I Have Set before You Life and Death

Misty days and Spring rains have given way to Summer heat; screen doors are flung open for cooling breezes; there are pots of flowers thriving on the porch. . . One of those is quite new, a lovely ribbed green ceramic creation with pink vincas blooming over the edge. It was a surprise gift from Nick, when he unexpectedly popped by my office on his day off this week.

Sometimes we need delightful surprises of flowers and monster-sized cookies, soft dresses on sale, and precious days with family. We need sad songs and sweet ones, too. We need bright smiles and long kisses, an unlooked-for hug on a hard day, and honest tears as we work through discerning what is right and best. We need meandering walks to drink in late sunshine and colour-drenched flowers. We need crickets and quiet moments on the porch, talking with God...which I think mostly means listening hard in the silences between words.

It has been both a restful, beautiful Spring with silvery mists and clouds rolling in over the mountains, and simultaneously a difficult season of stress, solicitude, and stealthy sorrow snaking its way into my family. I loved going home in April to take Nick to meet my family and enjoy the glorious spring beauty of the Midwest. I loved driving to Kansas to meet up with my immediate family to celebrate my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary... It was lovely to reconnect with many of my cousins, though the days were laced with a bittersweet undertone, as my uncle's health is deteriorating rapidly. 

Though it may not sound like it, the thread weaving the beauty, the bittersweet, the bite of sorrow is always the Lord of all. Not simply in the Bible Project podcasts or daily lectio divina of Pray as You Go, or even in Tim Keller sermons (how sorrowed I have been with his recent passing!)... Though also exactly in and through those things. Yet it is the Lord asking me questions from the mouth of the man I love, from my best friends, from unexpected sources. There is the question of God giving us choices, life and death—which will we choose? It sounds so easy: choose life! But am I seeing death as life? Will I choose wrongly because my eyes are mis-seeing? And what does that stem from? Is it because I am unused to looking at the goodness of the Lord?

What does loving someone well look like? Lately it has involved both saying what I need and setting boundaries. It involves sacrifice of time, and also listening fully engaged. It means being quieter than I have been lately. Do I remember that God is the Someone I love first? Am I loving Him well?

Questions, questions, questions. . . And Beauty. And sorrow. And joy. And hope. And boundaries. And learning to say hard things. And quiet. And open hands. It all weaves and flows; it all whirls in the delicate dance of this life we live, the air we've been gifted to breathe. All these come as gifts of some kind, even the gifts that feel like pain. As God gently, graciously unpeels our fingers from 'round the things we cling to, we stop strangling them and allow the breath of life to come in. . .

Come, Holy Spirit. . .

*Photo stills from The Cottage Fairy, no copyright infringement intended (I just want to share the beauty)...

What your life says about what you worship...

Imagine, crowds pressed into an amphitheatre watching with disgusting eagerness a man being ripped apart, limb from body, by wild horses. Smell the stench of the sweat and excitement of those around you. Breathe in the terror and agony of the man in the ring. Feel your heartbeat accelerate at the squeals of the horses being driven mad in order to torture a human.

Now, smell the sweat and excitement of another crowd. Listen to the roar of those around you. See the wild colours, vulgar gestures, grimacing faces (both in the crowd and in the ring) raging about you. Where are you this time? In an amphitheatre filled with thousands upon thousands of persons, yes. Unimaginably huge monitors flash replays. The smell of beer and sweat hang in the air - your favourite sports team has just taken the field in the second half of their game.

In the gladiatorial theatre those in the crowd worshipped the emperor, but they also exalted violence and entertainment.

In our current culture many persons give lip-service to God, but in their hearts they worship something else.

My question to you is, what does your life show that you worship?

You probably know (or are) someone like my neighbour. She has a Colts jersey, hat, and autographed card from Peyton Manning. She sports a Colts flag and tire cover on her porch and vehicle. Sundays after church you can find her watching the big game. Everyone who knows her knows that she is a Colts fan.*

Maybe you hate sports... But perhaps you cannot stand being single. You are always hoping that you will meet someone to spend the rest of your life with. You want to raise a family with them and grow old together. Or you may have met that special person and now you have children. Are your children the apple of your eye? Does their love, approval, happiness, or success mean more to you than anything else?

Are you like me, reading [somewhat less than] copious amounts of books, articles, and essays? Does your conversation focus on philosophy or historical figures and writers? Do you value a reader, an 'intellectual', over someone who watches liberal amounts of television?

Maybe you spend much of your time at work, working out, cooking organic meals, eating fast food, trying to follow rules, living a raucous party life, trying to look young, or one of a myriad of other things.

What do your habits say about what you worship?

When someone walks into your home or room, what will they see that you value? What do most of your conversations focus around? How do you spend most of your hours each day? What do you think about when you do not have to focus on something in particular?

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things.

~ Philippians 3.18-19

What is your functional saviour? You might know that no one and no thing but Jesus can save you from the end result of sin (death). But what are you setting your mind upon? Where is your focus? What is that one thing more that if you had it you would be happy? What is something that if it were taken from you, you would want to cease living? Is it your job, your house, romance, marriage, children, parents, your physique, your country, your talent (singing, writing, athletic ability, etc.), sports, a person, or something else?

