day no. 17,433: all of the fuss and none of the fun

"Frivolity is trying to rejoice with nothing to rejoice over." — G.K. Chesterton, G.K.'s Weekly (1925)

Frivolity is artificial. It wants the rewards of intimacy without the intimacy and the benefits of responsibility without any of the responsibility. It knows enough to know that it should want to have fun, but refuses to turn to the Font of fun to have it. It wants to party without an occasion and a ceremony without a Guest of honor.

"The result is that at last even frivolity begins to fail. People who began by coming together only for fun end by doing it only for fashion; and there is no more even of faint suggestion of fun but only of fuss." — G.K. Chesterton, G.K.'s Weekly (1925)

Chasing a high is always exhausting. All of the superstition and reenactments cannot contain the thrill of the original. There is a reason for the original that the reenactment cannot capture. Eventually, you are left with fussing over the details of getting it just right only to be disappointed all over again.

day no 17,432: cut to the quick

"Wit is a fighting thing and a working thing. A man may enjoy humor all by himself; he may see a joke when no one else sees it; he may see the point and avoid it. But wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it." — G.K. Chesterton

It is one thing to know how to make someone see and understand the point of something and quite another to make them feel the point of it.

Acts 5:29-35

Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, "We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.  And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." When they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay them.

You can speak in a pointed way, but you cannot poke someone's soul. The Word of God can cut to the division of joint and marrow, soul and spirit, however.

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It is the grace of God that gives us the ability to see the point and it is the grace of God that gives us the ability to feel its poke in our souls.

"All good things come to a point, swords for instance" — G.K. Chesterton

All good and perfect gifts come down to us from above, including the words that cut us to the quick. Thank God for His surgical precision in doing reconstructive heart surgery on us after having already performed a heart transplant on us. 

day no. 17,431: punctuation marks the spot

“One of the most necessary and most neglected points, about the story called history, is the fact that the story is not finished.” — G.K. Chesterton

History is not yet in the books. Some of it is, but not all of it. The Author knows the ending, but He has not written it down yet. It is in His mind. He knows where all of this is going, but He has not yet put all of the details down on paper. Not because He doesn't know them, but because He is still writing down the details of today right before our eyes. We often know the end of a sentence before we begin to type it out. We sometimes know the end of the essay before we begin writing it. But God knew the end of history before the beginning. He knows where the period will be even as He is typing the present into existence.

day no. 17,430: in the cave or out of it?

"While Christians and Jews share the Old Testament, we come down here to a foundational principle of division. Jesus either rose from the dead or He did not. The Old Testament either prophesied that He would, or it didn’t. If He did not rise, then as the apostle Paul noted, we Christians are the most pitiable creatures ever (1 Cor. 15:19). If He did rise from the dead, then He is the promised Messiah that the entire Old Testament was pointing toward. That would make the Jews the most to be pitied." — Douglas Wilson, By the Rivers of an Everlasting Babylon

Judeo-Christian is an oxymoron. They cannot coexist. Both cannot be true Israel. 

Deuteronomy 6:4

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:

There is only one God.

Deuteronomy 6:5 

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

You cannot have another god because there could not be anything left for him. If you love the one, true God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you would have no heart, soul, mind, or strength to give to another and no god would suffer such indignity. 

"And whether Jesus rose from the dead is one of those binary things. He either did or He didn’t. There is no halfway. If He didn’t, then what honest man would want to be one of those deluded Christians? If He did rise, then every sensible person would want everyone else to know and acknowledge it. But the one thing we cannot do with whether He remained in the grave or came out of it is . . . split the difference. Splitting the difference is not a rational option. There is no difference that can be split." — Douglas Wilson, By the Rivers of an Everlasting Babylon

If Jesus is God, worship Him, if not, then don't. If Judaism was the packaging that the Messiah came in, so be it, but no one treats the packaging like they do the product it contained. You might keep a package to read some instructions about the product, but you don't keep the zip ties that held the product in place or the mold in which the product rested in order to be displayed. Some want to make the whole thing a collectible by keeping the product in its original packaging by insisting that no one open it. They put it on a shelf and stare at it. They may offer it some form of worship and adoration and even show it off to their friends or others who appreciate such things, but they do not appreciate the product for what it is. They do not respect its Maker by making His work into an idol kept behind a clear sheet of plastic. 

1 Kings 18:21

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him." And the people answered him not a word.

Do not split the difference. If Christ is risen, do not worship the cave He walked out of. You can and should revisit it in contemplating His achievement in overcoming it, but you cannot and must not worship a buried-Christ, you must bow before the risen Christ. Judeo-Christian is wanting to have the cave and beat it too. Either Jesus has grown out of Judaism or Judaism put down Jesus. Either He overcame the grave or the Jews sent Him forever to one.

Jesus is either still in His grave clothes somewhere or He is sitting at the right hand of God the Father and from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

day no. 17,429: raised or razed?

"The modern world will have to fit in with Christmas of die." — G.K. Chesterton,  The Illustrated London News (1909)

Christmas will conquer the world. The world will either have to get on board by dying to itself or it will be killed by the coming on of Christ. The earth will be as it is in Heaven. That will come either by being raised from the dead by repentance or by being razed to the ground by the wrath of the Lamb.

day no. 17,428: i beg your pardon

Matthew 5:21-26

You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment." But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Proactively repent. If you remember something someone might have against you, proactively go to them and ask them for forgiveness. Consider it from the other end of the equation. Imagine someone came to you and asked you to forgive them for something they said or did to you a while back. If you have forgotten about it, you will gladly forgive them and respect the fact that they came to you and humbled themselves. Or let’s say maybe you hadn’t forgotten, but had been thinking about that thing they did or said and they come to you and ask for your forgiveness for it. Aren’t you glad it’s out in the open and being dealt with? If you love them, you want to be restored and reconciled to them. Sin had gotten in the way of that, but now the only thing standing in the way of it is your acceptance of their apology and offering forgiveness.

Not about keeping yourself from communion, it is about not giving your tithes and offerings. It’s not a shocker that this isn’t preached more often or more forcefully, right? You’ve heard more sermons on tithing than you have on not tithing because of bitterness. And that makes sense. God does not want your grudge money. If you are holding on to a grudge, hold on to your money. And that goes for here as well. Christ Church Leavenworth does not need your money as much as it needs you to forgive your neighbor. God loves a cheerful giver. If you are grumpy with someone, go and get things right with them before you give. And if you have wronged someone, God is saying you owe them an apology more than you owe Him your tithes and offerings. He would rather see you righting wrongs than writing a check.

It is sometimes easier to give your money than it is to give a pardon to someone who has hurt you, but both are required. You cannot serve grudges and God and you cannot serve God and money. If you want to give, you need to forgive. If you don’t want to give or forgive, consider where that goes. Everything is going somewhere and sooner or later it is going to get there. Being stingy ends with the sting of death and hell to follow. But those who are generous receive charity. It is easier to give money than it is to give a pardon. 

Now, some of you might be thinking, “You can’t tell people that. Apologizing to others and forgiving others is already hard enough and now you’re telling them that they get to hold on to their money if they hold on to their grudges?” Doesn’t that simply incentivize them to do the wrong thing? It would if it weren’t for the rest of the passage. What does Jesus say about the one who refuses to repent of their sins and refuses to forgive others of theirs? They are liable to the hell of fire. 

Later in this same sermon Jesus said that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” (Matthew 6:24)

day no. 17,427: conservative and progressive according to the Spirit

"Christmas, being a Christian institution, contains in itself already the two alternative actions toward society — the preservation of what is good in the past, the removal of what is bad in the present." — G.K. Chesterton,  The Illustrated London News (1923)

We honor our fathers and mothers best by testing all things and preserving the good and tossing the bad. We cull our culture for its high water marks and we correct the errors that have emerged. We love our pasts in general and we repent of our failures at present. There is good in the past we have not honored sufficiently enough and bad at the present we have not repented of. By the grace of God, we must do two things at the same time: remember the work of the Spirit already accomplished and reform by the Spirit that which needs to be sanctified.

1 Thessalonians 5:21

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

The Word of God proves things faithful or not. That which is faithful, we must hold on to with all of our might and that which is proven false, we must abandon as though our lives depended on it.

"Christmas does not honor the past simply because it is the past, but because it is the truth." — Ryan Whitaker Smith, Winter Fire

Christians must be conservative and progressive. We must conserve the works of the Spirit and we must make progress in the Spirit right here and now. We must fashion the future out of the best of the past and according to the vision of Christendom that is our future.

"We conserve the past in order to preserve the future." — Ryan Whitaker Smith, Winter Fire

Sanctification means keeping the gains of the past and advancing to the gains of the future. We must be like Christ, easy to please and impossible to satisfy. We must not settle for how far we've come, resting on the progress of the past, we must strive for that to which we have been called, never stopping until He returns or calls us home.