day no. 16,596: what God commands to be kept, keeps

Exodus 16:33-34

And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept.

What God commands to be kept, keeps. The same manna that could not be kept overnight, kept for two days on the Sabbath. The same manna that could not ever be kept for three days, kept for generations as a Testimony of God's provision in the wilderness. Whatever God commands to be kept will keep. What He says does not spoil. His Word never goes to the worms. It is a living seed that develops deep roots and climbs to the skies.

The commands of Christ cannot fail and anyone who walks in them has the promise of His presence in them:

"I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." — Matthew 28:20.

Those who keep His commission are kept in their keeping of it and when they teach the nations to keep Christ's commands, He is with them in that. He is in the commands He is in the insistence upon them, and He is in the obedience to them; He is in all of it:

"one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." — Ephesians 4:5-6

day no. 16,595: ten or ten thousand?

"If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.” — G.K. Chesterton

Rules are inescapable. Something is going to govern. If you will not abide by the simplicity of God's Law you will suffer under the complexity of man's. The Bible may be a big book, but it pales in comparison to our tomes on tax codes. God's Law provides simple principles that can be applied to all of life, but man's laws must account for every imaginable scenario and thus require never-ending revision and addition. When you reject God and His image, you do not get liberty; you get libraries of regulations aimed at making man into the image of man's idea of man.

day no. 16,594: pride or shame in forgetting

"In the story of creation, Adam met Eve in a garden. In the story of redemption, Jesus met Mary in a garden. Adam met a woman with a disreputable future. Christ met a woman with a disreputable past. We must always remember this because we are so prone to forget it. And when we forget it, when we forget our name of Magdalene, we usually do so in one of two ways. We either become self-righteous because we have forgotten our past, or we are guilt-ridden because we have forgotten our future." — Douglas Wilson, Scripture Stores: Live and Times

Eve has trouble in her future; Mary had trouble in her past. But our troubles are no trouble for Christ. With man these things may be impossible, but in Christ they are not only possible, but passed over, accomplished, in His own words, "Finished!"

Pride is a self-righteous product of forgetting yesterday's sins;

Shame is a self-condemning product of forgetting tomorrow's salvation.

Christ has saved us, He is saving us, and He will save us.

Our pasts are forgiven and our futures are secure — let us not forget lest we too fall by standing proudly or make a stand in a shame spiral.

day no. 16,593: the punishment of a crime

"War is waged by men, not by beasts or Gods. It is a peculiarly human activity. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at least half of its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime."

— Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune

God has declared war on sin and set enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of Eve. War is therefore not a sin in itself unless it is waged directly against the seed of Eve or indirectly against the efforts of the seeds of Eve to fight the seeds of the serpent. As Manning points out, war does contain a crime, but only on one side of the battlefield. To be on the side of peace is to be at war with the side of war. God calls men to fight for the sake of ending all fighting. God calls men to peacemaking, not peacekeeping; the creation of calm comes at the cost of crushing the chaos. Peace can be made only by ruthlessly eradicating restlessness.

Galatians 5:17

The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.

It is not a crime to punish a crime. The officer lawfully breaks the speed limit in order to apprehend the one unlawfully breaking the speed limit. The executioner lawfully ends the life of the lawless one caught and convicted of murder. The officer speeds to put an end to speeding; the executioner kills to put an end to bloodshed. He isn't committing a crime, but condemning one. 

The love of God produces a hatred of evil and a desire for peace inspires the battle to end all battling.

day no. 16,592: cowardice up close

Jeremiah 38:4

Therefore the princes said unto the king, We beseech thee, let this man be put to death: for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them: for this man seeketh not the welfare of this people, but the hurt.

"It is worth noting that cowards are frequently brave about distant dangers, like the Babylonians, precisely because they are afraid of nearby pressures, such as those that might come from courtiers and princes. Because Zedekiah was this kind of coward, he lived to see his sons executed in front of him and all the words of the courageous prophet fulfilled." — Douglas Wilson, Scripture Stories: Lives and Times

It is easy to carry your bravado into hypothetical battles, but difficult to stand your ground against present danger. The Spirit of the Age can cause a man to crucify the immortal Son of God in order to avoid the sideways glance of the mortal Caesar of a temporary empire. Pressure is always felt where it comes to a point. One can sell their future for the sake of some soup or kowtow to the crowd in front of them while grandstanding against the army across the ocean, but either way, wherever the pressure is felt is where the resilience is required.

"If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point." — Martin Luther

day no. 16,591: paige's birthday

Happy 38th Birthday, Paige!

You are my best friend. There is no one I miss more when they're gone or enjoy more when they're around. You are my favorite person in the whole world. I am so glad you got born. 

I hope you feel honored and loved and respected and grateful today for all the good things God has done for you and through you. You are a blessing to so many. I am so glad my children get to have you around all day as they grow up. I can't wait to see the myriad ways they will rise up to call you blessed. You are a great wife, a good friend, a faithful mom, and joy to know. I am glad that I get to know you more than most.

Happy Birthday! 

Here's to many, MANY more.

day no. 16,590: living prophets demand living faith

Jeremiah 18:18

Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.

"Who does Jeremiah think he is? Let us ignore him now and attack him with our tongues. Today, when a prophet speaks to those people who will not hear the Lord, they smite with their tongues as well. They say, 'The age of prophets is past. You are not inspired like Jeremiah was. He was a prophet.' And thus they testify—the only prophet they will hear is a dead one. And their fathers, who heard the living prophet, resolved to make him a dead one." -- Douglas Wilson, Scripture Stories: Lives and Times

Living prophets demand living faith. Dead faith can honor dead prophets. It does not require any faith to raise a monument to a man you do not have to obey. We do not honor our ancestors by merely keeping their last names anymore than we become children of Abraham by the accident of birth.