The First

This is a piece of art by Akiane Kramarik. She normally writes a story or a poem to accompany her painting's, but she did not for this one. This one is called "The First," she was 15 when she painted it. She invited others to write something for the piece, as it "defied explanation" for her. Following certain events, I was moved to write. What follows the painting, is an attempt. It is as Walt Whitman wrote, "the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse" (Leaves of Grass).

the First Two had a Fall—

Yet, stayed as One

through it all

The Divine’s hand-wrought pair—

Yet, the Man failed—

to protect
 

a new Two had a Break—

Yet, not mended

ne’er to be
 

They were their First Loves each—

Yet, the Man failed—

oh the Flesh!
 

The Two were reconciled

Yet, new pathways—

To Be walked
 

his heart aches to be One

Yet, our lips will—

never meet

 

"One day," was the oft repeated refrain. Now, tears fall as most precious dreams dissipate before the very eyes beauty once beheld as their own. A finality that is terrifying and all too real has come, as blitzkreig on a slumbering village or the seizing gasp in one's chest before a plunge. I have yet to wake up or take the dive, nor shall I.

Soli Deo Gloria

 - The Reader

 

Childlike Wonder

A blogger I follow posted about childlike wonder, entitled The things we used to treasure. I loved the post. Especially this masterful analogy: Changes in life aren't abrupt steps. Life is a slow change in color. Like when an watercolor artist smooths out a color into another. Brilliantly we transition without even knowing we left one color or entered another. Trying to figure out when you entered a new color is about as easy as trying to remember when you entered a dream. It's when we are in the deepest darkest part of the color do we realize we are in a new place.

I often think about how age seems to harden one's sensitivity and wonder, we can get used to just about anything from great suffering and despair, to great wealth and ease. I hunger for the newness, the freshness, the pure, the awe-inspiring, the glorious. I'm also reminded of the song Wake Up by Arcade Fire, I love the lyrics. I looked at these paintings after reading her post that reminded me of them. I hope you enjoy them. These painting are by Akiane Kramarik, who is a child prodigy. I love her work and have even written poetry to some of it. She often writes poems or stories to accompany her paintings. Here are a few:


                                      Title: Wonder   Age: 13


                  Title: Hope  Age: 11 (an interesting story with this one)



                            Title: Metamorphosis  Age: 16


                 Title: A Young Sage   Age: 15


                        Title: The Swing     Age: 16


She writes for The Swing:

Catching the middle of the rainbow, the center of the cosmic spectrum, the pulsating green is the most visible hue to human vision.

Green is the balance between the two extremes that influence the child's life in unexpected ways.

The light green represents learning, growth, health and harmony, but a mistreated green suddenly becomes murky and muddy with worry, pain, weakness, bitterness, and resentment, and it seems that no amount of light can return her to its original vibrant color. Except... for the swinging...

Whatever troubles that come along she needs to let them pass like a creek passing the callous stones. Let her keep on going and flowing, swinging and nurturing her love. Let the disturbance of the childhood memories find its own current of restoration that shelters others.

The direction of her soul is a balanced and continuous movement. The purpose of her soul is to keep on catching the color of peace, balance, protection, a sense of order, safety, tolerance, trust, healing and well-being, so others who are also vulnerable could be protected and healed as well.


         Personally, I along with many groan within myself waiting for the redemption (Rom 8). I wait for the day when all is put right, with infinite abundance and eternally so, when all things are made new (Revelation 21).

Soli Deo Gloria
 - The Reader

Tim Keller, Church Planting, and Watergate: A Tale of Sovereignty

Tim Keller is on of my favorite pastors, and perhaps the most culturally relevant and winsome in the United States. I am truly greatful for his ministry and am a student of it because of how Christ-centered, Biblically faithful, and God-honoring it is in an incomparably wise way. Here is a rather fascinating tale that he relates parts of in two different sermons. Tim Keller started Redeemer Presbyterian in NY because of Watergate; sort of.

