Outcome

(God) knows the way he takes;
when he has tried me, 
I shall come out as gold (Job 23:10)].

"(God) knows the way I take," the traditional translation of the first line of this text, has been an encouragement to many, and is patently true (John 2: 24). 

 

It's likely however, that Job had another thought in mind. The text reads literally, "He knows the way with me," i.e., the way he takes with me. Put another way, God knows what he’s doing. 

 

Previously, Job had wondered if God did know what he was doing (7:18). Now he rests in the assurance that his suffering is purposeful.  His trials are the means by which God is refining his soul, turning it into 24 karat gold. 

 

So I, with Job, can accept my small adversities cheerfully, secure in the knowledge that God’s outcome will be the best of all outcomes for me.

 

F.B. Meyer wrote, "There is no clue to the understanding of the mysteries of our mortal life, save the hypothesis, that we are being prepared for the position which has been prepared for us in the eternal world." Or, as Paul has said. “Our light affliction, which is for the moment, is working for us an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

 

You can count on it: God knows what he's doing.

 

David Roper

10.6.21

Hello Darkness

"Darkness has become my friend" (Psalm 88:18). 

This is the saddest song in the psalter, a mournful dirge with no praise, no thanksgiving, no celebration, no eulogy. The poet’s soul was “full of trouble"; his dark mood all-engulfing.

 

There are days like that.

 

Some tell us we should never have bad days, but they wrong us when they do. “God has 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” (Anne Johnson Flint). There will be days when we’re "in regions dark and deep" (88:6).

 

There's is one thing we can do in the darkness: Like Israel's poet, we can reach out for God: "As for me, O LORD, I cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you" (88:13)—in which case, the darkness will have pushed us a little closer to our Father and his faithful love and the darkness will have become, in that way, our  dearest friend (88:18).

 

"Hello darkness, my old friend..."

 

David Roper

10.4.21

 

The Limits of Our Liberty

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” —The Declaration of Independence

 

"For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them" —the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19

 

"We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights." Among these rights is the incontrovertible right to liberty. The Declaration of Independence affirms that entitlement, as does Natural Law and Holy Scripture.

 

But liberty is not the highest good. There is one higher: the right to set aside our rights for the sake of others.

 

Paul was a free man and had rights as a human being and as a Roman citizen—rights he enumerates in 1 Corinthians 9—and, on  occasion, he expected others to honor those rights (Acts 22:25-29). 

 

Yet he was willing to set aside his rights when, by insisting on them, he put the cause of Christ in jeopardy. "I do it (set aside my own freedom) for the sake of the gospel," he insists, "that I may share with others in its blessings" (9:23). It's in this context that Paul compares authentic Christians to Olympian athletes:

 

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified (9:24-27). 

 

Track athletes shouldn’t train on beer and pretzels and expect to compete successfully. They exercise self-restraint,  setting aside their personanal freedom in order to run well. This should be our discipline as well, for our race, unlike a Roman foot race and its fading laurel wreath, has eternal consequences: the ultimate salvation of men and women, boys and girls. In a mixed metaphor taken from the sport of boxing, Paul speaks of giving himself a "knock-out punch"[1] in order to obtain that prize.

 

We should then be willing to set aside our personal liberty for the sake of that higher goal. Jesus himself is our example: He voluntarily gave up his right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in order to save us (Philippians  2:4-8). Paul goes so far as to insist that our Lord in his incarnation, “emptied himself" of his right to the independent use of his attributes as God to bring eternal salvation to the world.[2]

 

I should be wary, then, lest I, by insisting on my own liberty, become an also-ran.

 

David Roper

10.2.21

[1] Paul's Greek word here translated "discipline my body" ("buffet my body" in earlier translations) is a technical boxing term for an uppercut that puts an opponent on the canvass—something akin to Mammy Yoakum’s fabled “Goodnight Irene” punch.

[2] Paul is very careful in his choice of  words. He does not say that Jesus set aside his deity but that he, in the incarnation, “emptied himself” of the independent use of his deity and always acted as a man solely dependent on his Father (John 5:30). 

___

The Rock

 

 

“Secure whatever ill betide…”

 

The Rock: His works are perfect,

and the way he works is fair and just—

a God you can depend upon, no exceptions…  (Deuteronomy 32:4 The Message)

 

Our yard is strewn with rocks. Huge rocks. Boulders.

 

No, they weren’t left behind when the glaciers receded. We put them there.

 

On one occasion, when we couldn’t get a rock delivered, I had the quarry load it on the tailgate of my jeep, which I then drove home and backed into place. Grandmother, Carolyn and I rolled the boulder off the tailgate into a hole we’d prepared. It landed in the exactly right place with a resounding “thud” that may have registered on the seismographs at Boise State University. It remains there to this day—steadfast, unmovable.

