Abundant Life

" I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly." (Jn. 10:10)

Abundant: present in great quantity
more than adequate
over sufficient
exceeding some number or measure or rank or need


Life: vitality
being
growth
change
animation

Fecundity: the production of offspring, fruit in abundance
prolific, fruitful
very productive or creative intellectually

It is easy to exchange the truth of God for the Lie. To miss the prolific, creative, growing, life around me because my eyes are on that which is not life. To trudge weary and oblivious to the sweet fruit spilling from my arms because the eyes of my heart are set on that which steals, kills, and destroys.

Father, have mercy. Open the eyes of my heart to the abundant life around me. Keep me from that which would rob me of joy, kill my delight, and destroy my life. Keep my eyes steadfastly on You. Let me taste and see that the Lord is good. Make me to hear the voice of rejoicing in the tent of the righteous. Keep your daughter from exchanging Your truth for the Lie.

" I have come that you may have life, and that more abundantly."

Torture

Today at lunch, my father in law posed the question of whether or not torture is a legitimate last recourse in the defense of national security. My immediate response was that torture is pragmatic and wrong. However, I needed to figure out why I believed it was wrong. As I considered this issue, these were my thoughts.

Torture is pragmatic. It rationalizes, "Yes, this is not just. Yes, it is not consistent with God's ways as revealed in His word...but." It is precisely that "but" that makes torture so morally wrong. That "but" is an innocuous way of denying the power of the Sovereign Lord. That "but" says, "Yes, I will hold fast to God's commands and ways...until He seems to fail me, and then I guess I will have to do whatever it takes to protect myself."

Isn't that what Abraham felt as he walked up Moriah wanting to vomit with horror at what was about to happen? He wanted to protect and defend Isaac. Isn't that what Job felt when all was lost and God seemed to have failed him? Abraham could so easily have said," God, up to this point I believed in you and your commands and you ways, but now, well, I just can not go there." Job could have cursed God. But neither Abraham nor Job lost hope. Abraham believed God could raise Isaac from the grave, and Job proclaimed that he knew his Redeemer lived. They cried out in faith to the Sovereign Lord believing that despite all circumstances He was faithful, and that He would act.

Pragmatism is the only recourse of a nation which does not acknowledge the Sovereign Ruler of the nations. It is the natural response of a people who do not believe in a God who directs the history of nations according to the Sovereign purposes of His perfect will. It is the rational response of those who exalt themselves against the Lord and His Anointed.

So, once again....an idea gives birth to a consequence. If there is no Supreme Law Giver, no Ruler of the Nations, then absolutely....torture is a justifiable, even necessary evil. However, if Christ is presently Lord over the nations, working out the pleasure of His eternal decrees in space and time, then torture is a unjust, cowardly lack of faith. It is disbelief at its ugliest.

Those who hope in the Sovereign Lord cry out:

" Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, because you are with me."
"But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you." (Psalm 23:4)(Psalm 10:14)

Again, I concur

"The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism."

- C.S. Lewis, On the Reading of Old Books

I concur

"Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."

-Harper Lee

Scout on Education

My husband read me the following excerpt from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird last night. It reinforced to me once again some of the reasons why I bother to teach my own to children. Yeats once said that " Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.". I want to kindle a passion for growing and learning and broadening in my children. I do not want to smother them in a weighty burden of educational "twaddle".

This excerpt is narrated from the perspective of a eight year old Southern girl named Scout:


"The remainder of my school days were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved int a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything-at least what one did not the other did. Furthermore, I couldn't help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay my hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me."

There is no fear in love

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18

Fear and love are incompatible. Fear gnaws the heart out of love. Love casts away fear disregarding the pain. Fear torments, tortures and attacks. Love comforts, strengthens, and protects. Fear builds walls to keep out pain. Love makes itself vulnerable to pain. Fear controls. Love sets free. Fear divides. Love inextricably unites. Fear is about self. Love is about God. Fear refuses to die. Love surrenders its life. Fear is cold, sterile, and barren. Love is warm, life bearing, and fertile. Fear is living death. Love is life abundant.

The juicy, dripping, sweet tasting fruit of righteousness

This morning I have been chewing on Charlotte Mason's observation that, " Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."

No matter how large the scope of my teaching aspirations, the end result is merely the culmination of a life time of choices. Almost every minute of my days choices present themselves. Each of these decisions creates an atmosphere, reinforces a good or bad habit, and results in the unique culture of my family.

Atmosphere. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as, "a dominant intellectual or emotional environment or attitude". I choose to immerse my children in the written word. I decide to read poetry to them. I intentionally expose them to stories far beyond their realm of experience. Surrounding my little ones with books, audio cd's, verbal stories, and other resources is a means of creating an atmosphere in which they feed on ideas. Atmospheres like that do not just happen, they take work. It is not always easy or convenient to talk, to answer questions, to communicate ideas. Often I do not want to, but then I remember that Deuteronomy 6:6-9 does not allow me to ignore their questions:

"And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. "

The more I embrace this command, the richer and fuller will be the atmosphere that pervades my home.

But it is not just an atmosphere. Education is a discipline as well. There are mornings where I am so not in the mood to teach my six year old the difference between a diphthong and a digraph, or to train him to work promptly. There are certainly days when I have no desire to remind my five year old what 2+3= yet again. I have to remind myself that " All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." If I desire the fruit I must submit to the discipline.

