Wisdom?

Wisdom = obedient acting upon the commands of God, not mere knowledge of them.

Deut 4:5-6 See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’

Thanks, after 26 years

Having completed 26 years of life yesterday, I thought I would give thanks to the Giver of all good things for some of His many blessings upon me.  I have sought to put them in roughly chronological order, though obviously many of them defy chronology.

life
health and strength
a believing family, who loves and serves God first of all
the Word of Truth
faith and repentance
communities of the faithful who have strengthen and edified me across countries and continents
adoption and sanctification
many teachers and much education
a purpose for living
travels that have allowed me to see the Kingdom of God as it is growing and the world He has given to the children of men
constant provision of every need
a godly heritage that extends back four and five generations
many dear companions on the heavenly way
a great diversity of friends
a beloved wife
a job
a baby girl, happy and healthy
Himself: the God who IS, who is Strength and Wisdom, and Justice, and Love, and Joy, and Three-in-One

Soma

I've appreciated a lot of stuff that I've heard from the elders at Soma Communities.  This post by Jeff Vanderstelt was excellent; it addressed the question "What is the Church?" in a very balanced and helpful way.

All the stuff that I have listened to from their training sessions has been very helpful as well.  They have looked deeply at the Gospel and sought to apply it to their lives, individually, as a church, and as a part of a community.  Very helpful, Gospel-saturated material!

Time, Patience, and Waiting

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! (Psalm 37:7)

   And wait patiently for him. Time is nothing to him; let it be nothing to thee. God is worth waiting for. "He never is before his time, he never is too late." In a story we wait for the end to clear up the plot; we ought not to prejudge the great drama of life, but stay till the closing scene, and see to what a finis (sic) the whole arrives. (Spurgeon's Treasury of David)

   It seems that most believers have difficulty in realizing and facing up to the inexorable fact that God does not hurry in His development of our Christian life. He is working from and for eternity! So many feel they are not making progress unless they are swiftly and constantly forging ahead. Now it is true that the new convert often begins and continues for some time at a fast rate. But this will not continue if there is to be healthy growth and ultimate maturity. God himself will modify the pace. (Stanford's Principles of Spiritual Growth)

a pondering on clouds

  The infinite, tender love of God for His own struck me anew as I considered the clouds a few days ago. Recall that God led His people out of Egypt and into a wilderness wasteland. Many hardships had been and continued to be their lot, but moment by moment they had the Cloud above them as a constant reminder that though the God of their Fathers had led them from one difficulty to another, still their Father God was tenderly concerned with their well-being. A pillar of cloud by day, shading and cooling against the hot sun. A pillar of fire by night, brightening, warming and protecting in the coldness that descends at nightfall in desert places. What tender love!

  The cloudy/fiery pillar of the divine Presence was there to lead them both day and night; with such tender love on display, it is hard to imagine that the omniscient One did not accommodate the pace to the slowest and shakiest every step of the way.

  We also have continual tokens of God's abiding love; may we not become so calloused about them that we ignore them and rebel against our loving Father, even when He leads us through a dry wilderness. The clouds must press upon us the personal love of our great Father for His people. Seek the tokens of God in your lives as a church and a believer and trust that even in the wilderness God's love cannot have wavered! 

 - Exodus 13:21-22; Numbers 14:14; Nehemiah 9:12, 19; 1 Corinthians 10:1ff

Worshiping with a Gift

I came across this quote which I originally found for some research I did on the OT sacrifices a number of years ago and it is a helpful thought.

   The worshiper never comes into the presence of God empty-handed.  The sentiment expressed in the hymn ("nothing in my hand I bring") would find little echo in Leviticus.  A worshiper comes either with his gifts of with God's Gift.

(from Victor Hamilton's Handbook on the Pentateuch, 252.)

Talitha Joy

While we have carefully documented the entrance of our new daughter into our lives in other places, I thought that I should at least place a bit of acknowledgement here.  Talitha continues to grow and be a joyful presence in our lives.  She also continues to challenge us in a variety of ways.  I trust in the future I will be able to say of her as a friend said of God's work in his life through his daughter, "She has been the greatest force for sanctification in my life." 

Talitha Joy - 8 days old

"Have we taken the Great Commission and placed it above the Great Command?" - Ted Travis, speaking on Kingdom Living this past Sunday at PBC

"The Gospel is inherently and irreducibly confrontational." - Mark Dever, The Deliberate Church, pg 55.

meditations on James 2:25 and Matthew 1

Byzantine depiction of Mary and Jesus in the Ayasofia (Hagia Sofia) in Istanbul

As I consider  Rahab the prostitute, an example in Hebrews and James of faith that works, I am awed to see the grace of God.  In the perfect plan of God to rescue sinful men who had rejected Him, He placed four "defiled" women in what we would imagine as a "pure" line of ancestors for his Son Jesus. 

Tamar - the Canaanite woman whose prostitution scheme brought about incest with her unfaithful father-in-law which ended with a pair of twins, one of whom carried the Messiah's line

Rahab - the Canaanite prostitute who not only believed the LORD would give her land to Israel, but also reached out to demonstrate this belief in her treatment of the spies, becoming a mother in Israel

Ruth - the Moabite widow who abandoned her culture and gods to follow and care for her Israelite mother-in-law. God blessed her to be the great-grandmother of King David and ancestor of the Messiah.

the wife of Uriah - a girl who was raped by King David and whose husband, a foreigner, was murdered in the cover-up, yet her second son would become king and another ancestor to Messiah

Each of these women show the grace of God in a sinful world.  They demonstrate His purposes for the nations of sinners and His means of salvation in an array of beauty that Mary, the virgin Jewish mother of Jesus, could not show us by herself. 

*Thanks to Brad for the picture.

Dreams from my Father

 This evening, I started reading Dreams from My Father, the autobiographical book by the young lawyer Barack Obama.  It has been startling good so far, and I think it's the best book that I've read dealing with cross-culturedness or TCK's since Third-Culture Kids, which I also loved.  It is a book that is rather frank and very open and reminds me again why the President's story speaks to so many people, even those who disagree with his policies.

 A few brief thought-excerpts that struck me in my personal journey and the journey I see others in:
 "...the fluid state of identity- the  leaps through time, the collision of cultures- that mark our modern life." (vii)
 "... [my past] speaks to those aspects of myself that resist conscious choice and that- on the surface, at least- contradict the world I now occupy." (xiv)
 "I enjoyed such moments [of companionship]- but only in brief.  If the talk began to wander, or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself.  I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew." (4)