1. Tim Keller planted Redeemer Church because he entered a Presbyterian denomination that encouraged church planting.
2. Keller entered that denomination because in his last semester at seminary he took two courses with a professor who convinced him to adopt Presbyterian theology.
3. Keller sat under that professor because at the very last minute the professor arrived at the seminary after having bureaucratic visa problems. (The professor was British.)
4. While that professor was having visa problems, the seminary dean prayed one day about how he didn’t know how they were going to get the professor to arrive, and his prayer partner happened to be a seminary student named Mike Ford.
5. Mike Ford happened to have some clout to get them through the bureaucratic snag because he was the son of Gerald Ford, the sitting President of the United States.
6. Gerald Ford was President of the United States because Richard Nixon resigned.
7. Nixon resigned because a bunch of burglars broke into Watergate and were caught.
8. The burglars were caught because one of them happened to leave a door unlatched to an office they had just bugged, and then a night watchman just happened to walk by and notice the unlatched door.
9. So “if that [burglar] had latched the door,” Keller half jokes, “if that door had been closed just two more inches, we wouldn’t be here tonight. Even Watergate happened for you.”

Andy Naselli comments: Keller’s point is that you can’t muck up your life. There is no plan B. We may perceive one of about a billion reasons for an event. Very seldom do we get a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a glimpse of how God is working all things together for good for those who love him, but He is.

Thank God that He is in control and He is working all things [on a level realized only by what we call omniscience] for the good of those who love Him (Rom 8:28). There is a reason this verse is so quoted, and its because of the stories like the one above. I am ridiculously comforted by meditation on this wonderful truth.

Soli Deo Gloria!
 - The Reader

G.K. Chesterton on Private Religion

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), “Introduction to the Book of Job”:

The modern habit of saying “Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me”—the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Soli Deo Gloria!
 - The Reader

5 Lessons from Winston Churchill's Life

 

Paul Johnson, Churchill (New York: Penguin, 2010), 122–25 (numbering added):

Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it—its amplitude, variety, and success on so many fronts. But all can learn from it, especially in five ways. . . .

1. Always aim high. . . . He did not always meet his elevated targets, but by aiming high he always achieved something worthwhile. . .

2. There is no substitute for hard work. . . . The balance he maintained between flat-out work and creative and restorative leisure is worth study by anyone holding a top position. . . .

3. Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster—personal or national—accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down. His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness and in psychological responses to abject failure, were astounding. . . . He had courage, the most important of all virtues, and its companion, fortitude. . . . In a sense his whole career was an exercise of how courage can be displayed, reinforced, guarded and doled out carefully, heightened and concentrated, conveyed to others. . . .

4. Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meannesses of life: recrimination, shifting the blame onto others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas. Having fought hard, he washed his hands and went on to the next contest. . . . There is nothing more draining and exhausting than hatred. And malice is bad for the judgment. Churchill loved to forgive and make up. . . . Northing gave him more pleasure than to replace enmity with friendship, not least with the Germans. . . .

5. The absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill’s life. His face could light up in the most extraordinarily attractive way as it became suffused with pleasure at an unexpected and welcome event. . . . He liked to share his joy, and give joy. It must never be forgotten that Churchill was happy with people. . . . He got on well with nearly everyone who served him or worked with him, whatever their degree. . . . He showed the people a love of jokes, and was to them a source of many. No great leader has ever laughed at, or with, more than Churchill. . . . . He liked to sing. . . . He was emotional, and wept easily. But his tears soon dried, as joy came flooding back.
 

Soli Deo Gloria!
 - The Reader



The Powerful Hope for A Cynic

I have entitled this post 'The Powerful Hope for A Cynic,' because from time to time the viewing of the world and the thought of making an impact depresses me. Why? The short answer: sin. If you come from a completely atheistic mindset: we are a collocation of atoms, all emotion is just chemical reaction, we have come from and will go to nothingness. That is terribly depressing, not liberating. The people that believe this certainly do not follow through with their beliefs, for with this worldview morality is a sham. I come from an Evangelical Christian perspective, and guess what, I do not have faith in the natural man, because he is dominated by sin. There is no hope for overcoming the evil and selfishness in every man - the thought of changing people through such means as welfare, politics, healthcare, law, social action, business, and education should be seen as an enterprise in insanity. If you define insanity as the doing of the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Every day the news and our own actions and attitudes prove this. Although mankind has made immense progress in all of the aforementioned areas and more - we find new and unimaginable evils happening everyday - from the simple white lie to genocide. However, I was again reminded of The Hope a Christian has while reading in the classic text Preaching and Preachers in a chapter on the need for the anointing of the Holy Spirit in preaching. The powerful hope, is Jesus and His death, burial, and resurrection for sins and the new life He offers all men.

