day no. 15,696: what He desires, that He does

Psalm 115:3
Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.

God is sovereign. He is the only God. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last. He is one of a kind and a kind all to Himself. His prerogative is always performed. He is a free agent. He is under no compulsion whatsoever. He owes no one anything. There is no pressure that can be applied to Him. His pleasure is unrestricted. He can do whatever He desires. There is nothing He wants that He cannot have and nothing He has that He does not want.

Job 23:13
But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back? What he desires, that he does.

And He has always been like this and always will be like this. He didn't graduate to Godhood. There was never a time where He didn't get His way. He didn't attain or arrive at enlightenment. He is Light. He didn't achieve greatness. His is Great. He didn't become good by trying or doing His very best. He is Goodness.

Malachi 3:6
For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed

And He has always leveraged all of His truth, goodness and beauty for the sake of others. He delights in displaying His great generosity of spirit. He loves charity. He enjoys giving Himself away. He does so because He wants to. He does so because it is Who He has always been, is now, and ever will be.

Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

day no. 15,695: brooks of honey and butter

Job 20:4-7, 17, 20-23, 27-29
Knowest thou not this of old,
since man was placed upon earth,
that the triumphing of the wicked is short,
and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?
Though his excellency mount up to the heavens,
and his head reach unto the clouds;
yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung:
they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
He shall not see the rivers, the floods,
the brooks of honey and butter.
surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly,
he shall not save of that which he desired.
There shall none of his meat be left;
therefore shall no man look for his goods.
In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits:
every hand of the wicked shall come upon him.
When he is about to fill his belly,
God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him,
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity;
and the earth shall rise up against him.
The increase of his house shall depart,
and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.
This is the portion of a wicked man from God,
and the heritage appointed unto him by God.
and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.

The promised land is defined as a place where milk and honey flow freely and frequently. When we eat ice cream on Friday night for dessert after our weekly pizza party, I make a point of acknowledging it. Where there are milk and honey, there is ice cream! And if this is how good fallen ice cream is, can you imagine how good perfected milk and honey will be? How much sweeter will glorified cows produce perfect cream and sanctified bees work to produce holy honey? 

Matthew 7:9-11
What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

I love my children and strive to give them the best that I can. But I am a sinful dad. So then, if a sinful dad like me can provide this kind of milk and honey, just imagine what God has in store for those who love Him? Imagine what kind of ice cream He is capable of providing! He withholds no good thing. And He has access to better honey and butter than I can get my hands on.

But the wicked will be cut off from the land of honey and butter. No milk and honey are waiting for them in their future. The ice cream this side of Jordan is the best they will be ever get to enjoy.  However, for the righteous, this the worst ice cream they will ever taste. And if this is the worst, we can only imagine the best! The wicked will have the pleasures of the belly removed since they saw fit to worship their bellies. They will not receive the kingdom where bellies are filled.

Phillippians 3:18-19
For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

There is a difference between setting your mind to enjoy the things of earth because you are grateful to God who made it and setting your mind upon the earth in order to worship it. The one worships God by appreciating what He has provided. The other bypasses the Giver and glories in the gifts. There is fresh, cold milk and thick, sweet honey awaiting those who set their sights higher than the hillsides and beehives. And those that look up will one day look down to see a bowl full of the best ice cream that has ever existed.

day no. 15,694: secondary things can safely dwell only in homes governed by first principles

"All through these talks I’ve been touching very lightly on a theme, which anyone who was treating the natural loves from a Christian point of view, would have emphasised far more strongly a few centuries ago. If the Victorians needed the reminder that natural love is not enough, the old theologians were always saying, very loudly and sternly, that natural love is

likely to be a great deal too much. The danger of loving our fellow-creatures too little was less present to their minds than that of loving them idolatrously. In every wife, mother, child and friend they saw a possible rival to God. And so, of course, does Our Lord (Luke 9:59-62, 14:26). There was therefore no question, in my mind of simple dissent from the older doctrine. There has been a difference of method. I have taken a roundabout way. In my critique of the loves, I have stressed their rivalry to God less than their failure without God to be completely, or remain securely, the sorts of love they profess to be. And this, I hoped, might make it easier for us to believe, and not merely to acknowledge verbally, that they are, after all, second things. Because to let us down, while legitimately attracting us, is the very characteristic of a second thing which has been treated as a first thing." -- C.S Lewis, The Four Loves

Colossians 3:5

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Inordinate affection presupposes a proper order of affections. The adjective is where the defect lies. In other words, priorities aren't the problem, but the order can be. Second things cannot be first things. If your priorities are out of proper order, they cannot help but produce disorder. It is in their nature to fall into place by the grace and gravity of God, who alone has enough sway to be the center of everything. When you try to make a satellite the center, it is not shocking to discover that the system feels off balance. It feels that way because it is that way -- off kilter.

"I know we have been told that ‘When half-gods go, the gods arrive’, but that seems to me a
very doubtful maxim. A heart ‘empty, swept and garnished’ (Matthew 12:44) of its half-gods
may expect, as we have been told, an in-rush of visitants anything but divine. And I think we
have seen it happen in our own generation. I would rather say, ‘When God arrives, and then
only, the half-gods can remain’." -- C.S Lewis, The Four Loves

Secondary things can safely dwell only in homes governed by first principles. A house that is out of order cannot endure the second things that are left to rule it. Disorder cannot tidy up. But an absence of secondary things is no assurance of clean, safe living. It is not the absence of secondary things that keeps a house in order, but the presence, rule, and reign of first things. Only a first thing can accommodate the presence of a secondary thing without it leading to the destruction of the entire structure.

day no. 15,693: if they killed her quick

"She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” - Flannery O'Connor, A Temple of the Holy Ghost

The prerequisite of a saint is right living, whereas that of the martyr is right dying. That is to say, a saint must die daily, but a martyr just the once. A saint must live rightly by dying daily; a martyr may die rightly by doing it just the once.

