Newsflash: You Can Honor God in a Non-Christian Setting

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This blog doesn't deal a whole lot with the specifics of my college experience, despite the fact that college now takes up most of my time and mental energy.  Apart from general updates on required literature and the beginnings and ends of semesters, I think the most I've said is that a) I'm going to college (!) and b) I'm pursuing a degree in History.  A few of you - mostly those of you who happen to be friends with me on Facebook - may also be aware that, when I decided more or less at the eleventh hour to attend college, I chose a liberal arts school.  "Liberal" in a double sense: politically and ideologically.  It's local, negating the need to live on campus, and it has a great academic reputation. 

I'll be the first to admit that I was not exactly peachy-keen about the whole notion: for this sheltered pygmy person who never traveled from her fire, the university had an outsized reputation for being A Place Where People Go to Apostatize.  Like many universities, this one was originally founded by a Christian denomination but has since made haste to distance itself from that heritage.  I'm not saying I actually thought they burned crosses on the manicured lawns or anything (way too much extra work for the gardeners); I'm just saying I was leery of spending four years listening to relativism, the liberal agenda, and whatever else these unknown professors might take it into their heads to teach.

Let's admit it: I was scared.

I think many people are when it comes to making decisions like these (I'm focusing on choices of colleges, since that's the only one I've really had to wrestle with).  Especially for those of us who were or have been homeschooled, it is undeniably daunting to consider going out into the world for further education; even if we've been taught about different worldviews, it isn't the same as hearing arguments straight from the horse's mouth.  It isn't the same as having to read or watch unpleasantness firsthand (and not experience it through someone else's tidy little review).  I think we're afraid we might be convinced by the arguments, or corrupted by the wickedness.  The world is a scary place!  The Devil roves about like a roaring lion and might devour us at any moment!  And springing from and reinforcing this fear is the belief that to properly honor God and protect ourselves, we're better off either not going to college or going to one with a Christian creed. 

I don't believe this is biblical in the least.  While I think it is always good to be conscious that we and the world are fundamentally at odds, I don't think my fear was biblical.  After all, as Paul admonished Timothy, we've been given a spirit not of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  We are encouraged, not to withdraw from the world in terror at the thought of being beaten by it, but to go out into it with boldness as a witness to the power and grace and presence of God.  One of the needful things of which the Reformers reminded us is that the divide between the "sacred" and the "secular" is completely artificial and uncalled for; and yet we continually return to it, cloistering ourselves because, I believe, we fear the world.  This is a tacit rejection of our mandate as believers to be salt and light and to powerfully permeate the world, bearing witness to our God ("who is a God like unto our God?") in the midst of the nations.

My use of "non-Christian" in the title is a little disingenuous, for I do not believe there is, or should be, a divide between the Christian and secular spheres.  What I mean to say is that we can honor God in all settings - not necessarily by sharing the Gospel, per se, but by our faithful presence.  Take college again as the case in point.  I believe we have this notion that if we do attend a mainstream college - for example, my liberal arts university - then to be really honoring to God we need to engage in a rousing debate with our godless professors and convince them that We Are Right.  You know, like those super long Pinterest quote-pins where by the time you get to the end, the student has effectively convinced everyone, including the formerly-atheist professor, of the existence of God. 

...I'll tell you straight up, I feel wholly unprepared to do any such thing.  But I do know that I can bear witness to the glory of my God every day without (necessarily) having to engage specifically in debate.

1. With a solid work ethic.

Just by taking our education seriously and applying ourselves to it, we can stand out.  We of all people should never be halfhearted in our endeavors.

2. With a polite, respectful demeanor.

We don't need to be obsequious in order to show professors, even the ones who don't thrill us, that we appreciate their efforts and respect their learning.  (And for the ones who we simply can't bring ourselves to appreciate or respect, we maintain our dignity, do what is required of us, and avoid as much as possible.)

3. With a cheerful, can-do attitude.

This is the subject of my June post, The Most Beautiful Curve.  Of course we all have off days, but we should strive to not make those our regular days.

4. With the ability to choose our fights wisely.

We do not have to raise a storm about everything.  Sometimes we are required to listen to or watch things that we disagree with or even that make us uncomfortable (Katie wrote a great comment about this, but it was on Facebook months ago and I can't find it anymore, so you will simply have to imagine it.).  But sometimes, when push comes to shove, we can say no.  Not loudly; not with a grand monologue; just politely informing the person that we have boundaries.  This is not about being a Good Christian; it may just be about having some personal dignity.

5. With a willingness to listen and learn.

Too often we are so wrapped up in mentally preparing a snappy response that we don't actually listen to what the other party is saying: possibly we're afraid to.  Yes, much of what we hear will be badly mistaken.  But there is also much that we can glean, much that can convict us, much that can challenge us, much that can encourage us.  We must be willing to grow, and even to alter our opinions.

6. With a growing knowledge of what we believe.

We never just fling open our minds and accept everything: we must have a well-reasoned foundation to build upon.

7. With the ability to give an answer for the hope that is within us, when an appropriate moment comes.

...with meekness and fear and a good conscience.

I'm not saying we can't go to a college that seeks to structure itself around Christian values or doctrine.  I am saying only that we should never do so out of fear of the alternative.  We honor God through our conduct in all settings - not by shunning contact with the world or following any prescribed path.

All Who Are Wise-Hearted

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I finished reading Exodus several evenings back.  Several weeks back, actually.  It's one of those deceptive books of the Bible that start out easy enough and then BOOM! you hit the instructions for the tabernacle and immediately slow to a crawl.  I confess to occasionally wondering why and wherefore as I moved through the minutiae, but from time to time something would spring out at me - often something more or less tangential.

"And I, indeed I, have appointed with him Aholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded you..."

exodus 31:6

The context, of course, is the construction and ornamentation of the sanctuary.  In the chapters preceding we see God laying out for Moses the blueprint of the tabernacle, then calling for "all who are wise-hearted" to participate in the actual building.  Two men were called out in particular and given special insight - Bezaleel and Aholiab - but it was the blanket description of all the craftsmen that struck me.  In other translations they're just "skilled artisans," but in this case I think the King James has hit on something.

all who are wise-hearted

That is probably the best description of real artists I've ever read.  You could argue that these men were wise-hearted because God especially blessed them, or that they were wise-hearted because they were the people of God, but I think it's far more basic than that.  These artisans were already wise-hearted; their work was the manifestation of it.  We've all read authors and found them unbelievably good - books where we reach the end and cannot fathom how a single mind could have held in all that complexity, let alone articulated it.  We've read poems that captured so much in so few lines.  We've seen paintings and statues and been left speechless by something.  

