and God, dilute his grace in you, divert his will from you
It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature.
Psalm 121 says that the same faith that works in the big things works in the little things. The God of Genesis 1 who brought light out of darkness is also the God of this day who guards you from every evil.
And though this world, with devils filled Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure; One little word shall fell him.
