day no. 15,262 continued... endarkenment

Isaiah 5:20

Woe unto them that call darkness for light and light for darkness

We refer to the medieval time period as the dark ages and modern time period which followed it as the enlightenment, The story goes that the days were dark in medieval times until modernity flipped on the light switch and enlightened us all. We now live in the light because the dark days are over.

But the medieval world lived in broad daylight. Those days referred to as dark, were actually lived in the light of God's revelation. The sun was God's sun and the day was for working in His will and the night for submitting it to Him in rest.

The enlightenment invented artificial light. This light was only useful after hours or in a dark room, however, so modernity built large, windowless buildings that blocked out the sun for the sake of showing off their light bulbs. They also paraded them around in the evening, celebrating the light they had brought to that dark world called night. Again, this man-made light was utterly useless in broad daylight, mind you, like a candle competing with the sun.

In order to validate their light, they threw shade at the days before its invention. The period before artificial illumination was therefor deemed dark.

We assume ourselves enlightened and our medieval ancestors endarkened, but we have it wrong. They were living in broad daylight while we live in cellars.

We are living in a dark age.

We are living in days of willful ignorance and unrestrained arrogance. We have shut out the light in order to worship under the haze of our own. We spend our days indoors by cold artificial light and our nights strutting by the dim light of them. But our party tricks only work in the dark, which is how we like it although we still know enough to call our night "day" while throwing shade at the light of medieval days gone by.

Jeremiah 2:13

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

We have forsaken the sun for the sake of our torches. But our torches burn up or burn out.

day no. 15,262: the doctrines of godliness and gladness

"The doctrines of godliness are the doctrines of gladness. If it does not come at the last to gladness, then to hell with it. When the work of God is good and deep, then those who are redeemed from their depravity are happy to sing and talk about it. 'And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isaiah 35:10)'" - Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

Total depravity is not a buzzkill. It is actually the founder of the feast. When you understand what you deserve, what you have in Christ is all the more celebratory. The doctrines of God and man that the Bible teaches lead us to greater joys than the ones we invent for ourselves. The mantras of self-esteem and and divine indifference do not produce gladness. They may produce small batch, self-assured braggadocio, but they cannot produce abundant, God-given gratitude.

day no. 15,261: providing an inheritance in both directions

"Paul says, that our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). What we do here matters. The work we do matters. This is not limited to ethical good works; it includes cultural good works. In music, what we sing matters. The way we sing it matters. What we compose matters. In the resurrection, we will be given a new song, but this does not mean that the old songs will be taken away. Too often, evangelical Christians throw up their cultural achievements like makeshift scaffolding. We think, 'It’s all gonna burn, man,' and so what we do here does not matter. But as Paul teaches us in 1 Corinthians 3, some of it is going to burn, but other aspects of what we do in ministry will be tested and purified. Some of our hymns will be with us in the resurrection. Rather than trying to guess which ones, we need to turn our attention to all of them, with an educated desire for all of them to glorify the Lamb as worthy, 'the Lamb that was slain.' We should sing as though we wanted all of them to make the cut." - Douglas Wilson, Church Music and the Other Kinds

"A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants." - Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (T.B. Macaulay)

What we do matters now and will matter later. Some of what we do will survive the refining fire of Christ's judgment. The culture we are creating is not just for our immediate benefit, it is for the saints who will follow in our train and it is for the saints who have already gone on ahead of us. Too often, we limit our assiduity, if we employ it at all, to those who will follow in our footsteps. And well enough all things considered: legacy-building and serving your great, great grandchildren through your present obedience should be a front-burner kind of fire.

But if the cultural mandate and the great commission are any indication, we are helping to build something which will be inherited by all God's saints: present, future and past. The earth that the meek will inherit has been, in part, handed to us to steward and to improve until that Day when Christ refines our collective efforts and hands back to us all the fruits of our grace empowered, faith-filled efforts. We are not just handing a legacy down to our descendants, but building one up for our ancestors as well. May we make them all proud by bringing more of it under the dominion of Jesus.

So let's build a culture that conquers the world in the hopes of reaping the fruit of the world we helped conquer for God's glory, the good of our neighbor and our personal growth.

"People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors." - Edmund Burke

day no. 15,260: while legacy may begin with you, it certainly doesn't end with you

"Think of parents who were never educated, and who were unable to read. They know their limitations, and they can accept those limitations without accepting the same limitations for their children. Wise parents in this situation will sacrifice a great deal to provide the education that they know they were never provided." - Douglas Wilson, Church Music and the Other Kinds

In attempting to begin a new legacy and trajectory for what it means to be a Van Voorst, I realize I am at a disadvantage in that I am attempting to do something of which I have no experience. I was not raising in an environment of assiduity where Jesus was Lord from top to bottom, from left to right, from side to side. I grew up knowing that Jesus was above us and the rest was more or less a crap shoot. 

There may be reason to despair in this thinking, "How am I supposed to give to my children something I never had?" or "How am I supposed to enjoy the benefits of what I believe without being there to enjoy it?"

First of all, God's promises ensure us that He can provide us with what we need in order to give to others what they require from us. Secondly, if your goal is to produce a generation whose great, great grandparents have been earnestly engaged in assiduous, faith-filled Christ-honoring, legacy-building, kingdom citizenship, you are signing up for something you cannot see. That generation will look back to you as the linchpin, but they won't see your face in person. If that is your goal, you should know that you won't see the fruit of everything you're attempting to accomplish. And if that is your goal, you will throw yourself into it anyways, because while being about legacy may begin with you, it certainly doesn't end with you. Although it is birthed in your mind, it cannot ultimately end with you in mind. To be legacy-minded is to begin building bridges that your great grandchildren will cross or lay foundations on which your great great grandchildren will someday stand. 

Faith works now believing that the fruit will come and that it will be consumed in gratitude by generations to come and that your part in it may not be the taste of it on your tongue, but the hope of it in your callouses.

day no. 15,259: your foci needs more focus

"You should want everything you do in the course of the week to be helping you prepare for worship, because worship should be preparing you for everything you do in the course of the week." - Douglas Wilson, Church Music and the Other Kinds

What you listen to throughout your week prepares your heart and head for what it will hear on Sunday morning and what you hear on Sunday morning should be preparing your heart for what you will hear through your week.

From top to bottom, left to right, side to side, our lives are to be from Him, to Him, for Him and through Him: all of Christ for all of life. Assiduity is a product and a purveyor of focus. What you focus on produces clarity and clearly focusing on certain things produces better focus.

Your focus is diminished by too many foci. When your focus is more focused, you can be more interested in other interests without losing focus.

day no. 15,258: committing adultery on dirty sheets

"When we decide whether or not we are being nice by whether or not the unbelieving establishment says we are being nice, the end result is that we will eventually find ourselves cheek by jowl with the unbelievers in their unbelief. For the sake of winning them, we allow ourselves to be won by them. Just like a simpleton teenage girl, we hope vainly to lure some horny boy into chastity, and the way we think it can be done is by lying down with him in the back seat of a car. What could go wrong?" - Douglas Wilson, European Brain Snakes

Everyone knows posers are lame. Everyone intuitively knows that trying to be cool precludes the very end one is trying to accomplish. In other words, trying to be cool will never be cool. Nothing is more uncool than trying to be cool and being caught trying is the least cool thing imaginable. Mind you, trying to be cool can be and remains quite popular nevertheless.