This isn't restricted to believing artists: we'd be foolish and bigoted to suppose it is.  Dickens very probably wasn't a Christian and I doubt Rosemary Sutcliff was.  I recently finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and that author gave me that wonderfully horrible feeling of inadequacy  every really great book should.  In the art field, I know very little about Bernini and want to know even less, but his "David" is one of the most amazing statues I've ever seen.  There's something in the heart of man that has this amazing capacity for beauty, even for glory, and I think that something is the wisdom of the artist.  It has little or nothing to do with form and rules, except perhaps in knowing how to break them.  I'm not sure I can put my finger on what it is, but I think that if you have some of it yourself, you know it when you see it in others.

wisdom is vindicated by her children.

Something in the Hearts of Men

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that is our shield-ring, our last stronghold;

not the barrier fells

and the totter-moss between,

but something in the hearts of men.

- rosemary sutcliff, the shield ring

Mirriam - it is always Mirriam's fault, isn't it? - wrote a post recently called "God Is Not Your Bestie," a good and all-too-brief defense of reverence in our relationship to God.  In my own circles I see very little of the phenomenon that would treat God like a member of one's exclusive high-school clique, and I'm very glad for it.  However, you can't very well live in this day and age without in some way coming into contact with a larger trend, of which I would argue our insipid treatment of the Most High God is but a (very telling) symptom. 

For our "spiritual life" (a silly phrase, as if our "spiritual lives" were not integrally tied to our "physical lives") is not the only area lacking in proper reverence; God is not the only one or thing to which we owe more respect than we give - although He is of course the only One deserving of our all.  Over the last three centuries or so we have elevated the individual and lowered the "great ones of the earth," a leveling process which has in many ways made society more pleasant and equitable, but which has also married lack of respect to great selfishness.  Not to say, of course, that mankind has not always been selfish.  We just happen nowadays to have a philosophy built around it.

This marriage, I would argue, has given birth to the offhandedness of modern Christianity and the want of depth in so many aspects of life.  What have we done, for instance, with the ideal of friendship?  Mirriam talked in her post about how we cheapen God by making Him our "bestie," but let us also talk about how we cheapen friendship with talk of "besties" at all!  I would hardly hold the three (four? D'Artagnan is forever complicating matters) musketeers up as models to be emulated, but at least Dumas was able to present a smashing good picture of loyalty in his D'Artagnan romances.  Sutcliff does much the same thing, though in a quieter way, and captures also some of the beauty of romantic love - which cannot be said of Dumas and can rarely be said of professing Christians.

There are things in life worthy of respect, even of reverence, and we too often miss the mark.  When God has instituted something beautiful as part of the revelation of His own Beauty, we ought to do our darnedest to capture it in as much of its glory and dignity as we are able.  Dumas and Sutcliff got it right.  Should we not rival unbelievers in our appreciation for the high things of the world, in our lives and consequently in our writing as well?

Out of the Ashes

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In the Sunday evening service at our church, one of the elders has been preaching (is it preaching if it isn't on Sunday mornings? I never can get the different words right) a series on Christ.  Christ in his different roles - Prophet, Priest, and King.  Christ as he is portrayed via word pictures - the Lamb, the Lion of Judah, and, I'm sure, many more to come in the next several weeks.  Each evening we start with a different jumping-off verse; last week's was Revelation 5, and the week before that was Colossians 2.

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

[colossians 2:13-15]

It was that last phrase that, in the context of the sermon, grabbed my attention most.  Sentences of Scripture will do that in those moments when you sort through the grammar (Paul's especially was awful) and find something of its meaning.  It can be a meaning you already "know," but I think we have all had times when something we "knew" actually came home to us as a thing of beauty and with maybe a little more clarity than it had before.  The whole series has been that way, more or less, but again, this section stood out particularly.

christ triumphant

We have a habit, I believe, of making Jesus Christ too tame in our conception of Him.  Even if we don't agree with making statues and painting pictures and portraying Him on screen, the images from our Sunday School days still haunt us: the gentle rabbi with long brown hair and a saintly expression on his often-beardless face (honestly, where did the beardlessness come from?).  Crucifixes and screencaps from "The Passion of the Christ" bombard us with the message of a Christ still on the cross.  And while it is certainly true that Christ dealt gently with some, it is equally true that He pronounced woes upon others, rebuked them, called them whitewashed sepulchers.  

And while it is also wonderfully true that He humbled Himself, suffered one of the worst deaths the human mind has managed to invent, and was forsaken by His Father and God, it is also magnificently true that in that death, He was triumphant.

The word picture Paul paints here in Colossians is one of a conquering Roman general in triumph through the streets of Rome.  All his enemies would be paraded behind him and made to literally eat the general's dust; his loot from Gaul, Hispania, Persia would be flaunted to all the people, a visible testament to his prowess on the field and the blessing of the gods.  This, Paul says with, as it were, a flourish of his pen - this is what our Lord and Savior has done.  He has made a show of Satan, death, Hell, the grave.  He has borne the curse and trampled on it; He has taken upon Himself all our sins, all our debts, all of the "ordinances against us," and also obliterated them.  

But the fantastic bit - the thrilling plot twist in God's redemptive story - is that all this was done through and in the single most potent symbol of disgrace and failure and humiliation: the cross.  "Cursed is every man who hangs on a tree."  "The Serpent shall bruise His heel."  Christ's heel was cruelly bruised, bruised to the death.  We can only imagine what must have been in Satan's mind that day, when he gained the death of the One Who was God Himself and Who was promised as the redemption of the people Satan had stolen.  He must have thought he had won, and that all the purposes of God had been brought to naught.  Perhaps in that moment he really thought that he had attained his goal: "I will be like the Most High."

