day no. 16,495: stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you

Isaiah 55:2-3

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

Stop buying that which isn’t bread from those who openly pedal poison.

Stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you.

Worship the Lord with your work and your wealth.

Support Christendom with your projects and your purchases.

day no. 16,494: the floods that wash away whole worlds are not enough for God to wade in

Psalm 29:10

The LORD sitteth upon the flood;

yea, the LORD sitteth King for ever.

The floods that wash away whole worlds are not deep enough for God to wade in. He sits upon the flood. He hovers above it, unphased by its current. It cannot sweep Him up, or away. It is not deep enough for Him to soak His toes, not even roast beef or wee-wee-wee all the way home.

The Lord is King for ever. He sits in His throne. His throne and His place on it are established. They are indomitable facts. He cannot be unseated and His seat cannot be undermined. Nothing can shake what He has fixed and nothing can hold on to whatever He shakes lose. 

The Lord sat down after saying, "It is finished!" His work is perfect and complete and incorruptible.

Psalm 110:1

The LORD said to my Lord,

“Sit at My right hand,

Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”

There He sits now as His enemies assemble like an ottoman. The floods that so disrupt our lives are but puddles over which He presides.

The Lord sitteth as King for ever. The floods are at His beck and call. Let us call upon Him.

day no. 16,493: force and fervor; decision and devotion; valor and vehemence

And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. —  Exodus 17:12

“So mighty was the prayer of Moses, that all depended upon it. The petitions of Moses discomfited the enemy more than the fighting of Joshua. Yet both were needed. So, in the soul's conflict, force and fervour, decision and devotion, valour and vehemence, must join their forces, and all will be well.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening 

Moses prayed while Joshua fought. Moses fought on the plains of faith and Joshua preyed on the fields of battle. Moses and Joshua were equally engaged in kingdom work. Moses by his prayer fought and Joshua by his fighting prayed. Joshua by his fighting demonstrated his faith. Moses in his prayer demonstrated his. Joshua trusted in the prayer of Moses. Moses trusted in the fighting of Joshua. Joshua did not set down his sword to pray. Moses did not lower his arms to grab a sword. Joshua left Moses to pray and Moses left the fighting to Joshua. Both were required. Both played the man at their posts and the battle was won.

“It is far easier to fight with sin in public, than to pray against it in private. It is remarked that Joshua never grew weary in the fighting, but Moses did grow weary in the praying; the more spiritual an exercise, the more difficult it is for flesh and blood to maintain it.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

The prayers of Moses strengthened Joshua in his fighting and the fighting of Joshua encouraged Moses in his praying, but Moses strength was sapped. Spiritual battles require Spiritual replenishment just as physical battles requires physical restoration. All battles leave their wounds. Physical battles are accompanied by physical wounds; spiritual battles by spiritual ones.

In Christ, there is a balm in Gilead that can heal all wounds, but not all scars. Just as physical wounds may leave scars of battles fought and survived, so spiritual wounds may leave their marks on a man. But just as physical scars are trophies of past victories, so spiritual scars may prove to be trophies for those who persevered past struggles by staying close to Christ.

day no. 16,492: a weapon which knows no defeat

"It is written, ‘They overcame through the blood of the Lamb.’ How could they do otherwise? He who fights with the precious blood of Jesus, fights with a weapon which cannot know defeat. The blood of Jesus! sin dies at its presence, death ceases to be death: heaven's gates are opened. The blood of Jesus! we shall march on, conquering and to conquer, so long as we can trust its power!” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

The blood of Jesus is a weapon which knows no defeat. It cannot be conquered. It is the victory of defeat. You cannot overcome the One who came out of being overcome. Christ was crucified, dead, and buried and yet here He stands. What can man do to Him? His blood was shed and shot up as salvation. He is indomitable. You cannot defeat Him. He has survived defeat and left it in the tomb. The death of Jesus was the defeat of defeat. There is nothing left. He destroyed destruction. He overcame being overcome. He overwhelmed being overwhelmed. He made a conquest of being conquered. 

In Christ, by His Spirit, through His blood, we overcome. We march on, conquering and to conquer. We have been conquered by Christ. He has overcome us. We are His conquest and in His Name we in like manner are called to conquer.

By all hell's host withstood,

We all hell's host o'erthrow;

And conquering them

Through Jesus' blood,

We still to conquer go

— Charles Wesley,

Angels Your March Oppose

day no. 16,491: medievalism is the novelty of vetting novelty

On a Vulgar Error

by C.S. Lewis

No. It's an impudent falsehood.  Men did not 

Invariably think the newer way Prosaic

mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot 

Upon the church? Did anybody say How 

modern and how ugly? They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot 

With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay, 

Were these at first a horror? They were not.

If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food 

All set us hankering after yesterday, 

Need this be only an archaising mood?

Why, any man whose purse has been let blood 

By sharpers, when he finds all drained away 

Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude 

Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway 

All that I can't do now, all that I could?

