Jim Packer suggests it means this:
The meaning of ‘he will give us all things’ can be put thus: one day we shall see that nothing – literally nothing – that could have increased our eternal happiness has been denied us and that nothing – literally nothing – that could have reduced that happiness has been left with us. What higher assurance do we want than that?
Packer, J.I.. Knowing God Through the Year (p. 297). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
Back in the spring - Lockdown Spring - I bought a new bible from 10ofThose. I had been using a single-column NIV but was struggling with how deep it was (the physical bible, not the contents - I mean, they're also deep and, yes, I struggle with them, too). The bible I bought was the NIV, British spelling (yay, no more roosters), 2-column, grey faux-leather with lime green zip. This one:
I paid £7.99 for it. I didn't really expect much, to be honest. But it's become my regular reading bible over the past months and I really like it (it's currently £9.99, btw - hardly extortionate).
The best bit is probably the 9-point text, which is a great size (11-point would be even more fab but that would make this a much bigger bible). The text is nicely dark and the paper pretty white giving great contrast. The paper quality isn't tops but this is a bible for under £8. Yes, there's bleed-through but that's pretty standard on all but the very priciest bibles.
I knew, however, that I was going to hate the zip - open in hand I'd always found a zip got in the way. And when perched on a shelf in the pew at church. But I don't hate it. It's not a problem (and, actually, I really like the splash of colour it brings to the bible). I haven't been using it in a pew, it's just been sat open on my desk. We'll see how that goes.
Durability? I dunno, can't say. But the price makes me feel comfortable with hauling it around and not worrying too much (the zip means the pages will be protected - another win for the zip).
I do still like a single-column layout but here's something else I've noticed: reading muscle-memory (it's got a proper name but you can go look that up) has meant I actually enjoy this double-column edition. I suspect that's because it seems to be pretty near to my old beloved 1984 NIV hardback, popular with helps, from back in the late 80s. Just a hunch.
Overall, what more can I say? It's what's inside that counts. And this package helps in getting there.
Hebrews is replete with quotations from the psalms. And maybe sometimes it seems like they've just been reached for as a repository of useful quotes. But, no, there's surely always more going on than that. We maybe just need to dig a little deeper.
Take Psalm 104 for instance. It makes an appearance in Hebrews 1 - only briefly and pretty routinely. The writer is arguing for the Son's superiority to angels and uses Psalm 104:4 to contrast what is said about angels there to what is said about the Son in Psalm 45. So far, so expected.
But is there any deeper reason for the selection of Psalm 104? Perhaps there is. That psalm in its place within the psalter acts as a prelude to the double-barrelled reciting of covenant history in Psalms 105 and 106. There, the history of Israel, from the call of Abraham to the wanderings in the wilderness, follows on from the celebration of creation in Ps.104.
And what follows in the next chapters of Hebrews? Especially in chapters 3 and 4, the focus is on Israel and their history, in particular the wilderness generation (through the lens of Psalm 95).
A simple collocation of ideas? Possibly. Neither Psalm 105 nor 106 is quoted in Hebrews, after all. But maybe it's further evidence for just how much the psalms helped forge the theological framework of the NT and its understanding of salvation history.
That would get my vote.
Ok, you're right, that title is a bit melodramatic. Point taken. But here are a few books that meant a great deal to me this year. In among all the other books that I get to read because of what I do, these books were special:
Wendell Berry, Stand By Me - I read other books by Berry this year, too, and loved each of them but the short stories in Stand By Me (some of which I'd read before) were so absorbing, like oceans of calm. Often bittersweet, never less than humane and earthed in God's good but now fractured creation, these stories wove their magic in my soul on many an evening.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Faith on Trial - sermons on Psalm 73. It's almost getting to the point where a book like this feels like it's from a bygone age, such is the whirling speed of life. But it was so timely, so completely poised with deep spiritual wisdom. Like gulping fresh air when you've been under water too long.
CS Lewis, Perelandra and Till We Have Faces - ok, this is not one book, it's two. But I read them almost simultaneously (which could have been complicated and confusing but somehow I managed to pull it off). TWHF was intriguing, being so well loved and held by many to be CSL's finest fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it, too. Perelandra, the second of the sci-fi trilogy I've read this year, was by turns achingly beautiful and deeply distressing, on occasion opening up worlds of meaning and shockingly humbling.
J Todd Billings, The End of the Christian Life - written by a man with terminal cancer, this is elegant, thoughtful, pastoral wisdom at its finest. Reading it seemed to both slow time down and make it seem smaller, in light of eternal realities.
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead - anything Jacobs writes is a joy to read but this was also timely (as in, for our times) and offers to help shift your perspective a few degrees. I'm so glad for it.
Marilynne Robinson, Jack and When I Was a Child I Read Books - another double A-side! It was inevitable that Jack would be in this list - such beauty and longing and sorrow - but I'm adding a book of essays, too, because they force you to slow down. They're not light reading but slowing down the mind to grapple with more than present crises was such a necessity.
Richard F Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life - this is now an older book (I'm suggesting 1979 is old only because Lovelace was writing from and for that moment in time) but remains so relevant. I don't really know enough in detail about the church history he deals with to make any informed assessment of his conclusions, and some of his predictions or hopes for the immediate future certainly don't seem to have transpired. But this is deservedly considered a classic. It rebalances thought even while pushing it further, embedding core realities more deeply and demanding they be reckoned with.
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana - this is more by way of honourable mention, just because it made me laugh so much. I first read it when I was 17 and had a distant, 40-years-ago memory that it was enjoyable. For once, that kind of memory didn't let me down. A necessary means of escape.
There were probably more but these remain in my mind. Poetry by Christina Rossetti and Mary Oliver also figure highly but some things go without saying. And now they've been said.
It appears that the recovery of apostate bodies is not only a possibility according to biblical teaching but that it is in fact the central theme of the history of redemption... If the implications of Romans 11 are stretched a little, it would almost seem that apostasy is a prerequisite for recovery and that the proponents of every formal orthodoxy must be allowed to show their share in human nature by a period of backsliding and decay, so that every mouth may be stopped and God's mercy vindicated.
Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.302f
Whether you find yourself agreeing with Lovelace's assessment or not, the possibility is indeed a humbling one. It is also supremely hopeful.
Though the attempt to claim justification without a clear commitment to sanctification outrages our conscience, we usually repress this from conscious awareness, and the resulting anxiety and insecurity create compulsive egocentric drives which aggravate the flesh instead of mortifying it. Thus the Protestant disease of cheap grace can produce some of the most selfish and contentious leaders and lay people on earth, more difficult to bear in a state of grace than they would be in a state of nature.
...It is when we come face to face with God and meditate upon Him that we are finally delivered from that low level of rational thinking and begin again to think spiritually. I wonder whether there is someone who is surprised that I have not put prayer first, or at least before this. I am sure there are some, because I know a number of Christian people who have a universal answer to all questions. It does not matter what the question is, they always say, 'Pray about it.' If a man in the Psalmist's condition had come to any one of them they would have said, 'Go away and pray about it.' What a glib, superficial and false bit of advice that can often be, and I am saying that from a Christian pulpit. You may ask, Is it ever wrong to tell men to make their problems a matter of prayer? It is never wrong, but it is sometimes quite futile. What I mean is this. The whole trouble with this poor man, in a sense, was that he was so muddled in his thinking about God that he could not pray to Him. If we have muddled thoughts in our mind and heart concerning God's way with respect to us, how can we pray? We cannot. Before we can pray truly we must think spiritually. There is nothing more fatuous than glib talk about prayer, as if prayer was something which you can always immediately rush into.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Faith on Trial, p.41