God is good

God is good!

Jonah 2:9:

"But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
   will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
   I will say, 'Salvation comes from the LORD.' "

Don't give me peace, Lord. Don't take away the difficulty.
Make me strong enough for it.

Acts 4:29:

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness

If I don't take this disgrace in hand, that would be the real dishonour.

 Acts 5:41:

The apostles left ... rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name

 And sure, people will say I'm treating this whole thing too seriously. "Not everything has to do with being a good person. Just enjoy life for once." Hm...


2 Peter 3:10-11:

The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives.

 Besides, there's no good way out of this one and you and I both know it.

1 Peter 3:17:

It is better ... to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

 Not that anything I'm experiencing can really be called suffering, of course.

2 Corinthians 4:17:

...our light and momentary troubles [the believers were being physically and psychologically persecuted]

If what he and the apostles were going through was "light and momentary", who am I to complain about this small thing?!

And in any case, whatever else happens, God is there.

Isaiah 41:13:

For I am the LORD your God
   who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
   I will help you.

thanks

In the last year or so I've read very little fiction (though I miss it). Most of what I've read, outside of school, has actually been C.S. Lewis. I just love his writing, his sensibility, and his talent for making difficult problems clear and pithy. Among the best are: the first book of Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, and The Four Loves (though I did also read his fiction; Till We Have Faces is amazing).

One of the most interesting things, however, was his collected letters. You really get to know him, and he was an even more interesting person than his philosophical writing suggests. But anyway, I was thinking of this quote, but I forgot to whom he wrote it or under what circumstances:

"When we pray, it seems ridiculous that we would ever have more things to ask for than to be thankful for. But I think we tend to prefer prayers that ask for thing after thing after thing -- forgetting the vast number of prayers that have been answered" (or something to that effect).

Compare with Thomas à Kempis in The Imitation of Christ:

"Looking at this world, the good man always has something to be sorrowful about."

Hmmm... I think they both have a point.

In the Sky

Discovered this tidbit among my notes a few weeks ago, though I don't remember writing it...

(Translated from the original French)

There was once a boy who loved to look, from his window, at the sky. He visited it often during the day to see outside, whether it was blue or cloudy. But his friends thought it was not good for a boy to do so; and when he said he was dreaming at the window, they replied that it was not good to dream. This he could not understand, and one by one his friends left him.

So afflicted was he by the loss of his friends that he decided to never again turn his eyes to the sky, not ever, but to travel the world, and from time to time stay in a little village or cottage that he'd find, and inquire whether someone would want to become his friend. He lived like this for three years.

There were some people who told him, “Go,” curtly; others who gave him bread and milk; and some others who invited him to their home to stay the night, the poor lad. But each night he closed his eyes to prevent them from seeing the stars and pulling him into a dream again. And nobody offered to be his friend.

At the end of the three years spent like that, the boy thought, “I find friends neither at night nor in the daytime. How then does one find a friend?” And, because he understood that he could not go on anymore, he stopped walking as he'd been doing. And he stayed where he was for a long time.

One day in the morning the boy slept, lying on the ground beside a little tree. And something strange happened to him: he felt himself dreaming. He took pleasure in this dream, because he dreamed that he was flying in the air, in the sky, where he had always wanted to live and spend his days.

Suddenly he was rudely awakened. A girl was there; she had bumped into him. She said, “Sorry! I’m so clumsy... I was looking up.”

The Sun said to the Tempest, Be Still; I Will Remove the Jacket

 to be read quickly aloud

We knew, some time ago, a man who thought himself a writer

and a poet and a servant of the Lord and tried to show it, but

we all knew it wasn’t true; we thought it was not good for him

to lead himself astray, and so we asked the angels and some other

rather shady folk to send a thousand tests his way until he either saw

what we was not—or, if he overcame, became
the things he thought he’d always been.

But the results were unforeseen. He neither failed the tests nor could

we really say in fairness that he’d borne the harness and succeeded;

he never recognized the tests or realized their significance.

Indeed he took the hook each time we looked and put it in his pocket

and forgot it, putting it aside and saving it for later. Then since

the man absorbed our every test, unloading every night the things

he’d stuffed into his pocket—coins and string and all manner of whatnot

besides the tests themselves—on his dresser, we gave it up at last,

abandoning the thought that he could be corrected. He thanked God

each night for the various odd phenomena which “faith hath brought”

(he didn’t know of our existence) “from the rich and blessing hand

of God”. The latter rarely said a thing in answer; we assume He didn’t

know any better than the man did of the tests and how we planned them.

However, one of us one day got the idea to make a test of will,

namely that the test itself would be, whether he should take the test at all;

that is to say, we laid a lovely trial on the ground to judge him whether

he would pick it up when he had found it; would he put it in his pocket—

you see, he’d vowed when he was young to take whatever God would

give him, graciously; but now we took that vow and turned it round,

delivering for once, instead of pain and suffering which he ignored,

a gift, too lovely to be true, disguised as being from his Lord. We’d see

if he would take the bait and only know it was temptation once it was

too late. And thusly, said the craftiest among us, we will wait.

He came upon it while he went from one place to another.

It caught his eye and gave him pause and contemplation.

“Normally my God delivers unto me the simple things,”

he mused, “unprecious things—or so it’s been since my salvation—

which I have borne and borne and borne; perhaps He’s bored

by this; or else perhaps he’s satisfied? Perhaps this new thing’s a reward?”

And so he justified its taking, as if given by the Lord,
instead of us.

And instantly he fell in love, the moment he had picked it up.

Exactly as we’d thought, it took him over, grabbed his soul

and made him worship it instead of God; and we were pleased,

and gave him, for our sport, the gift of writing, and of poetry, and of

considering himself a righteous person and a servant of the Lord.

And there was joy on earth, and peace, and everything that mankind

has inherently adored; and there was happiness in Hell.

going, staying, being, praying

I haven't said anything here for a little while.

It feels like I began life about two months ago and ended it now.
Not, of course, that Luke is dead. Far from it. But the person who temporarily lived here is moving out. And I myself will come back in after.
Sigh.
I liked having some company.

I've only even remotely resembled a good person for about the last 30 hours (and not nearly all of them), and it's not a lot of fun.
I never realized before that if it's easy to be good, you're not doing enough...

But through it all, I feel closer to God, anyway.

(I've never felt particularly close to Him, except on a few rare occasions. I'm too intellectual for that; I come to understand some point of theology, back it up from the Bible, answer questions, and have no idea who or what God is.)

But when you think you don't need Him, He breaks you and damn sure you'll come crawling back.
And rightly so. He's the only light or reason I can rely on right now.

God, please override my will with your own... I don't know how to do it, but I want to.

If, that is, He reads my blog... pretty sure nobody does! :P