Every Ounce

I read a bit of something St. Basil the Great wrote back in the 4^th Century. He was responding to the question, “How shall we repay the Lord for all his goodness to us?” As St. Basil writes, he talks a bit about the immensity of God’s goodness to us. Then, in reflecting upon his own experience, Basil writes:

He is so good that he asks no recompense except our love: that is the only payment he requires. To confess my personal feelings, when I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome by a kind of dread and numbness at the very possibility of ceasing to love God and of bringing shame upon Christ because of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities.

This is one of the things I ponder periodically, also, and, if I’m not careful, can fall into despair. It is the very real possibility that I may be so taken with the things of this world with which I become fascinated that my love for my Lord may grow cold. It is quite possible that my heart may even grow resentful against God for keeping me from those things that I think I may end up craving. That thought often brings me to repentance and contrition. And that act nearly always ends in humble thanks and praise to God for his mercy and grace.

The psalmist wrote, “My sin is ever before me.” (Psalm 51:3) It is quite obvious to me, when I am given to reflection on it, that I am a man who is in constant and desperate need of the grace of God at every moment in and in every fashion for my life. That God lavishes grace on me (Ephesians 1:7-8) is not because he’s got so much that he doesn’t know what to do with it all. God dumps those bucketfuls of grace out on me, one us, because we need every ounce. And there isn’t one ounce of grace that God holds back from us.

Don't Make Me Come Down There!!

I remember a time when i was a kid that my sisters, brother and i were clowning around. Dad was upstairs and had told us to settle down before someone gets hurt or something gets broken... but we kept at it. Dad was nearing the end of his patience and stood at the top of stairs yelling at us. We knew that if he came down stairs, we were going to get a whoopin' - or worse!

Sometimes i wonder what some people think of God. Do they think he stands at the top of the stairs threatening us? "Don't make me come down there!" What do they think he'd do if he made that threat and followed through on it.

In fact, God DID "come down." If that was a threat, he carried it out... but not at all like anybody thought he would. The consequences to what we've done wrong, to all our "clowning around" (in the worst sense of that phrase), are very real. God said, "Hey, if you don't straighten, i'm coming down there. THEN you'll see that those consequences are for real." We didn't "straighten up." And God made good on his promise. He came down showed us the consequences of our foolish, selfish behavior and heart. The full consequences of all our sin fell upon Him... on the cross.

By Their Fruit

Click on the title of this post to see the Barna article referred to in my comments.

Okay, Barna says that there are a lot of pastors who think their churches and, apparently, the nation is in pretty good spiritual health. He says that most pastors think that about 3/4 of the people in their congregations place God as #1 in their lives but that only about15% of those congregants poled agreed.

Who are these pastors who think that 3/4 of the people they see every week are really spiritually healthy? The reality, it seems to me, is fairly obvious. Look at how most people in the Church in America live! What do they spend their time doing? On what do they spend their money? About what do they dream?

When kids from "really good," church-going, Christian homes kill their girlfriend's parents, this ought to be some sort of clue. Granted, not every "really good," church-going, Christian does that kind of thing - or anything even really close to it. The point is that people can talk 'til their blue in the face. "Truth" that is heard but never seen lacks something.

Jesus said, "By their fruit you shall know them."

Fear

Last month I decided to put away my “heavy” reading for the month. Instead, I read the first five “Harry Potter” books. Harry is an adolescent boy who has discovered he’s actually a wizard. The books are about his growing up, learning to be a wizard and struggling and fighting against his nemesis and the enemy of the entire wizarding community. Once thought dead, Lord Voldemort is back. His name strikes terror into the heart of nearly all. So great is their fear that they refer to him most frequently as You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Occasionally, he is referred to as the Dark Lord. Lord Voldemort desires absolute control over all. His primary tactics are intimidation and fear. Even without the use of magic, through fear, Lord Voldemort is able to wield control. The premise is simple; that which we fear controls us.

I think I’m safe to say that everybody fears something or someone. Many seek ways to control their fears. Some pretend they have no fears. Perhaps it is because they fear having any fear. Most of us, I would say, seek to remove as much fear from our lives as possible. The problem is that what is “possible” for us regarding the elimination of all fear, is very little.

The issue with which we must reckon is not how to rid ourselves of fear but to discover what it is we ought to fear. Someone has said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Poppycock! There is something for us to truly fear. To think that we can and should avoid, refuse and eliminate all fear is foolishness. That is every bit as dangerous as letting the wrong fears (or too many fears) control us.

Many fear insecurity. Many fear loss of possessions. Maybe there is something behind all our fears that needs to be discovered and examined. Maybe most of our fears are rooted in one fear. I would submit that what we fear is our destruction. We perceive that through many other fears we harbor, but the root the fear that we will be destroyed.

Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Jesus says, in essence, that there is improper fear and proper fear. For the most part, we tend to fear the wrong things because we don’t understand or are simply ignorant of what we should fear.

The issue is not to eliminate all our fears but to discover what we ought to fear. Proper fear does not center so much on “what” as on “who.” The One to fear is not our fellow human beings. The One to fear isn’t the Dark Lord. The One to fear is He who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. And when we discover who this One is, we discover that, thought he holds all power, including the power of eternal destruction and damnation, we might also discover that he is also omni-compassionate. He pours out his mercy fresh and new upon us very morning. He lavishes his grace upon us. His love endures forever. We must learn that he is holy, just and righteous. He always does the right thing even when we do the wrong thing. His love never abrogates his righteousness. But his love moved him to be wholly righteous and wholly merciful at the same time.

He is the One who met Moses at the burning bush and told Moses his name, “I AM.” And he came in the season Christians all over the world just celebrated last month. He is Emmanuel. He is Jesus Christ. He comes to us in the storms of life that we so much fear, walking on top of them. And if we see him, above the storm, we may become terribly fearful. But he then speaks to us and says, “Fear not. I AM.”