He hadn't, though, because God has chosen the cross to be the vehicle for Christ's triumph.  That's the potent part: the part where you think, and the enemy thinks, that evil has won out and everything good has died forever.  And then you find out that it hasn't.  That God's wisdom was at play the whole time, and He has always had the upper hand.

the ideal and the parallel

Have any of you watched the Disney Hercules?  Do you remember the climactic scene where Hercules goes down to bargain with Hades to save Meg?  Perhaps it is a trite parallel (what isn't a trite parallel where something this wonderful is concerned?), but during the sermon I kept thinking of that scene: how Hades thought he had won, and then Hercules comes up over the edge of the cliff carrying Meg and he's shining and if you're a sucker like me you want to bawl.  It's an animated children's film, and still the thought of it makes me tear up as only a few movies can - the post-crucifixion scene in "Ben-Hur" is another.

The imagery is not limited to "Hercules," though, nor to a mere smattering of stories.  It is in fact a concept firmly engrained in the art of writing, and we have probably all heard of it in another, stiffer guise, that of "widening the odds," "upping the ante," and making it appear in the climactic scene as though the protagonist isn't going to win after all.  When you reach that climax, it seems as though all the cards are in the antagonist's hands.  He has his foot on the protagonist's neck; the protagonist has given it all he had, and now comes the end.

But then, of course, there is the twist.  It can often seem cliche, and we always have to fight to make sure it isn't; but it seems to me that the only reason it appears cliche is that it is so fundamental to the Ideal Story.  (I do believe in an ideal story.  I believe God wrote it.)  The tale of the Phoenix, rising again from its own ashes.  The image of the Greek hero getting off the ground when you thought all hope was lost, and going into battle for the final round.  The word-picture of  Christ breaking down the doors of Hell and triumphing through Death itself.  That, I think, is an ideal worth writing for.

In the World? Really?

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Last Tuesday, I began a two-part series in which I attempt to communicate something of my philosophy concerning what it means to be a Christian who writes.  The first half, "Changing the World? Really?", primarily focused on the individualistic approach we take to our art, and the misguided notion that we are called upon to change the world.  I wrapped it up with this essential belief: the Church is a people, not just a society of individual persons.  Then I left off with a question:

"Is the pressure on us, then, to change the world as a whole people?  For the Church to rise up and take on the world?  For all believing writers to band together so their books are more like a rock in the ocean of literature than like a drop?"

And I told you my answer was no, which is something of a spoiler.

This mindset is nearly as prevalent as the individualistic approach I discussed before, and would seem to be more biblical (and more in line with my own remarks).  I said that the language used in Scripture is that of a kingdom, nation, priesthood - large words, significant words, and words that have been used to justify the Church shouldering her way into all aspects of the world's business.  "The Church is a powerful force," they say.  "We just need to realize our power, stand up and combat the world."  Political activism is a major avenue for this kind of militarism.

But since I am a writer, I prefer to question something closer to home and more innocuous, and that is the presence of a Christian label in the arts.  I've talked about it before, but the subject flows quite nicely from the first part of this series, and I could not leave off "Changing the World?" without adding this caveat.  It would be too easy to finish reading that post and infer that I find the introduction of the Christian book industry the answer to our individualistic problem.  In fact, my feelings are, to quote Lizzy Bennet, quite the opposite.  I believe the philosophy behind this labeling to be an error on the other side of the spectrum.

It is difficult to tread this minefield without stepping on one objection or another, for the phenomenon of Christian fiction has been around for several decades now and is pretty well engrained in many minds.  If you are a Christian, and your work has scriptural themes, you publish within the Christian book label.  By and large, it is now taken for granted that the industry gives Christians a voice (by bringing many pebbles together to make a rock, and then dropping it in the sea of literature) and allows us to stand out.  It marks our books as different - as soon as you see the publishing house, and sometimes as soon as you see the cover itself, you know the book is Christian fiction.  And there are a lot of such books out there.

It would seem that this is what I was advocating in "Changing the World?".  It isn't individualistic; Christians are uniting, bringing their works together under an obvious heading, not "putting their lights under bushels" and all that.  By banding together, we're seeking to impact the world.  Two fists are better than one, after all.  It's true that we can't hope to make any difference on our own, but once we get together...!

But this is not what I believe is advocated in the Bible.  We are not told to go into all the world, making our own genres and labels and whatnot; that is not being in the world at all, but is in fact a form of monasticism.  We pull back, wanting to be different not by what we think and say and do and live, but by the heading we live under.  We write our novels and tag them as Christian fiction, reasoning (when we do reason about it; I don't believe I did) that it makes sense because we are Christians and our message is Christian.  But our lives are not meant to be pigeon-holed in such a way.  Yes, indeed, the Church is meant to be united - but the Christian book industry is not the Church.

In creating this label, I believe we have lost a great deal of understanding when it comes to the Church's role, and individuals' roles, in the world.  If we are salt, we cannot keep ourselves in the container; we are sprinkled across a decaying world.  If we are leaven, we spread out to "leaven the whole lump."  If we are a mustard seed, we grow so that our branches cover the whole earth.  This is the work of the Kingdom of Heaven, and there is no room for monasticism in it.

The Christian's life is meant to be lived in the world, within sight of unbelievers.  Not after the same fashion as the world, certainly, but also not off in a cloister - or under a different label.  What impact does that have?  I think if we would be honest, we would realize that few unbelievers are likely to pick up a novel with a Christian label, unless it be by mistake.  (And then they seem frequently to be disgusted.)  Much as the genre as a whole may express a desire to stand out, have an impact, etc., the result is a far cry from the vision expressed by Jesus and the apostolic writers.

None of this is particularly easy to say or accept, because the Christian label is so prevalent; there is little we can do about it, even if we wanted to.  My own novel is technically a Christian novel.  If Christianity plays a major role in your story, it may be difficult to be accepted by a "secular" publisher: that is one reason for going the other route, and I freely confess that there are others as well.  This is by no means a condemnation of all Christian books.  It is merely my look at the idea of a Christian publishing industry, and a challenge to the philosophy that underlies it.

Changing the World? Really?

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When a person finds out you're a writer, and they feel any interest at all in the fact, generally the first question they ask is, "What do you write?"  It's less frequent that you get asked why you write, although it does happen occasionally.

