A Foretaste of Heaven

Somehow as a child I remember getting the impression I was being told that church -- going to church -- was kind of a preview of what it would be like in heaven. I can't say I thought that sounded so great. To me, church was pretty boring. I liked the singing all right. Sometimes it was nice because I got to see friends. But I became an expert at tuning out most of the service, especially the sermon. I remember once when I was in high school thinking to myself, "Maybe if I listened, I'd understand what the minister is saying." What a concept. I spent years figuring there was no use listening because he'd use big words and talk about stuff that I couldn't understand.

I like to think I'm more mature now. At any rate, I do enjoy church much more, and even look forward to it. Last week I was thinking about the process of going through the various parts of the service such as the call to worship, the greeting, the prayer of confession, the words of grace and so on. During the confession I'd felt convicted. I related to what we were confessing, and how often I failed to live up to being a reflection of God. Then I was comforted by the words of grace. 

During the sermon that happened, too, when I heard about how Jesus loved all, even "seedy" people like prostitutes and tax collectors, and the parable of the banquet when we're told to invite "the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame." I realized how often I dismiss people based on their societal stature, or how much I sometimes invest in growing my own reputation in others' eyes. But the good news is we are all invited to God's table.

Thinking about this, I was reminded of scenes in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle and the other books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. Often, when someone would come face to face with Aslan, their first reaction was guilt and fear. Suddenly they realized all their own failures and felt they were not worthy. But Aslan would breathe on them, or whisper to them, and transform them to creatures who were confident and content in the fullness of his love.

In this way, church is a foretaste of heaven, isn't it? We realize our own unworthiness and then become renewed and refreshed as we receive God's words of comfort and grace.

A Big Meal

I kind of feel like I'm eating a delicious, multi-course meal right now. I'm reading a few books at once and they're all very tasty. I'll write more about each in my reading blog after I've finished them, but I thought I'd write a little about all now, while I'm still in the midst of the "meal."

One is by Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember. It's a bunch of his essays, some unpublished, some sermons he preached, and so on. He calls it a "grab bag." I've read just the first couple so far but they're wonderful. He is full of such wisdom. And joy.

In the first essay, the one the book title is from, he talks about a dream he has where he stays in a hotel in a room he finds absolutely wonderful and when he asks the host about it, the host says the room is named "Remember." He writes about looking back and remembering, "the need--not all the time, surely, but from time to time--to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves....". He speaks of a "deeper, slower kind of remembering;...remembering as a searching and finding." One thought I had was that my "stories" blog is a bit of that for me.

He writes about the memories of hard times, and reminds us of David and all the sinful things he did, yet he sang a song of thanks. Here's one of my favorite lines: "Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future." And after that, "There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our hearts--whether we believe in God or not--that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make us less than human." I can't stop. "To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift."

And that's only the first essay!

I'm also reading Life, God, and Other Small Topics: Conversations from Socrates in the City," edited by Eric Metaxas. Metaxas and some others decided to start a speakers' series in New York "with the simple idea that the philosopher Socrates was quite right when he famously said that the 'unexamined life is not worth living.'" He happens to know "a number of brilliant writers and speakers who had thought rather a lot about the Big Questions and who had some pretty terrific answers to those questions" so he decided to invite them to speak at these events. The book has Metaxas' introduction of each speaker (and they can sometimes make me laugh out loud), the speech itself (which they kept to around 45 minutes) and the Q&A after. I'm just loving it.

Again, I've only read a few so far but the other night I was lying in bed thinking how I'd like to send this book to several of my friends, and as I was listing their names the list got WAY too long for me to afford. I'll have to see what I can do. I'm not sure if these events are still happening in New York but if they are and if they're open to the public I could easily see it as worthwhile to plan a trip to New York around getting to one of these nights.

The first 2 essays/talks are named "Belief in God in an Age of Science" and "Making Sense out of Suffering." Talk about big questions, right? The speakers were Sir John Polkinghorne and Peter Kreeft, respectively. Great talks, intros and q&a. A couple quotes from the first one:

...science and religion have one extremely important thing in common--they both are concerned with the search for truth.

Of course, science and religion are looking for different aspects of truth.

Science does not seek to ask and answer every sort of question. It restricts itself essentially to asking questions of process, which are the "how questions" of how things came to be.

Religion is asking a different set of questions, deeper questions,...even than those of science--questions of meaning and purpose: "Is there something going on in what is happening in the world?" 

Sir Polkinghorne was a scientist himself, a physicist, then became an Anglican priest. One of the things he talks about is the incredible once-in-a-lifetime-ness (my "word") of the fact that our world and human beings came to exist. He goes further than saying this shows "intelligent design," but speaks along those lines. I can't be as eloquent as he is so I won't even try, but it's a wonderful essay. I'm so glad to have read it. Just one more quote I much appreciate: "Those seeking to serve the God of truth should welcome truth from whatever source it comes." If only we could all live that.

