One Day Nearer Home

"For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed" Romans 13.11b)

I remember lengthy, family trips when our road-weary children would sigh, "Are we there yet?" "No," we'd say, "but we're nearer than we were." 

It occurs to me that this is the perspective that can give us hope and cheer when our days are weary and long, for our salvation is nearer to us today than when we first believed.

Some of you rise each morning to endure hours of sickness and pain. Others face loneliness and seclusion. Still others see nothing ahead but long days of mindless endeavor and weary plodding. Look up! This may be the day that Jesus will come for you, or you will go to him.

But if not, know this: Your salvation is nearer to you this day than when you first believed. You're one day nearer home. 

Just one day nearer home, 

As shadows of the night descend. 

Just one day less to roam 

As fading twilight colors blend. 

Beneath that starry dome 

I'll rest beside my Guide and Friend, 

With each day's tramping, nightly camping, 

One day nearer Home.  —Harry D. Loes

David Roper

Things That Are Excellent

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,  that you may approve the things that are excellent, —Philippians 1:9,10

The Stoic philosophers of Paul’s day spoke of ta diapheron. Diapheron, in classical ethics, were those subtle aspects of character that set one person apart from others. Paul must have had this distinction in mind when he wrote of “things that are excellent” (ta diapheronta).

The “things that excellent” have to do with manner, demeanor, bearing, voice inflection, and facial expressions. It is what we do, but also how we do it. “A man ranks according to how he does a thing,” George MacDonald wrote.

I think that's what Jesus had in mind when he queried his disciples: “what do you do more than others? (Matthew 5:47). The “others,” in this case, were the Pharisees who were “good,” but whose goodness was unpleasant. True goodness is winsome, and wonderfully attractive in that it attracts others to the beauty of our Lord. 

Jesus said, “The good (and here he uses a Greek word that means “beautiful”) person brings goodness (beauty) out of the goodness (beauty) stored up in him (Matthew 12:35). This is the beauty of holiness, a radiance that comes from within, from the One who dwells there, who is incomparably lovely, and who, in his quiet love will gradually turn our actions into something excellent. 

Our part is to ask and ask and ask again...

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me

All his wonderful passion and purity

Oh, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine

Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me

        —Albert W. T. Orsborn

David Roper

Without Cause

"We’ve got to look after ourselves,” said the farmer. “Parson used to say there was One as took that off our hands!" replied Sarah—George MacDonald, The Cleric's Awakening

For without cause they hid their net for me;

without cause they dug a pit for my life...

They hate me without cause—35:7,19

Some folks will hate you though you're trying to do the right thing. Here's King David's take on his situation:

They repay me evil for good; my soul is bereft. When they were sick I wore sackcloth; I afflicted myself with fasting; I prayed with head bowed on my chest. I went about as though I grieved for my friend or my brother; as one who laments his mother, I bowed down in mourning. But at my stumbling they rejoiced and gathered; they gathered together against me; wretches whom I did not know

tore at me without ceasing; like profane mockers at a feast,

they gnash at me with their teeth" (35:12-16).

What then can we do when we're judged unjustly?  

David shot up a prayer, which is always the first thing to do: "Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication, for my cause, my God and my Lord! Vindicate me, O LORD, my God according to your righteousness” (35:23,24). 

Put your situation in God's hands for His resolution. Don’t try to vindicate yourself. Self-defense is a null set, as the math guys say: It amounts to nothing. Let God take up your cause. He is just and will bring justice in due time (35:17).

Meanwhile, our Father "delights" in us (35:27). Who gives a fig what others say?

David Roper

 The God-Man

“If ever we get hungry to see God, we must look at his picture.” 

“Where is that, sir?” 

“Ah, Davie… don’t you know that, besides being himself, and just because he is himself, Jesus is the living picture of God?” (George MacDonald, Donal Grant).

Jesus shows us God.He is the “living picture” of God that God himself has drawn—“the image (eikon=portrait) of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). "He that has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said (John 14:9).

So, if you want to know what God is like, look at the picture God has drawn. Read the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—and accompany Jesus as he makes his way through an average, ordinary day. Listen to his words. Take in his wisdom. Observe his actions. Consider his love. This is God—exactly.  Jesus is God–like; God is Jesus–like. 

But that's not the whole story: Jesus also shows us Man[i]and what he can be.

“Know yourself,” Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, knowing better than anyone of his age that we are unknowable. (“Know yourself,” meant “Known that you do not know.”)  Despite the fact that we know more about ourselves these days than ever before, “What is man?” is still the question.

All the social sciences—anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology—are skewed in their foundational assumptions and thus their conclusions are skewed, for they assume that Man, as he exists today, is the norm, not knowing (or not choosing to know) that modern Man is a caricature of himself—an intellectual, physical, social deviant—one who has strayed from the norm. 

And so, I would suggest, with sincere apologies to Alexander Pope, that the proper study of mankind is not man, but Jesus. If you want to know what authentic man looks like, look at Jesus. He, and he alone, shows us what it means to be a Man in full. 

“Know yourself,” Aristotle suggested. “Sir,” another Greek seeker said to Phillip, Jesus’ apostle, with greater wisdom, “We want to see Jesus” (John 12:21).

David Roper

7.20.18

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[i]Yes, I know. “Man" is gender insensitive, I try to be more sensitive when I’m speaking, but in writing I find that most gender circumlocutions seem awkward and contrived. (Put me down as an old Duffer.) Most people know that Man is a perfectly good English word and has no gender implications at all. By "Man" we mean humanity, the human race, mankind, or "male and female" as in the Creation Story: "So God created manin His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and femaleHe created them" (Genesis 1:27). I capitalize Man to make that point.