The latter question has in fact cropped up a few times in the interviews people have been submitting for this blog party, and it's not an easy one to answer in just a paragraph or two.  So to give it the attention it deserves, I'm devoting a two-part series to pulling together an answer and presenting something of my own philosophy of life and writing.  Of course it hasn't wholly solidified yet; I'm much too young to have a concrete and immutable philosophy of anything.  But for the moment, this is my outlook on what it is that I do and am - as a writer, and as a Christian.  (A silly turn of phrase, that "as a whatever," but we'll leave it for Dorothy Sayers to debate.)

In the circles I run in, including those in the blogisphere, there is a great deal of pressure being put on believers in general and young believers, I think, in specific.  It doesn't really matter what field or vocation you call your own, because the pressure is the same whether you aspire to be a writer or a musician, a laborer or a manager or a whatever.  The pressure is nothing less than to change the world.  Sometimes it is couched in different terms; always it entails a kind of militancy, a combating of the world, an aggressive sharing of the Gospel to anyone who crosses our path.

In writing, which is obviously what I'm most familiar with, this most often takes the form of incorporating the Good News into every story we produce.  Isn't that we're called to do?  Aren't we supposed to go into all the world and make disciples?  And even if we can't, we can hope our books will - and we want to be sure that anyone who picks up our works will find the Gospel in them.  We want to rest assured that our "Christian fiction" - neatly packaged, all loose ends neatly tied off - stands in contrast and opposition to the mass of worldly stuff hitting the shelves right beside it.  We want our writing to change the world, because we think that's our purpose as writing Christians.

But we don't change the world.

Of course there are probably a few works of Christian fiction that have been used by the Holy Spirit to regenerate hearts; I can't imagine there are very many, but God does work in some pretty mysterious ways.  However, His common - but not common; His chosen method of saving men and women is through "the foolishness of the Word preached" (I Cor. 1:21).  We can't expect that through our novels people will be saved in droves and gaggles.  And yet we still have this idea given to us that somehow our writing, almost by the very nature of its being produced by a Christian, will change our society.

That's a pretty tall order, and a great responsibility if it is indeed true.  Consider for a moment how vast is the culture we live in.  Think of the heaps of books - Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey and all other more or less innocuous works - filling and shaping that culture.  And now picture yourself putting in your two cents, your drop into that ocean.  What difference does it make?  In the scheme of things - and remember here the scheme is that of changing the world - does your contribution matter?  Or does the world sit and laugh (if it even notices you) at your attempt to change it?

"Holy cow," you say now, "aren't you bleak today?  I think I'll just go read Dostoyevsky now to CHEER MYSELF UP."  But my point isn't bleak, once I actually get to it.  I'm pretty cheerful when it comes to my writing.  Because my philosophy of what it means to be a Christian who writes is not one of world alteration.  I don't expect The Soldier's Cross to be out there "winning souls," or even just stemming the tide of bad literature.  That's far too much weight placed on one little 92,000-word novel - far too much weight placed on one little just-barely-five-foot girl.  I can't change the world, and I don't expect to.  I don't think God expects me to.  If we could change the world, I expect He would just leave us here until we had finally converted everyone and the world was a happy place.

What it comes down to in my mind, as far as this part of the matter is concerned, is that God has not placed me as a sole individual with the purpose in His thoughts of me accomplishing all these great things.  He has brought out for Himself a people.  He stuck Israel smack dab in the middle of everything - in the sight of all the nations, in fact.  He has stuck His Church smack dab in the middle of everything, too, so that she should be a city set on a hill.  It is hard to grasp or even to say because of our mindset, but He has not called out for Himself individual persons; He has bought a people (made up of individuals, yes, but greater than the sum of its parts!) to be a witness, to be salt and light and leaven and a mustard seed that grows to fill the whole earth.

We lose sight of this; I lose sight of this.  But I think we must stop thinking about ourselves in such a personal and individualistic manner, stop thinking that we're set out alone with our own candles with the weight of the world - literally - resting on our shoulders.  The language of Scripture is that of a nation, a priesthood, a kingdom, a spiritual house.  The pressure is not, and should not, be on us as individuals to change the world.

Is the pressure on us, then, to change the world as a whole people?  For the Church to rise up and take on the world?  For all believing writers to band together so their books are more like a rock in the ocean of literature than like a drop?  Well, I'll sum up my answer as "no," but the rest will come in a later post.

There's a comic that features Moses holding the tablets of stone and telling the people of Israel, "Please hold your applause until I've read all ten."  Please hold your applause (or rotten tomatoes) until I've finish up the next installment, and then see what you think.  And, while you're waiting, don't forget to enter the novel giveaway.  Because you've only got ten days left, and Christmas is coming...!

The Creative Mind

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Last week I finished reading The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels.  I can't say I'm much a fan of her mysteries, but this book I enjoyed so much that I gave it five stars and wanted to wave it in the face of everyone I ever met and scream, "Read this book, it's full of awesome!"  Which is not generally something I do; I try to keep my voice below a scream at all times.  Sometimes, however, I do feel that a higher pitch is justified.

The Mind of the Maker was once such instance.  It is a little hard to explain and do justice to it, for Sayers, with a kind of tongue-in-cheek, no-nonsense style somewhat typical of her generation, covers a great deal of ground in only 250 pages.  She is examining, or rather making a frank case for, the doctrine of the Trinity - and that right there is a monumental task.  She goes about it, however, not from the "top down," but from the "bottom up."  For she looks first at something very near and dear to every human artist, whether writer or painter, sculptor or musician:

the trinity within the mind of the human maker

This doesn't seem self-evident when stated like that, and yet it struck me because some time before beginning the book, I realized that in my writing I seem to have three different tracks or periods of thought.  There is the period where I seem to get the most concepts, where story ideas seem to be popping up frequently.  Then there's the time while I'm actively writing, where all my powers are concentrated on that single story.  And then I have my editing, as I polish and rewrite and convey what I want to convey, and during which I feel the need to edit everything in sight - whether it's mine or not.

These thought-periods very roughly correspond, I think, to what Sayers discusses in The Mind of the Maker, but outlining it her way is much more coherent and profound.  Her "trinity," based on experience, is that of Idea, Energy (or Activity), and Power.  Idea is comparatively easy to grasp: it is the overarching knowledge of the story, beginning to end, the story as it exists within the maker's mind.  It isn't always fully expressed even to the creator, not at first; but it is the guiding pattern of the work.  It is what allows you to say at the end, looking back at the beginning: "This is how the story was meant to be.  I didn't know it at first, but this is it.  Nothing else would have been right; this is the story."

