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Sunday, I was reading about an obscure 17th Century puritan pastor and scholar Jeremiah Whitaker. He was renowned for his preaching, but it was something about his life that people remembered. Perhaps it was that his preaching, mediated as it was through the suffering of the preacher’s life, was magnified in its power.

Edmund Calamy, a colleague and friend, said this regarding Whitaker:

Such as were best acquainted with him reckoned, that it was disputable, whether he preached more by the heavenliness of his doctrine, or by the holiness of his life. But they conclude, that it is certain, he preached as effectually by his sickness and death, as by either his doctrine or his life.

I like grits, and I have actually attended a NASCAR event (the 2007 Pepsi 400 at Daytona), and so I should have a favorite NASCAR guy, right?

For me, that would be Mark Martin, a Christian guy with a lot of class, and a terrible pile of bad luck. He’s fifty, and has never won the ‘Cup’ or the Daytona 500, racing’s biggest prizes. He was coaxed into racing a full year this year, despite his age, by an offer from NASCAR’s most elite racing team, Hendrick Motorsports. Everything was going his way. In three races, his cars have suffered two blown engines and a blown tire.

“I do have a history of not being the luckiest guy out there,” he said Monday, softly chuckling a day after yet another malfunction ruined what was on pace to be a top-five run.

Jenna Fryer, AP motorsports reporter writes that “His unbridled optimism at the start of the season was so out of character for the 50-year-old pessimist.”

A 50-year-old pessimist? I’ve never known one of those….

“I’ve been so bad over the years at judging my self-worth off of the results,” he said. “I told everyone that I am mentally tougher now than I’ve ever been in my life, and I am working at living up to that. I could run off behind the house and slash my wrists, but I’ve got some good things to focus on. I am disappointed, but I am not down in the dumps and I don’t feel worthless. I feel like I have helped make a contribution to the (No.) 5 team and I will continue to work as hard.”

Judging self-worth off results? Mark, you are my hero.

Not yet able to return to writing my own entries.

However, if I may borrow that of another, this is worthy.

It’s been a busy week and so I’ve not been able to post.

I don’t have the time now, really. However, the NYT just featured this review of one of my favorite movies of all time. If you’ve seen the movie, enjoy the review. If you’ve NOT seen the movie, you must remedy that situation as soon as possible.

See the review here.

The following is from J.I. Packer’s wonderful little book with the imposing title: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Please and indulge me in reading the entire quote, and then comment, if comments are stimulated by it.

“There is a famous old book on personal evangelism by C. G. Trumbull, entitled Taking Men Alive. In the third chapter of that book, the author tells us of the rule that his father, H. C. Trumbull, made for himself in this mater. It was as follows: ‘Whenever I am justified in choosing my subject of conversation with another, the theme of themes (Christ) shall have prominence between us, so that I may learn of his need, and, if possible, meet it.’ The key words here are: ‘whenever I am justified in choosing my subject of conversation with another’. They remind us, first, that personal evangelism, like all our dealings with our fellow-men, should be courteous. And they remind us, second, that personal evangelism needs normally to be founded on friendship. You are not usually justified in choosing the subject of conversation with another till you have already begun to give yourself to him in friendship and established a relationship with him in which he feels that you respect him, and are interested in him, and are treating him as a human being, and not just as some kid of ‘case’. With some people, you may establish such a relationship in five minutes, whereas with others it may take months. But the principle remains the same. The right to talk intimately to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and really care about him. And therefore the indiscriminate buttonholing, the intrusive barging in to the privacy of other people’s souls, the thick-skinned insistence on expounding the things of God to reluctant strangers who are longing to get away—these modes of behaviour, in which strong and loquacious personalities have sometimes indulged in the name of personal evangelism, should be written off as a travesty of personal evangelism. Impersonal evangelism would be a better name for them! In fact, rudeness of this sort dishonors God; morevover, it creates resentment, and prejudices people against the Christ whose professed followers act so objectionably. The truth is that real personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other man. We have to give ourselves in honest friendship to people, if ever our relationship with them is to reach the point at which we are justified in choosing to talk to them about Christ, and can speak to them about their own spiritual needs without being either discourteous or offensive. If you wish to do personal evangelism, then—and I hope you do; you ought to—pray for the gift of friendship. A genuine friendliness is in any case a prime mark of the man who is learning to love his neighbour as himself.”

Toward the end of Book Three of The Lord of the Rings (which comes 1/2 way through the second volume in the series, The Two Towers) Pippin is sorely tempted to steal a treasure which the wizard Saruman had lost and which the wizard Gandalf was guarding in his sleep. This treasure was a powerfully magic stone which in Pippin’s hands threatened to cause him great harm. It was for him and all his companions a terribly frightening time.