Hunky-Dory?

Life is not always "hunky-dory," as David Bowie and my father would say. Jesus agrees: "I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and a man's enemies will be those of his own household" (Matthew 10:34-36).

Sometimes, in our paltry efforts to live out our faith, misunderstandings arise and separate us from those we love. We may think that others need to be set right, and that may be true—"all have sinned"—but more often then not there are things in us that need to be done. 

And the "doing" of it can be extremely painful.

Keep in mind, however, that our Lord always has our highest good in mind: "All things work together for good," Paul insists, a "good” spelled out in the verses that follow: All things are to the end "that we may be conformed to the image of His Son," and enter into eternal glory (Romans 8:28-30). God is remaking us in the image of his Son that we may share his beauty forever. This is the purpose for which all things—even the most wearisome and vexatious things—exist. 

In the meantime, we can be encouraged by the thought that Jesus fully understands our frustration and sorrow when love for a loved one is thwarted. "He came to his own, but his own did not receive him." When Jesus became a man he became a man in full and "took his own medicine" (Dorothy Sayer).

David Roper

What God Has Promised

LORD, you hear the yearning of the afflicted; You will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more (Psalm 10:17–18).

Justice is promised, but it is almost always deferred. It’s a given that we will suffer for a while. But one promise is never deferred: God will strengthen your heart. 

God hath not promised skies always blue

Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through; 

God hath not promised sun without rain, 

Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

God hath not promised we shall not know

Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;

He hath not told us we shall not bear

Many a burden, many a care.

God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,

Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;

Never a mountain rocky and steep,

Never a river turbid and deep.

But God hath promised strength for the day 

Rest for the labor, light for the way; 

Grace for the trials, help from above;

Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

—Annie Flint Johnson

David Roper

7.14.18

Troubled

"I'm troubled. LORD (6:3).

"I am greatly troubled" (6:4).

"All my enemies shall be...troubled" (6:10).

David enemies were spreading malicious lies. Humiliated and emotionally exhausted, he was reduced to tears (6:6).

But, as David reminded himself, a day is coming when his enemies themselveswill be "troubled." David knew he could never mollify his critics, but he trusted that God would deal with them in due time. He would do so out of His great love for His child (6:4).

Jesus, when he was reviled "did not revile in return... but kept entrusting himself to the One who judges justly"(1Peter 2:21). We too must let people chatter, but that's not the end of the story: Our Father, who loves us dearly, will have the last word.

The only other thing we need is patience since God usually takes His  time (6:3).

David Roper

Supplantings of Grace

"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?" —Lord Byron

"Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree..." —Isaiah 55:13

It's not enough to eradicate thorns and thistles. God does more: He causes the cypress and myrtle to flourish where nettles and weeds encumber the ground (55:13). It’s not enough that God removes our vices. He does more: He replaces them one by one with solid virtues, so that the old site of evil becomes a place of rare beauty. 

Where cynicism abounded, hope and optimism begin to emerge; where harshness and sarcasm flourished, kind, gentle words appear; where malice and anger produced anxiety and turmoil, forbearance, tranquility and peace start to surface; where lust grew rampant and unrestrained, pure love springs up. This is the supplanted life, the living and lasting sign of God’s work, the only memorial that matters (13b). 

And how does this transformation take place?

Just ask him. "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near." (55:6). God can be “found,” when we grow tired of ourselves and our efforts to be good children. Then God calls us, reminding us that he's at hand.

Turn to him, act “before desire shall fail," A.E. Houseman said—turn from all your strategies to sanctify yourself to One who loves you to death—literally. “And he will have mercy on (you)." (55:7).

Sink your roots into God's word and ask him to make his words true in you for, “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, making it bear and sprout, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (55.10,11). 

Pray God's words into your heart and it will begin to bear fruit. You can count on it. God's grace will "come down" and beauty will "spring up"; his word will accomplish the purpose for which he sends it. 

"My ways are not your ways,” God says, “nor are my thoughts your thoughts” (55.8). Unlike our ways to make ourselves better, God’s ways work!

David Roper

7.9.18

Loners

The man who separates himself seeks self-gratification; he bares his teeth against sound judgment (Proverbs 18:1)

Idaho is famous for its loners: Free Press Francis, Buckskin Billy, Cougar Dave, Dugout Dick to name a few—all mavericks who chose to separate from the crowd. I've read their diaries and talked to people who knew them. In almost every instance these men and women became, well...wacky.

Loners can turn into unbalanced people, a principle underscored by the proverb above. (You'll note that there is no conjunction between the couplets, a grammatical nuance that connects antisocial withdrawal with irrational behavior.)

A proverb is not an absolute; it's a general rule, and there can be exceptions to the rule. Some loners are as sane as one can be in this world. But in general, those who seek to gratify themselves and save their souls through isolation will lose them in the end. It’s an application of the time-tested axiom: he who would save his life will lose it. 

I've always gravitated toward a solitary lifestyle; it's in my genes. I'd be happy to have a permanent job in a fire lookout tower or an offshore lighthouse, and that inclination has become more attractive as I’ve aged. People wear me out. It’s too easy for me to withdraw from the world and it's troubles.

But I know what isolation would do to my soul; it would wither away. I need someone apart from me to give myself to. Without the daily grind and rub of sinners and saints God cannot make the most of me. I would never learn to love. 

David Roper

7.1.18