Category: Uncategorized Page 32 of 71

One thing you can trust SomberandDull to never do is to send hapless readers to Oprah’s web site. Nosirree. Not us.

Okay, just between you and me, this quiz is quite a challenge for those of us who THINK we know our movies and books.

I surprised myself with six out of ten. How’d you do?

Joy is spoken of all over the Bible and is something sought by so many, but we rightly question what it really is.

Michigan State won a spot in the Final Four and the team (and some of us watching) experienced a certain euphoria as a result. But was it joy? In a sense, of course. But not in the deeply satisfying and full way that seems to be the fruit of life lived in the presence of God. That has to be something deeper, something richer, something stronger. Life needs to be punctuated with moments of victory and accomplishment and happiness, but the joy we seek is something other.

And it seems to me that it can only be had by first losing everything.

Three years ago, I was minding my own business leading a small group Bible study in my home, when I was lured outside on a ruse only to find thirty or forty people, some from 500 miles away, standing in my front yard singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I was stunned, and of course, deeply moved. Why? Because it was a kindness that I in no way expected and most certainly did not deserve.

The roots of real joy are illustrated by this. Real joy comes to those who receive what they do not expect and believe they do not deserve.

The prodigal son is stunned to receive what he does not expect and believes he does not deserve – his father’s favor and full reception. The immoral woman affectionately pours her tears over Jesus’ feet because she has received from him what she could never have imagined receiving and the right to which she had never possessed – his love and acceptance and forgiveness.

The son and the woman experience deep gospel truths: that all they have that matters they did not deserve and therefore could not have expected. Their wonder feeds their joy.

Real joy eludes us, on the other hand, because we really cannot sustain belief in the gospel. Forgetting ourselves, we allow ourselves to think that there really is some good reason for God to think highly of us, and so his favor ceases to be surprising and undeserved. And when it is that, the joy is gone.

Real joy can only come when we lose everything, every vestige of spiritual merit and expectation that we possess. And losing that can be very, very painful. We need to lose our self righteousness, the things upon which we depend. We need to lose the expectation that our success earns us favor, or our riches, or our character, or our looks, or our timeliness, or our propriety, or our ethnicity, or our hard work, or our exemplary parenting. We need to be stripped of everything in order to know that we are both deeply abhorrent to God and even more deeply loved.

When we lose everything we are in a position to marvel that we have been given everything. And knowing that we have been given everything by One who will not ever take it away is the place of real joy.

The cross is therefore our joy. To see the sin in our lives is to be shocked that the holy God would act to save us. To see our sin is to know that all that we have been given is clearly undeserved. and the more clearly we see these things, the more deep will run the channels of joy in our life.

[My thanks to Bill Kimrey, whose hand-carved celtic cross is pictured here.]

On Tuesday my associate Geoff and I were eating sandwiches at a local Italian restaurant. Into the restaurant walked, or I should say limped, my friend James Roberts, an African American pastor and dear brother of mine.

I asked James why he was limping. He told me that he had hurt his hamstring. I asked him how in the world he did that, joking that he shouldn’t play so hard.

The explanation involved wearing the wrong shoes, but the key line was that he made a move while preaching on Sunday and felt it go.

As I laughed, I told James that no white preacher I knew, no white Presbyterian at least, ever ran the risk of pulling a hamstring while preaching!

Here are two ways to obey the fifth commandment, for those who think it might be somewhat complicated:

1) though you may not have watched a college basketball game from beginning to end in three years, sit down on the couch with your father and watch, and sincerely cheer, HIS team in their NCAA quarterfinal game.

2) though you may live 1300 miles away and be at work at the time of the game, grab a break and CALL your father to share in his enjoyment of a fifteen point lead during the fourth quarter.

I’m feeling particularly honored.

Thanks, guys.

In my original NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket, filled in two weeks ago, I had selected an eclectic Final Four. As it turned out, I only got one of the four correct, but I don’t care. I chose MSU to make it, and after a dominant performance on Sunday, they did. I am of the unswerving faithful (BA, 1978)!

I thought I’d be content with their making it to the Final Four. I’m not. I want them to make it to the final game to redeem their earlier lopsided loss to North Carolina.

Age makes one read things differently.

This morning I was reading the very familiar passage regarding the woman caught in adultery from John 8 and noticed something I had never seen before.

7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

Why was it the older ones who seemingly were the most reticent to take action against the woman? Had age given them a more realistic perspective on their own sin? I wonder.

Among men I know, those who are older tend to be more mellow in their assessment of right and wrong. Things which once were clearly black and white tend to fade to gray with advancing years. And clearly, the older I get the more I understand about the fundamental corruption of my own heart.

I can’t say what was going on in the hearts of these men, or why John chose to note the age progression. But doesn’t it seem curious?

In a comment to yesterday’s post, Staci encouraged everyone to listen to Tim Keller’s sermon on “The True Elder Brother.”

I add my encouragement to that commendation!

For those interested, I’d recommend listening to ALL the sermons on this page.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

When the dust settled after the second round, I didn’t do too badly in my picks. Of the sixteen teams still standing, I picked thirteen. That’s pretty good for me, who does no research and merely guesses. That was why (blush) I had Clemson playing Cinderella and making it to the Sweet Sixteen. I don’t think I can be faulted too badly, though, for expecting Illinois and West Virginia to make it further than they did.

At least my beloved Spartans are still in it. If anything stands them in a good position it is the depth of their bench. GO GREEN!

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, pages 16-16

The following, offered without comment, comes from C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy.

“I do think, ” said Shasta, “that I must be the most unfortunate boy that ever lived in the whole world. Everything goes right for everyone except me. Those Narnian lords and ladies got safe away from Tashbaan; I was left behind. Aravis and Bree and Hwin are all as snug as anything with that old Hermit; of course I was the one who was sent on. King Lune and his people must have got safely into the castle and shut the gates long before Rabadash arrived, but I get left out.”

And being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks.

What put a stop to all this was a sudden fright. Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him.

“Who are you?” he said, scarcely above a whisper.

“One who has waited long for you to speak,” said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

“Who are you?” asked Shasta.

“Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook; and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay; and then the third time “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

Shasta was no longer afraid that the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too.