The Success of the Early Church

Reflecting on the growth of the early church, Gerald Sittser offers some thoughts to explain its success:

Christians had to guard the newness of the message without isolating themselves from the culture or accommodating themselves to the culture, which required them to form people in the faith and thus grow a movement of genuine disciples who could survive, and even thrive, in such a world. Rome would have ignored Christianity if Christians had been too isolated; it would have absorbed it if they had become too accommodating. For the most part it did neither.

Resilient Faith - Gerald L Sittser - Brazos Press, p.6

Augustine and A Well-Read Life

Augustine’s Confessions bears rereading because its story is the human story, a story that—with time and contemplation—I can also make my own. Like the prodigal’s tale, it shows me how I can return home. Like the Psalms it echoes, it gives me laments with which to confess my sin and praises to sing the faithfulness of God. And like the gospel it embodies, it teaches us all how to read and live our way into God’s great story of love.

from A Well-Read Life

Approaching God with freedom and confidence

If Ephesians 3:12 was a statement in isolation it would still be splendid, conveying such warmth and hope: that being joined to Jesus, by faith in him, people like us can come to the living God “with freedom and confidence”. The freedom of children entering our Father’s presence, knowing that we belong there and belong to him. And doing so with a proper sense of confidence - that his love and power are such none can ever ask too much. Confidence that asking for bread will not yield a stone.

You can read the whole piece over at The Waiting Country.

There is a river....

‘There is a river’ - the most powerful statement, definitive and decided. Set within a psalm that exhorts us to stillness because God reigns supreme, that offers the greatest comfort in the midst of calamity and hostility, these words lead into a place of calm and confidence.

You can read the whole piece over at The Waiting Country.

On Suffering (Jayber Crow)

Where did I get my knack for being a fool? If I could advise God, why didn’t I just advise Him (like our great preachers and politicians) to be on our side and give us victory and make sure that Jimmy Chatham had not died in vain? I had to turn around and wade out of the mire myself.

Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn’t it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and the chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn’t He do it? Why hasn’t He done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t, He hasn’t, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.

And so, I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.

I would sometimes be horrified in every moment I was alone. I could see no escape. We are too tightly tangled together to be able to separate ourselves from one another either by good or by evil. We all are involved in all and any good, and in all and any evil. For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless. It is why God grieves and Christ’s wounds still are bleeding.

But the mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either. After death and grief that (it seems) ought to have stopped the world, the world goes on. More things happen. And some of the things that happen are good. My life was changing now. It had to change. I am not going to say that it changed for the better. There was good in it as it was. But also there was good in it as it was going to be.

(Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry, pp. 311-312)

Other boats

New post over at the waiting country on Substack...

"There were other boats with him."

Don't be like the mule

Psalm 32 is justly famous, both within the Bible and in the lives of Christians, for its plain and powerful statements about the blessings of forgiveness and the LORD’s amazing willingness to not count our sins against us. For those who confess their sins and put their trust in God’s provision for mercy - his own Son - the outcome is bold and stark:

And you forgave the guilt of my sin. (verse 5)

No closure could be more blessed nor more secure. The guilt of our sins taken away, no longer counted against us.

You’d think we would all simply bow our heads in worship and live continually in the freedom of such favour, taking the greatest pains not to be careless or capitulate to sin. But there is a recognition here that we are far from straightforward people, that the twisted nature of our hearts will take much unravelling. Thus, the psalm pleads with us:

Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you. (verse 9)

It appears that there is a tendency in each of us to deny the depths of the issues we face, that our tendency to wander is more than a passing phase. Horses and mules are well-known for their potential to be obstinate (some, not all) but they aren’t the only creatures known to be so. People like us fall into the same category.

In her poem, Six Recognitions of the Lord, Mary Oliver bears eloquent witness to the shock of discovering the obstinacy of remaining sin:

…When I first found you I was

filled with light, now the darkness grows

and it is filled with crooked things, bitter

and weak, each one bearing my name.

The Christian life demands that we slow down our responses and become willing to learn. The Lord’s love for us is such that he will not allow us simply to career off into territory that is dangerous and harmful, both to ourselves and others. If need be, he will act to restrain us, to use bit and bridle, tides and time, turning us away from judgement and disaster. It won’t be pretty - we may well find our strength sapped as in the heat of summer (verse 4) - but it will be effective.

The reluctance of horse or mule to “come to you” is perhaps echoed in the willing diversion of our hearts away from the Lord’s presence. We carry upon us both the burden of unresolved shame as well as the poundage of a pride that does not relish correction. And so we dig our heels in, refusing to “Come to the waters…[to] buy and eat…without money and without cost.”

You really don’t need to carry that weight any longer. In coming to the LORD we are not coming to a faceless rider, as simply another mount for him to use. We are those he dearly loves. He will not exploit our weaknesses.

Nor are we hopeless captives to the folly of our pride and to the fear of exposure. The Spirit is able to help us calm and quieten our souls, so that we no longer fret fitfully like children who have not been weaned (Psalm 131). Instead, we can truly find rest in the joy of knowing that “the LORD’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in him” (verse 10), trusting in the God “who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5).

When the day closes, our confidence is this: he will not let the rising of the mighty waters reach us. He himself is our hiding-place, the strongest protection from trouble, even the self-inflicted pain of stubbornness. And he will ever surround us with songs of deliverance.

************

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfil Thy law's demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,

When my eyelids close in death,

When I soar through tracts unknown,

See Thee on thy judgment throne;

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.

(Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-78)