Lessons From the Stairs

Guest post by KG:

Several years ago we purchased a house. My wife was sold on it the first time she saw it. Little did I know that half of what she saw in the house was not what anyone else could have seen. When I looked at the house I saw what needed to be done. When she looked at the house she saw what COULD be done. What could be done involved, among other things, removing all the lath and plaster walls. I knew very little about home repair/improvement when I started and debatably more when it was all said and done. Anyway, part of the project of removing the plaster involved removing the plaster along the stairway. 

It was just those stairs that provided me with a trip… all the way down. It started at the top. About half our time on the stairway starts at the top. But this time was unique. Rather than traveling by foot I used a variation of back, bottom, and head. Now, the way I see it, some experiences are so powerful that they need to be thought through - things like marriage, raising children, surgery, IRS audits, auto accidents, angry exchanges, investing in a house, and on occasion falling down a flight of stairs. So as not to waste a golden opportunity, that is just what I did... think about it.

On the way down, I can assure you, I was not rethinking the color scheme for the bathroom. It was just crack, thump, bump all the way down. By the time I had reached the bottom I had lost my interest in how painful line 32 of that year's income tax form was going to be. I was mostly interested in where parts of my body were in relation to other parts and whether or not most of them came along for the ride. Almost nothing else mattered! Life on the stairway, for the moment, was screaming at me and that's about all that I had time for. Mark Twain was right; a man who has had a bull by the tail (or in my case has fallen down a flight of stairs) knows four or five things more than someone who hasn't.

There was a second reason that this particular moment would get my undivided thoughts. "Why fall down the stairs in the first place?" That's a pretty good question and in my case there was a pretty good reason, but to tell why would only add insult to injury. One thing I will say is that whatever my reflections may amount to, the short of it is that I only had myself to blame. Even if I didn't have myself to blame for what happened it had all happened just the same. Gravity worked! A fall is a fall. You can say "I'll never do that again" or "Man, I'm glad that's over with" or of course a variety of other things that saints just shouldn’t say even if the heat of the moment suggests them. In the end I had to conclude this one thing: It's just like life. We are constantly asking questions of it like, "Why did this happen to me?" or "What's the meaning of that?" We can bless it or curse it, but still, what happens happens. But more often than not and despite the needling questions we ask of it, we still get the silent treatment. When we ask "why?" we the typical response is the silent treatment.

If we change the frame of reference from ‘it’ to ‘you’, from addressing ‘life’ to addressing ‘God’ we may get some work done.  As it turns out we may not be asking the right questions of our disagreeable encounters with the sharp edges of life. More to the point, we may not be asking them of the right object. If we think about it and listen hard enough rather than being the interrogator we will realize we are being interrogated. So often it turns out that we sit in the seat of the questioner throughout the experiences of our lives. Despite the fact that it is not just an idle enquiry. Meanwhile he demands an answer - an answer in deeds, not just words: "What do you live by? What makes you tick? What/who do you trust?" ‘Life’ will not say a thing. It will remain mute. Whatever questions come will come from the one who is not silent. ‘Life’ is just God’s a sock puppet. All things play into his hand.

Poor pathetic Job had plenty of questions that he needed answered. He was up to his 'potsherds' in questions. But when God finally spoke he didn't answer one of Job’s questions. Don't misunderstand. He didn't address one of Job's questions directly, but what he did say satisfied all of his questions. He turned up asking questions of Job, dozens of them. His questions weren't malicious or angry. It's not until Job began to listen that he finally understood himself. (see Job 42:4-6) The most important questions are not our serrated “why’s!?” rather the questions God is asking us.  More often than not he asks us through our struggling encounters with life.

There comes the time, and it's more often than we think, when we need to listen. We talk too much. Whose side of the conversation do we think is more important anyway - ours or his? Admittedly, sometimes life "gets in our face" demanding our attention. But the counsel of the sages is, "be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10) My lesson/advice? Use the stairs, and life with caution. And always, through thick and thin, "be slow to speak and quick to listen."

- KG

Scandalous

"The idea that evangelical pastors can be sent to ministerial oversight of congregations without first having a solid grounding in biblical theology is one of the scandals of our time.  Show me a church without a good appreciation for the Old Testament and biblical theology and I'll show you a church with a weak understanding of the gospel."

- Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture

Crosses?

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Neither need we fear crosses, 
or sigh, or be sad for anything 
that is on this side of heaven, 
if we have Christ. 

