So today I was sitting at my desk at work staring at my planner. I was looking at Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday… And then it hit me.

I was ahead in homework.

That’s right. I had done all of my reading and assgnments through Wednesday. I could actually start reading for Thursday of all days! It’s just not possible!

For a moment I let myself fantasize about what I could now say: I’m taking 15 credits of intense, upper-division coursework. I’m successfully the DC of a hall. I’m a volunteer with a youth group. And now, I have free time.

What would I do with that free time? Hang out with my closest friends? Go to a basketball game? Watch a tv show — dare I even suggest it?

Then, in my 4:30 class, the professor said, “Everyone got through that Elmer chapter, right?”

And I thought to myself, Who the heck is Elmer?

And then I remembered the one thing you must remember at Covenant College:

You will never get ahead.

Because there was a scary snowstorm coming, I left for home as soon as I could after my last final on Thursday. I went to Carrollton first to pick up Peter and got there about 8:30; Peter wasn’t done at work yet so I went and had coffee for about 30 minutes with one of my dear friends, which was really fun because I came out of nowhere and surprised her. And there was coffee involved.

We got home in North Carolina at around 1am and Dad showed us the new Xbox 360, so Peter and Dad and I prompty played Halo for an hour. I went to bed around 2:30.

I woke up around 11am to about an inch of show outside and huge fluffy snowflakes coming down. It was lovely and I relaxed around the house with the family for a while. Mom, Dad, and Peter left around 2 to get groceries, and maybe an hour after they left the power went out for good. I picked up a new book, “Infidel,” and read until it got too dark, then Vincent and I lit candles. When the parents got home we set up a heater and played Monopoly — Dad totally killed all of us. Seriously, he had hotels on the whole first half of the board.

The next morning we still had no power, so we made coffee the old-fashioned way and I settled back into my book. In the early afternoon the power finally came back on; Peter and I turned up the heat and played, I dunno, 5 hours of Halo. I feel like I need to find some high heels and a dress or something so I can prove I’m not a boy, but Peter appreciates it.

We set up the Christmas tree today, covered it in all sorts of lights and ornaments. The angel has a half inch between her head and the ceiling. I feel like we did a pretty good job of decorating.

Now we’re all settled in the living room watching football. Still not particularly girly, but I like my family anyway.

There are a lot of reasons for loving the holidays. Let me list a few for you:

As fall descends the cold weather turns the trees the most beautiful colors of red, orange, yellow, and brown. The leaves are beautiful on the trees and even better on the ground, when Clara and I go more than slightly out of our way to step on particularly crunch-looking leaves. I love when it’s cold enough to see your breath and wear sweaters and, while I don’t actually wear scarves, I still think it’s awesome when they come out.  I love hot drinks of all kinds: coffee, tea, hot chocolate, hot apple cider.

Thanksgiving gives me the opportunity to stuff myself with delicious food after slaving over a hot oven or grill for four or five hours. More imporantly, it gives me the opportunity to hang out with family, talk to people, watch football, play video games — whatever I want, the day is mine for the enjoying. After months of hard work, it’s a day to truly rest.

As frustrating as finals are, I love when I can finally write all those theology papers I’ve been putting off. I love the research, the time spent in the library, the liberating feeling of stapling and turning in the finished product.

And after finals are over, I love the three weeks of Christmas break: long enough to enjoy my family, get some rest, and be ready for another semester. I love picking out the tree and I love how enthusiastic Peter is about decorating it. I love when Dad puts out the string of elves that ring their bells in Christmas tunes. I love the Coca Cola and M&Ms Christmas commericals that are the same every year. I love finally having to wear long johns, gloves, and hats. I absolutely adore the rare snowfall Georgia gets, and I loved it even more in Oregon when the snow would stay for forever.

I think Christmas is the best. Peter is always absolutely stoked about opening presents and it keeps us  all moving. The parades are the best ever. By that I mean, they’re really fun to keep on in the background and glance at occassionally.  The decorations for both Thanksgiving and Christmas rock: the best color combinations, of course, but my particular favorite is Mom’s habit of putting Santa Claus hats on anything and everything (the cowboy statue, the 20-year-dead deer on the wall, the plant in the corner…).

One of my current joys is delicious Starbucks coffee, brewed with cinnamon and nutmeg in with the grounds. Spec-freaking-tacular. It’s why I get up in the morning.

Finally, I love the reminder that God chose to become flesh in order to save sinners who cannot possibly save themselvse. What great love the Father gives us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are. Amen!