Paul finishes out his thought in Philippians thus, "For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself."

Are you willing for Jesus to subdue even you to Himself? Are you eager to spend time with Jesus? Do persons you talk with know by your actions alone that you are a Christian? What does your prayer life look like in God's eyes? Do your thoughts go naturally to Scripture or praise? Does knowing that it cost God the very lifeblood of His Son to make you His child overwhelm you, or does it bore you?

I am not saying that I am always eager to spend time in prayer, praise, or Scripture. However, I want to be eager to know God more deeply. I want to see God's holiness. I am willing to know God through suffering and sorrow. I want to practise loving others like Jesus loves me... Even though it costs, and even though it hurts, and even if it is not returned. And I am scared to death that the LORD will actually take me up on teaching me to be more like Him in these ways. But I am willing.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

~ Colossians 3.1-4

For a more in-depth look at the idols of our hearts and how to shift our focus, listen to Tim Keller here.

~ Johanna

*My neighbour, mentioned above, is also a Christian... I am not bashing her love for her team, nor sports as sports. I was merely showing that even a good thing (even morality) can become an idol if not submitted to Christ.

"I'm just being honest!"

*Note: If you don't have time to read all of this, skip to the Elisabeth Elliot quotation and following.


We live in a world, even a Christian subculture, that values 'honesty', 'genuineness', 'authenticity' and 'transparency'. I value all of those things a great deal. Yet I find that I value 'authenticity' more than I value refraining from gossip; 'genuine expression' more than not sinning in my anger (or my angry words); and I disregard building up the Body of Christ in favour of 'transparent' feelings about fellow Christians.

I am not alone in this strangely 'weighted' values system. Many other Christians are the same. We want to express our feelings, our emotions - even if in our anger we say untruths about someone. We desire to rationalise that we aren't really gossiping, we are just explaining the events (and persons involved) that hurt our feelings, frustrated us, etc.

Yesterday I was twice presented with the idea that honesty is not always the best policy.

I was listening to pastor Tim Keller talk about Removing Idols of the Heart, where he related the story of the forgiven prostitute who was kissing Jesus' feet at the house of Simon (the former leper). At one point in his illustration, Dr. Keller says that Simon wasn't more moral because he had been forgiven less than this woman (implying that he has sinned less). However, Keller's next statement caught my ear. He said that neither was the prostitute somehow more moral (according to our changed standards - as if we had the authority to do so) by being honest while Simon was a hypocrite.

In the afternoon I was reading Discipline: The Glad Surrender by Elisabeth Elliot where I came across a story that proved Mrs. Elliot-Gren does actually sin sometimes. She was speaking of her annoyance at a young woman, and at her husband's correction for letting her annoyance show. Her response was a running commentary of self-defence in her head. It was certainly 'honest' and 'genuine'.

Elisabeth Elliot went on to say,

" 'Reality' is often evil. There is a common belief that a frank expression of what one naturally feels and thinks is always good because it is 'honest'. This is not true. If the feelings and thoughts are wrong in themselves, how can expressing them verbally [or via e-mail, facebook, etc.] add up to something good? It seems to me they add up to three sins: wrong feeling, wrong thought, wrong action."

(page 66, Revell/Baker, ©1982 - emphasis mine)

So let us be honest: let us call slander by its name. Let us stomp on our own tongues to extinguish the fires of gossip. Let us cease from anger and forsake wrath that gives place to sin... Even if we were simply 'expressing ourselves'. Some forms of 'self-expression' are sin. I know, because I sin often. In the months since I have been back from Oxford, my patient mother has had many frustrated calls from me where I have 'vented' about a particular issue. However, in my 'authenticity', I confess that I sinned in just about every previously mentioned area – maybe all of them.

We must give place to emotions, but the place for our emotions (which includes things like rage, bitterness, resentment, even frustration) is found in the piercing eyes of the Man of Sorrows. When we look into the very eyes of Jesus, all of our hurts, unrighteous anger, jealousies, lusts, etc. die. Not because we haven't experienced real pain, frustration, desires, and so on, but because Jesus, too, has dealt with derision and scorn. He, too, has served annoying people. He had to be flexible at the last second. His closest friends deserted Him. Those in authority constantly badgered Him. People mocked Him and goaded Him. He knows.

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. ~ Hebrews 4:15

Jesus experienced rejection, hatred, scorn, abandonment (by His disciples and His own Father), and much more, but He did not sin in the way He reacted to those things. He was honest in His cry of "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" but He did not reject His mission or His Father at that point. He was obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2).

We must daily pray that we may have the mind of Christ. When we meet with joy and pain, gladness and frustration, hope and despair, ungodly anger and righteous indignation, unkindness and overwhelming blessing, unfairness and injustice (completely different things!), doubt and trust, and the myriad of other emotions that daily confront us, we will be able to respond aright if we have asked the Holy Spirit to help us put on the mind of Christ.

Remember, honesty is not always the best policy if you are 'expressing yourself' from wrong motives or in a sinful way. Look into the pages of Scripture, and into the eyes of Christ crucified, for direction on how to deal honestly with your emotions.