Psalm 92

It is good to praise the LORD

and make music to your name, O Most High,

to proclaim your love in the morning

and your faithfulness at night,

to the music of the ten-stringed lyre

and the melody of the harp.

For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD;

I sing for joy at the works of your hands.

How great are your works, O LORD,

how profound your thoughts!

The senseless people do not know,

fools do not understand,

that though the wicked spring up like grass 

and all evildoers flourish,

they will be destroyed.

But you, O LORD, are exalted forever.

For surely your enemies, O LORD, 

surely your enemies perish;

all evildoers will be scattered.

You have exalted my horn [strength] like that of a wild ox;

fine oils have been poured on me.

My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries;

my ears have heard the route of my wicked foes.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,

they will grow like a cedar in Lebanon;

planted in the house of the LORD,

they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age,

they will stay fresh and green,

proclaiming, "The LORD is upright;

he is my Rock,

and there is no wickedness in him."

Psalm 1

Blessed is the one

who does not walk in step with the wicked 

                        or stand in the way that sinners take

                    or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,

and who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither -

whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked!

They are like chaff

that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Moment-by-Moment Obedience

          “We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success.  We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us.  In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite.  We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not.  The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way.  What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.

            What is my vision of God’s purpose for me?  Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now.  If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me.  God is not working toward a particular finish-His purpose is the process itself.  What He desires for me is that I see ‘Him walking on the sea’ with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight, but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is alright because I see ‘Him walking on the sea’ (Mark 6: 49).  It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God.

            God’s training is for now, not later.  His purpose is for this very minute, not for sometime in the future.  We have nothing to do with what will follow our obedience, and we are wrong to concern ourselves with it.  What people call preparation, God sees as the goal itself.

            God’s purpose is to enable me to see that He can walk on the storms of my life right now.  If we have a further goal in mind, we are not paying enough attention to the present time.  However, if we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.”   (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, July 28)

June 2013

Click on the pictures to see them bigger or click here: June 2013

What we've been up to...
Patrick finished his ordination tests, Kingsley got sick, we went to Denver for the EPC general assembly, were greeted by a tornado, enjoyed the mountain scenery, and had a fun dinner with a cousin and her family.

Psalm 125

N. T. Wright on Ephesians @ Wheaton College chapel

Listen here: Wheaton chapel - April 16, 2010

Good Samaritans

Laura Smit is a professor of religion at Calvin College. Here she preaches at Beeson Divinity School on the well-know passage about a good Samaritan.

Listen here: Laura Smit | Luke 10:25-37
Beeson Divinity School chapel - March 31, 2009

In Praise of Blackberries | Guest post by Jeremiah Webster

My two year old son has a Radio Flyer scooter: classic red with streamers that blow in the breeze with near-patriotic flair. The scooter belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting, on a marquee, and is machined from a single piece of steel to make its rider feel like a demigod. Install an engine and you’d have an intensive care menace on the streets, a motorized Vandal. Liam would store “bi-ke” in his crib if Mother and I would let him. It’s his set of rebellion wheels until the BMX upgrade.




So when I explained to Liam the other day that his ideal scooter was not designed to go down the innumerable staircases of our apartment complex, he was understandably confused. With a furrowed brow that seemed to say, “Why wouldn’t someone take this all-terrain enchantment down a flight or two,” I realized we were beyond rational negotiation. The kid can be stubborn about self-injury. Opting for shameless bribery, I suggested we find a paved, well-lit, OSHA approved, BPA-free walking trail. I threw in several cookies to seal the deal. “Coward,” his eyes flared, “unworthy diaper-changing sidekick,” but he agreed. I expect worse when he hits puberty.

The nearest trail was a far cry from my visions of a leisurely stroll. It was more of a committed hike leading straight up the ridge that encircled our neighborhood. Liam began scaling the path like a Toddler IronMan competitor, so I went the distance with him. The path was all glory: towering pines I too often took for granted, wild flowers with names like showy fleabane, and a congregation of deer ferns people from Eastern Washington (like myself) find exotic. Most importantly, there were blackberries. Having lived on the western side of the Cascades for only a year now, I found blackberries to be a welcomed anomaly. Rubus fruiticosus, a bramble, an invasive species anyone could feel good about, inhabited most of the landscape. Fruit that demand four bucks a carton in the grocery store hung like multi-faceted sapphires from an endless tangle of vines. There were hundreds, undisturbed in their sanctuary. O taste and see, they said.

Liam would stop his scooter every three feet or so to gather a fistful of blackberries, the juice infusing a permanent dye into his sweatshirt. The first bite elicited “Mmm,” and the boy was wholly converted. We ate ripe ones together and the ones with reddish drupelets. We ate them in groups, in singles. We ate them whole, and in halves to see what they looked like inside. We received cuts from the thorns to reach the alluring ones buried deep. We spoiled our dinner. We wished there were more.

Being a father is so challenging that I often struggle to find the “meaningful” in the midst of Liam’s daily routine. This was no such moment. As I stood watching Liam partake in the unmerited favor of these woods, I experienced (not just understood) a poem from Gerald Manley Hopkins that I had loved for years without knowing why. “Pied Beauty” is comfortable with duality, with “all things counter, original, spare, strange.” The poem marvels in the “skies of couple-colour,” “rose-moles,” and “fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” that comprise this transitory life. Rather than try and resolve such incongruities with prescription or anecdote, Hopkins worships a God “whose beauty is past change.” Even the title resists an essentialized vision of beauty. It suggests that to encounter tension in the natural world is to encounter the infinite.

This was my encounter. A boy who moments earlier had a naive death wish to take his bike down a flight of stairs was finding sustenance in the mercy of blackberries, in the extravagant droop of their harvest. Blackberries destined to ferment on the vine were now sweet for our choosing. Toddler care (menial, often humiliating) became an occasion for worship: in praise of blackberries. Liam and I were equals in those woods, two blackberry stained souls in the garden. Father and son ate without toil. Hopkins taught me to reside in such mysteries, and to actively seek “whatever is fickle, freckled” as I care for my son. Radio Flyer daredevil stunts and all.

Pied Beauty / Gerald Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                  Praise him.

May 2013

May 2013, a set on Flickr.

Here's what we've been up to in the month of May