This struck home to me, because it encapsulated my feelings as I stand at the finish-line of The White Sail's Shaking and The Running Tide.  I can't express how unprepared I was when I began the novel on November 1, 2010.  I had little more than the names of two main characters - Tip and Marta - and a setting, and that was all.  Charlie Bent and Josiah Darkwood came in of their own accord, one might say, but I found they were crucial to the story as a whole.  Lewis, only a bully at the beginning, appeared again to star as the villain of the piece - and it was right, though not wholly planned.  I look back over the story and I'm amazed at the unity of it, when I started with nothing more than fragments.  Sayers, I think, gives the explanation.  For The White Sail's Shaking and The Running Tide exist in my own mind as an Idea, and because the execution of it has matched that pattern, it feels right.

The execution, then, is the Energy.  I found the term a little odd, and hard not to confuse with Power; "Activity" works better, I think.  At any rate, this is the outward expression - in paint or words or music - of the Idea in the maker's mind.  For a writer, it's the act of writing.  It's taking the concept and giving it expression, so that readers can see that form and, through it, see the Idea in the mind of the maker.  Sayers comments that this is why it confuses a writer to be asked, "What did you mean by this plot twist, or that character?"  Because if the writer has done his work correctly, his "meaning" should be expressive in the plot twist or the character.  "Meaning" is part and parcel of the Activity.

This concept is mentioned at times, though not in these terms.  It is the same law that says that extraneous characters (no matter how vivid) and unimportant events (no matter how dramatic) damage rather than help a story.  Such goings-on are nothing but the Activity expressing itself, and not the Idea; for the whole purpose of the Activity is to present the Idea. 

Lastly in the trinity, there comes Power.  It is harder to explain than Idea or Activity, as Sayers concedes, but it is something like the conveyance of the Idea's spirit.  It is the invoking of feeling and understanding in the minds of readers - an exchange, as it were, from the writer's mind to that of the reader.  If this Power isn't present, then the expression of the Activity has failed and the Idea is not fully revealed.  I saw a quote recently (by Stephen King - go figure) that reminded me of this: "Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's."  I think you could accurately add to "description" characters, plot, foreshadowing, dialogue, and anything else that might spring to mind.  All must be planted in the reader's mind, or there is no Power.

I think by this point the analogy becomes quite clear.  For like the Idea, would not God the Father be, for all intents and purposes, unknowable if it were not for His self-expression in God the Son?  And does not Paul - and Jesus Himself - make it clear that the Son is the "image of the invisible God," that "having seen Him we have seen the Father"?  He does not do His own will, but the will of the Father.  And the Holy Spirit, proceeding from God the Father, then testifies of Jesus Christ.

It would be wrong, of course, to say this analogy is perfect; because of the Fall, the trinity of the human maker's mind is corrupted and tends to overemphasize one or another - as Sayers herself points out.  And yet, as God is the supreme Maker, is it not reasonable to see how we, made in His image, are makers after the same fashion?  I wouldn't say this is all that is entailed by the Imago Dei, but it is an integral part of human nature: the true, good human nature that God Himself created.  As we are all made in His Image, so we are all meant to be makers.  Not all writers, not all painters, not all musicians.  But all looking at the world and our work with the eyes of artists, expressing and taking pleasure in our creations.  Because if we don't, if we fall into the rut of ho-humming our way through life and taking no pleasure in our work (for God did design us for work), we are not living according to the pattern the divine Maker has laid out. 

And that's never a pleasant place to be.

in conclusion: read the mind of the maker.  end of story.

All Your Might

pinterest

I came across a quote today.  I was already familiar with it, and probably you are as well, but it sprang out at that moment because I happened to be thinking about working on projects I didn't want to be working on; I was, in fact, pretty actively procrastinating - if that is even possible.  So the quote was very pointed indeed.

whatever your hand finds to do, 

do it with all your might.

ecclesiastes 9:10

Granted, the Preacher was not exactly a cheery fellow; judging from the whole of Ecclesiastes, and from scholars' arguments in favor of Solomon being the author, it appears that he was a world-weary and perhaps God-starved man looking at life through jaded eyes.  His proverbs tend to be negative; the full verse quoted above reads, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."  Not particularly bright and sunshiny.  It sounds almost like Russian literature.

And yet it is nonetheless true, and for a much more glorious reason than the Preacher brought out.  Another quote sprang to mind as I read this one:

so, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

first corinthians 10:31

The two verses mesh; they complement each other.  The Preacher, world-weary and God-starved as he may have been, was yet a wise man: it is true that whatever our hands find to do, we ought to do with all our might.  But not merely because we will eventually no longer be able to do it.  We put our might into these things for a greater reason; we have a higher goal, we march to a more joyful beat.  And that reason, that goal, that beat, is the glory of God.

It is not only our duty, but our greatest good and, we hope and pray, our greatest happiness to glorify God.  We were made to glorify Him.  What does the catechism say?  "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever," or, as some would rephrase it, "...to glorify God by enjoying Him forever."  This is an ongoing, lifelong, daily process, worked out in our most common actions - in our praise and prayer and meditation, and also in our work and our rest.  I Corinthians and Ecclesiastes can be put together, I think, because whatever our hands find to do, we do it with all our might for the glory of God.  

Most of us on this block of the blogosphere are writers.  Some are published; some aren't.  Some are treated by acquaintances as though "writer" were synonymous with "lazy bum."  In this context, I don't think it really matters.  The point is that, no matter what stage of life we are in, no matter the praise or disapprobation of others, we must do what we do with all our might.  If we're putting our hand to this plow - to any plow - we aren't meant to look back.  To co-op a third and totally extra-biblical quote, we shouldn't know how to dabble in things we should be earnestly pursuing.  Perhaps "dabble" shouldn't be a word in the Christian's vocabulary at all.  Labor and perseverance, prayer and praise - those are words much better suited to us.

kudos if you know the reference of that third quote

Logos

I want much more than this provincial life!
I want adventure in the great wide somewhere
I want it more than I can tell...

- beauty and the beast

I am not an adventurous individual. I get nervous about car rides and the idea of being on an airplane makes me shudder. Snowboarding? Tubing? Riding a bike down a really steep hill? They all make me want to slink away to my comfy chair in the living room and settle down with a book. Real-world adventure and I don't get along.