In novels and movies we are taught to identify with the main character. If the main character is a victim, we feel his pain; if he is a superhero, we feel his strength; if she is confused about the direction of her life, we are constantly thinking, “Which path would I take?”

In VeggieTales, there is one refrain that Bob and Tomato and Larry the Cucumber remind their listeners of constantly: “You are special, and God loves you very much.” Our generation has taken this to heart: I am special and loved by God. Unfortunately, we have also taken it to an extreme: I am special enough to stand before God. I do enough good things to earn God’s love.

When Jesus gave the parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son, he was speaking to two groups of people: the “tax collectors and sinners,” or bottom of the religious totem pole, and the “scribes and Pharisees,” or top of the religious totem pole. Interestingly, he was able to tell stories that struck both of their hearts. As Jerram Barrs writes in his book Learning Evangelism from Jesus, the scribes and Pharisees see themselves as “the ninety-nine righteous persons who need not repent” (106), while the tax collectors and sinners “know that they are people who need to be rescued from their lost state” (107). We, however, are in an interesting conundrum: we see ourselves as the main character – that is, the lost sheep, the lost coin, or the lost son – but we feel as special as the scribes and Pharisees. We who have grown up in the church know the point which Jesus is getting at: that God has mercy on the lost. We know from Sunday School that we are lost, and we know from VeggieTales that we are special enough to receive God’s love.

Do you see the problem? When Barrs describes the tax collectors and sinners, he writes, “As they listened, many of them would be saying in their own hearts, ‘Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ They would be amazed that there will actually be a party in heaven for them, for they think that they are not worthy even to lift their eyes up to heaven” (107). When they see Jesus the Shepherd returning with the one lost sheep, they think, “This is not possible that he would be willing to save me. I’m simply not worthy.”

I was so struck by this passage because I could see my response to this story in my own heart. I promptly identify with the correct person – the lost sheep – but I skip the step of realizing my unworthiness. Deep down, I know that I am, in fact, worthy of God’s love. After all, I have been told from childhood that God loves me. Why does God love me? My childhood self isn’t really sure, but there’s no need to worry about that. I look up to heaven unafraid and say, “Come save me God! I know you want to!”

I’ll give you another example of how our culture warps this story. Barrs talks about the common 20^th century depiction of the lost sheep: a young, handsome, slightly effeminate man happily carrying a dainty, pure white sheep through rich green fields of joy. Jesus has not worked hard or sacrificed to find the lost sheep. The lost sheep has not suffered in its rebellion. It is simply a clean-cut, heart-warming story.

The reality is very different. I worked with sheep at a camp one summer and I know one thing about them: they’re stupid. They don’t like help. They don’t ever understand what’s going on and they don’t think about what they’re doing. So for instance, when some counselors attempted to sheer a sheep because of the heat of the summer, it took six counselors to hold the sheep down. They were helping him, but he refused to accept it.

So, I imagine that when the shepherd went out to find the sheep, it took forever. That stupid sheep was just fine grazing off in the fields and didn’t want to come back. He didn’t run to the shepherd; he had all the grass he needed out here, thank you very much. And when he finally got tired enough, probably very late in the evening, he simply lied down, because there was nothing else he could do.

When the shepherd finally found him, the sheep didn’t really know what was going on. He probably kicked and wiggled to avoid being hurt. He was probably large and heavy, gorged from spending all of his time eating grass. He had probably wandered far away from the other sheep, so that by the time the shepherd got him calmed down enough to pick him up and carry him home, both sheep and shepherd were exhausted. Neither of them is spotless or carefree: they are tired, they are worn out, they hurt.

And here we see the difference between the sheep and the shepherd. The sheep, in his stupidity and rebellion, wandered off and brought all this trouble on himself. He deserves to be out in the wilderness. He deserves to be tired, wounded, and weak.

But the shepherd made a conscious choice. He removed himself from the ease and comfort of the 99 well-behaved sheep and went into the wilderness. He accepted the trials of the walk, and when he found the lost sheep, he picked up the sheep, removing the pain and weariness from the sheep and placing the weight of the sheep’s rebellion on his own shoulders. And the story doesn’t end there, because Jesus says the shepherd “lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” The shepherd is happy to take on the pain and hurt in order to save the sheep! In his great joy he removes all vestiges of rebellion from the sheep’s heart and gives him glory and acceptance. He gives the sheep what he had never had before: love. Love in the sheep’s heart for the shepherd, because the shepherd has loved him all along.

