Dr. W lost his 32-year-old daughter last month. His response and reflection on this tragic event has be nothing short of inspiring. To this point, he has posted four posts on Christian faith in the midst of suffering, especially unexpected tragedy. They are all worth reading. The link above is the first post. Click here for post two, post three, and post four.
"My hope is in nothing less than a dramatic reversal of death in the flesh. My hope is not even just in the Risen One, though that is true enough, but in his promise to raise those who are in Christ from the dead. Nothing less than this is my hope. So, as I grieve for our Christy, I do so in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection."
A Free @hope_church Lent Wallpaper for your spacephone, courtesy of ccausey.com. Photo by Wolfgang Staudt.
The Trojan-Horse Seed of Obedience
I just finished an email to a professor that I’m hoping to potentially study with in the future. I’m writing a number of these emailed these days as I prayerfully consider further study in theology and biblical studies. There are tons of question marks on the horizon for us these days, and that’s not a bad thing. Catherine and I are trying to make wise decisions, keeping our ear to the ground as we wait for some of our future obedient steps to become clear.
In the mean time, I’ve been noticing more and more how some of the little steps of obedience on my plate now have huge potential futures in them. It reminds me of one of the key teachings of our church: your obedience in the moment can usher in world-changing possibilities in the future. I don’t mean to say that I think the email I just sent is going to change everything in the future; but I do believe that an obedient act now can send a ripple of events forward that reaches far beyond what I may ever see or know.
Take Paul in Acts 16. He and his entourage are headed in one direction, and the Spirit gives Paul a vision one night of a Macedonian man asking them to come help them (16:9). So they go and help the people there. Simple enough, eh?
Yet that step of obedience took the gospel westward when Paul had wanted to go east. That westward move brought the church into Macedonia, planting churches in cities whose letters from Paul still speak to the church. That westward move eventually brought Paul to Rome, and the gospel westward. And that shift changed all of church (and world) history, and one of the results of that history in the church’s presence in the US, even the church you attend.
Am I saying that Paul’s yes to that vision is the reason my church exists? No and Yes. No, in the sense that God’s purposes for the world are larger than a single act of obedience. Yes, in the sense that one simple act of obedience may hold within it thousands and thousands of future obediences, both for you and for those whom your yes affects.
Any doubt of the pregnant possibilities of your obedience need only look to the perfect obedience of Christ, through whom all of the promises of God find their yes. His prayer in the garden to take the cup and see the Father’s will unfold enables and fuels every obedient step the church has or will take. The greater things of which he spoke in John 13 pile out of the trojan-horse obedience of the cross, that Yes that makes every other yes possible.
So I’m excited about some of the possibilities that may come to be because of the steps I have before me these days. The seeds of obedience sown today have harvest upon harvest in them; may his Spirit empower and embolden me to say yes to them as they come.
In studio for an Asbury/Seedbed project based on the metric Psalter. Should be interesting.
If your church sings psalms, how do you go about choosing melodies? Just curious…
kinda cool, eh?
"Praise is more than our duty; it is our humanity! Men have climbed Everest, they tell us, because the mountain is there. How much more must we climb God’s Holy hill in worship because God is there, revealing his glory to humanity made in his image?"
A great list of resources for litany, songs, and other perspectives on Lent. Thanks for the link, Bruce!