Adventure in the realm of ink and paper, however, is quite a different matter. That I couldn't do without. Whether it be an adventure of the past, as in a biography, or one like Treasure Island, where the action is nearly fantastical, there is something thrilling about it. Through the story we see a wholly separate world; through the characters we are allowed to live the adventure. In a way, it takes us out of ourselves.

I suppose this is a large part of the charm of reading. There is only one Emily Dickinson poem that I have read and enjoyed (although I will admit to not being well-versed in her works), and it is probably also her most famous.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Perhaps this is a little embellished, as poetry usually is. Yet it hints at the beauty and power of the written word, its seemingly unlimited capabilities. There are few things that so set Man and his soul apart from the animal realm as his rationality and capacity of both thinking and communicating; last month I wrote a short post on the Imago Dei, and this aspect of Man vividly portrays that God's image in him has not been lost. Jesus Christ is called the Logos, the Word, the thought of the Father communicated, and as humans we are privileged to bear that image through language.

It is impossible to explain the impact of words, yet it is equally impossible to deny that they do indeed have an impact. We joke about the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword and envision a battle between a writer and a soldier, but cliche though the saying may be, it remains true: we would no longer know of the great warriors of history had some writer not chronicled their lives. Words have the ability to transport the reader "lands away," to conjure up another world in his mind, to communicate in a manner that is almost magical. Like so many elements of the human psyche, this is something that, while tangible, is also indefinable.

And yet, also like so many other parts of the human mind, this comes with its own dangers. It is easy to fall into escapism - I know I often do. Is it a godly way of living to shut oneself up in the realm of the written word and never come out? I have heard people declare that they live in the wrong era. These are usually readers, individuals who see another period in the (oft-glorified) mirror of books and wish they had been born in that time. It just seems so much better than the humdrum life we have every day. But not only is this an idealized way of looking at history, it also constitutes a slap in the face of Providence. God knows what He is about; He put us in this day and age for a reason. We must not lose sight of that, or we run the risk of getting so caught up in sighing over days gone by that we forget to live as salt and light here and now.

Are books dangerous, then? Should we all burn our adventure stories? Well, to answer the first question, with our sinful nature it is possible to take anything to excess; and to answer the second, if you intend to get rid of them you should send them to me. Books are wonderfully beautiful and helpful things. So much can be gleaned from them. We cannot live in that realm alone, but I do think we should strive to unite it with the world of our daily lives.

Imago Dei

I'm reading a book (whaddya know?) called Noah's Three Sons. It is the first in The Doorway Papers, a series of essays on theology and anthropology by a Canadian named Arthur C. Custance, who is, I gather, not very well known. Probably the reason is that he thinks so very much outside the box, and that while I have thus far found him very orthodox, he challenges the norms of biblical interpretation. In Noah's Three Sons he traces God's plan of redemption through the lines of Shem, Ham, and Japheth and the impact that those three families (Semitic, Hamitic, and Indo-European) have had throughout the history of Mankind. While I will admit up front that I don't agree with all his theories, his major point is profound and well worth considering.

It is Custance's contention that Man has a threefold nature (not surprising, perhaps, when it is considered that Man was made in the image of a triune God) and lives in three realms: the spiritual, the physical, and the intellectual. He further argues that each son of Noah was entrusted by God with a particular responsibility relating to that - Shem, to Man's spiritual need; Ham, to the physical; and Japheth, to the intellectual. I could hardly do justice in one post to Custance's arguments in support of this, which span about 300 pages, but a cursory look at history tells in favor of it. Consider: the three major religions of the world (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) are all Semitic in origin. It has been discovered that the vast majority of basic (and ingenious) inventions were created by Hamitic people, who, Custance postulates, were the first to spread and subdue the earth. And philosophy was cultivated by races of the Indo-European stock, most notably the Greeks.

Custance does not try to say that individuals of each stock can only focus on that one part of their lives. But he shows the way each race as a whole has carried the responsibility for the part of Man's nature that was entrusted to it, and further shows how the relations between Shem, Ham, and Japheth down the ages have been used as a vehicle for the workings of God. In laying out his arguments, too, Custance bears witness to the glory of God's prime creation, Man, even as he has been corrupted by sin. It is the belief of some that Christianity - or any religion at all - robs Man of his greatness; but while it is true that one of the basic doctrines of Christianity is that we are nothing outside of Christ, yet it is also true that in another way, Christianity exalts Man more than any other religion or "non-religion". He is created in the Image of God. He is a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor. He is capable of unimaginable things, good and, fallen as he now is, bad. He is a creative genius. His soul was made for God. He lives in time, but God has set eternity in his heart. It was for Man, that creation which God pronounced "Very good," that Christ was slain before the foundations of the world.

Man is all this, and more. Day to day it is difficult to see; one does not easily look at a stranger and remember that the image of God resides in them. Sin has done its corrupting work, and continues to do it. But the difficulty does not lessen the reality of the fact. Sin is not of the essence of Man, and by that I mean that when it has been stripped away, Man does not cease to be Man. Oh, no! In His essence Jesus was Man, but he was not sinful. Man as created is a glorious being, and even now that glory, derived from His Maker, remains.

O LORD, our LORD, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!

- psalm 8

The Hound of Heaven

The funny thing about breaks is that they always seem to be busier than "normal" life. This week my inspiration has been divided pretty evenly between The White Sail's Shaking (the first draft has passed Wordcrafter in length - much excitement) and devising pretty ways of wrapping packages, but I did want to bend my mind toward a Christmas blog post. Being late to get around to it means that I have already seen quite a number of Christmas-themed posts, most of which deal (naturally) with Jesus Christ's birth. Therefore I am going to depart from the usual and post just a small portion of the long, lovely poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson.

the hound of heaven

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."

... Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said,
"And human love needs human meriting,
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay rhe dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms.
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for the at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstreched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

I am not usually a fan of poetry, as I know I've mentioned before. And yet this one captured at least an element of the majesty, the satisfaction, the glory of God in His redemptive work - the power of His grace that pursues unhurriedly and deliberately until it has gained its object. The grace of God is omnipotent, not impotent. Jesus Christ is King, the King of Glory. In this season we remember His incarnation and birth in Bethlehem; but let us not focus on the Child and lose sight of the Man, the righteous Man who has redeemed His people and sat down on the right hand of God in majesty.

