Today I’m sharing a piece written by Glenn Parkinson, the retired former pastor of my church. He writes: “Biblical hope expectantly waits for what we know we cannot find in this life, but are certain will be ours when Christ returns.” Hope like this can transform our every day lives!
Well worth a read (and a subscription)!
What Christ’s Return Means to Me
Fellow travelers,
Today, I post a poem I heard years ago, recently remembered and found online eventually. The title is “A New Leaf”, author unknown, and compares a child/teacher relationship to us and Jesus. His mercies are new every morning and every day.
“He came to my desk with a quivering lip, the lesson was done. ‘Have you a new sheet for me, dear teacher? I’ve spoiled this one.’ I took his sheet, all soiled and blotted and gave him a new one all unspotted. And into his tired heart I cried, ‘Do better now, my child.’
I went to the throne with a trembling heart; the day was done. ‘Have you a new day for me, dear Master? I’ve spoiled this one.’ He took my day, all soiled and blotted and gave me a new one all unspotted. And into my tired heart he cried, ‘Do better now, my child.'”
Today is part 2 of a series on the second Beatitude from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” – Matthew 5:4. In the first post, I wrote about how mourning logically follows our awareness of needing Jesus because we are poor in Spirit. When we mourn this way as Christians, we deeply acknowledge that we aren’t happy with the consequences of having sought our own way.
Many religions and philosophies see no value in sorrow. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers hated it and strived to avoid it. Eastern religions sometimes deny its reality and seek to live above it. On the other hand, in Christianity and Judaism stories like those of Job are highly valued, and verses like these from Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 are common –
“It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”
In Christianity, mourning can have value, helping sanctify us, making us more like Christ. Mourning can be a form of confession – a way of saying the same thing about sin that God does. When we mourn doing wrong things or neglecting things that should have been done, we agree with God on what is “wrong” and what “should” be done. It is not the same as repentance but is often a preceding part of it.
The framework of the series of posts on Matthew 5:3 – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” – shows many ways living outside the kingdom of heaven fails us and others:
Therefore, we should mourn! Emotionally reacting to these things means that knowing we are “poor in spirit” is more than just an intellectual or logical idea. Sin needs to mean something to us, deeply. However, this mourning is not the same as despair, depression, or meaninglessness. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, spoken through the wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings: “Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt.” Only God can see the end, and there is more to come! In Christianity it is but part of a journey, or in the case of the Sermon on the Mount, part of a sequence of Beatitudes.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” – Matthew 5:4
In the next post of the series, I plan to talk about Jesus’ reaction to death and the consequences of sin, focusing on John 11: 33 and 11:38. He knows more about it than we ever will, and He cares deeply.
This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here
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.
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”
