Month January 2022

A Surprising Conversion: History for January 6

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A bit of a detour today. I’ve considered including historical bits in the blog since long before it was a blog, and have been collecting ideas. I just found one for January 6th the other day and decided to make it the first, given the timing. This one is quoted from Warren Wiersbe’s “Be Alive” commentary on John 3:14.

“On January 6, 1850, a snowstorm almost crippled the city of Colchester, England, and a teenage boy was unable to get to the church he usually attended. So he made his way to a nearby Primitive Methodist chapel, where an ill-prepared layman was substituting for the absent preacher. His text was Isaiah 45:22 – “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” For many months this young teenager had been miserable and under deep conviction, but though he had been reared in church (both his father and grandfather were preachers), he did not have the assurance of salvation.

The unprepared substitute minister did not have much to say, so he kept repeating the text. “A man need not go to college to learn to look,” he shouted. “Anyone can look—a child can look!” About that time, he saw the visitor sitting to one side, and he pointed at him and said, “Young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” The young man did look by faith, and that was how the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted.”[1]

[1] Wiersbe, Warren.  Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986).  P. 55.

Blessed are Those Who Mourn #1

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Recently I began writing about the Beatitudes, the opening statements from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, starting with Matthew 5:3 – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The crowds who gathered to hear Him needed to hear this Beatitude first of all because if anyone refuses to be humble before Christ, the rest of His speech won’t matter.  The more we see Him as the King we need, the more He can, and will, bless us.

Next Jesus moved to the second of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:4 –
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Before digging into the meaning of this statement, today’s focus is on the idea that Jesus did not put the set of Beatitudes in a random order, but that He intends them as a sequence. Not everyone takes this view, but to me the sequence makes sense and Jesus – the best teacher ever – would not do anything by accident.

To see the connection between the first two Beatitudes, consider the book of James where he cautions against being a “double-minded man”.  The book begins by saying that going through trials helps a Christian grow.  In testing times, we should ask God for wisdom – trusting God’s voice within our conscience, calling us to action by faith – and he contrasts that with being “double-minded.”  While God gives wisdom “generously to all without reproach,” a double-minded man ignores wisdom and ends up “driven and tossed by the wind…unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:5-8). The original Greek language suggests being “double-minded” is like “having two spirits.”  Such a person cannot make up their mind which voice to follow in their conscience; while having God’s guidance, they are unable to follow it and end up lost.  They do not have the kingdom of heaven.

Later, James comes back to the word “double-minded” in 4:8, saying that overcoming this inability to follow God’s guidance is “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you” (4:1).  Then in verse 9, he recommends: “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.”

Thus, James provides a link in the Beatitudes’ progression.  Being double-minded is like lacking the kingdom of heaven.  Inability to follow the right voice leads to our “quarrels” and “fights”, while leaving us “unstable.”  Knowing these consequences of failing to be poor in spirit, James suggests mourning as the first, and proper, response to our spiritual poverty.

We do not naturally associate blessing with mourning, but neither did being poor in spirit seem like blessing.  When we mourn, we acknowledge that we have not been poor in spirit but have sought our own way.  That this has consequences.  Jesus offers us blessing now in the reassurance of comfort to come.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” – Matthew 5:4

Over the rest of this week, I hope to expand on what this mourning means, Jesus’ reaction to those who mourn, hope God provides for those who mourn, and the link to the next Beatitude.  For the rest of the Beatitudes, I hope to show how each one builds blessing upon blessing as the kingdom of God is built within each of His people.  We will see how God’s plans affect mine as we go.

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

What If Nature Shows Purpose, Rather Than Randomness?

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Headline I just saw in the Facebook news feed: “What if Math Is a Fundamental Part of Nature, Not Something Humans Came Up With?” Reading the article I found that patterns in nature are “staggering”, but no conclusion is made. (Article linked below)

Yeah – What If?

Says CS Lewis, in the book Miracles: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator”

Science Alert Article

Hate New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s a Replacement Idea.

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Fellow travellers,

Happy New Year! I’ve been finding it hard to write consistently for a while, but did want to share a variation on New Year’s Resolutions I’ve been trying to do personally for a while. It’s been helpful to me, and might be to you. I’m sure there’s already a book out there with a similar idea, but here’s mine, starting with some background:

A while back I realized two problems I had with New Year’s resolutions: 1) I get frustrated by failing at them, and 2) they aren’t permanent. So they go nowhere.

About the same time I realized similar things about giving up something for Lent, a roughly 40-day period.

So what if, instead of making temporary changes at New Year’s or Lent, a person could make smaller, but permanent changes every 40 days? In any year, there are about 40 times 9 days. What if, even if they failed at half (or more) of the changes, the successful ones still added up to a massive shift in habits over a multi-year period or even a lifetime? They don’t need to be “spiritual” or major, they just need to be something you think will make your life better, permanently.

For example, in 2021 these were some of my attempted changes:

1/1/21 – Drink at least 32 oz of water a day
5/1/21 – Blog regularly, and
8/29/21 – Open a devotional before checking my phone in the morning.

There were more – some I failed at and some I’ll keep private, but they are significant enough to have a cumulative effect without being too hard to keep them all.

Are there small things you are doing that are harmful to you? Are there small changes you can make to improve your life? Can each of us build a better “Life Liturgy”** over time, step by step? The idea is to accumulate victories in small battles, and over time to better love God, yourself, and others. Keep a record of what you’re changing. In years, hopefully the cumulative change is emormous.

I keep a list of the 40-day periods each year and the change I want to make. Sometimes I do nothing until later – I don’t criticize myself for missing a deadline or going back on something.

My “Life Liturgy” change for 1/1/22 is to keep Facebook off my phone. The next date is 2/10/22, and I have a couple of things under consideration for then.

What do you think, and what do you have planned for 2022?

** I had called this “Eternal Lent” for myself, but ended up liking the Liturgy concept better.