Shelter from the Storm (Friday Devotional)

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

- Psalm 90:1-2

As we hiked along the trail, we took turns nervously looking up at the grey sky. Miles from our next campsite, my fellow Boy Scouts and I could smell and feel that a rainstorm was coming any second, and we knew there was little hope of escaping the downpour. Our backpacks were covered, our ponchos were on—now all we could do was continue hiking, hoping against hope that our socks and boots wouldn’t get too soaked when the clouds finally emptied.

Then, like a providential gift, our patrol leader spotted something up ahead. Along the mountain trail we were hiking, there was a spot where the rocks jutted out over the trail like a natural roof. We picked up the pace and, as we got closer, saw that this spot was large enough for us all to fit under—we were saved! Rushing beneath the formation, we dropped our packs, pulled out some snacks and, with comic timing, the storm let loose.

Dry as a bone beneath our natural shelter, I wondered how many people before us had used the rocky outgrowth for exactly this purpose. Had other hikers before us watched their own storms beneath its shade? Had the rangers who’d built this trail used it as a resting place in the middle of a long day? Had the settlers who’d pioneered the region retreated beneath it as bad weather approached? It was not even inconceivable to imagine that, hundreds of years earlier, a family of Native Americans had experienced the same relief we felt as nature saved them from a downpour. For as long as people had been wandering through these mountains, I imagined, they had been using this rock formation for shelter.

In Psalm 90, the writer imagines God as just such a shelter, a “dwelling place in all generations.” Even as the ages have dragged on, he seems to be saying, God has remained, a refuge and a hope for His people when storms assailed them. For all the ways our planet, its people, and its problems have changed, God has remained a constant sanctuary.

In our own time, storms still rage, in the world at large and in our own lives. Some days it feels like you spend every waking minute nervously looking up, waiting for the figurative clouds to empty and for the deluge to wash you away. But in those times of peak anxiety, God remains a shelter from the storm, a refuge to whom you can turn for spiritual comfort. Even when life’s storms seem unprecedented in their ferocity, even when protection from them appears impossible, look to the God who has been a dwelling place in all generations—because while storms come and go, the Rock of Ages remains.

Top Billing (Friday Devotional)

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

- Romans 12:2-3

Somewhere in America, a little girl is standing in front of her mirror rehearsing the speech she hopes to give someday when she wins the Academy Award for Best Actress. In another part of the country, a film student is daydreaming in class about the day he gets the call saying he’s won Best Director. And in pretty much every coffee shop in our nation, there’s somebody sipping their third latte and ironing out a tricky scene in what they feel certain will one day win Best Screenplay.

But I’m willing to bet that no one goes to sleep at night dreaming of winning Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress. Don’t get me wrong, an Oscar’s an Oscar, and I’m sure it would be the thrill of a lifetime for any young actor to even be nominated for such a prestigious award. But we’re talking about dreams here, and nobody dreams of playing second fiddle. In our minds, we always get top billing.

After all, it’s human nature to imagine yourself as the protagonist of your life story…it is everyone around you who are the ancillary characters, there to encourage you, challenge you, and yes, support you. Particularly when inconvenience and trouble rear their heads, as author David Foster Wallace once pointed out, “my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and [it seems] for all the world like everybody else is just in my way.”

There is an ugliness to that kind of thinking, a self-centeredness that we recognize with no small degree of discomfort. But in Christ, we are freed from that default way of thinking, freed from loving ourselves more than anyone else. By grace you can be transformed by the renewing of your mind, able and willing to truly love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. By grace you can see the people in your life—not just your family and friends, but even the strangers you barely notice—not merely as bit players in your story, but as people created in the image of God, as your neighbors. And by grace you can then love those neighbors as you love yourself.

Our world is full of idols to worship, but none are as immediate, as personal, and as tempting as the one in the mirror. In Jesus’s name, resist the siren call of self-centeredness. Give top billing instead to God and to your neighbor—after all, in the kingdom of God, it is the supporting actors who receive the greatest reward of all.

What You're Known For (Friday Devotional)

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”

- Philippians 4:5

When Lindsey and I travel, one of our favorite things to do is eat the city’s signature dish. Whether we’re savoring cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, lobster rolls in Boston, or deep dish pizza in Chicago, there’s something about this exercise that makes us feel connected to the city, almost like we understand it better after trying their food than we did before. After all, those dishes are more than just food to their respective cities—they’re part of their identities. As much as any landmark, event, or sports team, those foods are what people know their cities for.

What do people know you for? The answer could be your looks, your intelligence, your career, your family—any number of things, really. But Paul, closing out his encouraging letter to the church in Philippi, made clear what every Christian should strive to be known for: gentleness.

This may seem an odd thing for the apostle to build the Christian identity around. If you were choosing one thing for people to associate your faith with, there are an abundance of other options, from your doctrine to your acts of service to your personal testimony. But trusting that the Lord was near, Paul said gentleness was to be “known to everyone” as the mark of your faith in Christ.

Perhaps this is because gentleness was one of the most distinguishing features of Jesus’s own life and ministry. Whether he was welcoming little children, extending a healing touch to lepers, or pardoning the sins of prostitutes, Jesus was always reaching out in kindness to those who needed it. Though renowned far and wide for his teaching and his miracles, those who personally encountered him remembered his compassion the most.

As you seek to live more like Jesus, ask yourself whether you’re known to everyone for having Christlike gentleness. When you’re criticized, do you counterpunch or look for a peaceful resolution? When you encounter someone with beliefs that are antagonistic to yours, is your instinct to belittle them or to listen? When you’re in a position of authority, do you rule with an iron fist or an outstretched hand?

If you proudly proclaim yourself to be a Christian, then unbelievers will look to you to determine what being a Christian means, for good or ill. You’re going to be known for something—with the Spirit’s help, may you be known for the gentle, compassionate love of Christ.

Repent or Reject (Friday Devotional)

“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him.”

- Matthew 21:45-46a

Growing up, I was never one of those kids who dreaded my annual dentist appointment. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love it—who does—but I wouldn’t throw a fit or melt into a puddle when the time came for my checkup. The dentist and I had a pretty set routine: I’d watch a movie in the waiting room until it was my turn, he’d make one-sided small talk with me while he cleaned my teeth (why dentists try to converse with you when their hand is in your mouth, I’ll never understand), I’d take my cup of fluoride, he’d give me my sticker, and then I’d wait for his report.

And the report was always the same, with the same three pieces of advice. First, he’d tell me I had no cavities, so I should continue staying away from too many sweets. Well, my mom was pretty much controlled my diet in those days, so no problem there. Second, he’d say my teeth were looking ok, so I should keep brushing twice a day. Sure. It was the third part of his evaluation where we hit an annual bump in the road: “Daniel, your gums are looking pretty sore. Are you flossing?” At that point I’d mumble something about how I didn’t every night, but tried to most of the time. It was a lie, and he wasn’t buying it for a second. I flossed maaaybe twice a year (usually the day before and after my dentist appointment) and we both knew it. So he’d give me a stern look, remind me how important it was to floss regularly, and then I’d be on my way, red-faced from shame but done with the dentist for another year.

That night, and maybe the next, I would follow his instructions about flossing, still cowed by the guilt of that last moment in his office. But before long, the evening would come when I’d look down at the dental floss in my drawer, furrow my brow, and toss it in the trash can. I didn’t have any cavities. My teeth were clean. My gums felt fine. What did I need to floss for?

Every year, I had two choices when I left my dentist’s office: I could accept the dentist’s message and change for the better, or ignore him and accept the negative consequences. I could repent or I could reject. We face the same choice when confronted by the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of things God calls us to that we find palatable, things that we’re either already doing or can adopt with ease. We can pray every now and then, do the occasional good deed for a friend, love our families well—if these are what it takes to keep us right with God, then sign us up!

But eventually there comes a moment when you learn that following Jesus isn’t as easy as you thought—he says to love not only your friends, but your enemies; he calls you to give freely, not just to give your leftovers; his way is the cross, not the sword. In those moments, when the Spirit convicts your heart, you can respond one of two ways: you can repent or you can reject.

As the Pharisees learned during Jesus’s ministry, it’s not particularly fun to realize that when Jesus calls people to repentance, he’s talking about you. But while you may share the discomfort of those biblical teachers of the law, you need not copy their reaction. The redemptive response to spiritual conviction is not anger, but humility, a willingness to examine yourself and see how you can become more like Christ. God does not want to shame you, He wants to transform you, to heal what is broken and bind up what is wounded. But He gives you the choice—you can let Him do his redemptive work, or you can ignore His will and accept the consequences. You can repent or you can reject.

Take a moment to think about the ways the God has called you to change recently. How have you responded, with humility or with arrogance? When you realize, like the Pharisees, that certain gospel challenges are directed at you, do you run from those challenges or rise with Christ to meet them? May you have open ears and an open heart for God’s will—just like with my dentist’s advice, you can repent or you can reject, but only one will make you clean.

September Reading Log

Not as many reviews as usual this month, both because of less time to read than the average month and because the books I did get to were pretty hefty. Nevertheless, enjoy what's here and look forward to a presumably larger load next month!

JOHN WESLEY'S SERMONS: AN ANTHOLOGY by John Wesley, edited by Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater

In my ongoing quest to read through all the books I bought for seminary, I spent the last month and a half reading one John Wesley sermon per day from this anthology (each was roughly 10 pages) at the end of my morning devotional. My experience with Wesley's work was limited even in seminary--as I recall, we were only required to read 5 or 6 of the 50 sermons this volume collects. So I knew only the basics about John Wesley: founder of Methodism, brother to Charles (who wrote thousands of hymns, many of which are still beloved today across all denominations), and titan of evangelical Christianity (the theological movement, not the political apparatus.) After reading 50 of his sermons, I, as you might expect, have a much better grasp on his beliefs, style, and priorities--and am the better for it.

The theme that appears time and time again in these sermons, the belief that defined Wesley's life and ministry, is that man is saved by grace through faith alone. That may sound like pretty standard fare for a Protestant preacher, but coming out of the 18th century Anglican church, his insistence on personal faith in Christ set him apart from many of his contemporaries. Wesley came to this conviction not only through study and prayer, but personal experience, having felt his heart "strangely warmed" at a church meeting on Aldersgate Street. It was in that moment that he experienced what he would later call his true conversion, when (as an already ordained minister!) he placed his full trust in Christ for salvation. Wesley would spend the rest of his life preaching that all men and women must come to that same realization he had at Aldersgate.

While salvation by grace through faith is certainly the predominant theme in Wesley's sermon (I'd be hard-pressed to find even one where the doctrine is not proclaimed), Wesley had a few particular issues that he returned to on numerous occasions. One was the doctrine of Christian perfection, the idea that the saved believer who placed his or her life in Christ's hands, could therefore cease sinning--though impossible apart from Christ, Wesley believed and preached that it was possible for the Christian. Another frequent topic of his was the separation of justification and sanctification in the salvation process. Where justification (being cleansed of sin) happened in one moment in time (as with his Aldersgate experience), sanctification (being made righteous) was a gradual, progressive experience according to Wesley. Both, he stressed, were necessary elements of salvation. Finally, a topic that he returned to on numerous occasions was how Christians should handle their money, which he summarized simply: earn all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. You can guess, the editors of this volume note, which of the three points his audiences tended to ignore.

Speaking of the editors, they have put together a fine anthology here, a work that feels comprehensive but not overwhelming, making clear that this is only a sampling of Wesley's voluminous works, but a representative sampling. Before every sermon is a half page essay providing the context, summary, and distinguishing features of the sermon, which I consistently found helpful in understanding both the sermons themselves and Wesley as a preacher. Overall, I would recommend this anthology to preachers, students, and anyone else interested in one of the greatest figures in the history of evangelicalism. 

THE PALE KING by David Foster Wallace

Boredom shouldn't be this fun.

The Pale King, the unfinished novel David Foster Wallace was working on when he committed suicide in 2008, manages to illustrate, analyze, and interpret tedium in ways that reveal important truths about the human condition. Combating and working through boredom, Wallace shows, is the great battle of the information age. After all, in an age of endless distraction and entertainment, true boredom--having nothing to entertain you at a given moment--is uncharted territory, a frontier that few are willing to navigate.

Wallace shows this mostly through characters working at a regional IRS office in Peoria, Illinois. With painstaking detail, these characters' lives show how mind-numbing bureaucracy can be, but also how there is a certain nobility, even courage, to the people able to invest themselves in it, doing the same boring job day in and day out and even finding fulfillment in it. In a lesser writer's hands, this book would be a chore, but Wallace makes it sing.

In fact (hot take), I enjoyed this unfinished novel more than Infinite Jest, his opus and universally acclaimed Very Important Book. While IJ sometimes seemed like the prose equivalent of a Jackson Pollack painting, delightful but all over the place, The Pale King was more restrained in style and scope--less ambitious, but also easier to read. The tighter focus and smaller cast made it easier to follow the plot's progression and keep track of the characters, which I appreciated and which made it easier to comprehend and think about the book's big ideas, since I wasn't using all my mental energy just to keep up.

Various critics and scholars have debated how much Wallace still had left to write in order to finish this book, and it definitely leaves you wanting more, but his writing style (each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the characters are only loosely related to one another) makes it worth reading even if you don't get the satisfaction of a real ending. Come for Wallace's prose, stay for his typically kooky characters, and leave with his insightful perspectives rattling around in your brain.

  

  

EAST OF WEST VOL. 1-7 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

There are some stories that only comics can get away with telling, and East of West, a sci-fi dystopian western about the coming of the apocalypse, is probably one of them. There's so much going on in this book, and it's all so bonkers, that I can't imagine another medium pulling it off...but pull it off it does, and with style.

It would take a while to fully explain the plot, which is Game of Thrones-level intricate, but it boils down to two sides, one trying to bring about the biblical end of the world prophesied in Revelation (or at least a fictionalized version that borrows from it), and the other trying to prevent that apocalypse. In the group trying to bring on the end of the world are Famine, Conquest, and War, three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Chosen, seven true believers from the six nations now occupying what was once the United States (I know you're curious, so here they are: the Union, the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, the PRA (a Maoist kingdom of Chinese exiles), the Endless Nation (Native Americans), and the Kingdom of New Orleans. Trying to prevent the oncoming apocalypse is Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who fell in love with a human woman who bore his son, a child now believed by the Chosen to be the Beast of the Apocalypse. Both sides are also seeking Death's son after he escapes the custody of the Chosen, convinced he is the key to ushering in the end of the world.

Confused yet? Intrigued yet?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then you'd probably like this book--or, for that matter, anything by Jonathan Hickman, because that combination is his bread and butter. Hickman is a master of the craft that Lost made so popular on TV: building a world so mysterious and insane that every answered question yields ten more questions. He gives you just enough to tantalize and entertain without you ever feeling like you have total grasp of what's happening, a tendency that is infuriating but effective. Especially for the comic book medium of monthly serialized storytelling, it's a good fit--by definition this story will have to end sometime, but when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to imagine that day ever coming.

The art serves the story well, and Nick Dragotta does a particularly good job at evoking a world with a spaghetti western aesthetic but 22nd century technology. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it does, and most of the credit for that must go to the art. Dragotta isn't the kind of artist that anyone will be studying in 50 years, but his work is more than serviceable.

Should you read this? If you like palace intrigue, Clint Eastwood movies, religious symbolism, gore, and never knowing the whole story, then yes. Heck, as long as you like two or three of those things, you'll probably like this. Particularly for sci-fi fans who haven't ever gotten into comics, I'd recommend East of West as a good entry point.