- Samuel Rutherford
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The Primacy of the Holy Spirit

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The tragic reality is that the Holy Spirit is as unsettling and unwelcome in our day as Jesus was in his.  Jesus was scorned, mocked, ridiculed, belittled, he was the target of numerous assassination attempts, and ultimately killed.  Is it really any surprise that His Spirit is treated in like fashion today?    

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“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth:it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”

John 16:7 ESV

Can you imagine the response of the disciples to these troubling words of Jesus?  How could it possibly good for Jesus to leave?  How could there be any advantage to such a predicament?  After all, Jesus was the one who healed the sick, raised the dead, confronted the power hungry religious leaders of the day, and who had, “the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)

Yet Jesus indicates that the more advantageous situation for the disciples is the one in which Jesus leaves and the Helper, the Holy Spirit, comes.  Jesus indicates that this would not happen unless Jesus were to leave.  This unknown territory to the disciples was not unknown to Jesus.  Jesus was the Immanuel, God with us (Mat. 1:23).  Yet when he left he sent the Holy Spirit to be God with us.  

Some theological schools have deplorably been referred to as teaching a new trinity, “The Father, The Son, and the Holy Scriptures.”  It is not a trite nor humorous thing to refer to another so called trinity, yet it rather painfully highlights a distressing problem in our focus.

The study of theology can be a wonderful thing, encouraging, and enlightening.  Yet it is not sufficient to define a relationship with God.  For a relationship with God does not consist in the reading of books.  Without a doubt books can be helpful, yet books permit us to remain in our comfort zone while the Holy Spirit would draw us further out of our comfort zones and into waters that are well over our heads.   

The tragic reality is that the Holy Spirit is as unsettling and unwelcome in our day as Jesus was in his.  Jesus was scorned, mocked, ridiculed, belittled, he was the target of numerous assassination attempts, and ultimately killed.  Is it really any surprise that His Spirit is treated in like fashion today?    

Of Thunder & Prayer

A guest post by KG:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. 

(Psalm 19:1-4)

Our age has the distinct privilege of looking more deeply (whether microscopically or telescopically) into the physical world than any generation that has gone before us.  It is hard to avoid the notion that we are looking at something that has been crafted. (Even Richard Dawkins, the inveterate atheist concedes as much.) Whether we considering the architecture of ameba or galaxies everything has an artistry that invites us to look at it as well as beyond it to what must be an artist. Even chaos has a calculus. The heavens do have a language all its own. And we are so crafted that we can understand its dialect. We can hear its speech and it is “talking its head off”.     

 I just heard the thunder the other evening. It was great. I have always enjoyed thunder and thunderstorms. It was one of my childhood thrills while growing up in the Texas Panhandle. Michigan/Missouri thunder is not quite so "mythic" but it is thunder none the less. Thunder speaks to something within me. And it almost always meets me when I’m in the middle of doing something else. It never needs to be introduced. It rumbles into my awareness, echoes between my ears and almost always swamps every other conversation. Thunder is an unapologetically rude wonder. 

Job says "He unleashes his lightening beneath the whole heaven ...after that comes the sound of his roar. He thunders with his majestic voice ...God's voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understanding (Job 37:3-4)." Being an audience to a thunder storm makes it a little easier to imagine how falling into the hands of the living God would be a uniquely alarming experience. Sometimes I wonder, "How could I possibly approach such a thundering God”?  At the same time I think “How could I avoid him”? Sometimes it seems like I'm on a fool's errand when I pray to God, that only a fool would enter into such a dangerous circumstance. (In prayer, Eugene Peterson reminds us, we are brought into proximity with the one that breaks cedars, shakes and strips forests bare making the oaks whirl. Ps. 29) Only a fool would believe that such thunder cares that it exists, let alone that it would hear our squeaking words.  The remarkable promise, the even more remarkable experience is that, unlike climatologically turbulence, he does hear our squeaking words.

Sometimes it seems like a fool's errand to pray. Other times, however, it's clear that only a fool wouldn't pray after coming to this bellowing God. John Donne said about his own life with God that he did not need God's music, he needed God's thunder. We all need to be interrupted. To fall into the hands of the living God is a terrible thing we are told. But when you think about it, though terrifying, his hands are also the only place where we can find an answer to our deepest londings.  "Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of heavenly lights." (James 1:17) As Mr. Beaver says in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,  “He may not be safe but he is always, always good.” Pray on.

- KG