So, when our guides unanimously decry 

The backward glance, I think we can guess why.

Modernity is possessed by progress. So much so, it despises history. The future is the heaven it can never obtain and the past is all its failed attempts to get there. Modernity hates tradition and worships novelty. "Next" and "new" are the word and sacrament of advance.

The Medieval mindset, by contrast, encourages looking back in order to better look around. The Medieval mind compares "now" to "before" in order to compare and contrast advantages and difficulties. It thinks in terms of trade-offs, while Modernity considers only solutions. Modernity is blind to the side effects of progress and thus is continually obsessed with fixing the unforeseen problems caused by previous foolproof solutions.

The Medieval mindset does not reject advance, but insists on assessing it -- testing all things, keeping the good and tossing the bad. The Medieval mindset is one of adoption by evaluation whereas Modernity calls for revolution by abandonment.

The Medieval mind is centered upon accepting Christ, not in rejecting Modernity. The Medieval mindset would not resist the phone or the internet simply as "new" technologies. It wouldn't welcome or refuse them solely for the sake of their newness, but neither would it necessarily fawn over them for their novelty. The heart of the Medieval worldview dwelt pondering within the Church, not rejecting anything invented outside of it.

Medievalism is the novelty of vetting novelty. Modernity is the tedium of tossing tradition and the monotony of obsessing over obscurities. Medievalism is the originality of rejecting some originals while Modernity is the predictability of infatuation with innovation.

Modernity is a vaccination against tradition. It pits artificial against beneficial and prefers unique over ubiquitous. Medievalism is inherited immunity. It considers utility without forgetting vanity. It prefers well-worn assiduity to fresh-baked fixation. It curates continuity instead of manufacturing monotony.

day no. 16,490: do not apologize for that which deserves your applause

Numbers 30:13

Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.

Husbands can nullify the covenants of their wives. In other words, covenant heads can annul the commitments of their wards. A covenant head can void the covenant of one for whom he is covenantally responsible.

Patriarchy is not incidental to the Old Testament. It is NOT an old, outdated embarrassment or blemish on the Christian faith. It is, in fact, essential to the Good News of God in Christ.

Isaiah 28:18

And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

If we could give ourselves away, we would still be in our sins. Our contract with death would stand and we would be destined to die. But thanks be to God, a federal head can nullify our commitments. We cannot give ourselves away. We need someone to walk us down the aisle and sign off on the transfer. If that someone does not or will not, any commitments we have made can be unmade and annihilated as though they never stood.

While the federal headship of Adam may have broken everything, the federal headship of the Second Adam is our only hope of getting out of it in tact.

Masculinity takes responsibility; It is the glory of the man to step between the danger and his beloved. It is his honor to protect those under his care. Even when the danger is imposed by his beloved's decisions. It is the fame of a father to take on himself the consequences of his children's choices in order to rescue them from themselves (e.g. God's commendation of Job).

Doctrines we can be tempted to find repulsive (headship, representative government a la Adam, patriarchy, etc...) when abandoned also leave behind the strength and weight of the Gospel which is God acting on our behalf as our head and saving us from ourselves.

Do not apologize for the presence of patriarchy; rather, applaud it. Do not apologize for that which deserves your gratitude. The glory of God in Christ is manifested in breaking our covenant with sin and death without us completing the proper paperwork. He did not leave us to let live, for to us that would have been our death. He interfered by letting Himself die. He removed our promises to death from our mouths and eliminated our vows to death from our hearts.

He did not ask our permission. 

He secured our salvation.

He acted on our behalf to undo our deal with death.

Thanks be to God!

day no. 16,489: ophelia is TWO

Ophelia Belle, you are TWO today! Happy birthday.

You are so much fun. You love to dance and wiggle your shoulders. You love to show off your teeth. You love to open your big eyes as wide as they can go. You like to laugh. You are just a blast.

You are our baby shark. You have all the teeth and you know it... and you show it.

You love your milk and you love your cheese. And you like saying, "cheese," when a camera is pointed in your direction.

You like saying, "Hello!" It's your favorite word. You say, "Hi!" and "Hello!" like you mean it... which you do! 

You also like saying your own name, except you often stop short and get stuck singing the Wizard of Oz, flying monkey chant of, "O-E-O... Whoa-O." It is adorable.

You still walk a bit like a capuchin with your arms bent into your ribs instead of akimbo. You have figured out how to navigate the stairs and are enjoying your new found freedom by messing up all of your mom's bookshelves.

You have more eyeball than you have hair. I'm sure the hair will catch up, but your eyes have a great head start.

You love having your feeties rubbed by mom.

You like to suck on your sheets while you sleep and often wake up a very cheerful, yet very hot mess. You also have recently acquired the joy of jumping on your bed. You look like Family Force 5 in the BZRK video bouncing away. It is very cute.

You are a fan favorite and we love so much. I'm so glad God gave you to us.

Happy 2nd birthday, OE Biscuits!

Love, 

Dad