Hit ‘Em High

As some of our own poets have said,

If I hit 'em high, hit 'em high, hit 'em high
And you hit 'em low, hit 'em low, hit 'em low

If that line doesn’t ring a bell, be sure to add the 1996 hit motion picture Space Jam (the original) to your watchlist. In any case, what’s the point? Point is this sounds like something Isaiah the prophet said:

Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven (Isaiah 7:11).

King Ahaz foolishly refuses (in false piety). So the Lord rebukes him, giving his own sign instead. What shall it be, high or low? How about both. He gives the sign of the virgin birth (verse 14), which checks both boxes at once. He hit ‘em high and he hit ‘em low, high as God and low as creation.

God the Son, exalted in heaven, is conceived in the womb—or as David says, “intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15). And then (as if to complete the chiasm) he went low for us in death and high for us in glory, where we’re going too.

Twenty Years Later

Well, as far as I can tell I called upon the Name of the Lord twenty years ago today (Jan 9, 2005). Time does fly! I must confess that he has never failed me once during these years. It is true, he has placed unlooked-for burdens upon me, but they have caused me to grow in ways equally unlooked-for. He has also granted me many special surprises along the way (mostly of the people kind). Here’s to twenty more years of goodness and mercy, which follow us all the days of our lives as we follow our Good Shepherd.

A Resolution Worth Keeping

When Isaiah caught an eyeful of the Lord’s glory, he was deeply convicted of his sin. He had something specific in mind, too (as the convicted man always does): in this case, his sin of speech. He says:

Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts! (Isaiah 6:5)

Much of our sin is in our speech. Let us resolve to keep guard over our mouths this year and to measure our words more carefully. Let us learn to hold our peace. And may the God who cleansed Isaiah’s lips with the live coal from the altar (surely a figure of our crucified Savior) cleanse our speech and encourage our hearts through the fiery gospel.

Wings

If I had wings, I would fly.

-Warren G

Isaiah saw seraphim and mentions first their wings. What wondrous things they must have been! Man has no wings. We are bound in God’s will to this ground from which we were made. And yet sometimes we long for them, as King David says: “Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away” (Psalm 55:6). But wings or no, one day we will fly. It suits us, therefore, to live humbly before the Lord until that time when he calls us to meet him in the air.

A Grace in the Hem is Worth Two in the Heavens

You may recall that Isaiah saw the hem of the Lord’s robe filling the temple. Like the woman who was instantly healed, the hem of the Lord‘s robe is that which we grasp of him by faith. The temple foreshadowed the gospel economy of God’s mercy to sinners in the body of his Son. Christ crucified is full of the fringes of the infinite Majesty of the infinite God—hems of grace which guilt-ridden sinners may take by the fistful.

Always Enough Time

For those who want to serve God, he will provide the time. The willing heart will find a way. Joshua made the sun stand still through his prayer—and so, through faith even we may find just the time we need to execute the Lord’s will in our busy lives.

It’s Giving Thanks

Gratitude is a vibe, an aura. You can tell when someone has the ol’ attitude of gratitude…a posture of appreciation. Thankfulness is universal—not only when we are blessed with the things we want most, but when we begin to recognize the innumerable gifts of God in our lives that we don’t deserve. It is a correct view of our gracious Creator. Let’s represent him well with a thankful spirit before him.

What is Evil?

Scholars are divided, but the old idea of evil is that of privation. In other words, evil does not exist as a thing on its own but rather it is the corruption of that which is good.

All that God created is good; sin and evil corrupt these good things. Let’s think of sin this way and see it as that which threatens ever to undo us. Let’s also rejoice in the healing refuge, the mighty cross!

The Reformed Doctrine of Going With the Flow

Philosophers like Lao Tzu have taught the importance of moving with the nature of things rather than against them. Interestingly, his concept of the Tao is akin to the Greek concept of the Logos. As the apostles (and church history) demonstrate for us, believers may profit from the true conclusions of natural philosophers as they grasp at the truth of the invisible God and the principles of his creation.

But the philosophy of moving with things as they are also finds expression in the biblical doctrine of God’s loving sovereignty in our lives. If we trust him, we can embrace the people and predicaments he has put in our daily lives instead of wishing things were otherwise and trying to make them so (one of the classic blunders). So as it turns out Reformed theology is pretty zen.

What Makes What We Say True?

We may happen to be right about something when we make a guess or repeat what we’ve heard, but what we think and say is truest when we think and speak that which we know to be true. A word is true, says Augustine, when it has “sprung from things that are known.” As one of the poets has said,

No man could stop my flow

Because I know what I speak and I speak what I know.

Let’s think and speak in this way.