This Life.

I can't believe heaven is going to be even better than this life. I find myself rejoicing more and more about God's careful restoration of his Creation. This life is such a blessing to be a part of, and to know that heaven is going to be the fullest realization of life as it was went to be is very hard to conceptualize, especially when you begin to fail to keep track of your blessings, because you can't count that high. We are showered with love and beauty each day, as Creation screams of a Designer who is intimately interested in what He has made. We are exposed to the incomprehensible intricacy of human life every day when we talk to other people, whose lives have been carefully shaped to bless, teach, and experience the most wonderful event of being alive. The Church, with the love of God birthed in her chest, will never cease to amaze me. The story of redemption will always fascinate me and bring me such hope and joy. 

The beauty of this life is incomparable with the life to come. And that is what blows my mind. Because this life is so beautiful.

Salvation

He saves us from us.

There is no other name,

That I would rather know,

Than the name of Him who washed me, 

Whiter than the snow.

God's Work

"God hath a work to do; and not to help Him is to oppose Him."

-John Owen

We are part of a divine plan of redemption. It will be carried through. It has already been accomplished in Christ. But as the Church, we have the important duty of reverberating His Call to the lost and the perishing. How can we neglect such a great work? Indeed, we cannot. For we have not been called to disobedience, but to obedience. We have not been called to hatred and indifference, but to love. We have not been called to ourselves, but to Christ. Heed His Word, and answer His Call!

Luke 15:8-10

"Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Luke 15:8-10

God leaves us not to our own self-destructive ways, but instead pursues His children in steadfast love and mercy. And what is the result? Repentance on earth, and joy in heaven.

What is man, that You are mindful of him?

I am quite overwhelmed by several things.

1. The depth and spread and reach of God's love and mercy and grace and care and tenderness and faithfulness and intervention and Providence. There is nothing they cannot reach, there is nothing that can hide itself from them. And I rejoice in this.

2. The depth and spread and reach of God's love and mercy and grace and care and tenderness and faithfulness and intervention and Providence, in spite of my wayward heart and the slow pace I seem to be holding in sanctification. His patience blows my mind. His faithfulness, even more so.

3. How people can mistake the creature for the Creator. How even fellow Christians mistake the work of the Creator for the work of the creature. There is only One who can work goodness and love in us. There is only One who can fix the mess that we are born into and live in. There is only One who can say to me, You are justified in Christ, now walk in Him. There is only One who can put His exquisite and unique and satisfying love into a heart that has never known anything like it. 

4. How all of Creation shouts and proclaims the beauty of the Creator. And how magnificent common grace is - Who could have even thought of blessing all, both righteous and unrighteous, but a God whose character is that of love and grace and kindness? Who would have ever thought that Someone would care so much for what He has made - to the extent that He would sacrifice Himself! to salvage the good work of His hand, that had intentionally ship-wrecked itself for the selfish pleasure of it? But God who is rich in mercy...

...how can this not be overwhelming?

Reading Van Til's "An Introduction to Systematic Theology."

"When God existed alone, there was no time universe, and there were no new facts arising. The only knowledge activity that existed was completed in the circuit of the mutually exhaustive personalities of the triune God. It is only with respect to man that we can speak of a relation of the a priori and the a posteriori elements of knowledge. Such a distinction cannot exist in God ... There is no novelty in God, and there can be no novelty for God."1 (Italics emphasis mine.)

God doesn't learn.

He is.

He knows.

He is True knowledge.

Hallelujah.

1 Van Til, Cornelius. An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1974), 10.

The Immeasurable Wonders of a Holy God

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again," and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough...It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

-G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy