Beautiful, Delightful Church

"For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. " Isaiah 62:1-5

Last night I heard a sermon from Mr. Martin (Titus' dad) on this passage. He spoke of how we can believe the promises of God, and remind Him of His Word, as it says later in the passage. I read through the verses as he was reading them to us. What a blessing it is to be called beautiful by God! To know that through all our sin and dirtiness, God still looks at His Church and says we are beautiful.
So this finals weeek, I am reveling in the fact that as a small part of God's Church, His delight is in me.

Lessons from a Peasant's Dish

Pixar has been making me smile for years. November 6, 2007, their newest movie, Ratatouille came out on DVD. I just happened to be at Walmart on that day, so I bought it. A friend of mine and I just watched it this evening. And as a Pixar movie, I can watch it over and over again and get something new out of it every time. This time, I learned a simple recipe for life.
During the movie, a food critic apply named Anton Ego "The Grim Eater" snobbishly criticizes food from Gusteau's Restaurant. At the climax of the movie, however, Ego eats a simple peasant's dish, Ratatouille, and learns a lesson himself. As he walks away from this experience, he says,
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
I heard these words this evening and they pierced my heart. Going through college, students (myself included) tend to criticize everything we can. I don't exactly know why this is, but it ruins the more correct perspective of appreciating what we have.
Application?
Recipe for Appreciation:
-realize I am just a peasant's dish
-look on the positive side
-relish the dish placed in front of me
-Thank God for every gift of His
May God bless you this lovely evening!

The Body of Christ

I have a humanities class this semester, which is absolutely wonderful! One of the neat things we had to do in it was write a poem about something we love. Here is what I did...

In the eyes of people around me
I see a sight amazing to behold:
Brothers and sisters loving each other, praising God.
I lift my voice to sing,
I bow my head to pray.
Around me, a hundred voices join together,
And with us is Christ, our Head.

I sit alone and cry.
In walks Christ, my Savior
In the body of a weak sister.
She puts her arms around me,
Drawing my eyes upward to gaze on
What I see in her eyes –
My Risen Lamb, the Head of the Church

I see my love, Emmanuel: God with us
In the Body of Christ.

The Glories of the Trinity

This evening I read Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening for the day. In his evening selection, he talked about John 16:15, commenting that, "There are times when all the promises and doctrines of the Bible are of no avail, unless a gracious hand shall apply them to us....Think not that Christ hath placed His joys on heavenly shelves that we may climb up to them for ourselves, but He draws near, and sheds His peace abroad in our hearts. O Christian, if thou art tonight laboring under deep distresses, thy Father does not give thee promises and then leave thee to draw them up from the word like buckets from a well, but the promises He has written in the word He will write anew on your heart....Glorious Gospel! which provides everything for the helpless, which draws nigh to us when we cannot reach after it - brings us grace before we seek for grace! Here is as much glory in the giving as in the gift. Happy people who have the Holy Ghost to bring Jesus to them."
What a wonderful thing the Trinity is in our lives! God the Father lovingly cares for us by giving us His Word - Christ Jesus, who not only pleads on our behalf, but sends His Holy Spirit so we may know the promises of His Word. May we drink in the promises of God this evening and for the rest of our lives!

Welcome!

I finally got a blog.
Perhaps this compilation from about a month ago will help to explain the name of this blog.

Life is full of different moments and, for an emotional person, different moods. The best moments and moods I have in my life are the ones in which I get a sense of the exciting side of being a Christian. In this mood, I am ready to conquer the world in whatever way God has called me. In these moments, I feel as though I can see a glimpse of myself as I will be in heaven.
I had one of these moments this past week when a blinding flash caught my mind up in thinking of exciting Christianity. The setting was chapel here at my Christian College. As I was sitting, listening to the speaker, he mentioned a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle. I just happened to be listening to an audio version of this book last week, so the quote captured my attention. The quote comes from a scene in the book when the creatures have entered “heaven.” The unicorn cries out, “Come further up! Come further in!”
In the course of the rest of the book, the unicorn cries this out several times. The first time I heard the phrase, I almost cried, but the unicorn repeats it so many times that I got rather annoyed at this unicorn, so I did not think about the quote until I heard it in that Chapel. As I heard the words, it suddenly struck me that adventure is a grand, wonderful part of the Christian life. Christians can be truly adventurous because no matter what happens to us in the adventure, we know that, first of all, it will be God’s will, and second of all, it will have a wonderful ending. Life is exciting when we do not know what will happen, but we do know that it will have a beautiful ending.
I used to think that happy endings were a little too optimistic for Christians. After all, we do believe in total depravity and our stories right now in this world do not always end very well. “Fairy Tale” endings are very unrealistic in this life. Come on, who really lives happily ever after? Or, as a recent movie asked, “What comes after happily ever after?” In our postmodern world we think that reality must set in at a certain point.
And yet, deep down, we all know a story is no good without a happy ending. In our “reality checks” we forget that we are just in the middle of the story, and by the time we get to the end, it will be a beautiful, exciting beginning in which we will live happily ever after as we dwell perfectly in heaven.
So as I look forward to the adventure I will have in heaven, I will start my adventure towards heaven right now. With a cry in my heart and Christ my banner, I am going further up and further in.

Well, aren’t you coming too?