Texted to me by an angel today. I needed it.

My Help Comes from the Lord
A Song of Ascents.

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 121

A great day . . .

A movie with Jill, Bethany, Blake and his friends on his tenth birthday. At Studio Movie Grill, so we got to eat pizza while we watched.

Seeing Bethany both sing and act at her voice recital today. She did a song from Mulan. Truth be told, she wasn't really up for doing the recital today. But she's devoted to her craft, and professional about it, so you would have never known. She did great.

Going with Blake to pick out a flower for Bethany to give her after the recital. He helped me choose, and we gave it a decent amount of thought. I bought him a 20oz Sprite at the check out because, hey, it's his birthday.

Driving to drop off Molly at an ABS party. Well, actually, she drove. And, yes, that's a good thing, even for this nervous dad. She's near getting her license and she's a good driver. We listened to High School Musical 2 on the way. And I listened to it on the way home too. So there.

Watching two shows tonight with Andrew. One was that Tom Brokaw special on 1968. The other was Minority Report on DVD. Andrew and I think a lot alike and have a lot of the same interests, and he's going to college next fall so every moment together is important to me. Please pray for him.

Reading an email that blessed Molly. She wanted me to read it because it was such an encouragement to her - it came out of the blue and wasn't expected.

It encouraged me too.

Seeing Blake sleeping in his mother's arms tonight. He's ten now, and so this doesn't happen very often and won't happen much longer, but Jill insisted tonight. She's that way, and that's just one more thing I love about her.

Minority Report reminded me of how thankful I am to God for my kids. If you have seen it you know why I say that.

All our kids are in double digits now.

I just looked at the clock. It's after midnight. It's December 16th.

So I'm forty four now.

These are the days!

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. - James 1:17

For your edification, I give you the iMonk's Sanity Verses. Great stuff.

I particularly liked this one:

Philippians 3:12-16 If any passage deserves the title of “The Sanity Verses,” Paul’s words of determination to be free from the past through Christ certainly fit the bill. What strikes me about these familiar encouragements is the relation to “maturity.” If we are mature, we will think this way. Refusing to give the failures of the past- the ministry failures, the personal failures- to Christ is immaturity. It is the junior high boy who says he can handle everything himself. It is the twenty-something college student who believes his anger and brandishing words make a difference. It is the emotional immature Christian who lives off his personal dramas, forever portraying himself as a victim to manipulate the sympathies of his friends because he is afraid they really don’t like him.

The “mature” Christian moves on. He gives it to Christ- the mess, the garbage, the failure, the refusals to believe, the rejections of the Gospel- and goes to the next chapter. There is no maturity in punishing yourself. There is no maturity in burnout, broken health and divorce. There is no maturity in choosing to refight meaningless battles that amount to the raging of an undisciplined ego or a wasted war with fools. Listen to Christ. Move on, even if it’s hard. Even if it’s a strain. Listen to the voice of the Spirit telling you that God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. You aren’t garbage and you aren’t here on earth to waste your life in meaningless suffering. If there is to be suffering, let it be for joy, not for madness or bitterness.

Move on. Give Christ the mess and take the gift of another day, another chance.

Paul Joiner, on Death, Suffering and the Christian Story:

The Christian who is united to a suffering Savior finds themselves in the ‘normal’ context of suffering. Jeremiah Burroughs, a seventeenth century pastor says, “God’s ordinary course is that His people, in this world, should be in an afflicted condition . . . usually when God intends the greatest mercy to any of his people He brings them to the lowest of conditions.”

The struggles of the Christian aren’t a sign that something is terribly wrong, but a sign that something is amazingly right. Again, for the Apostle Paul, the Christian who experiences trials is doing so because Jesus holds onto them ever so tightly, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 7-12).

In the midst of our trials, the Christian’s union with Christ reminds us that the Story has an end that is different than our current experience. I constantly find myself wondering which direction my struggle with sin and temptation is going - up or down. I feel this when ministry is a grind, when I see my failings as a parent, and when two of my best friends die in one week.

But, isn’t this the constant temptation of the Christian: to believe that the current chapter of our experience is the final chapter of our experience. The temptation to believe that things will never improve (and the more difficult the situation, the more tempting it is to believe this).

When, by faith we look at Jesus and our union with him, we know that things will improve. Our story is already finished in our union with Christ. We are now raised with Christ and our life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1). The last chapter of our lives has already been written and Jesus is now living in our happily ever after. His resurrection is our assurance that things must get better at his return. On that day, we will know by sight what the Christian believes by faith - sin, Satan, and death do not win. Our little stories, in God’s grace, begin to mirror the bigger Story simply because we are united to Christ.

For the Christian who is united to Christ, our current experience of suffering needs to be seen in light of the immortal words of the Paul Harvey, “now you know the rest of the story.” So, maybe its just my tendency as a Reformed and Presbyterian pastor to be too theological. But, I’m beginning to think that the problems that I, my students, and my family face need to be met with a deeper and more fixed theology that gives me the freedom to hurt, cry, and hope - all at the same time.

Do you ever wonder if churches are doing any good in this world? There is so much cynicism these days, even in the God-blogosphere.

So take a moment to read this article from the New Yorker written by Malcolm Gladwell. The article is about Rick Warren, and is an interesting read, but this paragraph really caught my eye:

Ram Cnaan, a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, recently estimated the replacement value of the charitable work done by the average American church—that is, the amount of money it would take to equal the time, money, and resources donated to the community by a typical congregation—and found that it came to about a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year. In the city of Philadelphia, for example, that works out to an annual total of two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of community "good"; on a national scale, the contribution of religious groups to the public welfare is, as Cnaan puts it, "staggering." In the past twenty years, as the enthusiasm for publicly supported welfare has waned, churches have quietly and steadily stepped in to fill the gaps.