I was just looking for Easter Poems for our Easter Bulletin and I found a picture of C.S. Lewis' wife's grave. The engraving has a mini-poem. Here it is:

"Here the whole world (stars, water, air
And field, and forest as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

How awesome is that! What he's saying, is that Easter makes a difference. For those of us who are in Christ, just as Jesus had his "Easter day", his Resurrection day, so will we.

And the reference to "Lenten lands" (the same as Douglas Greshem's autobiography) is, if I understand it right a reference to the fact that "Lent" is the days of preparation up until Easter. So living here on earth was for Joy, as it is all Christians, the days of preparation for her very own Easter Day...

Because Christ did it first!

Lent means "40" and is a reference to the 40 years Moses spent in the wilderness preparing to lead his people from slavery, and the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness preparing for the Promised Land, and the 40 days Jesus spent preparing for his ministry.

So if this earthly life of ours are our "Lenten Lands" then we are in the wilderness preparing for exodus from slavery, preparing for the Promised Land, preparing for ministry(service) in heaven...and preparing for our own Easter Day!

We are preparing for our Resurrection day. We will each have one, because Christ had one too. That's part of the joy of Easter. Because Jesus walked out of his grave, alive, more alive than ever before, gloriously victorious over death, so will you, because he went first.

The first "Easter" guaranteed that there will be many more...one for every Christian.

I think that's awesome.

Perhaps you Lewis scholars can elaborate on the meaning of this poem more for me....like what does "holy poverty mean? And to whose mind is he referring in the first two lines? Joy's or God's? I love the way he rhymes this whole thing.

AND I'm still looking for a good Easter verse, so please put any suggestions in comments. Who knows, maybe it'll show up in our church bulletin. :)

The cost for the recipient of God’s grace is nothing—and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay.

- Dan Allender

As seen on The Spyglass

"We are all ministers of the Gospel. Some of us just happen to be clergymen."

-- Martin Luther

Have you ever heard that? Man, I've been hearing that saying all my life.

There are all sorts of descriptions that follow that intro. Here's two I heard recently:

Those who keep score and those who don't.

Those who think and those that feel.

Respond in comments.

In the spirit of this post, you have a choice.

There are those people who will suggest other "two kinds of people" sayings and those who will tell us what kind of person they are based on one (or all) of the suggetions.

Which one are you?

"Forgetting God's goodness is part of our fallen DNA."

- Jared

Milton Stanley on the dirty work of the Kingdom.

. . . don’t let the messiness blind us to the blessedness. Jesus sometimes compared the Kingdom of God to seed, and of course seeds grow in dirt. The seed of God's Word is the power of Jesus Christ himself. And something unique happens when Jesus touches dirt: instead of getting dirty himself, Jesus makes the dirt clean.

So Christians, let's be encouraged in the church. At times we may see mainly dirt, but God sees what's growing underneath—for our blessing and his glory.

"“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy . . . God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, chapter 8

From Prayer by Richard J. Foster:

Sometimes we are invaded to the depths by an overwhelming experience of the love of God. Walking down the streets of New York, D.L. Moody was so overcome by God's loving presence that he rushed to the home of a friend in order to have a room alone where, for two hours, wave after wave of God's ravishing love swept over him. At other times we experience such a flaming vision of light that we are forever blinded to all competing loyalties. In the center of his greatest spiritual moment Blaise Pascal wrote the single word "Fire!"

Primary Wonder
Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well

Days pass when I forget the mystery
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversion, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the
throng's chamber recedes; the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all, let alone
cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void; and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

(quoted in Philip Yancey's Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference?)

Now I begin to be a disciple. . . . Let fire and cross, flocks of beasts, broken bones, dismemberment, . . . come upon me, so long as I attain to Jesus Christ.
-- Ignatius of Antioch

I have an affinity for many of the early church fathers, Ignatius of Antioch being no exception. Like Polycarp, he lived closely to the time of Jesus, and it was (spuriously?) said of Ignatius that he was the child whom Jesus picked up and placed among his disciples. While I doubt the veracity of that legend, Ignatius would have been about the right age, since he was born somewhere between 30 and 35 A.D.

All indications are that he was martyred in Rome. I love his response to Christians who wanted to save him from martyrdom: "I fear your kindness, which may harm me." You see, Ignatius' wanted to die for his Lord. Like Peter who chose to be crucified upside down (because he did not think he was worthy to be crucified in the same manner as JESUS), Ignatius knew the glory that awaited him.

