I am pleading with the Eternal for this one thing,
my soul’s desire:
To live with Him all of my days—
in the shadow of His temple,
To behold His beauty and ponder His ways
in the company of His people.
His house is my shelter and secret retreat.
It is there I find peace in the midst of storm and turmoil.
Safety sits with me in the hiding place of God.
He will set me on a rock, high above the fray.
God lifts me high above those with thoughts
of death and deceit that call for my life.
I will enter His presence, offering sacrifices and praise.
In His house, I am overcome with joy
As I sing, yes, and play music for the Eternal alone.
This is so good — especially if you’ve ever felt foolish for listening to the wrong advice. Allison Bown (no r) is a brilliant writer. Thank you Allison!
“Postmodern people have been rejecting Christianity for years, thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism.”
– Timothy Keller
It made grammatical sense to me. When I was little, I added an “er” to the word bug when referring to my even littler brother, because he was bugging me.
Mom washed my mouth out with soap for my efforts to extend my understanding of linguistic principles. I didn’t know it was a bad word. That event made such an impact on me that I remember it all these years later. I resolved as a three year old that when I was a grownup I would explain the rules to my kids before dishing out consequences for violating them. Unfair! It was a justice issue for me then. It still is.
My husband and I were discussing the question of how to teach the principle of grace to young children in a Christian education setting. We both taught Sunday School for years and became frustrated with pre-packaged lesson plans that required every Bible story to have a moral. Nearly every one of them was a moral about behaviour — shoulds and should-nots. A lot of them were stories from the Old Testament that did not take New Covenant grace into consideration. Be like the good guys. Don’t be like the bad guys, because God is watching. (How do we explain that everyone, except Jesus, was both good and bad without glossing over the embarrassing details the Bible does not gloss over?)
What we truly believe becomes evident when we distill it down to concepts we try to teach to little ones. But how do we teach the concepts of grace and forgiveness to children (or others) who don’t yet know the difference between right and wrong?
Grace is not a laissez faire message that sin has no consequences. Skipping that truth is really unfair. Sin is not okay. Never has been. Never will be. I do think there is a difference between sin (defying God’s principles) and un-wise actions though. Sometimes even though you have been working at a job for 32 years, and know it inside out and backwards, a boss will require you to do something that you know is stupid. It will cost you great inconvenience later to clean up the mess, but the boss is in authority, so you do it. It’s not a sin; it’s just un-wise on the boss’s part. If the boss asks you to eliminate a competitor in the back alley, however, there is no question. That is sin. You refuse to submit, no matter the cost.
Sometimes we choose unwise actions of our own volition. When we come to our senses it involves changing our minds and policies, and probably offering some apologies, but it’s not the same as deliberately choosing to disobey Jesus’ command to love your neighbour, for example.
The Pharisees asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was. Children need to be taught what he said: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Luke 12: 30-31 ESV).
Four times in his final charge to his disciples Jesus said loving him and being his friend meant keeping his commandments. Then this: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John15:12).
Sometimes love means being quiet and leading by example. Sometimes love means letting children learn the discipline of natural consequences. Sometimes love means tackling a kid who is big for his age before he hurts himself or somebody else. How this plays out in your life depends on the wisdom God gives you when you ask Him.
By the time a child can think for himself he knows he has missed the mark. Holy Spirit speaks to them too. Even as a child I knew that labeling my brother according to his on-going temptation to bug me was not loving him — even if I didn’t use the right word.
When I was depressed and in the midst of burn-out from trying to earn God’s approval a counselor asked me, “What does grace feel like?” I gave him the Bible school definition. He said, “No. I asked what grace feels like.”
I had no idea. I was a product of moralism. After a search in which I asked many other people this question – including some joyless Christians I did not admire – I came to an understanding. Grace to me now is climbing up on the lap of the Creator of the universe, (someone who has the power to annihilate me in a flash), resting my head on his chest and knowing I am perfectly safe because he loves me. Grace lets me know I am forgiven and enables me to change because he whispers encouraging words and tells me who I really am in his eyes. He loves me because he loves me because he loves me. The Creator sent his son, who lived as a man, who both accepted and spoke the truth to those caught in sin, chose to die at the hands of those he came to save, and conquered death just to prove it.
How do we teach children (and others) about grace? By demonstrating it. By speaking the truth about the way God sees them -as lovable. By loving them the way we are loved, including setting wise boundaries, teaching them to base their choices on love (and not mere tolerance) and becoming who they are meant to be. We teach by extending a grace that costs everything the way Jesus extended grace to us.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. – Jesus Christ
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ’s love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
As we are gathered into one body,
Beware, lest we be divided in mind.
Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease,
And may Christ our God be in our midst.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
And may we with the saints also,
See Thy face in glory, O Christ our God:
The joy that is immense and good,
Unto the ages through infinite ages. Amen.