I don’t see this in myself because I believe I am worthy from the start to receive God’s love. I am a Pharisee, a doer of good deeds, a person who walks confidently into the Lord’s throne room based on my own specialness. In reality, I am much more the lost sheep than I think I am. I walk into the throne room because the Lord has stepped off the throne, has taken on my sin, and has defeated it through his own perfection. My specialness is worth nothing. God loves me because of Christ, because of what His Son did. And what His Son did is impossible to fathom.

I was so convicted by this story because I forget my tendency to be both the self-righteous Pharisee and the spotless sheep. I forget that I believe I am good enough to enter heaven and Jesus just shows up because it looks pretty in a painting. I forget the great pain he took on. I forget how I rejected him, how my own sin sent him to the cross. I am so quick to ignore my unworthiness. I am so quick to defiantly stare God in the face and demand a spot at his right hand.

What great mercy the Father has showered on me, then, that he died to save me when I still believed I could enter heaven on my own two feet! What great pain the Shepherd accepted to save the defiant sheep! I hope I can remember my own unworthiness before the throne, so that I can glorify Christ in his astounding worthiness. I hope never to forget that my sin was first put on the righteous Lamb, and then his righteousness was given to me. How wonderful to be a tax collector and sinner! It is only in the realization of my sin that I can humbly accept Jesus’ act of grace.

The pretty picture of Jesus and the lost sheep

The reality: stooped, tired, and full of love

Here are the things bouncing around in my head right now:

Wilson, Egypt, world powers in 1919

Translation: formal or dynamic equivalence? Gender neutrality

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Everyone Poops, The Phantom Tollbooth

Iron and Wine, Usher

Deuteronomy 7:6-9, junior highers, “Who trained you to do what you do?”

The Reformation in France — in a soothing Canadian accent

The library, the blink, Starbucks

Fog

The effects of the Intertropical Convergence Zone on India’s climate changes

Chi Alpha, prayer partners, Day of Prayer, bible study, t-shirts, loud noises

And so you see, I just can’t update. I promise to come back eventually.

So here’s the deal: I have had an excellent summer. I mean really, it’s been great. After spending some time with my family, I helped them safely move to North Carolina and then moved in with a family in Carrollton in order to stick around here. They’re so much fun, their kids are wonderful, and I just love hanging out with them. As I’ve gotten used to camp it’s become easier and more rewarding. Not that it’s less difficult — working with kids is always tiring and challenging — but, for instance, watching a little girl gleefully take in the laser show at Stone Mountain after a long day is really just beautiful. The spiritual steps we’re taking with our students are baby steps, but they’re nonetheless moving forward. And when I’m not working with camp, I’m working with the youth group. As a youth ministry team we’re exploring both the strong and weak aspects of the program and trying to figure out how we can better represent Christ to students. I get to teach this coming Wednesday, which means I’ve been able to spend a lot of really wonderful time in the Word. This summer has been not only fun but challenging and rewarding.

Now, I’m a pretty black-and-white person. Things are either good or bad. People are either kind or mean. Cereal is either crunchy or mushy and clearly you can’t have both. So when things are good, you might envision me standing in a church looking at a stained-glass window as the sun shines through it. It’s beautiful: brilliant colors which come together to form a magnificent picture. The sun is shining through so strongly that the colors are reflected across furniture in the room, making the chapel a brilliant picture of the glory of God himself.

So here’s the issue: I keep looking around and noticing shadows or even dark holes in the brilliance. Not one but two cases of long-term, committed Christians suddenly, inexplicably turning from the faith. Mourning the anniversary of one death even as I hear about more young lives taken. The faithful, tireless work of believers for the cause of Christ leading to — fruit? The hope of salvation for others? No, just darkness. Just blank stares.

On the one wrist I can see a rope tied, pulling me ever closer to the beauty and joy of the Lord. But on the other wrist the rope is pulling me in the opposite direction, towards sin and hurt and loss. This is why I’m so black and white: because the tension of both circumstances, of a loving God and a murderous demon standing in the same throne room, is too painful. Why does Job have to suffer?

I don’t have an answer and I don’t really know what to do about it. The only thing I can think of is to keep praying, because I’m certain that loving God is sovereign and that murderous demon is not. And eventually we’ll reach Canaan and, while I imagine God will not tell us why Job suffered, at the very least he won’t suffer anymore.

Working with kids is hard. Their sin is out there for everyone to see: if they’re angry they hit, if they don’t like what you say they mouth off, if their pride gets hurt they pout. They have either too much energy or no energy at all. They have attention spans of approximately fifteen seconds. I don’t have a ton of energy and by about noon they’ve got me completely worn out even when they’re on their best behavior. And on days like today, when they’re all fighting and crying and full of attitude, sometimes I just want to sit down, give up, and forget about them.