If we become each and every thing in order to win each and every one, will win no one. Paul believed so staunchly in Jesus that he was willing to reduce his life to that one note, but that one note was not some private space in the upper left hand corner of his head. In other words, he did not do things with his hands that Jesus would forbid in order to win the upper left hand corner of other people's filthy handed bodies. And neither should we. We do not become all things to all men by becoming one with all things and all men. We do not promote the sanctity of marriage by promiscuously sending out invitations to the world to join us in our bed. Even if they accept the invitation, it won't be marital fidelity or a high view of the marriage bed which will be achieved by committing adultery on dirty sheets.

day no. 15,257 continued... conversations and kingdoms

This morning in my dreams before waking up I distinctly heard, "1 Kings 10:1-5." That was it. No commentary or elaboration. Just those words. I was asleep but alert. I repeated the words. I made note of them. I was still dreaming, yet able to make arrangements to look up the passage once I was awake. But my alarm went off at 7am, I went through my morning hygiene routine (use restroom, wash hands, floss, brush, mouthwash, brush beard) and then headed out to the dining table for my morning devotions. 

t was a rainy morning and overcast and dark enough that without a light, it felt much earlier. I looked up 1 Kings 10:1-5 on my phone, but my fat fingers must have pushed on 1 Samuel instead of 1 Kings. So I read an account of David sending condolences to a foreign king and that king's advisers responding with suspicion resulting in the shameful treatment of David's messengers. I moved on to my regularly scheduled devotions committed to dwelling more on the matter after I'd devoted my time to my readings and my morning walk and prayers.

Once home and settled in and caught up with my morning's work, I hunkered down to mull over the meaning of the text and to puzzle the possibilities of it being brought so clearly to my attention this morning. However, when looking up what I had copied and pasted to myself from my phone, I realized I was reading 1 Samuel 10:1-5 and not 1 Kings. I now looked that up and am prepared to ponder it and my mistake in reading 1 Samuel this morning.

1 Kings 10:1-5
And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.

OBSERVATIONS:

Solomon had free publicity that spread his fame far and wide without a marketing campaign. This reputation reached the Queen of Sheba, but she assumed it was too good to be true, but good enough to be worth the trip to check it out in person. She didn't send someone else to verify it, she wanted to see it with her own eyes. Her mission was to expose or prove Solomon by hard questions. She brought her A game and an impressive entourage in order to ensure everyone in Solomon's court knew that she was not nobody. Upon being granted an audience with him, she gave vent to every question she had, holding nothing back. And Solomon was proven. He satisfied her inquisition. She laid herself bare and hid nothing and Solomon was filled with wisdom and no answer escaped him or remained hidden. After hearing him and seeing his kingdom, the Queen of Sheba had the wind knocked out of her sails, she had no fight or bark left. She had nothing left but to accept the reality of what she had heard. It had not been overstated. It was not embellished. If anything, it was understated. It paled in comparison to the reality. Solomon defended the faith by his life and doctrine, his kingdom and his conversation confirmed it.

APPLICATION:

TBD. At this point, it's unclear. I will continue to mull this over as I engage with what's in front of me, pondering possible application points. I should also ask Paige if she has any insights or thoughts in response.

ADDENDUM:

Incidentally, in my morning reading, I also read this in a Year with Bonhoeffer devo I'm reading...

"The ancients had a persistent sense of man's helplessness while sleeping, of the kinship of sleep with death, of the devil's cunning in making a man fall when he is defenseless. So they prayed for the protection of the holy angels and their golden weapons, for the heavenly hosts, at the time when Satan would gain power over them. Most remarkable and profound is the ancient church's prayer that when our eyes are closed in sleep God may nevertheless keep our hearts awake. It is the prayer that God may dwell with us and in us even though we are unconscious of His presence, that He may keep our hearts pure and holy in spite of all the cares and temptations of the night, to make our hearts ever alert to hear His call and, like the boy Samuel, answer Him even in the night: 'Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth' (I Sam. 3 : 9). Even in sleep we are in the hands of God or in the power of evil. Even in sleep God can perform His wonders upon us or evil bring us to destruction. So we pray at evening: 

'When our eyes with sleep are girt,
Be our hearts to Thee alert;
Shield us, Lord, with Thy right arm,
Save us from sin's dreadful harm.' - Martin Luther

But over the night and over the day stands the word of the Psalter: 'The day is thine, the night also is thine' (Ps. 74:16)." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together