His divine power has given us everything we need to experience life and to reflect God’s true nature through the knowledge of the One who called us by His glory and virtue. Through these things, we have received God’s great and valuable promises, so we might escape the corruption of worldly desires and share in the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:3,4 The Voice)
I knew a dear lady who became profoundly disappointed with God. She made a bargain with him, that if she threw herself into church work to the edge of her physical energy he would give her the desires of her heart — a husband and children. He didn’t keep up his end. When menopause hit and she realized she would never have a child and would probably remain single she was devastated. Her hope was the hope that disappoints.
I’ve realized lately that many of us test God with our presumptions. We tend to present him with bargains of our own design and don’t hang around long enough to find out if he agrees. It hit me last night that praise and worship services can fall into this category as well. I went to a large gathering of believers at a conference not long ago. I was really looking forward to it because I had heard stories about how “God showed up” last year. I had hoped that if I joined in singing loud rock-style praise songs for 55 minutes, if I knelt or waved a flag or swayed or shouted, whatever, I would feel experience a sense of God showing up — because it happened to those guys over there.
I felt nothing and was profoundly disappointed because I had thrown my whole heart into it. Other people seemed to be experiencing some sort of ecstatic moment while I felt nothing.
The truth is, I was presenting God with a bargain presuming that he would agree to it. “If I move out of my comfort zone and really get into this music even though it is a style and volume I personally find irritating, if I stretch out of my introverted personality and do things I fear would draw uncomfortable attention, if I sacrifice my time and money to be here, You will give me the desires of my heart, right, Lord? Because this is the way praise and worship is done, right? Because if You are pleased with my efforts You will take away the feelings that come with burying my dad yesterday and fill me with happy happy joy joy and allow me to experience Your Presence, right? ”
Can I confess I was actually angry when I left? I spent days wondering what is wrong with me that I was more aware of an out-of-tune guitar string than the majesty of God. Then I remembered an experience I had in Israel.
I was standing in the shell of an abandoned building in Gibeah — that place that was known as “The School of the Prophets” in the time of Samuel. I was excited when I found out this would be included on the itinerary, because the story in the Bible was that the presence of God was so strong there that even King Saul prophesied. I was secretly hoping for some special experience — at least some goose bumps.
Nothing.
The same thing at Bethel… and Shiloh… and Jerusalem. I told the Lord I was disappointed I didn’t have a sense of his presence there. That’s when I felt him say, “Because I’m not there. I’m in you now.”
In the past God has made his presence known in a burning bush, in a wind, in a voice like thunder, and in other ways. I believe that he has delighted the hearts of many people who have gotten together to offer him full-out singing and playing, but he doesn’t visit them by “showing up” like he did for a few in the Old Covenant. He inhabits them now. We are his temple. Worship is not something we do to earn a feeling. Using singing-style worship to manipulate our emotions so we can escape the unpleasant ones is making ourselves the object of worship. If I feel good this must be God, right? No. I was treating a praise and worship service like a drug.
I was wrong.
It made me re-think the point of actions we turn into rituals. It’s like giving a loved one the same birthday gift every year because we remember how happy their reaction made us feel the first time we gave it to them. We sensed God`s pleasure and his presence in us when our hearts turned to him and we expressed it through contemporary music. Now every meeting starts with obligatory rituals of a praise band and repeated choruses — because that worked before. For those whose hearts are in the right place it still does, but it’s not the method that connects them; it’s the heart.
Yesterday I read Psalm 109. It is not a feel-good psalm. In fact it’s rather embarrassing the way David spills out his feelings. I wish that one had been edited out. But in spite of his intense anger, grief, and disappointment, the psalmist offers the sacrifice of his right to want revenge and offers it to God.
Perhaps that is what would have made a finer gift of praise that day at the conference — my tears, my grief for what would never be on this earth ( a fully restored relationship with my dad), my honest feelings — the pure distilled worship of lament that says, Nevertheless I will give You first place in my heart because I choose to trust You. Christ is in me, and right in the middle of my disappointments You continue to show me the hope of glory.
Worship is acknowledging that God is God and he is good. And that does not require a sound system.
My grandma’s kitchen table overflowed with happy chaos –as did her closets, drawers, shelves, baskets and any other available surface. She was a quilter, crafter, seamstress and creator of quasi-useful doo-dads extraordinaire. She should have had a blog.
Some might have thought she was a hoarder, but she actually made use of her stashes of potential and gave most of the finished projects away. A quilt stretched out on a frame usually took up most of the living room and when I came home from school I automatically picked up a threaded needle and joined the two or three older friends (all called Mrs. So-and-so, even to each other) while Grandma fixed me a snack.
