Tuesday, 07 July 2009

  • How real is our enemy's war?

    How is it that a Christian girl, raised in a Christian home and educated in a Christian school, has never read The Pilgrim's Progress? 

    I ignorantly believed before starting Bunyan's work that the majority of the it dealt with Christian's road to conversion.  Not so; Christian comes to the "Wicket-gate" and Jesus' salvation early; then, and following the Bible's lead, Bunyan falls onto metaphor to illustrate the trials we Believers will face.  J.R.R. Tolkein did this also with books I have already read, his The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy, and Lewis with his Chronicles. 

    These I've mentioned and certainly many other works of "fiction" provide graphic, illustrative battles and circumstances for their heroes: actual Valley's of the Shadow of Death, true armies of Orcs, cold, evil rulers.  Real arrows and darts are thrown; swords really clash.  I get that all these are the metaphors of the Christian life, but they seem so graphic, so obvious.  As I said, even the Bible gets in on it:

    Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt? Jeremiah 2:6, KJV

    Real Christian life isn't like that.  Though this verse in Jeremiah speaks of a true history, we Believers have been using in metaphorically every since.  Most of us, anyway...and fortunately.  We don't slog through actual Slough's of Despair or are faced with a tangible Caracas, nor do we really find refuges reminiscent of Bunyan's palace Beautiful.  So is all this metaphor truly accurate, or is it overkill?  And if it isn't overkill, is the evil more deadly because of it's elegantly crafted subtlety?

Monday, 06 July 2009

  • The Father's love reflected

    I’ve been staring at dirty beige walls in my apartment far too long, and though I planned on painting the place from the day I moved in, it was four years before the bee flew up my bottom and I started.   I knew if I asked my Dad he would come and help.  He had, after all, helped me paint the bathroom twice.  But he’s busy, I know; busy with his own company, his own yard and garden, his own father and in-laws…  So I determined to do it on my own, and except for borrowing from him all the painting supplies minus the paint, I tried to.

    Well, not only is my father wonderful, so is my mother, who knew how I felt about asking Dad for help.  Both knew I intended to paint sometime this month, had seen the colors I chose, and they knew I purposed to do the task over the three-day holiday weekend. 

    Well Friday morning or Thursday night, my dad asked Mom why I hadn’t called him for help yet.  Hearing my mother relay the conversation, I had the impression that Dad was somewhat sad I hadn’t asked; and I think that after hearing from her my reasons, he might have been more so.

    I guess I just don’t understand the heart of a good father, even though I’ve always had the best example of one.  I just don’t always get that a good father will always put his children ahead of everything else, that they want to be asked for help, that they want to share even the mundane hours of our lives.

    As I was driving back from the paint store Friday, Dad called me, offered his help, and I eagerly accepted… ’cause I hate painting. 

    I believe there are mirrors of God’s character everywhere, and I’m blessed God uses my father to be a mirror that reflects an aspect of his love I have the hardest time accepting.  I hate to ask for help, hate to admit that I need or could simply use it.  I can’t accept that anyone would actually want to do something for me which has no return. 

    But God does do things like this for his children, and I think he knew before I was born I would have this issue and so he gave me an earthly father who would most clearly reflect the part of God's character I needed to see.

    The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  1 John 4:8-11, NASB

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  • If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. Mat 6:22
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