Things That Inspire

On You Haven't Got an Appointment! Yaasha asked about the things that inspire me most. I've done posts before on the things that have particularly inspired my novels Wordcrafter and The White Sail's Shaking, but I thought I would do a post just on the little things that inspire me in general. So, in no particular order, here goes!

1. books

How could I write without books to inspire me? There's so much beauty and power in the written word - so many emotions they invoke, pictures they paint. I just love books.

2. teaching

The teaching of the elders at my church frequently convicts me and doesn't always give me a warm and fuzzy feeling - I should be alarmed if it did - but it does inspire me as much as anything else. It is such a wonderful thing to see some of God's Word come alive and to understand something a little better, even if only a very little bit better. After all, Christ is the supreme Word through Whom the world was made and by whom all things are held together. It would be rather silly not to be inspired by the revelation of the Word of God.

You and me we use so very many clumsy words.
The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard.
When the Father's Wisdom wanted to communicate His love,
He spoke it in one final perfect Word.

- The Final Word, Michael Card

3. music

Especially dramatic, thrilling music. I don't always write while listening to songs, but I do find them invigorating and sometimes I'll find one particular style that seems to fit a story. For instance, the music from Escala always turns my thoughts to Tempus Regina.

4. autumn

I do believe I write best and most in the fall, whether or not I do NaNo. The cool weather just gets my blood flowing and inspires me to actually sit down and write after the heat and lethargy of summer. It's my favorite month, hands down.

5. history

Sometimes crazy and funny, sometimes not so much. Certain periods I find especially thrilling: the Age of Sail (in case you couldn't tell) but also eras like Roman Britain and the Plantagenet dynasty, to choose two random ones. Currently I have a couple ideas of stories that have almost nothing but a setting, but which will hopefully percolate into worthwhile novels.

6. the random

Or you might say "miscellaneous." Sometimes I can't pinpoint any particular inspiration; I might suddenly have an image in my head of a girl with a cross (The Soldier's Cross), or a man injured in a wolf-hunt (Wordcrafter), and a story may or may not build from there. I'm sure there must have been something to bring about those ideas, but I couldn't tell you what it was and so I take the easy way out and label all such thoughts "random."

7. family

I love my family. I love the Saturday evenings we spend together, the joking and the serious conversations. I love just being with them all. We're not the sort of family that novels are made of, I suppose, and yet I find inspiration and encouragement in our kinship.

and that, dear readers, is a peek into the things that inspire me.

art from flickr

The Truth of a Fairytale

Several days ago Liz on Awake posted her thoughts on the "knight in shining armor" versus the underdog antihero, and it got me thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know) about the concept of the true-hearted knight in fairytales. The knight on the white charger was a recurring character in the stories of the Western world for centuries - the Knights of the Round Table, the Lone Ranger, and the heroes of the old Disney princess movies, to name a few. Nowadays they are not so popular in literature; writers focus more on the psychological and spiritual aspect of their heroes in order to make them true to life. The structure of a story has developed so that the main character must now have a clear character arc and must change throughout the course of the novel, until the climax shows him to be a hero at last. And, to steal one of Liz's examples, it is certainly true that a character like Rick from Casablanca demands more empathy than a Prince Charming or one of King Arthur's knights. The reader or movie-viewer feels a sense of growth as a Rick Blaine walks off into the fog at the end of Casablanca that cannot be felt while Prince Philip cuts through the thorns to the enchanted castle and kisses Aurora in Sleeping Beauty.

And yet I think perhaps we have lost sight of the truth behind a simple fairytale like Sleeping Beauty. It has become so cliche that we look at it as nothing more than a story for children who have not yet learned How the World Really Is, who still view things in stark black and white. They aren't stories that fit with our perception of the world, and so they aren't considered "real" or "accurate" or "true." At the risk of sounding too allegorical, however, the parallels that can be drawn between these childhood tales and the Greatest Story argue that perhaps these fairytales are more True than even the most intricate Dickens novel - or, rather, True on a higher level.

"Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." (G.K. Chesterton)

The basic plot of the classic fairytale mirrors - in a small and necessarily incomplete way - God's redemptive history. Take, for instance, the tale of Saint George and the Dragon, in which you find all the components: the dragon, the damsel, the knight. The venomous dragon lived in a lake outside a city and was given presents of great worth by the townspeople in order to placate him and keep him from destroying them all; then the people began also to give the dragon their own children for it to devour. In time the king's daughter was chosen to be sacrificed, and she was taken out to the lake and left there for the dragon. At this time, of course, Saint George was riding past the lake and, on seeing the maiden, stopped to see what the matter was. He fought the dragon and eventually killed it, rescuing the maid from being eaten.

This is hardly the first legend involving the slaying of a dragon. The Greeks had the story of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, which has obvious parallels to the legend of Saint George, and there were many similar myths in the Middle Eastern empires. This common thread suggests that it is a story based on fact, though I cannot say whether it flows from the history of a man killing some legendary beast or from a spiritual truth.

Regardless, it does bear a striking resemblance to the history of God's people that can hardly be missed. The dragon, Satan, has held Mankind in captivity since the Fall, while Man blindly and willingly serves him out of the depravity of his own heart. Such has been the state of Man and such it would continue to be but for Christ. It is He who comes to rescue His chosen Bride, and He alone who could do so. It is all there - the dragon, the maiden, the knight. A fairytale paints in muted colors the glory of redemption and of the work of Christ. It is otherworldly, and that is why it is so different from what we experience day to day. It looks to what lies beyond; it looks to the Truth behind it all.

"You're watching how the story finds a way.
And you've seen it all before, but still you love to see the hero save the day.
It's a window in the world, a little glimpse of all the goodness getting through.
And all along the way the days are made of little moments of truth."
(Andrew Peterson - Windows in the World)

We Have the Mind of Christ

This school year I have been taking a course on Philosophy, and my term paper happens to be on the question What is Truth? I started out with much fear and trembling and intense feelings of the paltriness of my mind, wondering how on earth I could produce a worthwhile ten- to thirteen-page essay on such a difficult topic. I've actually found, however, that writing this report is easier than my other essay for History, primarily because of the large amount of literature on the topic. The issue of objective versus subjective Truth has been around for ages, expressed by Pilate so famously in his brief, skeptical question to Jesus: "What is Truth?" Nowadays, with destructive postmodernist philosophy strong in the world and in the Church, the common answer is that there is no truth. Or, at least, there is no objective Truth. Truth is what you make it to be; it's all a matter of perspective.

