The Twelve Days of Christmas (sort of)

Classic Christmas cheer from "Straight No Chaser":

On Gentleness (Homily 59)

We're all labeled.

"...Thy gentleness has made me great." Ps. 18:35b

To speak of God's gentleness is to speak of His understanding. He knows us. He knows how small and frail we are, how limited and imperfect in our knowledge and abilities. He knows our propensity to fear, and He knows our frustrated desire to be better than what we are. We cannot fool Him. Our weakness is like an open book before Him, like an open wound, and He sees us for the bumbling fools that we are, sees our strutting and posturing for the facades that they are. He sees. He knows. He understands, and on the basis of that understanding He pities us. Not as our betters "pity" us, with a smirk hiding a sneer, but as a father would his children (Ps. 103:13-14): with a smile, and a loving, helping, outstretched hand.

God handles with care.

It is the gentleness of God that makes us great. It is by His mercies that we are not consumed. Where is boasting? It is removed. Where is pride? It has been swallowed up in love. What can we say to these things, for who is a god like this? Many gods have understood who we are and what we're made of, but they have not responded with gentleness, nor with pity, save the "pity" of the smirk-painted sneer. Our God never smirks or sneers. He forgives. He heals. He upholds by His right hand. He reaches out to lift up, to redeem our souls out of hell, to show us the paths of life (Ps. 16:10-11). We have deserved none of this, earned none of this. How could we? We are weak and frail, but God responds to our weakness with gentleness, breathing boundless grace and mercy through our lifelessness like a soft breeze sends dead leaves dancing across the ground. And because we are always weak, God is always gracious. Therefore, we only have grounds for joy, for we are caught up in a whirl of gentleness, of God's gentleness making us greater than we ever were before. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

On Goodness (Homily 58)

"...men of the world who have their portion in this life, and whose belly You fill with Your hidden treasure. They are full of children and leave their substance to them. As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied, when I awake, with Your likeness." Ps. 17:14-15

Scandalous!

Every good thing come from God (James 1:17), and He gives good things even to those who do not love Him (Matt. 5:44-45). He gives them passions to pursue and talents to realize those passions. He gives them minds to think and reason to arrive (in part) at the truth. He gives them hearts to love and the ability to find love, to see and appreciate beauty and desire its presence, to long for and attempt to deliver goodness to others. He gives them strength to accomplish things as well as various comforts to succor their weaknesses. He gives rain for their harvests and opportunities for their enterprises. He delivers their enemies into their hands and delivers them from their enemies. He gives them peaceful sleep and happy days, and all this without asking. It is and has been scandalous how good God is to those who do not love Him (Job 21:7-13; Ps. 73:2-5; Jer. 12:1-2). But there is one good thing He does not give them, for they do not, will not ask for it: Himself.

"I am restless for You."

God gives all good things because He is all good things. They find their source and being in Him and are meant to draw us to Him (Rom. 2:4) like rivers flowing to the ocean. The goodness of God belongs to all (Acts 14:17), but God Himself belongs only to His people, His children, His beloved and bride, to those who are satisfied with Him alone. One can never be satisfied with the goodness of God alone. You will always want more, reducing God to a blessing machine for your own avarice. But to have God Himself, to seek God and be found by God, is to find the Good behind the goodness and the goodness thrown in. Then His goodness is no longer a blessing but a bonus, for God is the blessing, the satisfaction of our souls (Ps. 42:1-2) when we taste and see that He is good (Ps. 34:8). Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

All Shall Be Well (Homily 57)

"My heart is glad and my spirit rejoices. My flesh also shall rest in hope, for You will not leave my soul in hell.... You will show me the path of life...." Ps. 16:9-11

The dark is bitter so that the light may be sweeter. For the child of God, all things are redeemed: all failures and faults, all things meant for evil, all festering wounds and burning humiliations. God is turning them into goodness. He will not leave you in hell, though hell you have to go through. Just now the way is bumpy and uncertain, and doubt and despair swarm on you like flies, and fear and anger bubble inside; but though the way is dark, it is moving to a place of light, where all light is lightning because of the dark. This is the inheritance of those who love God because He loved them: we endure the horror and great darkness, for it is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is coming.

You must rest in hope, for all is redemption. All of life is redeemed and is being redeemed, though the process is mysterious and hidden. For now the soil lies silent, but it will blossom, and the barrenness of the past will accentuate the harvest of the future. The stumbles of the past will accentuate the strong steps of the future. This is the meaning of redemption: all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, not by erasure but by reversal. Not by annulment but by eucatastrophe. The shame shall not be forgotten but instead shall serve to brighten the glory. The faults and failures will not be lost but rather woven into the tapestry, adding pattern to pattern and color to color, emblazoning the whole.