Later, Gandalf takes some time to explain to Pippin what the stone was and to alert him to the danger he had faced. Their conversation is revealing when pondered in the light of how we sin, and how God uses consequences and pain in growing us up.

‘I wish I had known all this before,’ said Pippin. ‘I had no notion of what I as doing.’

‘Oh yes, you had,’ said Gandalf. ‘You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen. I did not tell you all this before, because it is only by musing on all that has happened that I have at last understood, even as we ride together. But if I had spoken sooner, it would not have lessened your desire, or made it easier to resist. On the contrary! No, the burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart.’

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

That quote was ranked as #11 on the American Film Institute’s list of the most famous movie quotes of the first 100 years of filmmaking. (This is three spots behind “May the Force be with you” and two spots ahead of “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”.)

It comes from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke and is spoken to Paul Newman by the warden of the prison in which he is incarcerated. Later in the film, Newman himself mocks the line back to his warden.

As Barb and I watched this movie last week it soon became clear that though that line was exchanged between two characters in the film, the real object of the line is God.

Newman’s ‘Luke’ is a man imprisoned for two years for a drunken act of vandalism. His imprisonment however is a symbol of the senseless and capricious life he has been forced to live under the oversight of a supposedly benevolent deity. Luke has been dealt a whole lot of nothing, and with that hand, he tries to win. But he can’t. So he battles through life with increasing bitterness.

Toward the end of the film, Luke enters a church and shouts to God for some explanation, some intervention, some communication. But the heavens are silent; they fail to communicate. There is no one to respond, and so he turns to face his fate utterly alone.

The movie raises hard questions. Good films do. If there is a God, why does life seem so senseless? This movie does not hesitate to give an answer: life is senseless because there is no God. Even the cross is senseless in a senseless world, and it does not escape being mocked in this film.

But the problem, of course, is not a failure to communicate. It is a failure to listen. The answer to Luke’s question is not easy, but it is there. God speaks; we are too stubborn to listen.

Ironically, it was the next morning that I read the following in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Calvin, one clearly acquainted with suffering, would counsel Cool Hand Luke to cool it.

“…When dense clouds darken the sky, and a violent tempest arises, because a gloomy mist is cast over our eyes, thunder strikes our ears and all our senses are benumbed with fright, everything seems to us to be confused and mixed up; but all the while a constant quiet and serenity ever remain in heaven. So must we infer that, while the disturbances in the world deprive us of judgment, God out of the pure light of his justice and wisdom tempers and directs these very movements in the best-conceived order to a right end. And surely on this point it is sheer folly that many dare with greater license to call God’s works to account, and to examine his secret plans, and to pass as rash a sentence on matters unknown as they would on the deeds of mortal men. For what is more absurd than to use this moderation toward our equals, that we prefer to suspend judgment rather than be charged with rashness; yet haughtily revile the hidden judgments of God, which we ought to hold in reverence?” (I.17.1)

When there is promise of a great piece of pie or shortcake or the like following dinner, one might be tempted to hustle the main course, or even shortchange it, in order to get to the prize at the end. Don’t even the bumper stickers tell us, “Life is short; eat dessert first”?

I’m reading, as some of you know, John Stott’s classic exposition of the atonement The Cross of Christ. Of it’s four sections, the last is called “Living Under the Cross”. I have my eyes on that section, I long to get there and read this godly scholar’s reflections about life lived in the shadow of the cross.

But one ought not hustle dessert. The main course sets the context for the end. As Stott leads me through the biblical texts expounding the atonement, and brings solid support to our understanding of things like propitiation and justification, we are made ready to comprehend the concrete application which follows.

My metaphor may break down here, but in this I think dessert sticks better once the main course has been digested.

The dessert like application of biblical truth should never be detached from the meaty comprehension of the truth itself. Neither should the truth be spread across the table without some pie at last to set off the sweetness of the meal.

This post from Scott Myrhe in Uganda does challenge our national priorities. A sample here:

I am sitting among 273 delegates from 19 countries at the first Uganda
Action for Nutrition Congress, in Kampala. The first speaker,
professor Tola Atinmo from the Federation of African Nutrition
Societies noted that the US President Obama just signed a 787 BILLION
dollar bail-out for the US economy . . . and asked when he could
obtain a mere 10 billion dollars to bail-out the malnourished in
Africa.

I encourage the reading of the whole post. All is not completely hopeless.

Perhaps, of course, our president and our congress believe that American prosperity will trickle down to those living on $1/day in the continent of Africa. Yes, that must be it.

I noted this week that Alison Krauss and Robert Plant were planning a follow-up to their Grammy dominating collaboration. As a fan, I find that wonderful. But here is my question: does anyone know if she and Union Station will ever put together another studio album? Are they history? Has AK grown too big for her roots with the Soggy Bottom Boys?