The Suburbs of the Soul

Here is a beautiful passage from Jeremiah Burroughs' book The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.

"A great man will permit common people to stand outside his doors, but he will not let them come in and make a noise in his closet or bedroom when he deliberately retires from all worldly business. So a well-tempered spirit may enquire after things outside in the world, and suffer some ordinary cares and fears to break into the suburbs of the soul, so as to touch lightly upon the thoughts. Yet it will not on any account allow an intrusion into the private room, which should be wholly reserved for Jesus Christ as his inward temple."

We're on a Mission from God...

Found this clever picture on an emergent site. Finally, my secret love of the Blues Brothers movie is united with my commitment to Missio Dei (God's mission of reconciling the world to Himself). There is no more divide between the secular and the sacred, Christ is all in all.

Patience

Jacques Derrida in an interview said that people by nature are messianic. I think he meant (this is funny: I am interpreting Derrida, or should I say, deconstructing?) that all people live in expectation of something. All of us are looking forward to something happening and live in light of that hope, or fear. Christians, are perhaps the most messianic of all people. Arguably, promises of things to come outnumber things that are already in our possession. Christianity is a faith and we are the faithful. We live by faith that God’s promises will come true. That sort of faith is what God credits to us as righteousness. We are people who have been commissioned to wait. Our decision to wait and trust that God will do what He promised is the defining factor in our lives. Of course, there are many promises that have already come true – most notably, Jesus was born, died and rose from the dead. Those events we no longer expect. However, they contain in themselves promises of things not yet present, or, at least, not to the fullest extent. For example, Jesus’ birth contains a promise of our union with God and an invitation into the divine life of the Trinity. Jesus’ death contains a promise of victory over the Devil and his final judgment, while Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of many resurrections to come, as Paul writes. So, our faith may be likened to a pregnancy. The baby has been conceived and is alive with all her potential. However, we are still waiting for the birth. And as any woman who has been pregnant, or her husband, will tell you, patience is a supreme virtue during pregnancy.
Let’s see how this idea of the messianic nature of our faith affects different spheres of life. On a cosmic scale, we are expecting restoration of all things to God, the Creator. We long for our King to return in glory to reward the faithful and vindicate the oppressed. Socially, we relate to people who are not yet mature. We patiently wait for them to grow up, as it were. Of course, we ourselves require others to be patient as well. So, human interaction is kids talking to kids.
Our spiritual experience is no different. We expect the Holy Spirit to show up and change us. We wait for God to reveal His will to us. Realizing that it is God who always makes the first step involves a lot of waiting.
This life of expectancy warrants the conclusion that patience is one of the supreme virtues of the Christian. We may be called the patient as much as we are called the faithful.

Psalm 126

I was reading Psalm 126 this morning. It seems to illustrate the idea of joy as a reaction to God's gracious acts really well. Here is the first half of the psalm:

When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter
And our tongue with joyful shouting;
Then they said among the nations,
"The LORD has done great things for them."
The LORD has done great things for us; We are glad.
(Ps.126:1-3)

True joy comes from the realization that the Lord has done great things among us.

More Thoughts on Joy

Last week at the home group meeting we discussed joy. Surprisingly, we had a difficult time defining joy and differentiating it from peace. Here are some thoughts triggered by our discussion.

Joy is a reaction to grace. It is a "He likes me, He really really likes me!" kind of moment. Joy is maintained and enhanced with each new realization of grace and each new attentive act of God towards the person. Not to sound intolerant and arrogant, but it seems to me that Christianity is the only religion with a very well developed doctrine (and practice) of joy. Can someone correct me?

To differentiate peace and joy, perhaps, I can define each in this way. Peace is what happens when you realize that Jesus' acceptance and presence are enough. Joy is what happens when you realize that Jesus' acceptance and presence are too much.

These are pretty raw and need more conversation and thinking. Please, comment!

Storm

It was about 4 o'clock on Thursday. I was sitting at our local Starbucks working on the sermon for Sunday. I started considering heading home since it looked like it might begin to rain. The next moment it got really dark, wet and scary. Everyone inside turned towards the windows and uttered phrases like the deceitfully religious "Oh, my God", the Chicago favorite "Holy Cow" and the ever popular "Wow". The storm hit suddenly and without hesitation. Somehow water was coming down while the wind was blowing outside umbrellas and lawn chairs in various directions. Several trees on the street were brought down within the first gust of wind. Transformers in the alley popped and power went out. All of this happened in the first minute or two. I called Gillian and she said that the two huge trees in front of our house came down and were resting on the power lines. I ran, or, more accurately, swam home as fast as I could. The girls were pretty scared, which is somewhat amusing since one their favorite pretend games is "Blackout" (a close second is "Mom and Dad die and we have to take care of the baby"). The storm was over in about 10-15 minutes. Everyone came outside to see what the damage was. Below are some pictures.

Some Pictures After the Storm

Our front yard. The church building is to the right of the house.

One of our two big trees.

A view from the alley.

The only car that was hit on our street. Our neighbor John took it pretty well.