And we shall see it. We shall see the redemption of all things. Of our things. We shall see the rescue and restoration. We shall see our ashes turned to beauty. We rest in this hope, for there is rest in this hope. Let all our troubles be calmed, for though we cannot see it now, they are all wrought with redemption.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Earth Stood Still (Advent Music)

Merry Christmas from Future of Forestry:

One Question (Homily 56)

Priorities, son.

"...who is lord over us?" Ps. 12:4b

The question of lordship is still the most practical question you can ask anyone. For every person, the buck ultimately stops somewhere, and wherever it stops can tell you a lot about that person: what they believe, what they care about, and what they're willing to put up with.

Now, Psalm 12 mentions two kinds of people: the godly and the proud (vs. 1-4). The former are failing and fading while the latter are flourishing. The dichotomy is simple enough---there are those to whom God is their ultimate authority and those who are their own ultimate authority. That dichotomy is pretty well maintained throughout Scripture. There are those who "fear the Lord" and those who say "there is no God." Every human being can be boiled down to one of those two categories.

This is not merely a matter of God's existence. There are plenty of people who believe in God's existence that still live like atheists in day-to-day practical life. Rather, it is a matter of relevance, i.e., what is His relation to you and your life? Is he everything or nothing? That sounds like a false choice fallacy, but remember the dichotomy: if God is not everything to you, then He really is nothing to you, no matter how much you patronize Him. The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and got (Matt. 22:36-38), and he who transgresses one law is guilty of them all (James 2:10), and we all have transgressed the greatest law: we have not loved God (Ps. 14:2-3; Rom. 1:21-25, 3:10-11).

All sin and righteousness comes down to the one question Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matt. 16:13-16; c.f. Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20). The answer to that means everything, affects everything: what you live for and are willing to die for. Where the buck stops. Where the final line in the sand is drawn. Christian living, the life of faith, is the fight to recognize the lordship of God both in Christ and over your life. "You are not your own. You are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God" (I Cor. 6:19-20)---that is the way of life, and life more abundant.

The center is still the center.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Further Up, Further In (Homily 55)

What hath God wrought?

"I have trusted in Thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me." Ps. 13:5-6

The foundations of the past are hope and strength for today; light and guidance come from what has already been established. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Ps. 119:105), a word written long before I was born and spoken long before the foundations of the earth were laid. In fact, the Christian life is all about foundations, about seeing them laid thick and solid. It is all about God setting precedent, of watching Him build His case in your life like a man builds a tower, or better yet, a cathedral. Watch each brick be laid and ornamentation carved, and slowly but surely the monstrous edifice takes shape before your eyes, and what was once an amorphous rubble becomes a sublime work of art.

"I support which candidate?"

It is all art with God. All beauty. All true beauty and beautiful truth. It is not about machinery or efficiency. God is not reducible to a system. We are not here to deduce and define some divine algebra. We are not here to "figure it out," not because there is nothing to figure out but because the figure is too great for us, a figure shaped in the Person of God. We do not comprehend Him; we stand in awe, in overwhelming humility and wonder. We stand still and know that He is God and that we will never reach the end of Him. We can never reduce Him to our myriad manias, to our legalistic claptrap or liberal corrosion, to our efforts to explain or obscure Him. Thank God that He is greater than all our rabid reductionism, or innate and insane desire to make everything smaller than us.

God has revealed Himself, not that we may "figure" Him "out," but that we may begin to know Him (John 17:3), not as a principle or some cosmic machinery, but as a person, as a friend would a friend or a lover a lover. To this end He is building His presence into your life, brick by brick, moment by moment, until He is the most real thing you know, the one true thing, the Fact above all other facts. The point of Christian living, of the life of faith, is to know that God is real: vividly, intimately, personally real. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something: an ideology, a gimmick, or another reductionism. They cannot give you God, the reality of God spreading over and through every inch of your life like waves to the sand of the shore.

Nope. Still haven't arrived.

Like a good marriage, God is known over time, not grasped in an instant. You must never fall into the snare that says, "I have arrived" when it comes to your relationship with God, that you have discovered all there is to know about Him and now the adventure is over. That can only lead to boredom and despair (and perhaps an abandoning of God for something more "exciting"). The truth is that we never arrive, even throughout eternity, not because there is nothing to arrive at, but because God is incomprehensible, beyond our full comprehension, which means it will take all eternity to know Him fully, and therein lies hope and peace and joy.

Further up. Further in.