 

Rocks are like that, you know: mute witnesses to immutability. They never change.

 

The world does, however: Disorder is the order of the day. “Restless nations in commotion.” Raging chaos and confusion, wild perturbation. Alarming flux and change.

 

Not so with God. He’s a rock.

 

The Lord’s our rock, in Him we hide,

A shelter in the time of storm

Secure whatever ill betide

A shelter in the time of storm.

 

David Roper

9.27.21

 

Speak No Evil

 

“Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one,to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:1,2)

 

Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and contemporary of Jesus wrote, "You know what wine and liqueur taste like. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand bottles pass through you, you are nothing more than a filter” (Moral Letters, 77.16).

 

Wine and strong drink are pleasurable for the moment, but are wasting assets, or so Seneca believed. They pass through us and on. (It's alimentary, my dear Watson.)

 

Jesus used the same logic to make another point: "Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person" (Matthew 15:18-20a).

 

I often chuckle at Jesus' perspicacity: His listeners would have expected "covetousness" as the final vice in the list for it was next in line and last in the Ten Commandments, seven of which he enumerated. Jesus surprised the crowd with “slander,” a peccadillo in their eyes. (Slander is “speaking evil” of others.)

 

Slander proceeds from the heart. Accordingly, it’s not what goes into my mouth that defiles and defines me, but what comes out of it. My words reveal the true condition of my soul. 

 

Is it any wonder that Jesus' listeners were mortified (Matthew 15:12).

 

Here’s another thought…

 

Paul’s wrote: “Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse” (Philippians 4:8 The Message).

 

It’s generally thought that Paul had abstract thought in mind (right thinking) and that may have been his intention. I wonder, however, given the context of the book, if Paul is not encouraging us to think about the “things” (behaviors) that we observe in others.

 

Rather than fixing our minds on the flaws we see in our brothers should we not think about their best actions—those that are “true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse?” Should we not think and speak of these things?

 

David Roper

9.20.21

Contrarities

WHat is this strange and uncouth thing?

To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,

Untill I had some place, where I might sing,

And serve thee; and not onely I,

But all my wealth and familie might combine

To set thy honour up, as our designe.

 

And then when after much delay,

Much wrastling, many a combate, this deare end,

So much desir’d, is giv’n, to take away

My power to serve thee; to unbend

All my abilities, my designes confound,

And lay my threatnings bleeding on the ground.

 

One ague dwelleth in my bones,

Another in my soul (the memorie

What I would do for thee, if once my grones

Could be allow’d for harmonie):

I am in all a weak disabled thing,

Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.

 

Besides, things sort not to my will,

Ev’n when my will doth studie thy renown:

Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,

Taking me up to throw me down:

So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,

I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

 

Ah my deare Father, ease my smart!

These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions

Doe winde a rope about, and cut my heart:

And yet since these thy contradictions

Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,

With but foure words, my words, Thy will be done.

 

—George Herbert

 

Herbert was unwell most of his life—"a weak, disabled thing”—and died at age 39. In this poem he reflects on the illness he calls a "contrariety." Why, when he prepared so long to preach (“study thy renown"), and when he was willing to give all to that task, did God "throw him down" contrary to his wishes?

 

The"contrarieties”  crushed him: the "cross actions" cut into his heart, a fair description of the way prolonged illness makes us wonder if God knows, or cares, or knows what he’s doing.

 

But in the end Herbert saw, as we must see, that illness is a cross to be taken up and borne as Jesus bore his cross, “with but four words.”

 

His words become our words: "Thy will be done."

 

David Roper

9.30.21

Holding and Held

I hold on to you;
Your right hand holds on to me—Psalm 63:8

David was in the Judean Wilderness, “a dry and weary land where there was no water.” His physical surroundings were but an echo of his deeper thirst and weariness: "I thirst for you, O God” (63:1).

 

Indeed, our deepest desires are for God himself and His steadfast love, a love that will endure forever. Thus, when caught up in that love, we can say with David, "I’m satisfied” (63:5). 

 

So, David concludes, "I will hold on to you” (63:8)

 

Me too, though my grip is not as strong as it used to be. Not to worry, God is holding on to me! People get tired of me and my imperfections and readily give up on me, but not God. He has me in his grip and will never let go. He will hold on to me forever (63:8; John 10:28,29).

Well, the Rock got ahold of me,

Yes, the Rock got ahold of me.

I used to think I had ahold of the Rock,

But the Rock had ahold of me!

 

David Roper

9.15.21