day no. 15,797: be a bee, not a spider

"Good-nature, like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill-nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the sweetest flower" - Anyonymous

Belief counts any and every trial as a blessing.

Unbelief counts any and every blessing as a trial.

Gratitude can lighten anything.

Ingratitude can ruin anything.

Faith can turn even bitter to sweet.

Faithlessness can turn even sweet to bitter.

day no. 15,796: spotty reception

Jeremiah 13:23
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?
Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

The Ethiopian's blackness is something he has always known. He possibly even takes it for granted. It is what it is. Same goes for the leopard's spots. He has always been that way and doesn't even notice he is spotty. If you pointed out the Ethiopian's blackness, he would be able to see it the same way a fish could be made to consider how wet he is all the time. Same can be said for the leopard and his spots. 

The point is not that blackness is sinful, but that sin is built in, like blackness. Spots are not problematic for the leopard. Jeremiah's point in referencing the skin colors of people or animals is that it is hard-wired. Our sins are like this. They are built in. It's all we've ever known. We have no context for a time when we lived our lives by the golden rule. We had to learn that maxim and work hard to apply it even after we adopted its truth. In fact, we're so sinful, that we don't spend much time even thinking about it. Sin is just one of the facts of life, the backdrop, the et cetera. If someone points it out to us, we can see it if we look intently upon it, but we're so used to seeing it, we're often blind to it. We live in an ocean of air at all times, but it is invisible to us though we breath it in and out and see it moving the limbs of trees in the distance. We take special note of our breath on cold days and use the fact that we can see it to highlight how unusual it is. We see it on the glass expanding and then quickly retreating, but most of the time, we forget. Breath is easy to forget.

So our sin is like the Ethiopian's skin or the leopard's spots: part of who we are. To change the Ethiopian's skin is to rob him of something Ethiopian. To change the leopard's spots is to unleopard him. To tell an Ethiopian that he must change his skin to enter eternity is to tell him that Ethiopians cannot enter eternity. To tell a leopard that he must change his spots in order to be blessed is to tell him that leopards cannot be blessed. For to change the skin of the one or the spots of the other is to unmake who they are. So it is with our sin. If it is removed, it results in a new creation. Whatever was will no longer be. Whatever remains cannot be what it once was. In other words, we cannot be saved by staying who we are. We will have to die. And we will need to rise again in order to live.

Put another way, what must be done cannot be done if things do not change. Sinners cannot be righteous anymore than leopard's can be spotless. If you remove the leopard's spots, you kill its leopardness. If you change the Ethiopian's skin, you end his Ethiopianess. So too we must die to ourselves if we are to become who God calls us to be. We cannot enter the kingdom without being changed -- not merely a costume change or a cosmetic alteration, but an entirely new creation.

day no. 15,795: good courage

2 Samuel 10:12
Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the LORD do what seems good to him.

Good courage:

- risks death in order to protect that for which living was designed; 

- takes responsibility for others and assumes risk in order to protect their safety; 

- considers the cities behind them when facing the enemy before them; and

- acts on the assurance of God instead of the assurance of the outcome.

Bad courage:

- willingly accepts the risks of hell in order to hold on to the right to be the one choosing them;

- shirks responsibilities to others in order to secure comfort and safety for oneself;

- destroys the cities in front of them assuming the enemy is behind them; and

- justifies any action that leads to obtaining the only outcome it can imagine.

day no. 15,794: from boast to boast

Jeremiah 9:23-24
Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD."

Whatever wisdom a man has is on loan. Whatever might a man has is borrowed. Whatever wealth a man may possess is lent to him. There is no wisdom, might, or riches outside of Almighty God. Whatever anyone has, it has been given to him.

1 Corinthians 4:7
What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

There will be boasting. That is inescapable. But what is boasted about is yet to be determined. One will either boast about their achievements as though they are theirs while another boasts of their blessings as though they were Someone else's achievements.

Psalm 44:8

In God we have boasted all day long,

And we will give thanks to Your name forever.

Since we will boast, let it be in obedience -- bringing glory to God for all His goodness.

1 Corinthians 1:31
As it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

day no. 15,793: God isn't merely what we don't know

“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. For the frontiers of knowledge are inevitably being pushed back further and further, which means that you only think of God as a stop-gap… We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don't.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom

God is not what we don't know. God is not merely a stop gap between that which we have mastered for ourselves and that which remains mysterious.

"The God of the gaps recedes before scientific advance as the gaps are narrowed.” -- John Cobb

If God is merely what we don't know, He is diminished by each and every advance of knowledge. His rule and reign only preside over that of which we remain ignorant. He is all fog and no illumination.

"Here again, God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized as the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom

God is not a placeholder for what we don't understand. He is not the periphery that hovers just outside of all we know and do. He is not only for when we throw our hands up or meet an obstacle too heavy to carry or too complicated to understand. God is revelation. He is not to us all that remains darkened, but our light. He is light that shines in the darkness. Light which cannot be overcome. God is not boxed out by darkness; the darkness, rather, is diffused and dissipated by His light.

"Let there be light," and the darkness was done for.

God does not live in the dark. He lives in the light.

1 John 1:5

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

John 1:4-5

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. L The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

day no. 15,792: hnakrapunt

"Hna—hma," it muttered and then, at last, Hman, hnakrapunt." -- C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

These are the last words of Hyoi as they are spoken to Ransom. With his final breath, he wants Ransom to know that he is a "Hman, hnakrapunt." 

"Hnakrapunt" in the language of the hrossa means "one who kills many hnéraki, literally "hnakra-slayer"

There are few titles more desirable than "dragon-slayer." There is hardly a designation you could bestow on a fellow man that would communicate more respect. 

The only thing better than a world without dragons is a world with dead dragons with some of them having met their demise by your hands.

May God grant me and my sons the courage, opportunity and privilege to be named among those bearing the name, "hnakrapunt."

day no. 15,791: getting used to it

“Sanctification is the art of getting used to your justification" - Gerhard Forde

When you know who you are, you know what to do. When who you are is made new, you need to adapt to a new way of doing things. Sanctification is the process of dying to your old self (mortification) and coming alive to your new self (vivification) as you learn to be who you now are in Christ. It is not merely becoming who you ought to be in Christ, but being who you already are in Christ. It is not simply preparing to get your driver's license, but learning how to handle the privileges and responsibilities of being legally allowed to drive.