Hope because even if we cannot see far ahead, we can see for miles behind us, and all of God's bountiful goodness and love trumps our doubts. Peace because all things are working together for our good (Rom. 8:28), working towards are knowing of God, until we finally see what life was meant for: all knowing, all intimacy, all a drawing further up and in to divine love. And joy because identity and purpose and meaning are found at last, not by an arbitrary fiat of our own but by the God who created us for Himself. So see your life for the divine art that it is. Look and see God building His presence into your days, becoming more and more real. See all that you've been through, even the hard and horrible (II Cor. 4:16-18), as the foundations of a yet greater structure, one that will stretch on into eternity, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Proof for God (is not a syllogism)

"The Lord has made Himself known by the judgments He executes." Ps. 9:16a

Actions speak louder than words, and it is no small thing that we have an active God, a God desirous of activity. "Come unto Me and I will show you great and mighty things," He says (Jer. 33:3), almost like a dare, as if it were a matter of personal pride and honor. Of course, God can have no pride. His honor is absolute and His person perfect, so he has no need to prove Himself, and yet He calls on us to prove Him. "Prove Me now, and see" if I will not do and be all that I said I would and am (Mal. 3:10). It can almost be said (with careful reverence) that although God has no need to prove Himself, He still desires to do so, even to the point of sarcasm (Num. 11:23).

Still playing fair.

The real wonder, however, is not that God is active, or even that He desires to act. The real wonder is that He always acts rightly. "I will praise Thee, O Lord," says David. "I will be glad and rejoice in Thee." Why? Because: "You sit on Your throne judging right" (Ps. 9:1-4). If the fact that God actively reveals Himself is a great marvel, then here is one greater still: "He has prepared His throne for justice" (Ps. 9:7), justice in every way we can imagine---salvation for His people (vs. 4, 10, 13-14), deliverance for the poor and weak (vs. 9, 12, 18), and destruction for the wicked and oppressive (vs. 3, 5-6, 15-16, 17). Today, many rise to condemn Him, but one day none will rise to condemn, for all will see the justice and the righteousness of His judgments. One day we will see that whatever "game" God is playing, He has always played fair.

"Yea hath God said?"

If there were ever two truths that a Christian must believe, it is that God acts and acts rightly. And if there were ever two truths most often disparaged, it is the same two. Whether it is the "black box" conundrum or the "problem of evil," every skeptical attack or doubt comes along these lines: God has not done anything or God has not done anything right. Even Satan Himself comes this way. In Genesis, his attack on humanity was two-pronged: question what God said (Gen. 3:1), which is to question His actions; and call God a liar (Gen. 3:4-5), which is to question His goodness. Either God has not actually acted, through either non-existence or passivity, and we are all alone in our little world with our little lives; or God acts wrongly, being either evil or incompetent or both, and thus we are stuck with an all-powerful savage or idiot or both. Every accusation against God follows the logic of the Accuser himself: either God has not acted, or He has not acted right.

Seeing different.

I will not say it is a simple task to answer either attack (though many in and outside the Faith have done so). What I will say is this: God has revealed Himself to all in universal, inexcusable ways (Ps. 19:1-4; Is. 45:18-19; Rom.1:19-20; Heb. 1:1-2), but the deeper and deepest knowing of God is less general and far more intimate, i.e., God applying His truths and reality to the specifics of your individual life. There is a knowledge of God for those on the outside, but there is additional knowledge (or knowing) for those on the inside. This is not the "secret knowledge" of gnosticism but the intimate knowledge/knowing of love. Outside, your knowledge can be factual, logical, and reasonable (if not believable). Inside, your knowledge/knowing has included but also moved beyond those things to the experiential. Inside, you are no longer dealing with mere facts but rather the presence of a Person, a dynamic that is much harder to articulate in a syllogism. Those on the outside say, "We will hear thee again on this matter" (Acts 17:32). Those on the inside say, "We have seen God's glory" (John 1:14).

Again, this distinction is not meant to cast aspersions at those who are "outside." Rather, it is meant to create an understanding: you can know something by either facts or experience, or by facts leading to experience. I am simply saying that Christianity claims to be the latter. We have been told an incredible truth, and we believed the truth; but we have also moved beyond mere comprehension and belief into love and life. We found the truth to be a living truth, a living Person whose Life we experience in our own life. That is not easy to either explain or defend, but neither is love, and we are in love. God is known because He does, not because He argues, and He has done unto us and for us.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...they are weak, but He is strong...." (Homily 54)

You just gotta beliEEEEEve!

"Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name.... Out of the mouths of babies and infants you have ordained strength.... What is man that You are mindful of him? [...] You have crowned him with glory and honor, [and] have made him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands.... How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!" Ps. 8:1-9

"God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty, and the base and despised things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should glory in His presence." I Cor. 1:27-29

We want to be strong. We want to be better than others, or at least better than ourselves. We want our projects to succeed and our plans to bear fruit. We want our dreams to be realized, and we hope we have the skill and wit and tenacity to see them through. We want to be noticed and appreciated, to be seen as worthy and valuable, to be know as someone who brings something to the table. We hope that we have the charm and looks and abilities necessary to grab and hold someone's, anyone's attention. We want to know that we can do it. We want to know that we are loved and have secured that love.