This view has worked itself into the modern Church with alarming success, resulting in the widespread belief among professing believers that the Bible is not God's objective Word and does not need to be obeyed. Phrases like "Well, that's true for you..." and "That's just your opinion" tumble easily out of the mouths of the majority of professing Christians. This disbelief (usually subconscious) in the existence of objective Truth in the moral realm then also manifests itself in the types of entertainment that are accepted - in music, literature, art, what-have-you - because if there is no objective Truth, there is no standard and everything is simply a matter of personal opinion.

It's understandable that because of this ecclesiastically-accepted postmodernism, more reformed churches react against it and begin to lay down rules as to what things Christians should listen to or compose, read or write, admire or draw. We begin to see the development of the use of "Christian" as an adjective - "Christian" novels, "Christian" music, etc. - and even if what are termed "secular" forms of entertainment are not wholly condemned, we are encouraged to stay primarily within those categories labeled "Christian." These are considered healthy and safe and God-honoring.

Unfortunately, this reaction to the looseness of modern Christian morality is just that - a reaction. It moves to the other end of the spectrum and begins to construct definitions of "good" and "bad," "healthy" and "unhealthy," "God-pleasing" and "God-dishonoring," that are not found in the Scriptures. Some body of officials is set up to say that this book is good because the author mentions God a few times, but that book is bad because the characters don't profess to be Christians. That music is bad because it uses drums, but this music is sacred because it is in the hymnbook. But do all men not have the Imago Dei? And isn't it possible that the image of God that they bear comes out in a beautiful or powerful or even truthful way in their work, whether or not they are a believer? Paul himself quoted a pagan poet in addressing the Athenians and gave the man credit for speaking truth. Is it not possible for a thinking Christian to find diamonds of truth in the works of Plato or of Marcus Aurelius; in Charles Dickens and in Shakespeare; in works of fiction and works of history?

But you might say, "Well, surely there are a great many bad books and music and art in the world." And I say yes, most certainly; and there are a great many bad books and music and art that call themselves Christian, too. The point is not to be lulled into comfort by tags and labels, not to be trusting because a CD has "CCM" on it or because a novel is in the Christian fiction part of Barnes & Noble. Believers must be thinking men and women - thinking and fearless. When you combine a sanctified mind with trust in God, there is not only no danger in "secular" works, but you will often find good challenges and truths.

In case you think I am saying that Christians can benefit by every genre of book and style of music and ought to read and listen indiscriminately, I'm not. I think that being critical of what you read is as important as being critical as you read. But this critical thinking should not be guided by what the Higher Ups have in their great and boundless wisdom termed "Christian"; it should be guided by a firm knowledge (and by that I mean a scriptural and well-considered knowledge) of objective good and bad.

Naturally, the first question is of the morality of any work. If the lyrics of the song are obscene or the content of a book is immoral, there is no reason for a believer to waste his time in listening to the music or reading the book. But something may be decent without passing the test of objective worth; it may simply not be any good. Personally, I think many "Christian" novels fall into this category. (Sadly, most of the ones I have read fail to pass the first test, either.) The plot is so old that the author is not just beating the dead horse, he is, as my sister likes to say, "beating the greasy patch where the horse used to be." Or the writing is flimsy and unpolished, with no beauty or truth or impact. In one area or another, or perhaps a whole bunch, the book isn't good. Why waste time with such a thing when there are thousands of other objectively good books to be read and enjoyed? Or perhaps a song is clean - perhaps even a rendition of a hymn - but the music is discordant, or the singer's voice is horrid. Is this beauty? Is this worth spending time listening to?

The very fact of the presence of the Imago Dei in mankind that I mentioned earlier demands better things than this. We ought to search for beauty and cherish it when we find it, and not be content to sit in the mud and make pies. It may be that subjectively you don't care for Bach or for Jane Austen, but the mind should be attuned to the objective worth of such works of art. In I Corinthians Paul talks about the wisdom of God and the unsearchable, unknowable depths of His mind, then says powerfully and succinctly: "But we have the mind of Christ." That is a deep thing, having the mind of Christ. I cannot imagine that having this mind of Christ, we are meant to let it stagnate by remaining always in our comfort zone and never exercising the power we have through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We ought always to be searching out good things and enjoying them as gifts from God, and honoring Him in that enjoyment as the Giver of every good gift.

Love Lustres at Calvary

Anna posted this beautiful prayer, from a collection of Puritan prayers and devotions called The Valley of Vision, on her blog today, and it so powerfully captured the glory of this time of year that I could not pass it by.

My Father,

Enlarge my heart, warm my affections, open my lips,
supply words that proclaim ‘Love lustres at Calvary.’
There grace removes my burdens and heaps them on thy Son,
made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for me;

There the sword of thy justice smote the man, thy fellow;
There thy infinite attributes were magnified,
and infinite atonement was made;
There infinite punishment was due,
and infinite punishment was endured.
Christ was all anguish that I might be all joy,
cast off that I might be brought in,
trodden down as an enemy that I might be welcomed as a friend,
surrendered to hell’s worst that I might attain heaven’s best,
stripped that I might be clothed,
wounded that I might be healed,
athirst that I might drink,
tormented that I might be comforted,
made a shame that I might inherit glory,
entered darkness that I might have eternal light.
My Saviour wept that all tears might be wiped from my eyes,
groaned that I might have endless song,
endured all pain that I might have unfading health,
bore a thorny crown that I might have a glory-diadem,
bowed his head that I might uplift mine,
experienced reproach that I might receive welcome,
closed his eyes in death that I might gaze on unclouded brightness,
expired that I might for ever live.
O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightest spare me,
All this transfer thy love designed and accomplished;
Help me to adore thee by lips and life.
O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise,
my every step buoyant with delight, as I see my enemies crushed,
Satan baffled, defeated, destroyed,
sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood,
hell’s gates closed, heaven’s portal open.
Go forth, O conquering God, and show me
the cross, mighty to subdue, comfort and save.

- from 'The Valley of Vision'