Charis

I’m still mulling how to be satisfied with God, so in the meantime I thought I would share this powerful passage from Facing East, by Frederica Mathewes-Green. She explains that life usually seems full of uncertainty,

But, oh, how sweet is anger. When I’m angry, I’m not in the wrong. Somebody else is in the wrong, […]

For Easter, I received Mother Angelica’s Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality, and so far I am very much enjoying it. It’s organized into topical chapters, and each chapter is a collection of sayings from Mother Angelica. Some are several paragraphs, but most that I have read so far have been fairly short, […]

I’m continuing to read George Müller’s Answers to Prayer, and I find myself encouraged and challenged at every turn. I’m encouraged because Müller’s story is such an incredible testimony of God’s faithfulness, not once or twice but over decades. And I’m challenged because I realize how far I have to go in learning […]

I never gave much thought to the mercy of God until this past weekend. “Lord, have mercy” has long been an expression of exasperation (as in, “Lord have mercy! What were you thinking?”) rather than a prayer. My first exposure to this was in sixth grade, when we moved to Columbus, Mississippi—my family’s first time in the South. My teacher that year—I can’t remember her name, but I clearly remember her face, her blue hair, and her rather unpleasant disposition—was a good Southern woman, and she used to exclaim, “Laaaw-zay mer-say may!” (translation: Lordy, mercy me!) when she was frustrated. Later, in high school, Sunday school teacher Dave Krebs suggested to us boys that “mercy” was a good word to say instead of a profanity. Not a bad idea, I suppose. The other place that I encountered “mercy” was in games of strength: you extend your arms upward, interlock fingers with the other guy, and try to push him down to his knees, making him cry for mercy.

The upshot of this, particularly using mercy as an exclamation, is that the word was emptied of meaning for me. I knew that it was a theologically important concept, as well as a potentially troubling one, linked as it always was to God’s sovereignty. God said to Moses, “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,” and I always wondered how He decided. Since I usually ended up scared when I pondered this, I decided not to think about it at all. So “mercy” didn’t enter much into my understanding of God or into my prayers.

I just got Oswald Chambers’ If You Will Ask, and I’m already loving it, one chapter in. According to Chambers, prayer “develops the life of God in us” and “nourishes” that life; in other words, if we don’t pray, we are starving ourselves. That’s a sobering thought!

He goes on to say the life of God in us

is nourished by refusing to worry over anything, for worry means there is something over which we cannot have our own way… Never let anything push you to your wits’ end, because you will get worried, and worry makes you self-interested and disturbs the nourishment of the life of God. Give thanks to God that He is there, no matter what is happening….

He concludes his discussion of worry with this beautiful thought:

The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge that God is my Father, He loves me, and I shall never think of anything He will forget, and worry becomes an impossibility.

I shall never think of anything He will forget: this is one of those Selah moments. Pause, and calmly think about that!

The chapter ends with a prayer from Chambers’ journal:

O Lord, this day may your beauty and grace and soothing peace be in me and upon me. May no wind or weather or anxiety ever touch Your beauty and Your peace in my life or in this place.

Yesterday, I got out Andrew Murray’s Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness, a wonderful and powerful little book (just over 100 pages). I read it back in early 2004, and it seems like a good time to read it again.

Murray starts by making the point that all most Christians know of humility is in regard to sin: we are humbled when we realize our sinfulness, but once we are saved, we hear nothing more of humility. In response to this misconception, he writes….

As part of my effort to pray more intentionally (instead of just more frequently), I’ve committed to use The Little Book of Hours, which provides morning, midday, evening, and nighttime prayers for thirty days. I bought it almost two years ago and started with it several times, but I never lasted more than a few days. I started with it (again) last Sunday, and it took me until Wednesday to manage all four prayer times. Now that I’m in this mode, I’m very much enjoying it.

I’ve always been a lover of fiction, and only in the last 3 or 4 years have I come to a place where I can not only teach poetry but also enjoy it. The majority of my students in literature surveys are put off by poetry (as I was, even in grad school), so I have had some hesitation in posting a poem here. This summer, I’ve been teaching British and Irish Literature II (which covers the late 1700’s to the present), and I’ve been reacquainted with some poems and poets that I love. In particular I’m drawn to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit in Victorian England who wrote so eloquently about his faith. A number of his poems speak to his struggles with doubt, but he has others that celebrate God and creation. “As kingfishers catch fire” has been on my mind since mid-June: when I read it one morning before class, it stunned me (more about why after the poem).

I got up this morning ready to write more about Graham Cooke only to discover that my laptop wouldn’t boot. You likely know what that meant: a day spent reinstalling software, trying to figure out what I hadn’t backed up and therefore lost, getting everything back in order. I’m still not there yet, but I’m close. At any rate, in the midst of all this turmoil, this passage from Cooke seems appropriate:

When the soul comes under the rule of the spirit, life and peace are the result. Suddenly, we do not have to know everything—we just become wise about where to stand at any given moment. We do not know how everything will pan out, but we learn to be happy with the process of getting there. We become fixated on holding God’s hand and do not worry about the trouble around us.

While I can’t say I had this attitude all day, I had it at least part of the time. I didn’t get in a tizzy this morning because I knew God would work it out, and at 6 (I had been up for an hour and half at at point trying to solve the problem), the Spirit prompted me to drive to campus to get my Mac mini and bring it home. I figured I would use it to work if I had to take my laptop in for repairs. As it turned out, having the mini was a huge blessing but not as I expected: I was able to copy all my applications and other files over, saving me from a very frustrating hunt for installation CDs, serial numbers, and so forth. When I realize that I could connect my laptop to the mini and copy, I was excited: not only because it was a great solution, but more importantly, because I realized that the Holy Spirit was looking out for me even before I knew I needed the help. Or, to put it another way, He’s got my back. When you see God at work in unexpected ways, you can’t help but be filled with love and gratitude.

I’m reading Graham Cooke’s The Secret of a Powerful Inner Life—less than 60 pages, but slow going because there’s so much to think about. Here’s what caught my attention this morning:

How much of our “spirituality” is threatened by opposition? Do we feel the urge to control or dominate in human confrontations? How much of our peace is destroyed by conflict? How easily upset are we? How long does it take us to regain normal, good humor? How vulnerable are we to anger, resentment, and bitterness? How long do we hold a grudge? How quick are we to forgive? How willing are we to be restored?

If the answer to any of those questions is, in any way, negative, we are more likely living in our souls than in our spirits.

Ouch!

Lest this leave you feeling overwhelmed with your failures, Cooke offers hope in the next paragraph:

God is breaking our controlling selves by enabling us to submit to the spiritual fruit of self-control. Our dominatnig, manipulative selves must become humble and submissive to Christ. We must learn to reassert our wills as the vehicle of the spirit over our emotions and thought lives.