A Changed Heart

resting by His cross
my rebel's heart is altered
now quiet at last

Rotting Tree? Or Mighty Oak?

Jim Downing, one of the patriarchs of the Navigator work, was asked, "Why is it that so few men finish well?" His response was profound. He said, "They learn the possibility of being fruitful without being pure . . . they begin to believe that purity doesn't matter. Eventually, they become like trees rotting inside that are eventually toppled by a storm." (Emphasis mine)

I remember a few years back, it seemed the notion of "finishing well" was highlighted quite a bit, maybe in connection all the Promise Keepers events going on. In almost all of life, it seems that finishing is much more difficult than starting.

Today, for example, I finished painting the living room and a hall. This project was begun by Number One Son back before winter. It was just paint - nothing to tear up, nothing to repair - just lube the wall with pigmented latex. Easy as pie. It was months between the initiation and the completion.

And it is true in my spiritual life, as well. I remember the excitement and zeal of the early days of my faith. I remember spending hours thumbing through the Bible on any given day. I couldn't get enough. I remember anticipating meetings and gatherings of other believers and not wanting to leave them when it was over. Now, while I still desire these things, the energy is not the same. I think I see slippage in attitudes, in prayers, in ministry. I don't have the attention span I once did.

Maybe it is age. Maybe.

Or maybe, like Downing said, have I learned to be 'fruitful without purity?' Or said another way, am I settling for appearances instead of performance? Style over substance?

I hope not and, as I said, I notice the weakness, and hope my efforts in combating it, by God's grace, are real and successful.

(Downing quote from Desiring God blog - linked here.)

Grace For Grace

I spent the better part of an hour Saturday, scraping double-sided tape up off a concrete floor. It was tape that is designed to keep carpets in place and was therefore not intended to come right back up off the floor. The carpets it was holding down were in a booth at the exhibition center and the whole idea was to keep the carpets down and immovable so patrons would not trip or slip. The intentions were good, but the consequences of the decision remained a big secret until time to pack everything up at the end of the day, after a herd of humans had pressed the tape to the floor like a steamroller squishing asphalt.

My connection to the whole deal was that my wife's employer had the booth and I was there to pick Kathy up. I was waiting in the car, listening to oldies, when the distress signal came. I went in and was soon on the floor scraping tape.

It was a good day because I didn't resent it. And I'm thankful to God for that. On not good days, I would have resented the interruption to my "schedule," resented having to help somebody that should have known better and, after all, you made this mess, you clean it up.

But God is good, and has made His goodness known to me and gave me the grace to lay hold of the grace to be of service to somebody else.

And that is no small thing.

Taste and See

My lovely bride and I were reading a selection from John Piper's Taste and See the other day. One portion was especially good for my soul and I'd like to share it. It's a quote from John Owen.

"The revelation of Christ deserves the severest of our thoughts, the best of our meditations and our utmost diligence in them . . . "

There was more, of course, but this was enough to spur my heart and prick my conscience.

Make Plans, Not Resolutions

I don't know where you are at, of course, but for me, this was timely:

“First, God is central to plans and motives. God is not first on a priority list, but rather central to all areas of life.”

Said another way, God is not first among equals (the rest of the list), but the star around which all things move, their orbit ordered by that star.

The article from The Resurgence.

Editorial Note

Recently I had posted a photo of our president that had been altered to make him look like Heath Ledger’s Joker from the movie The Dark Knight. I removed the image after someone I am close to was offended by it. This friend reminded me that I have a responsibility as a Christian to act in a manner which is appropriate. And while I still believe that Obama’s agenda is destructive and should be opposed by all; and that satire is an effective weapon, particularly when the object thinks so highly of himself, I probably crossed the line. I am sorry.

So I took the photo down and replaced it with the chastised puppy.

A good post in a similar vein from Justin Taylor’s Between Two Worlds.

True, But For Whom?

While waiting to find out if I would participate in our participatory form of government today, I was plowing through a book I brought along. As it turns out, there was less waiting and more participating than I had anticipated, but I did get the chance to note an interesting bit from the book.

The book is Tony Dungy's "Uncommon" which was given to me at Father's Day. Dungy begins Chapter 10 with a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Now, I readily admit that, when it comes to Shakespeare, I am an ignoramus. I recognize some quotes that I hear from time to time, but not because I am actually familiar with the work. I recognize them because many have become part of the cultural fabric. Cultural Fabric, incidentally, can be purchased by the yard and is much cheaper in places like Miami, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Austin, TX.

(Yes, the guy who knows nothing of Shakespeare IS making jokes about others lacking culture. But just ask yourself, where else are you going to find this kind of breath-taking irony at such low prices?)

The quote is this:

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

When I read this, I was flabbergasted. A little bit, anyway. Here, as I already mentioned, is a quote that I've heard before. That is, I've heard the "to thine own self be true" part. Usually on a TV show or in a movie is where I hear it and is usually deployed to justify some self-centered act. In other words, "you won't be happy unless you look out for Number One." But what I saw here, for the first time, was that the familiar part was nestled in a larger thought, roughly, be honest with yourself and you will be honest with others. At least that's how I understand it.

It is such a stark difference in meaning! "To thine own self be true", standing alone is an end in itself; "to thy own self be true" as a part of the larger quote is a means to an end. The former has self as its focus and latter has others as the focus.

The two meanings could not be more different.

Note: I have confessed my ignorance about Shakespeare and so I may have misunderstood him here. I'm willing to be corrected, if I have missed it. Let me know in Comments.

125. Beautiful Music Together

I’m generally a happy person, so when I listen to music, I want music that, at a minimum, does not drain my happiness.

Until recently, I put a great deal of stock in ‘styles’ of music or ‘types’ of music I liked or didn't like. Something like “I hate country” or “I hate disco”, and I would use these 'opinions' to guide my music selection. But this approach is often informed merely by peer pressure or the ever fickle culture and is so insufficient as to almost always miss the point.

What is most important is my heart, the furnace of my soul and source of all my outward action, including my mood and attitude. Obviously, my heart’s health is primarily dependent on being happy in the Lord each day and then, as the day goes on, I will encounter stuff that either aids my happiness or doesn’t, like music.

That said, I’ve decided that ‘genres’ of music is just not enough information alone for picking music and I suppose that's not really groundbreaking. But the motive is the happiness of my soul no matter what the alleged 'genre'. Where I can get fooled is by the memories that some music evokes and sometimes that's enough to trick you into 'liking' a tune, but not because you really like it, but because it reminds you of a time or a place or people. And that's not the point.

The point is, does the music cooperate with my current happiness or drain me of it?

Now, what's really interesting is my wife wrote about this very topic on her blog today and neither of us knew what the other was doing!

Stuff like that makes me happy, too!