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and pulsates with eternal life. Every time Jesus healed, forgave or called someone, we have a demonstration of shalom.
And shalvah, “pro...
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leisure—the
the relaxed stance of one who knows that everything is all right because God is over us, with us and for us in Jesus Christ.
a history that has a cross at...
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In general terms, service is a willing, working, and doing in which a person acts not according to his own purposes or plans but with a view to the purpose of another person and according to the need, disposition, and direction of others.
is an act whose freedom is limited and determined by the other’s freedom, an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other . . . . It is ministerium Verbi divini, which means, literally, “a servant’s attendance on the divine Word.” The expression “attendance” may call to mind the fact that the New Testament concept of Diakonos originally meant “a waiter.” [We] must wait upon the high majesty of the divine Word, which is God himself as he speaks in his action.
acquire certain skills. One is service.
A psalm is not a lecture; it is a song.
Service begins with an upward look to God.
God did not become a servant so that we could order him around but so that we could join him in a redemptive life.
And if we thought about it for two consecutive minutes, we would not want it to work that way. If God is God at all, he must know more about our needs than we do; if God is God at all, he must be more in touch with the reality of our thoughts, our emotions, our bodies than we are; if God is God at all, he must have a more comprehensive grasp of the interrelations in our families and communities and nations than we do.
If we want to see God the way he really is, we must look to the place of authority—to Scripture and to Jesus Christ.
The moment we look up to God (and not over at him, or down on him) we are in the posture of servitude.
“Mercy, GOD, mercy!”: the prayer is not an attempt to get God to do what he is unwilling otherwise to do, but a reaching out to what we know that he does do, an expressed longing to receive what God is doing in and for us in Jesus Christ.
He rules, guides, commands, loves us as children whose destinies he carries in his heart.
Servitude is specific in its expectation, and what it expects is mercy.
Freedom is on everyone’s lips. Freedom is announced and celebrated. But not many feel or act free. Evidence? We live in a nation of complainers and a society of addicts. Everywhere we turn we hear complaints: I can’t spend my money the way I want; I can’t spend my time the way I want; I can’t be myself; I’m under the control of others all the time. And everywhere we meet the addicts—addiction to alcohol and drugs, to compulsive work habits and to obsessive consumption. We trade masters; we stay enslaved.
The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master.
around life—and place it before God as an offering” (12:1). The
But most significant is the remarkable last phrase logikēn latreian, “place it before God as an offering,”
We learn a relationship—an attitude toward life, a stance—of servitude before God, and then we are available to be of use to others in acts of service.
attitude of servanthood
Commands will be heard to be hospitable, to be compassionate, to visit the sick, to help and to heal (commands that Paul assembles in Romans 12—16 and many other places) and carried out with ease and poise.
For freedom is the freedom to live as persons in love for the sake of God and neighbor, not a license to grab and push.
It is the opportunity to live at our best,
A servant Christian is the freest person on earth.
Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ’s love.
And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily—open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.
The final sentence, “GOD’s strong name is our help, the same GOD who made heaven and earth,” links the God who created heaven and earth to the God who helps us personally. It takes the majesty of the One who pulled a universe into order and beauty, and finds this same God involved in the local troubles of a quite ordinary person.
the majestic greatness of God becomes revealed. Faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence, not the easiest.
But the content of our lives is God, not humanity.
We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.
Living as a Christian is not walking a tightrope without a safety net high above a breathless crowd, many of whom would like nothing better than the morbid thrill of seeing you fall; it is sitting secure in a fortress.
“God is a safe place to hide, ready to help when we need him” (Ps 46:1).
One threat to our security comes from feelings of depression and doubt. The person of faith is described in this psalm as “a rock-solid mountain . . . nothing can move it.” But I am moved. I am full of faith one day and empty with doubt the next. I wake up one morning full of vitality, rejoicing in the sun; the next day I am gray and dismal, faltering and moody. “Nothing can move it”?—nothing could be less true of me. I can be moved by nearly anything: sadness, joy, success, failure. I’m a thermometer and go up and down with the weather.
re.mind me Father
And as we learn that, we learn to live not by our feelings about God but by the facts of God.
My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors. “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people.” The image that announces the dependable, unchanging, safe, secure existence of God’s people comes from geology, not psychology.
faith not feelings
Anxiety seeps into our hearts.
We have the precarious feeling of living under a Damoclean sword. When will the ax fall on me? If such a terrible thing could happen to my friend who is so good, how long until I get mine?
Evil is always temporary. “The worst does not last.”
It is not possible to drift unconsciously from faith to perdition.
Discipleship is not a contract in which if we break our part of the agreement he is free to break his; it is a covenant in which he establishes the conditions and guarantees the results.
Defection requires a deliberate, sustained and determined act of rejection.
We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of
us.
Neither our feelings of depression nor the facts of suffering nor the possibilities of defection are evidence that God has abandoned us.
not be anxious” (Mt 6:25, 31, 34 RSV). Our life with God is a sure thing.
And now, GOD, do it again— bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence.