There is the kind of faith required to be a martyr and there is that kind that leads to one being martyred. It takes real faith to die for Christ if that situation in general should come upon you, but it takes another type of faith to live in such a way that it comes looking for you in particular. To live as a saint is to draw fire from the world. To be a martyr is to align yourself with God and His saints at the critical point, a difficult thing to do, especially if it has not been your habit to do so up until then. But many do not exercise the daily faith of a saint in dying to oneself and would disassociate from those that do if given too much time in the face of too much conflict. To be a saint is to be faithful. To be a martyr is to have faith. But some types of martyrdom would prove too much for many people’s faith.

Hebrews 11:37
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated

Those who were stoned to death or sawn in two had to have the kind of faith that endured death in repetition. To be stoned to death is to endure the blow of many stones. To be sawn in two is to endure the many backs and forths of the saw. To have faith enough to endure only half the strokes, would be futile. It may stop the sawing, but not the dying. To be sawn halfway in half is to be completely beyond repair. Such is the faith of some- enough to do something, but not enough to finish doing it. Enough perhaps to engage, but not enough to endure.

To live as a saint requires faith that fills the day. Some people don't want to live in such a way, but would be willing to die for such a way, if it came to that. Such a person doesn’t want to have to live for Jesus now, but hopes that they'd be willing to die for Him if it came to that; but even then, only if it were done quickly enough without an opportunity or time enough to back out or turn back.

day no. 15,692: it always sounds good

"'Compassion' is a word that sounds good in anyone's mouth." -- Flannery O'Connor, Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction

Everyone likes the idea of compassion... especially the caustic. They love to slap “compassion” onto their endeavors in order to justify their evil. Compassion is the battle cry of the catamite, the sodomite, the trans, the abortionist, the communist, the feminist, justice warrior and the envious. “Compassion” is so powerful that anyone can use it for just about anything, no matter how un-compassionate it may be. 

That said, true, Biblical, Christ-like compassion (com = "with" + passion = "suffering") is a rarity. It is found more often in mouths than in motion. It always sounds good, but it also always looks hard. So it remains merry an echo — a sound without a body, a reverberation without an action.

Real compassion requires one to be strong enough to suffer the weakness of another without forfeiting enough strength in reserve to pull them both back out.

day no. 15,691: the Curse Himself

"All created mankind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish; but they that endure in their faith shall be saved by the Curse Himself." -- The Didache, J.B. Lightfoot translation

Christ became the Curse. He became the forsaken. He became sin in order to save us from our sins. He became a curse for us in order to save us from the curse we deserved.

Galatians 3:13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”

Our only hope in light of the curse upon us is the Curse Himself upon the cross -- in our place and for our sins. The tenth and final plague of Passover was God Himself. He sent His presence and it devastated the land, ending the life of every firstborn son of every household except for those covered by the blood of the sacrificial lamb. Christ became the final Lamb. He provided the perfect blood to cover our households in order to save us from the plague and curse of God. Furthermore, in Christ, God's presence is no longer a curse, but a blessing. In Christ, we are as the Beloved -- blessed because He became as we were... cursed.

day no. 15,690 continued... the characters of esther in current events

MORDECAI

Esther 3:2–5

And all the king’s servants, that were in the king’s gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman: for the king had so commanded concerning him. But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence. Then the king’s servants, which were in the king’s gate, said unto Mordecai, "Why transgressest thou the king’s commandment?" Now it came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto them, that they told Haman, to see whether Mordecai’s matters would stand: for he had told them that he was a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath.

May God grant us more Mordecais. He did not bow down or pay reverence to Haman. Despite being asked, despite being accused, despite being despised, he stood and did not bow. He bowed before God, not men. He saved his kneeling for his Lord. He reserved his obeisance for the One he obeyed without reservation. He defied the king's man and the king's commands in order to honor and obey the King's commands.

May God give us more men who bow down only before God and obey Him by refusing to bow before any other. May God give us men whose obedience includes defying tyrants.

ESTHER

Esther 4:16

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.

May God grant us more Esthers. She was simultaneously in a position of power and in peril. Her office afforded her sway, but her beliefs were out of fashion. God had given her a time and a place and an opportunity. For what other reason could He have done so than to turn a profit on her position and risk losing it in order to express openly her beliefs? She concluded it was time to put it all on the line. It was not the time to attempt to secure her position, but to leverage it to protect her beliefs.

May God gives us more who leverage their positions for their convictions. May Christians who have been able to be under the radar up until now bring their beliefs into the light. May they do so with authority and humility. May Christians put their positions on the line in order to secure their position in line with Gods elect. Mordecai confirmed that God would save His people. The question was not whether His people would survive, but whether or not Esther would be included among their numbers. She did not seek to save herself, but surrendered herself and her position in order to save her people.

HAMAN

Esther 7:9–10

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Moreover, the gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, is standing at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.”  So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king abated.

May God allow us to see more Haman's hung on their own gallows. May we see the wicked fall into the pits they have dug for the righteous and caught in the traps they have set for Christians. May God use Christian faith and creativity to catch the clever in their own devices. May we be granted the privilege of seeing them swing and our people set free.