When I embrace this calling to create an atmosphere, and to instill habits of discipline, the result is a life. A life of learning, of growing, of enjoying. A life of tasting and seeing and hearing and smelling and touching the goodness of the Lord. A family life where ideas are planted and grow and give birth to juicy, dripping, sweet tasting fruit.

Honesty... consistency... really?

Russel Kirk in the Conservative Mind made the following observation on the relative ineffectivity of John Quincy Adams' administration, and I find it true not only of conservatives then, but also now.

"During his later years, John Quincy Adams suffered agonizing doubts concerning the Deity. That God willed the state, the conviction of Hooker and Burke, always had been a tremendously energizing principle of conservatism: now, influenced against their instinct by what Glanville calls the "climate of opinion," conservatives were losing their certitude: and with it went their immunity against French and Benthamite rationalism. Conservatism had become uncertain how to reply to sophisters and calculators." (emphasis mine)

Unshakable belief in an all powerful, all sovereign Creator from whom all power and authority is derived, and unshakable belief that He interacts with man in space and time, and that He has given all authority in heaven and on Earth to the Person of His Son Jesus Christ who is the Ruler of the Nations, is indeed a "tremendously energizing principle". It is a principle capable of toppling all "the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places". It is a principle that liberates men to pursue righteousness without fear, without compromise, without inconsistencies.

If our confidence in the Sovereignty of God, in His rule over the nations, and in His eternal purpose were lived out in in the political arena, then we would undoubtedly possess the gates of our enemies. The nations would shake in fear at the people whose God is the Lord. They would kiss the Son lest He become angry and they perish in the way. They would be in fear of the King and know themselves to be but men. But we are afraid, we tremble before the face of man, and loose our certitude, becoming unable to reply. We demand "traditional values", yet deny the foundation from which they are derived. Justly, we are accused of an irrational faith because we demand that culture conform to our standards, yet mumble and sputter and when asked why we think we can impose them on the world. We are terrified by the consistent, logical conclusions of the godless, so then why do we shirk from the first premises of our own faith?

The catch is this. Before we can reject this dichotomy at a political level, we must first be willing to kiss the Son ourselves at a personal level. Followers of the Way, the Truth, and the Life must first bow our hearts, our bodies, and minds to the Sovereign. We are not our own, we are bought with a price. We are not free to self, but slaves to Christ. Before we can rule with Him, we first must be crucified. Before we can seek the Kingdom, we first must bow beneath His yoke. We must present our bodies, not just our mouths, as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God which is our reasonable service. Only then do we dare to assail the gates of our enemies, and proclaim Christ as Lord of the nations.

Thoughts on the morning to come

It is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness. For by you I can run against a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall. This God--his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

For who is God, but the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?-- the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You have given me the shield of your salvation, and your right hand supported me, and your gentleness made me great. You gave a wide place for my steps under me, and my feet did not slip.

Psalm 18:28-36

Monday morning will be here soon. Piles of weekend laundry, a sink of dirty dishes, appointments to make, a pile of newly arrived school books to begin, stubborn little hearts to train, and my own battles with sin to wage. By myself will come anger, resentment, frustration, but by my God I can leap over a wall, by my God I can bend a bow of bronze, by my God I am armed with strength. He is the God who exists. The God who is there. He is my light, my only hope, and the saving strength of my life. He alone delivers me from the power of sin. He alone can make my way blameless. So I begin a new week at the feet of my Lord claiming His promise that His right hand will support me, and that He will not allow my feet to slip.

Stuck in the back of my brain.

Something is weighing on me. It has been bugging me all day, stuck in the back of my brain. It was President Bush's use of the word "moderate" in his State of the Union Address. It is fine, and I do not mind him using it, but the word just stuck. It disturbs me.

Who ever said that moderation was the chief end and highest achievement of man? Why is it that mediocre feelings, commitments, and beliefs are praised as high virtue? What is it about half lived convictions that people find so attractive? It is noxious. What kind of life is that? What have halfhearted convictions ever achieved? Just enough conscience to take the meaning and fun out of life ...and just enough cowardice to bring guilt, discontent, and misery.

If Truth is really true, then it can always be carried to its furthest logical conclusion. Why bother believing something if you have to close your eyes to its end? If I profess to believe something, I do not want to get half way down the road and suddenly say, "Well, I just can't go there."

Although diametrically opposed to their most basic presuppositions, I find that I can respect the intellectual honesty of the Dadaists or Thomas Hardy, over lukewarm, half hearted professions of Christianity.

Revelation 3:14-22 reads:

"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 'The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

"'I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.'"

I do not want to be spewn out of the mouth of the Living God. I want to be passionate. If Jesus Christ is really Truth incarnate, if the whole Word of God is true, then I want to live it to the hilt. I want to follow Truth to its farthest logical conclusion. I want the truth to consume me.

There is no closing my eyes, no looking the other way, no hoping He won't ask me to go there. There is no looking back once my hand is to the plow. There is no saying "This was not part of the deal." There is no saying" I'll give you everything, just don't ask for this."

Truth fears no inspection. It will not wither under closer inspection. It does not fall apart when questioned. And if what I think is truth shatters under the scrutiny of God's word, then praise be to He who enlightens my darkness. The Lord is my Light, my Lamp, my unchanging Rock. He is the I AM. There is no question which threatens True Truth. And there is nothing to fear from its pursuit, for Truth is always hand in hand with Mercy.

"Mercy and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed."
-Psalm 85:10