Good Gifts, Celebrating and Sacrificing

I have been slowly but surely working through Piper's Let the Nations Be Glad. A book like this is a good read when it can stay theoretical, when you are comfortably in your homeland pew. But when you're one of those the book is talking about? Well, at some moments it's been an encouragement, at others an exhortation, but most often a shameful mirror, showing a high standard with plenty of room to grow. But all of that is for another time.

There have been a lot of hard-hitting excerpts, but probably none more than the following, which I found incredibly pertinent...

I'll explain first: there is something quite powerful and profound in enjoying life to its fullest and thanking God for it, acknowledging him and glorifying him as the source of all good things. Good food around a picnic table on a breezy summer day with family and friends? Something resonates in our souls: Thank you, God! James 1:17: Every good and perfect gift is from the Father above. Psalm 103:5 He satisfies us with good things. Acts 14:17 He did good by giving you fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.

This ongoing sense of gratitude has been a focus for me in recent years, and I've seen it develop in circles around me as well. As an effort to take nothing for granted, it's an excellent attitude and mind set of praise, giving glory and thanks where it is due.

But this taking pleasure in 'good gifts,' more recently I've felt conflicted about it, and slowly realizing why. If all we do is enjoy life and thank God for it, well, so what? Especially in a wealthy, consumerist, materialist society, this becomes too easy. And eventually it can become a justifiable materialism, a watered down prosperity gospel, a holy coverup of greed, a pious form of gluttony, as we insatiably search for more good gifts to acquire and consume.

The point is, there's more to it all than that. As Piper says better than I do, if the outworking of our faith stops there, maybe it's the gifts we love, and not the Giver.

Glad Suffering Shines Brighter Than Gratitude:

It is true that we should bear testimony to the supremacy of God's goodness by receiving his good gifts with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3). But for many Christians this has become the only way they see their lifestyles glorifying God. God has been good to them to give them so much. Therefore, the way to witness to the reality of God is to take and be thankful.

But even though it is true that we should thankfully enjoy what we have, there is a relentless call in the Bible not to accumulate more and more things but to give more and more and to be deprived of things if love demands it...What is clear from the New Testament is that suffering with joy, not gratitude in wealth, is the way the worth of Jesus shines most brightly...

...You cannot show the preciousness of a person by being happy with his gifts. Ingratitude will certainly prove that the giver is not loved, but gratitude for gifts does not prove that the giver is precious. What proves that the giver is precious is the glad-hearted readiness to leave all his gifts to be with him. This is why suffering is so central in the mission of the church. The goal of our mission is that people from all the nations worship the true God. But worship means cherishing the preciousness of God above all else, including life itself. It will be difficult to bring the nations to love God from a lifestyle that communicates a life of things...

It's not a call to feel guilty about receiving good gifts, nor a call to refuse them. It's a call to be vigilant in our love for the Giver, a love that has so little to do with his gifts that we are always ready to gladly leave them behind.

It's not a bad gig.

On the Move

I don't think it technically counts as crawling yet. It's more of a tummy pull slide maneuver with the occasional barrel roll. Whatever it is, the other kid is getting around. So much so that while my back was turned earlier today, he moved all the way over to the cat's water dish and dumped it all out on the floor and himself. And even while typing these few sentences he's gone from one end of the room to the other to get the cat's ball, then back to the other end to eat his brother's crayons, and even though I pick him up and move him to a safer locale, he's not only mobile, he's determined, back in the same spot seconds later.

This is not a phase of parenting we've had to worry about before, the phase where absolutely nothing anywhere on the floor is safe, and neither is turning your back. Seems like a lot of fun. Relaxing, too.

Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing 5

I'm still kind of circling and trying to pinpoint what exactly I'm getting at in all of this. Meanwhile, I've lost some of you long ago. I promise this will be the last attempt to articulate myself on this subject for the foreseeable future.

I was reminded of an article passed on by a friend a while back that deals with some of these same ideas, more specifically on how people wired different ways interact in the same community. What I've been calling melancholics, he calls Winter Christians. What I've been calling happy-go-luckies, he calls Summer Christians. I like those terms. If you've been tracking this train of thought with me, you might be interested in what psychologist Richard Beck writes over here.

But I read my reaction to that article, in an email from more than two years ago, and my reaction was the same as today's: But why are we one or the other? Shouldn't Winter Christians experience summer? Shouldn't Summer Christians experience winter?

In Lamentations 3, Winter Christians are comfortable with half of the text and uncomfortable with the other. Summer Christians the opposite. But both halves are there, both are equally the words of God.

I want us to embrace all of Lamentations 3. I want Winter Christians to more readily accept expressions of hope. I want Summer Christians to more readily accept expressions of lament. And I want us to bear with and learn from each other, mourning with those who mourn and rejoicing with those who rejoice, no matter what our disposition, being sorrowful yet always rejoicing together.

New Sneakers

You know the scene. A little boy straps on a pair of new sneakers and is utterly convinced he can run faster, jump higher, basically the closest thing in this natural world to super powers. It's the stuff of daydreams. I can vividly remember the feeling.

I've been under the assumption that this belief was completely due to successful marketing ploys. Maybe that's because I seem to have grown up in the height of sneaker wars and their ridiculous gimmicks and subsequent commercial series, all of which worked quite well on my peers and me. (At the time, there were two ways to size up the caliber of the opposing basketball team: the height of their tallest player and the shoes each one was wearing. But back to the point at hand...)

Exhibit A: Reebok Pumps.

Exhibit B: Converse React Gel.

Exhibit C: Nike Air

Exhibit D: Oddly enough, even L.A. Gears had some appeal.


But I am here today to tell you this assumption has been debunked. The belief in the super powers of new sneakers is not due to marketing campaigns, but rather seems to be innately written in the DNA of young boys everywhere.

I know this because we gave the kid (who has never heard of Pumps nor Jordans) a new pair of sneakers (that only cost 5 euros, mind you) and he has been skipping and galloping and stomping and running and jumping and kicking (in ways we have never seen before) ever since they were strapped on.

Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing 4

More simply put, I guess what I've been trying to express is that hope doesn't negate lament and lament doesn't negate hope. Lament does not mean an absence of hope. If anything, it authenticates and deepens the hope. But hope does not discredit or invalidate lament. If anything, it points us towards that which our hearts our longing for. It orients us towards the solution to the reason we're lamenting in the first place.

And so, I'd like to see us be more comfortable with the two right next to each other. I'd like see us succeed in being sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

But really, this shouldn't be an unfamiliar concept. Because Biblically speaking, some of the greatest proclamations of hope come in the midst of lamenting, and some of the deepest examples of lamenting come while being focused towards hope. I'll give just one example here: Lamentations 3.

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light...
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation...
He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy...
he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate...
He has filled me with bitterness;
he has sated me with wormwood.
He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the LORD.”

It doesn't get much more blunt or bleak. And yet in the middle of this, there is a glimmer of relief, a passage we often like to quote without its context, robbing it of its full force and depth of meaning:

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

We Found a Forest