The hardest part, though, is not when they’re fighting with each other or mouthing off. The hardest part is when we’re sitting in front of them, desperately trying to explain the most fundamental aspect of Christianity, and they’re giving us blank stares.

“Do you understand?” we ask.

“Yeah, it all about Jesus,” they answer, trained by Southern Christian society that if they drop the J-word they’ll be good.

“Do you understand grace?”

Blank stares.

It doesn’t matter how much we explain the gospel. I can use the smallest words, the most creative examples, the clearest prose I can think of, and I’ll still get blank stares. Dark hearts don’t understand light. Even worse, dark hearts who grow up in the church think they understand light — and also think they deserve grace. If I can’t explain the cross of Christ, how will I explain anything else?

Praise the Lord for the Spirit, for true grace, and for the love that sent Christ to the cross. Praise the Lord for the gospel, because without it there is no difference between me and these kids. And without the blessed Spirit my job is pointless. Those blank stares won’t go away without the movement of the Spirit, and if you don’t believe me, come hang out with kids for a while. Praise the Lord for sovereignty, because if I could chose my own salvation I would never see Christ. My heart is too rebellious and my eyes are too blinded to do anything else.

I’m not very eloquent today because putting words to sin is just painful. I can see myself in my students: my anger, my pride, my attitude. I just hide it better than they do. I am so, so glad that Jesus has more patience with me than I do with these kids. If Christ gave up on His bride as quickly as I want to give up, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! But God is love, and love is patient. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. And it never fails. Praise the Lord for that.

I think what I learned at camp today is how important prayer is in ministry. Teaching students about Christ is, of course, commanded and absolutely necessary. But without prayer, teaching can become a self-reliant waste of time, because if I believe that my words can save then I’m damning my students to hell. We must pray that the Spirit would impact the lives of our students with grace and love: that is by far the most important part of ministry. Prayer reminds us who we’re relying on: not our eloquent words or creative illustrations, but the sovereign God who saves. I will point my students to the cross as often as possible, and when I can’t do that, Father, give me grace to remember to beg for their souls.

Please, brothers and sisters in Christ, remember prayer.

This morning, after a long and restful night’s sleep, I woke up to sun shining in my window. I took approximately 20 steps and found myself in the kitchen, where Mom was baking crumb cake muffins. I got myself some real, delicious coffee and stretched out on the couch to watch mindless TV and eat breakfast. After breakfast I settled on a channel and watched a few hours of baby and adoption stories. Eventually I got up, got ready for the day, and spent a little time in 2 Chronicles and Matthew 6.

Around lunchtime Mom and I jumped in the car, got Dad some lunch and brought it to work for him, and went to pick some stuff up at the store. Mom paid. At home she made me a sandwich and I facebooked while the sports channel played surfing and soccer. About mid-afternoon Mom went to take a nap and I went for a bike ride — only 20 minutes, but the hills in my neighborhood proved how incredibly out of shape I am.

Shortly after I finished my bike ride, Peter showed up and we played guitar and ukulele together until dinner, which my whole family (minus Vincent — no one actually knows where he is) enjoyed together, and we discussed the possibility of me actually being able to drive a car this summer (yay!). After dinner Peter and I went outside and played a little Badminton until the bugs came out and started biting, and then we went inside and watched Jeopardy while we enjoyed dessert: pudding cups.

I. Love. Summer.

Yeah, pain sucks.

I’m sure I’ve discussed the particular topic of pain and suffering before, but in this pre-Revelation 21 existence it pops up repeatedly, so I feel like it’s alright for me to repeat myself a little. As I’ve told many of my friends, it takes a couple times for truth to seep through my hard-headedness and I figure that’s probably the case for some of you too.

In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul says the following:

“To keep me from being conceited because of these supassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”

I haven’t studied Paul’s thorn very much. I’m pretty sure it’s a metaphorical thorn, some kind of sin or temptation or something like that, but when I was little I thought it was a real thorn. I imagined Paul limping along with a huge rose thorn stuck in his ribs, impairing his breathing and forcing him to bend a little, one hand always clutching his nasty wound.

I didn’t understand any of what Paul was saying, so I didn’t understand why God wouldn’t take the thorn away. What does “My grace is sufficient for you” even mean? Some kind of strange, unseen feeling was supposed to take away this very real, very painful thorn? What are you talking about, God?