"Hello! I am your problems."

We fear weakness. We fear failure. We fear being worthless and of no consequence, but that is often how we feel. Projects and plans and dreams stall or stall-out, becoming insurmount- able, seeming so very, very big and we so very, very small. We are ignored and unnoticed and undervalued. We feel everyone's eyes piercing past us, or worse: piercing into us and seeing all the mess, the flaws, the inconsistencies and hypocrisies. The failures and inabilities. The terrible burden of our innate weakness. We can feel unmade and exposed before others, and we will avoid any place or any person we feel we cannot fool. We will not risk the exposure. We will not risk having to confront ourselves, our small, weak selves.

God confronts us. He knows us. He knows our weakness. He knows that we are dust and fading vapor (Ps. 103:13-16). He knows how the weight of even our fleeting existence can become crushing. He knows our frustrations. He knows our fears. The fear of failure. The fear of weakness. The fear of making mistakes and not being who you were meant to be, not fulfilling all you were made to do, always feeling out of joint like a bone out of socket. He knows all about it, and He has only compassion and pity and sympathy for you. This Great Strength has nothing but merciful, loving kindness to we who are the great weak. He has kindness and purpose, for this Great Strength uses the weak for His great purposes. He calls and justifies and glorifies the doubting and the frail and the fearful and the downright unimpressive (Rom. 8:28-30) while all who are supremely confident in their own impressiveness are left outside (Luke 18:9-14), for this Great Strength summons the sick and not the healthy (Mark 2:16-17) and exalts the weak while crushing the proud through the weak (James 4:6; I Cor. 1:27-29).

The Word became weakness.

We who are weak and fearful and frustrated and self-de- feated and weary, come and find rest (Matt. 11:28-30). We have a great and mighty advocate, for we have a God who has been touched by our infirmities (Heb. 4:14-16). God became a man; not just a man, but a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Is. 53:2-4). He felt with His real skin and real soul the agonies of fear and rejection and betrayal and the seeming failure of all His efforts. We have a God who was afraid (Matt. 26:38-39), whose stress created sweat as thick as blood drops (Luke 22:44). We have a God who failed, whose messianic ministry lost all of its followers through offense (John 6:60-61, 66) or fear (Mark 14:50) and ended in ignominy and death. And yet, and yet, it was through those fears and failures and agonies that God triumphed. He triumphed through weakness, not in spite of it. The weakness of God, the strength made perfect in weakness, is still stronger than all the might of darkness and evil and human skill and ability. He has sanctified weakness and made it holy, made it into a means of triumph (II Cor. 12:9-10), made it His favorite tool and weapon and made weak people His favorite heroes, all so we may know that there is no God like this. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Why You Should Sleep (but probably won't for a while)

""I laid me down and slept. I awoke, for the Lord sustained me." Ps. 3:5

"I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for only Thou, Lord, make me dwell in safety." Ps. 4:8

Psalms 3 and 4 are both war Psalms. David wrote them during times of battle, and his talk of sleeping soundly and waking safely was about sleeping on a battlefield between battles. To sleep encamped not too far from your enemy was an act of faith in God---every subsequent morning was a gift of grace and an occasion to praise God. It was not luck of the draw but rather a sign of God's love and favor (Ps. 3:3-4; 4:1, 3, 7). David knew that his life was in the hands of someone who loved him. Therefore, he slept like a baby.

Most of us probably don't sleep on a battlefield like David, but life itself is hair-raising enough with a sufficient amount of evil for every day. Sudden accidents and random acts of violence strike just as savage as any foe in the night, for death is a foe, the last and greatest we shall ever face (I Cor. 15:26). Sleep is just as much an act of faith for us in our homes as it was for David on his battlefield. Think about it: for six to eight hours you lay unconscious and immobile on a giant rectangular pad, oblivious and helpless. You remain unaware of the world, this random, violent world. It is almost an act of suicide, and yet we sleep and we wake, and we do this multiple times as though it was nothing.

We have our confidences: in locks and neighbors and police and civilization at large. But we ought also to have confidence in God as well, who gives sleep to the just and the unjust. It is by His love we sleep undisturbed and awake unscathed. It is by His grace we have been brought to the morning. It is by His mercy we are not consumed (Lam. 3:22 KJV). Every morning with a fresh awakening is a gift, the first of the gifts of God for you in a day, the first grounds for thanks and worship. When you rise, you are already blessed, for waking is a blessing. The sunlight that pours in from around your curtains or through the cracks in your blinds is an ever renewed herald of triumph, for you have yet again made the perilous quest. God has lead you once more through the nightlands and into daylight.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013