"One Thing Needful"

      May I never suppose I am in Christ unless I am a new creature, never think I am born of the Spirit unless I mind the things of the Spirit, never rest satisfied with professions of belief and outward forms and services, while my heart is not right with Thee.
     May I judge my sincerity in religion by my fear to offend Thee, my concern to know Thy will, my willingness to deny myself.
     May nothing render me forgetful of Thy glory, or turn me aside from Thy commands, or shake my confidence in Thy promises, or offend Thy children.
     Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful.
     May I not be inattentive to the design of Thy dealings with me, or insensible under Thy rebukes, or immobile at Thy calls.
      May I learn the holy art of abiding in Thee, or being in the world and not of it, of making everything not only consistent with by conducive to my religion.

- "Sincerity" from Valley of Vision

This semester has been overwhelming.  Between RA responsibilities, working in the admissions department, singing in Evidence, serving in church, and being a full-time seminary student, somehow activities overtook life.  It was bad...I'll just leave it at that.

A number of things helped get life back into proper perspective, but one of them was hiding from campus life in a basement over Fall Break.  There was time to sleep, eat fruits and vegetables, sleep more, read some disappointingly limp fiction, sleep some more, and spend more time than usual in devotions.  The lines from Valley of Vision that were particularly meaningful were, "Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful."

The semester had become so full of the "temporal occupations" of memorizing music, various prayer meetings late at night, rushing from meeting to meeting, and squeezing bits of Hebrew homework into cracks in the schedule, that the "one things needful" - resting in Christ's finished work on my behalf - had been pushed out of sight, and when that happens, it is only a matter of time before life falls apart.  

There's still a lot to do.  But I hope that I have learned  not to let "temporal occupations" crowd out the "one thing needful."

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

    and to inquire in His temple.

- Psalm 27:4

"To You It Has Been Given to See"

The mornings this week have been delightfully occupied with a low-stress, confidence-boosting Greek translation class.  Armed with our Greek readers’ edition New Testaments and a couple of translation aids, the professor, the other student, and I read selected passages from the New Testament .  By Friday, we will have translated [fut pft act ind] selections from every New Testament author except Jude.  Part of the beauty of the class has been seeing connections between passages I wouldn’t have imaged were connected, such as Matthew 13 and I Peter 1.

Matthew 13:10-17

And the disciples, approaching him, said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"  He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given….For this reason I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor understand.  And the prophecy of Isaiah has come true in them, saying: ‘Hearing you will hear and never ever understand, and seeing you will see and never ever perceive.  For the hearts of this people are insensitive, their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes are closed: Lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.’  But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.  For truly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous ones longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” [author’s translation]

The parable of the soils and the interpretation of the parable of the soils bracket this paragraph.  The different types of soils represent different kinds of people, some to whom it was given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven and some to whom it was not given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.  We can see examples of these two types of people in Matthew.  The disciples do not initially understand Christ’s teaching that He will die and rise again, but as He continues to explain His words to them, they understand that He will die for sin and rise again.  They were able to understand Christ’s teaching because God had given them sight and hearing.  In contrast, the Pharisees listened a great deal to Christ’s words, but never saw or heard what He was saying because God had not given them sight or hearing.

Christ uses a play on words with see and hear.  Through most of the paragraph, those who don’t see and hear are not God’s people.  The disciples are different because they are God’s people who see and hear.  However, in the final sentence of the paragraph, Jesus speaks of sight and hearing in a technical sense meaning to see the fulfillment of what was promised in the past.  The prophets did not see the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, not because they did not believe them, but because they did not see it happen during their lifetime.  They believed that God would provide a sacrifice for sin, but they did not see it happen.  The disciples see and hear not only in the sense that they understand mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but also in the sense that they see the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven fulfilled. This kind of sight and hearing was desired but never experienced by God’s people in the Old Testament. 

Roughly 30 years later, one of the seeing and hearing disciples, Peter, wrote these words:

“Concerning which salvation, the  prophets, having prophesied, sought out and inquired concerning the grace which is for you, trying to find out at what time and in what circumstances the spirit of Christ in them was predicting the suffering for Christ and the subsequent glories.  To the prophets it was revealed that they were not serving themselves but you….” [I Peter 1:10-12, author’s translation]

Peter comforts the suffering believers by reminding them of their salvation.  This salvation, he explains, was something that the prophets tried very hard to understand.  They desired to know when and how Christ would suffer and be glorified.  But, in God’s plan, the prophets were ministering to God’s people in the future who would understand.  The prophets longed to see and hear what the disciples saw and heard, the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Here we are: New Covenant believers who are blessed with an understanding of God’s plan that the prophets only dreamed of.  Look what God has opened our eyes to!  See how much of His plan He has shown to us!  Are we not greatly blessed?  And ought we not to praise the Father for opening our eyes?