I like the way I used to envision Paul’s thorn, because I think it’s an excellent picture of what our suffering looks like. Often we show up in our Christian circles wearing huge black trenchcoats and happy-face masks to disguise our bloody wounds and the pain that seeps into our faces. We try so hard to stand up straight when in reality our backs are stooped from the pain of the pointy thorn stuck right between our ribs. We try to laugh but our lungs are just too pierced by that thorn. We’d much rather curl up in bed and not get out anymore.

I understand better now what God’s response to Paul meant. Paul begins his explanation with, “To keep me from being conceited…” And if that’s a good enough reason for Paul, it sounds like a pretty solid reason to me. Pain forces God’s children to forget about themselves and run to him. It makes us realize that we’re not in control, but we follow a God who is.

At a Covenant basketball game last year, our boys had been dominating up until the fourth quarter. As they got tired and perhaps a little cocky, the opposing team began catching up in points. The timer ticked down and the other team kept scoring. Nonetheless we Scots were standing in the stands, cheering for our boys and at times harassing the other team.

With three seconds on the clock, the Scots had the ball and were throwing it back into play right under the opposing team’s basket. The boy with the ball threw it across the court in an attempt to get it as far away from their basket at possible. But, misjudging the distance, he tossed the ball too high. It bounced off the bottom of the other team’s backboard and landed right in the middle of three defenders, who immediately scooped it up. They ran towards their basket and shot as we tried desperately to block them. They missed, but with less than a second left they shot again and made it. They won by one point.

The packed stands stood silent, mouths hanging open, completely shocked. We had been winning for literally four quarters and they snatched it away from us. No one moved for probably thirty seconds.

When pain comes and lops you upside the head like that, you really don’t know what to do. You stand there and wonder what happens next. You wonder if you can keep going, or if you should just give up now. When death shows up unexpectedly, how do you keep putting one foot in front of the other? When your heart aches and it won’t go away, how do you put it out of your mind and write a research paper? When you can’t fix anything, what in the world do you do?

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” There’s only one thing to do: run to Jesus. “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” Pain forces us to realize that it’s really not all about me, it’s about my Christ. When the thorn digs so deeply into my flesh, I have nothing to boast about but the Lord. I get out of bed because of Christ; I keep moving, despite my inability to fix anything, because “when I am weak,” through Christ’s great power, “then I am strong.” If suffering points a sinner to Jesus, then bring on the suffering. If, as C.S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world,” then pain we must accept. And if such accute hurt will draw me closer to the only God who can save me from it, then I will limp to my Savior and let Him hold me. It hurts so much, but the reward is greater than we can imagine.

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.  … So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Romans 7: 14-15, 19-25

Over the past few weeks I’ve had an up-close encounter with what we theologians here at Covenant call the antithesis which runs through all people. As even Paul said, every Christian is in a constant struggle between the good we’re called to and the evil we were born into. There’s no escaping this evil, at least on this side of Revelation 21. And to be perfectly honest, it completely sucks.

For instance, I love to talk to people. I love to hear their stories and share my life and hug them and feel those relational warm fuzzies. I do not, however, like to make presentations. In fact, I happen to be avoiding writing a presentation at this very moment, partly because the thought of giving a presentation in front of a class full of those juniors I always look up to is enough to give me a minor heart attack. I also like to translate Mark from Greek to English, which is what I’m doing in Greek this semester. I even like to discuss the author’s theological implications in class. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, however, I dread when 2pm comes around and I have to go to said class. I practically avoid it at all costs.

After every exam I’ve ever taken at Covenant I think to myself, “Next time it’ll be different. I’ll start studying a week beforehand, or at least three days, and I’ll feel prepared when I go into the room.” Nope. I’m always studying the night before or the morning of.

Why do I do this? I mean, I know not wanting to go to class is pretty shallow in the scope of potential problems, but my little “c” calling is to be a student right now, and I’m not doing a great job of it. I want to be a good student, but somehow facebook, C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, and “America’s Next Top Model” are always more appealing.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

This quote directly follows the one I opened my post with. Paul doesn’t really give an answer to why we must struggle with this nasty antithesis — a question I’ve been asking almost constantly. But he does tell us how to deal with it: Jesus. He is the only way to be free.

I don’t know what that looks like. I think sometimes I have a hard time even believing it. But we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disapoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Romans 5:3-5

My biggest struggle right now is not really whether or not I’m going to class, but it’s a good enough example for what I want to say. “Hope does not disappoint us.” There is a reason to hope. Not because I can make it if I try harder, or because the sun’s going to rise tomorrow morning, or because I know I have good friends to lean on. There is a reason to hope because God loves us. As sinners he loves us, and through his Son’s righteousness he loves us. When I screw up he loves me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.