Lastly, I'm also reading a book called Bad Religion, by Ross Douthat. I would not put it on the same pedestal as the two above books, but it's kind of like the meat and potatoes of the big meal. I'm reading it for a book club I'm a member of, and although at first I wasn't sure I liked it enough even to finish it, I actually am getting more from it than I thought and plan to continue. The subtitle is "How We Became a Nation of Heretics" and, at least so far, the author is kind of writing a history of religion in America. It'll be interesting to get to his conclusions and perhaps propositions for improvement.

I guess I'm also reading one more as a kind of palate cleanser, which is a Georgette Heyer novel I read every so often just to get in a little lightness and relaxation.

So there you go. An embarrassment of riches.

Peter's my fave

Yesterday's sermon was based on Luke 5:1-11, where Jesus calls his disciples. Peter is still called Simon there. Peter reminds me of me. In this story, when Jesus tells him to put his nets out, Peter first has to let him know that they've already done that and it didn't do any good. I tend to do that -- make sure I get my potential "I told you so" setup, you know? So Peter says, "Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." Right. "OKaaaay, since YOU say so."

And then, of course, there's definitely no I told you so happening from Peter. And Jesus -- well, he IS Jesus after all -- doesn't say it, either. But those nets get filled with fishes, overflowing, nearly breaking them. And then Peter's actions take a huge pendulum swing. "...he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, 'Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!'”

Oh Peter, you're a man after my own heart. I'm so glad you are in the Bible. It just shows you, if Jesus could love Peter, he can love me, and you and all of us.

Once I started to gather all the passages I could find with Peter in them. Story after story he proves Jesus loves us in spite of ourselves. Peter gets out of the boat full of confidence and faith,...then loses it. Peter says "You are Christ, son of the Living God" and Jesus tells him he'll build his church on this Rock. Peter says he'll never, ever deny Christ, and then he does..three times! But after all those failures, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit and Jesus does use Peter, and he does build his church with him. There's hope.

Praise God!

Another good sermon today. I guess it's become my habit to write about the sermon quite often. Anyway, today's sermon was the last in a series Brad did on "Praying the Psalms." Today was the last Psalm in the book, Psalm 150.

At one point Brad said that many current theologians say that American religion has become moralistic, therapeutic and deistic. It's about what's right or wrong, it's about how it can help me feel better, and it's about the fact that there is a God out there. Hmm. That made me think of some of the stuff John Suk wrote about in his book, Not Sure, which I blogged about today in my other blog.

But mostly today's sermon was about PRAISE. He said Psalm 150 is unequivocal when it tells us to PRAISE GOD. It does not ask us how we feel about it, or talk about why we should do it, or how it benefits us. It just says, do it! Praise him because he is God, not me, and praise God for that!

It was a joyful service with communion, which is always a blessing, good singing, and some participation by children, which is always heartwarming. Brad had asked people to memorize a Psalm for this series and to let him know if we did it. Two little girls, sisters, learned Psalm 23 and recited it today. You can't get much more touching than that.

Psalm 150 

Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.

As High As....

Today Brad's sermon was on Psalm 103. He's doing a series on the Psalms. When he talked about verses 11 and 12 it reminded me of a sweet memory with Zach.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him; 

as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

 When Zach was little, we had a little routine where one of us would say, "I love you as big as.." or "..as high as..." and the other would respond. It'd go something like this:

Z:  I love you as big as the ocean.M:  I love you as high as a mountain.Z:  I love you as high as the moon.M:  I love you as high as the sun.Z: I love you as big as the universe.
M: I love you as big as the galaxy.
Z:  I love you as big as INFINITY!!

How sweet is that? And it was a good association. Even in the psalm, the writer talks about "As a father [and we could substitute mother] has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;

Besides reminding me of the gratitude I feel for my children, and my children's love, it also reminded me of the gratitude I feel for having such a loving father and mother, who demonstrated that compassion and grace that the Lord has for us.

Birds in the backyard

I love it that from our couch we can see the fountain and the hummingbird feeder. I can never catch the birds on camera but little ones, maybe finches, often wash and splash in the fountain, and the hummingbirds like both the feeder and the red flowers on the plant beside the fountain. So pretty.

Sing a New Song

We're visiting Delaney, Luke & Des (and Cori has joined us) for the Memorial Day weekend. I love how Delaney sings and hums as she's doing things. Just now she was sitting by me putting on her shoes, humming away. Yesterday in the car she and I were singing songs she knew and every once in a while she'd ask for one like, "Sing the Frog Song." I'd say, "I don't know that one, you sing it." And she'd sing something very softly. I couldn't hear what she was singing most times but I'd catch something like the word "ribbit" when she sang about frogs. She was just making them up as she went.

Here's a video of her singing while she picks up her blocks. In this case I heard some words but often she was just singing syllables. Very melodious. And I'm not at all biased.