Shakespeare and Satisfaction

Last weekend, I attended a free production of a Shakespeare play held outdoors.  A big group of friends went, and there are few things in the world so comfortable and happy as spending time with good friends.  Two productions were running: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Antony and Cleopatra.  Not being a big tragedy fan, I planned on seeing Midsummer.  However, the organized side of my personality was pre-occupied with Hebrew and didn't check which show was running that night.  The result was that when we arrived at the park, Antony and Cleopatra was running. 


It was an entertaining show - quite funny on many levels.  I couldn't endorse it and probably won't see it again because it was quite a bit more descriptive than necessary (one of those times when it's not edifying to be familiar with Elizabethan English!).  But the value of seeing it was that it highighted the world's best.  Theater is a high form of art.  Antony and Cleopatra is great literature.  Shakespeare is considered to be the finest expression of love in the English languages.  But after the play, I thought, "Is this it?  Did I really just  spend 2.5 hours watching the highest form of English culture?"  Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time and hope to see the next Shakespeare production, but the whole thing had a hollow feeling about it.


Part of the reaction probably comes from not studying Shakespeare, but part of the reaction is similar to Solomon's in Ecclesiastes 2:4-11:

"I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself.  I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.  I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.  I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.  I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the children of man.  So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me.  And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.  Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."

Solomon recognized that the world's best did not satisfy.  Trying to find satisfaction in landscaping, livestock, wealth, art, relationships, and Shakespeare is empty.  The world's best does not satisfy us because God did not make us to be satisfied by it.  God created man for fellowship with Himself, and nothing less than that will satisfy him.  Man's problem is that he looks for satisfaction in things and people instead of God.


C. S. Lewis wrote in "The Weight of Glory":

"...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased."

When a person has been united with Christ in a saving relationship with God, he is satisfied in that relationship.  Then, he may enjoy the things that Solomon and Lewis mention because he is first satisfied in God.

Creation, Light, and Re-Creation

Here is a beautiful theme in Scripture that I ran into yesterday while studying Christ's kingship.  It reminded me of God's creative use of word pictures to communicate something that is bigger than words.  The following paragraph came from a fat book of theology, so pardon the author's long sentences and enjoy the his content:)

Arise, shine, for you light has come,

And the glory of the LORD has risen upon  you.

For behold, darkness will cover the earth,

And deep darkness the peoples;

But the LORD will rise upon you,

And His glory will appear upon you.

Nations will come to your light,

And kings to the brightness of your rising.

Isaiah 60:1-3

"...Why is light underscored in Isaiah?  ...  The reference that "darkness will cover the earth, and deep darkness the peoples," likely alludes to Gen. 1:2-4: "And darkness was over the surface of the deep....Then God said 'Let there be light'; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness."  Isaiah 60:1-3 is depicting the coming restoration and redemption of Israel [New Covenant salvation, ed.] against the background of Gen. 1:2-4.  The reason for doing this is that Isaiah understands the future blessing on Israel and the world to be a recapitulation of the first creation, so that Israel's and the nations' salvation is painted as a new creation and emergence from spiritual darkness.  The same notion of new-creational light presumably is also in the mind of the NT allusions to these Isaiah verses.  The idea of new creation is conveyed in the NT uses is also indicated by Paul's statement in 2 Cor. 4:6: "For God, who said, 'Light shall shine out of darkness,' is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.""

- "Resurrection as New Creation and Kingdom in the Gospels and Acts" from 

A New Testament Biblical Theology by G. K. Beale

Want Something to Read?

Ever summer I set goals of books I want to read...and every summer I fail (!).  Not that I don't read anything during the summer, but my reading seems to be lighter; the brain is a bit fried after nine months of classes.  Last summer, the goal was Mortification of Sin, and then the entire summer was spent pulling weeds for the City of Hutchinson.  This summer's project is Life Together by Bonhoeffer, and the entire summer will probably be spent memorizing vocabulary lists.  (Actually, this summer's project was supposed to be Ladd's New Testament Theology, but that was a bit ambitions for a student attempting to learn Hebrew in ten weeks:)  


Since none of these lovely books are likely get read this summer, I am concentrating on finishing one of my favorite devotionals, The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prays and Devotions.  Returning to it this summer has been a great joy!  The authors seem to be able to express my own desires better than I can, and their honest, God-centered view of life is both refreshing and challenging.  If you are interested in something to add to your devotions this summer, you can find it at at http://www.amazon.com or http://www.monergismbooks.com/.


Here is several selections from a prayer that was a blessing to me recently.

Quicken me to call upon Thy name, for my mind is ignorant, my thoughts vagrant, my affections earthly, my heart unbelieving, and only Thy Spirit can help my infirmities.

I approach Thee as Father and Friend, my portion forever, my exceeding joy, my strength of heart.

I believe in Thee as the God of nature, the ordainer of providence, the sender of Jesus my Savior....

May the truth that is in Him illuminate in me all that is dark, establish in me all that is wavering, comfort me in all that is wretched, accomplish in me all that is of Thy goodness, and glorify in me the name of Jesus....

Teach me that Christ cannot be the way if I am the end, that He cannot be Redeemer if I am my own savior, that there can be no true union with Him while the creature has my heart, that faith accepts Him as Redeemer and Lord or not at all.