"And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'" Mark 8:34

This post has been a long time coming, but something reminded me again of the fact that I am very thankful for crazy groups like Young Life. I helped some YLers chaperone a high school formal at the end of last semester and I again realized how awkward and dramatic (and traumatic) high school really is. And yet, groups of college kids all across the country (backed by all of the support staff- directors, boards, teachers, parents, churches) choose to spend many hours of their weeks and semesters in ministry to these emotionally charged kids, giving up time that could be spent with friends, working for college bills, extra studying, or resume building clubs and activities.

High school is that weird age where everyone expects to you act like an adult and yet they won't let you have the responsibilities/privileges of being one. Parents and teachers often talk down to these kids as though their feelings and opinions don't matter. Truth is, their feelings and opinions do matter- to themselves. At a very fragile and transitional period of high schooler's lives, these YLers devote their efforts to giving young kids the answer to all their hopes, dreams, fears and desires- Jesus Christ. They have a unique position to meet these kids at their level and yet still maintain a leadership role in their lives. It's so awesome to see them all interact.

So to all my YL friends out there- praise God for this ministry.

"You Raise Me Up"

On the Hike to Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, Summer 2004

"GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places. " Habakkuk 3:19

Fresh Look

Well, I decided to change things up a bit and I like it. I find the lighthouse particularly fitting since I will be living in Maine in less than eight months...so anyway, enjoy!

Missing Montana

St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana
Summer 2004

Does a disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it?

No, this is not a trick question and its not even one for which we must search out an answer. In fact, it is a rhetorical question taken straight out of Amos 3. Basically, God is behind every action and event that ever has or ever will take place. The sovereignty of God can be mysterious and hard to grasp for our human minds, considering that God is without sin, stills holds men accountable for their actions and moreover, remains a loving and compassionate God. We have seen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of people in the tsunami, the endless turmoil in Iraq, and our own local tragedies and struggles. (It is a tragedy that woke me in the wee hours of the morning that turned my meditation back to these thoughts.) And I believe that our one hope, our one reason and end must be found in a reliance in the sovereignty of God. There are two reasons I'd like to outline for now why such a belief is essential.

1.) If you deny the sovereignty of God, then you cannot have a grounded faith that God will work all events out for good. Christianity is historical, and contrary to some lines of thought, is completely based upon evidences. Faith in God is faith in the evidences of the promises fulfilled and promises hoped for. People who deny that God causes all things, even the terrible, to happen have no evidence that God will in fact be able to cause events to turn out for good. If you say that God did not cause the event then you say that he did not want it to happen. (Saying the he "allowed it to happen" is a cop out. If he allowed it to happen and did not stop it, then he either wanted it to happen or was powerless to do anything about it. The latter is a dangerous, and dare I say it heretical, position.) So if God was powerless to use events leading up to a tragedy to prevent its coming to pass, then what makes you think that he is powerful enough to make it turn out right? God calmed the sea and poured down the flood all for his glorious, although sometimes hidden, purposes.

2.) Belief in the sovereignty of God opens the door of your heart for God's refining fire. A second important result of belief in the sovereignty of God is that it humbles our own hearts and puts the world into perspective. Saying that God just allowed an event to happen or that he is not finally responsible places all ultimate blame on human actions (or natural, unavoidale phenomena, like the tsunami), a position that neither Job nor the writer of Job takes. Job said, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away (1:21)," and "shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive adversity? (2:10)" The writer of Job says that Job's brothers and sisters "showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him (42:11)." Certainly the writer of Job mentions that Satan did this work, but all final responsibility is given to God who ordained that Satan be allowed a short leash in order that God might show his name to be great by his servant's rejoicing in God's sufficiency amid hardship. By placing complete blame on human or worldly elements also hardens our own hearts to see God's purposes. In the Old Testament, God used attacks and destruction from Israel's enemies as a wakeup call so that they would give up their idols and rely upon him. He had warned them by prophets, but they still would not listen until he mercifully stripped away their strongholds. Job himself, although a righteous man, finally realized his need for further refinement by God's loving and firm hand. Sometimes God takes away our comfort so that we stop relying on his gifts and start relying on him alone for our satisfaction. So we ought to be careful not to pray for justice and wrath upon our enemies too quickly, but we ought to pray for mercy for our own souls and consider what refining work God intends to do through our situation, for Israel's experience attests to the judgment that God brings when his voice is ignored.

The agony of the cross is a call to faith that God is in control of all of history and that his purposes are true and good. Likewise, its suffering is a starting point for the transformation of men's hearts to reliance upon God's provision. Let us glory in the cross and in his sovereign will.

"Friends are friends forever.."

Ha. So many cheesy memories of that song. Anyway...Kristen left today. She was here for about a week and we had all sorts of crazy good times, especially with Michelle, Emily Sawyer, the Mullers and Piko. Friends are awesome.

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" Psalm 133:1

"One Thing" on Beauty

This is sort of a response to David's post on beauty a few days ago. He says, "Beauty is not a good guide to truth. For often false things may appear beautiful." Conversely, I posit that Beauty is a good guide to Truth.

God is beautiful. He is lovely. He is praiseworthy. That is the truth. God, in fact, is Beauty. Maybe what David means to say, and what I will say, is that our false conceptions of beauty are not a good guide to truth. Our failure to see real beauty for what it is, is a reflection upon ourselves and our sin, and not on beauty itself, whose content is God. To call a marriage, which is "full of rot and bile," beautiful is to lie about beauty, and to lie about God. God's beauty is not expressed in rotten marriages, but in ones that reflect his supremacy and communicate the truth about his Son to the world.

It's often the philosopher's game to say that "Beauty" or "Goodness" is some abstract thing, but in reality, God is those things, first, and the things that are beautiful or good are the things which reflect God. God revealed both truth and beauty to man in the incarnation, the death and the resurrection of Christ. Therefore, again, to call a philosophical argument, which is untrue, beautiful is to lie about beauty and God.

Now, things (like ceremonies or argument)may appeal to us, or affect our emotions or stimulate our brains, but may not be true or good. In these cases, we prefer them over something else- but wrongly. But to say these things is not to change what the things are, or if they reflect God's beauty. So the problem of truth lies in our sin. For what is sin or idolatry but to find loveliness in something other than God? (to lie about God's beauty and worthiness and sufficiency and to replace God with something of lesser worth?) Beauty is a good guide to truth, for wherever we find true Beauty, there is the handiwork of God, who is all beauty. So in order to evaluate the beauty of anything, we must first see,know and love true Beauty.

Sam Storms just put out a new book called One Thing, which talks a lot about God's beauty. It's good as far as I have gotten in the book, and I will post a review when I've finished it. But I do recommend it.