One of the other jobs she gave me was sorting the bottles of buttons she snipped off thrift store clothes too worn to wear, but still good for quilt patches. I…
My rose bush produced one measly flower this year, yet in the forest, untended and uncoddled, the wild roses bloom freely.
Sometimes I fret and rush about trying to make things grow when and where I decide they ought to, when really I’m not in charge at all. I can’t force relationships to bloom when and where and how I want them too either.
The roses in the woods remind me that Jesus said, “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to this span of life?”
“Instead, seek his kingdom and all these things will be added to you.”
Have you ever tried to ditch a nickname? It’s not easy. Some people have had to move to get away from less than complimentary labels.
My granddaughter and I are working together on a genealogy project for school. We lucked into some work that other people had already done and were willing to share. She typed as I read names and birth and death dates out loud. Robert… William… Robert… William… Robert… Robert… Robert… William
“Wow. These people had no creativity at all when it came to names, “ she observed.
I agreed. A singular lack of imagination. Like many families in previous centuries, our ancestors apparently chose from a very small book of baby names, unlike in this century when my Dad couldn’t recognize or spell any of his great grandchildren’s names. Robert, William, Robert, William. That was the expectation and that’s where nicknames came in. There had to be a way to tell them apart.
Now I say this with apologies to all the Roberts in my extended family (and there are many) since names are something you rarely get to choose for yourself, but nearly every one of them has spent their adolescent years trying to ditch the name, “Bobby” and replace it with Bob or Rob or Robert. Bobby is not a bad name and many guys have decided to keep it into adulthood. It’s certainly not like other nicknames assigned by insensitive 10-year old friends with a predilection for bodily function humour, but it’s hard to change and even when you reach retirement age your mother will still be calling you Bobby. She can be as proud as the dickens that you are now Dr. Robert or President Robert or the Right Honourable Sir Robert, but she will still call you Bobby in front of your colleagues.
Reputations can be like that. Some people have to move to get away from labels people have hung on them – even “good” labels. The pretty one, the athletic one, the klutsy one, the unreliable one. Labels can hang on long after they are applicable. Sometimes the people who most want us to change and mature are the least likely to remove the old label and the expectations stapled to it.
I’m still working on understanding the word consolation(earlier musings here) and I’ve been wondering about what the character of Joseph of Cyprus (Joey, Joe?) was like. Why did his friends give him the nickname, “Son of Consolation” – Barnabas in their language.
Two incidents stand out to me, although Barnabas had already earned his honorary name before these occurrences. The first is when he took Saul the persecutor and introduced him to the new believers in Jesus Christ and leaders of the new church in Jerusalem. He laid his own reputation on the line to vouch for serious change in the guy who had tried to silence and even kill them. More than that, he again acted on his perceptions when he invited Saul – who later changed his own name to Paul (small) to come help him with a thriving community in Antioch, where believers were first called “Little Christs” – Christians.
The second incident has always caused me problems. Years later, after many adventures together, Barnabas and Paul had “a sharp disagreement” over including John Mark (a cousin or perhaps nephew of Barnabas) on the missions trip because he had chickened out once before. Had Mark changed by that point and Paul didn’t believe it? Did Mark need more one-on-one counseling and inner healing so Barnabas took him back to Cyprus for “restoration therapy”? Was Mark really the issue or was Paul still upset with Barnabas over the not eating with Gentiles incident? Was Barnabas bothered by the fact they were now called Paul and Barnabas and no longer Barnabas and Paul? Did the Lord allow “the sharp dispute” to send them in a wider direction, apprenticing more disciples and developing greater influence in the process? Were they both right? Were they both wrong? Was it a mix? I don’t know.
What I do know is that the label, “Useless Deserter,” hung on Mark turned out to be totally inaccurate. Later he wrote the gospel of Mark and Paul even sent for him because he was “useful.” Perhaps Mark’s true calling was to be a writer and not a missionary. (I like to encourage myself with that thought anyway.)
The outstanding trait of Barnabas in both situations seems to be his ability to see people’s potential, to see them as God saw them. As an apostle, a father, he was willing to nurture, protect and advance people who carried “nicknames” from their immature years. He was a facilitator of change. I wonder if this was the character quality that contributed to his own new label – Son of Consolation, Son of Encouragement.
I was surprised to find out that in the Greek that the word translated consolation here is parakletos – the same name that Jesus used for the Holy Spirit when he said The Comforter is coming! There was something in Barnabas that people recognized as a characteristic of Holy Spirit – consolation, comfort, empowerment.
Could it be that one aspect of the consolations that delight our souls (Psalm 94:19) is that God sees us for what we will become? He removes old labels and goes before us to defend us – to ourselves, and to others. He shows us our true identity. He is a facilitator of change.
Charis: Subject to Change 