Here is what D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said on revival and the need for the anointing of the Spirit upon the preacher:

Take the situation with which we are confronted today. Look at the task, look at the state of the world, look at the modern mentality. Without believing in and knowing something of the power of the Spirit, it is a heart-breaking task. I certainly could not go on for another day but for this. If I felt that it was all left to us and our learning and our scholarship and our organisations, I would be of all men the most miserable and hopeless. The situation would be completely hopeless. But that is not the case. What we read of in the New Testament is equally possible and open to us today; and it is our only hope. But we must realise this. If we do not, we shall spend our time in 'shallows and in miseries'; and we shall achieve nothing. (sic, Preaching and Preachers, 315).

Though this transcript of his lecture is dated, it is timeless. It is only with the knowledge that God through His Spirit, particularly in preaching as His means for bringing faith and new birth, transforms men into "new creature[s]" (2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 10). With new life in Christ, men are no longer enslaved to sin and have new desires and goals and and the living hope Jesus! God is making all things new, and He is transforming lives now - particularly through the preaching of His Gospel!! All my hope and trust is in God. I have faith in His power and His gospel and His anointing for the carrying out of the task. Indeed, this is the hope that this cynic has found and will find anew all his life.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. - 2 Cor. 5:17

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Titus 2:11-13

Soli Deo Gloria
 - The Reader

The Message of the Bible

 What is the message of the Bible? If a non-Christian were to ask you the question, could you give a succinct answer?

Here is a succinct answer of a world-renowned Evangelical New Testament Scholar (NT in extreme speciality; his breadth of learning is immense). See biographical information here: http://divinity.tiu.edu/faculty/person.dot?id=d0460325-2dad-4e9a-bdfc-2be9d608d88f  Personally, he is my favorite scholar to read on any issue, and particularly to hear speak and preach.

He writes/says:

God is the sovereign, transcendent and personal God who has made the universe, including us, his image-bearers. Our misery lies in our rebellion, our alienation from God, which, despite his forbearance, attracts his implacable wrath.

But God, precisely because love is of the very essence of his character, takes the initiative and prepared for the coming of his own Son by raising up a people who, by covenantal stipulations, temple worship, systems of sacrifice and of priesthood, by kings and by prophets, are taught something of what God is planning and what he expects.

In the fullness of time his Son comes and takes on human nature. He comes not, in the first instance, to judge but to save: he dies the death of his people, rises from the grave and, in returning to his heavenly Father, bequeaths the Holy Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of the ultimate gift he has secured for them—an eternity of bliss in the presence of God himself, in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

The only alternative is to be shut out from the presence of this God forever, in the torments of hell. What men and women must do, before it is too late, is repent and trust Christ; the alternative is to disobey the gospel (Romans 10:16;2 Thessalonians 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17).

While this is certainly brilliantly concise and wholesome, I think perhaps a bit more should be said about the cross and what the Son of God accomplished, which would be a penal substitutionary atonement for His  people (see Isaiah 53; Romans 3:23-26). Fundamentally, the sacred writings make us wise for salvation which is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who He is and what He has done (2 Tim. 3:14; Rom. 10:9-10). I would just fit this in with what is above - with perhaps a bit more added here and there (as Carson himself undoubtedly would). I think he has given an excellent example of how to communicate a lot quickly. Carson has an excellent (and short!) book The God Who Is There, that is primarily designed for non-Christians, but is really helpful for all, in which he briefly goes through the Bible and it is masterful. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Soli Deo Gloria
 - The Reader