A Moment to Write

My professor, Dr. Greenham, spoke well against reincarnation. He said, “We are made to go on.”

Lewis says something similar. Something of how time is an odd thing and that because we view time as odd that this points to our not being made for the temporal but the eternal. That our terms of how, “Time has flown,” or how, “Time has slowed down to a crawl,” are hints at our eternality. We are not made for reflection or the entropy of reliving parts of life, no, we’re made to go on. Now and now and now, we’re made to go on and on and on, but never made to go back to how things once were. God himself will not return us to the Garden, he, rather, will create a city for our dwelling. Lewis does well to say, “Further up and further in.” For indeed this is what we are created for.

Something of this is freeing. Nostalgia seems such a happy place until compared to reality, then we spiral into the hope of how things were, never thinking of how things are let alone how things will be. But if creation longs to be made new (Rom 8) then ought’n we too? Should we not long for the consummation of all things in the enveloping arms of Christ the King? Yet here Lewis’ voice plays in my ears once more, “News from a country you’ve never visited… echoes of a tune you’ve not heard… the scent of a flower I’ve never smelled.” Indeed our longing for completion is evident in our nostalgia, but we cannot go backward to gain it, we must go on.

I’m finding more and more that I truly only know two things, that I am a great sinner and Jesus is a greater Savior (as Newton would say it). My feelings betray me. My heart is deceitful. My mind is a labyrinth of these's and those's, this’s and that’s. Even reality holds little to know, because I’m certain that just behind it’s frail curtain a war rages - a war of cherubim and seraphim fighting devils and demons - of light defeating darkness for the Dawn has come. There is comfort in seeing my ignorance.

Andrew Peterson has a song that has been capturing me, “Carry the Fire.” He sings, “We dream at night of city descending with the Son in the middle and a peace unending… Where joy writes the song and the innocent sing them…” The more I learn, the more those same two things are all I know. In some form or fashion all things are tied to the sinfulness of my soul and Christ’s redemption.

Friday's Thoughts

1) It's nice to have a game plan.

2) Really want to see Cloud Atlas (perhaps tonight?).

3) WSU president Dr. John Bardo taught my class last night. It was stupid cool. We got out early.

4) My family is the best.

5) Had a chat with my advisor on Wednesday, she laid out some handy things for next semester.

6) Went to jail yesterday - they let me leave like 45mins later.

7) Sometimes, sooner or later, you just got to ask for help.

8) "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

9) Found a CD of bagpip hymns. Talk about inspiring and soul music and good - allatthesametime.

10) There is but one thing to do when one doesn't know where to go or what to say - it is to drop to kneel and let the groaning of one's inward being (that being one truly is) come forth. For in that moment words are not enough and would merely cheapen the depth of the brokenness one feels. To let, as it were, God, though knowing all, see in one's groans the pains of sin, the depravity of the world, and the utter reality of it all which is now seen itself within the unveiled eyes of the one who groans. It is to confer with the almighty in a way, which is nearest to how it was in the garden - that is to say it is a deeper understanding of what the Other in the relationship sees and knows.

Yet it does not end there, for while one is capable of seeing and knowing - in part - the sin which besets one's soul God has not left him there. Though at the point of rock bottom, though unable to stand because of the shattering effects of the fall, though the groans communicate revilement and the understanding of just damnation, though one feels like anything else in all of creation should seperate one from the love Christ Jesus, He - the One from the cool of the garden, the One from the firey bush, the One from the cross, the One who indwells us says, while picking us up from our stupor,

"Who shall seperate you from my love? Shall tribulation? No. Shall distress? No. Shall persecution? No. Shall famine? No. Shall nakedness? No. Shall danger? No. Shall sword? No. No, in all these things you are more than a conqueror in me, because I love you. Be sure of this: neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from my love. Nothing."

Preaching/Weekend Thoughts

1) Everyone is staring.

2) There could be at least 26 sermons from John 17.

3) We are not the hope of God and because we are not the hope of God we are free to be free in our radical hope in God.

4) Sunday afternoon.

5) Watched The Goonies this weekend. Success.

6) Went to The Anchor for an 'employee party.' I'm no employee but I work there.

7) Louis Armstrong

8) Getting undeserved grace and it's piling up like snow that never comes to Kansas.

9) "'The Eagle is right,' said the Lord Digory. 'Listen Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or a copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or a waking life is from a dream.'" The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis

10) Romans 8