About to board an early flight for a quick trip to see my daughter in Furman, so here are a few of my favorite Madeleine L’Engle treasures for you this morning, from Walking on Water:
“Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It’s no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.
God asked Adam to name all the animals, which was asking Adam to help in the creation of their wholeness. When we name each other, we are sharing in the joy and privilege of incarnation, and all great works of art are icons of Naming.”
“To name is to love. To be Named is to be loved. So in a very true sense the great works which help us to be more named also love us and help us to love.”
L’Engle quoting Martin Buber:
“You should utter words as though heaven were opened within them and as though you did not put the word into your mouth, but as though you had entered the word.”
“I am grateful that I started writing at a very early age, before I realized what a daring thing it is to do, to set down words on paper, to attempt to tell a story, create characters. We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are, to see through plastic sham living, breathing reality, and to break down our defenses of self-protection in order to be free to receive and give love.”
Several streams have merged today in my thinking: 1 — my 14-year-old son telling me two days ago on the way to school how he was feeling sad about the number of people he knows with cancer right now, 2 — talking with my Dad yesterday about John Donne’s grip on the paradox of God becoming human in the poem Easter 1613, and 3 — my own anger at the attempts of evil to destroy through cancer. Today I am hungering for the day when there will be no more cancer and no more need for chemo and radiation. These thoughts merge in my post today, John Donne’s Holy Sonnet, Death Be Not Proud, and Emma Thompson’s stunning work as an English professor grappling with the issues of cancer, death, and life in the movie “Wit.” Be aware, the video clip is emotionally powerful and challenging, especially if you have loved ones with cancer. But the point of both the clip and the sonnet is — death (I would make that “d” lower than a lowercase if I could figure out how on WordPress), death — thou shalt die. Revelation 21 tells of a day when there shall be no more death, no more pain, no more sorrow. And the day of restoration has already begun. “One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally.”
Holy Sonnet 6, “Death be not proud” from the Helen Gardner edition
Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee;
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou’art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie,’or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.
Want to learn more about John Donne, a metaphysical poet and also an Anglican priest? Read this introduction to the play “Wit” by Amy Wegener: http://faculty.smu.edu/tmayo/donne_essay.htm
I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s excellent work on idolatry, Counterfeit Gods. He uses the story of Abraham and Isaac to demonstrate one aspect of idolatry — how we can come to love good things so much that we depend on them for life and meaning. Today I post a few “clips” from his discussion of this famous story.
“Previously, Abraham’s meaning in life had been dependent on God’s word. Now it was becoming dependent on Isaac’s love and well-being. The center of Abraham’s life was shifting. God was not saying you cannot love your son, but that you must not turn a loved one into a counterfeit god. If anyone puts a child in the place of the true God, it creates an idolatrous love that will smother the child and strangle the relationship.”
“What Abraham was able to see was that this test was about loving God supremely. In the end the Lord said to him, “Now I know you fear God.” In the Bible, this does not refer so much to being “afraid” of God as to being wholeheartedly committed to him. In Psalm 130:4, for example, we see that “the fear of God” is increased by an experience of God’s grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. The Lord is saying, “Now I know that you love me more than anything in the world.” That’s what “the fear of God” means.”
“The All-seeing God knows the state of every heart. Rather, God was putting Abraham through the furnace, so his love for God could finally “come forth as pure gold.” It is not hard to see why God was using Isaac as the means for this. If God had not intervened, Abraham would have certainly come to love his son more than anything in the world, if he did not already do so. That would have been idolatry, and all idolatry is destructive.”
“As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous.”
One caution: Keller goes on to explain that Abraham did not have to kill Isaac, that God offered a substitute. Sadly, I have heard too many tales of people in ministry y using this story to justify putting ministry before their children. Let us be very careful. The story is not saying we sacrifice children. And putting needs of ministry before needs of children is only trading one idol for another. The story is calling us to take anything that we are dependent on for life and meaning and put it on the altar and see how Jesus died so that we might no longer be enslaved to that idolatrous god.
For reflection:
1. Is there anything in your life that you might have come to love more than anything in the world?
2. Is there something you are looking to for security and significance more than God?
3. What might it mean to bring this idol to the altar?
My husband was very impressed when I managed to capture, create AND upload a short video of a recent talk. (He had patiently instructed me in the basics of our complicated videocamera and shown me around Imovie first:)!). However, as some alert “readers,” or “viewers” as the case may be, let me know, they were not allowed to view the video when they clicked on it. I discovered that it played for me because I was the creator but it had inadvertently been marked “private”…So with adjustments made, here it is again,
WHY I LOVE THE BIBLE!
Thinking about Genesis, Creation, I stumbled upon these words about living the gospel in the real world. From an interview Ray Ortlund did with Eugene Peterson in Christianity Today:
“The pastor’s question is, ‘Who are these particular people, and how can I be with them in such a way that they can become what God is making them?’ My job is simply to be there, teaching, preaching Scripture as well as I can, and being honest with them, not doing anything to interfere with what the Spirit is shaping in them.
CT: What does it mean to experience all the material of our lives as an act of faith?
EP: That I’m responsible for paying attention to the Word of God right here in this locale. The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.
CT: As a pastor, then, you see grace in some unlikely situations.
EP: Yes, and my job is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them to see the grace that is operating in their lives. It’s hard to do, because our whole culture is going the other direction, saying that if you’re smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems. . . . The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are — the particular circumstances of our lives — to recognize grace and say, “Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or my kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and this suffering?”
Elizabeth's passion to tell the Big Story of redeeming love through the everyday events and the oftentimes crises of life reveals the melody of God’s grace and the beauty of his truth. [read more]