He was rightly called The Bearer of God. May we all attain to his level of devotion.

As seen on Jollyblogger, here are some quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on complaining about the church and about Christian community. I'm not sure I'd thought about these matters quite this way before:

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief.

. . .

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature.

. . .

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

That's some good stuff. I posted the quote about pastors and complaining to God with trepidation, because I'm not a pastor, and I certainly know some pastors who have some massively valid complaints about their congregations. What do you think? Does Bonhoeffer have a point?

Jollyblogger also posts this quote from John Calvin. As messed up as the Corinthian church was, Paul still called them brothers. Let that rattle around for a bit . . .

Among the Corinthians it was not a few that erred, but almost the whole body had become tainted; there was not one species of sin merely, but a multitude, and those not trivial errors, but some of them execrable crimes. There was not only corruption in manners, but also in doctrine. What course was taken by the holy apostle, in other words, by the organ of the heavenly Spirit, by whose testimony the Church stands and falls? Does he seek separation from them? Does he discard them from the kingdom of Christ? Does he strike them with the thunder of a final anathema? He not only does none of these things, but he acknowledges and heralds them as a Church of Christ, and a society of saints. If the Church remains among the Corinthians, where envyings, divisions, and contentions rage; where quarrels, lawsuits, and avarice prevail; where a crime, which even the Gentiles would execrate, is openly approved; where the name of Paul, whom they ought to have honoured as a father, is petulantly assailed; where some hold the resurrection of the dead in derision, though with it the whole gospel must fall; where the gifts of God are made subservient to ambition, not to charity; where many things are done neither decently nor in order: If there the Church still remains, simply because the ministration of word and sacrament is not rejected, who will presume to deny the title of church to those to whom a tenth part of these crimes cannot be imputed? How, I ask, would those who act so morosely against present churches have acted to the Galatians, who had done all but abandon the gospel (Gal. 1:6), and yet among them the same apostle found churches?

The Bride is beautiful.

From Brant Hanson via Jared.

"Ministry is loving people you didn't handpick."

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Read the rest of Jared's post as well - it's awesome.

Some quotable goodness from the Blogosphere:

"What we call 'morality' is God's way of creating a livable world and a life we're glad to have." - Weekend Fisher.

"I have to put myself in locations conducive to spiritual nourishment" - Jared. This one seems straightforward, but it had me doing the "I coulda had a V-8" noggin-smack. Living with intentionality. Yes, yes, 1,000 times, yes.

"Do you think David was afraid when he faced Goliath? I mean, the verses don't give us much insight into his emotions. I don't think he was, because he was a pretty rad dude. I think, like Ace of Bass, he 'saw the sign and it opened up his eyes.' I think like Christian Hosoi or Tony Hawk on a half pipe, he was ready to get gnarly. And when Goliath challenged him he thought, 'can I beat this guy?' No doy!" - Stuff Christians Like (doing an impression of a 1990's youth pastor "speaking the young people's language")

I might say, "This person is GOOD because he is who he is." God would judge, "this person is not good because he is not who I am." - Lauren, on right judgement.

"Halfway Christianity is the most miserable existence of all. Halfway Christians know enough to feel guilty about themselves but haven’t gone far enough to get happy in Christ. Wholehearted Christianity is very happy." - Roy Ortlund (from a post in memory of his father) - h/t The Spyglass.

And, finally, this one sums up my feelings exactly (and, no, I'm not anti-environmental. I'm just pro-seriousness and anti-chicken-little-ism): “I’ll believe climate change is a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” - Planet Gore.

Something to think about, from D. A. Carson (he's a Hoss!)¹

. . . many of those who speak easily and fluently of redeeming the culture soon focus all their energy shaping fiscal and political policies and the like, and merely assume the gospel. A gospel that is merely assumed, that does no more than perk away in the background while the focus of our attention is on the "redemption" of the culture in which we find ourselves, is lost within a generation or two. At the same time, I worry about Christians who focus their attention so narrowly on getting people "saved" that they care little about doing good to all people, even if especially to the household of God. Getting this right is not easy, and inevitably priorities will shift a little in various parts of the world, under various regimes. Part of the complexity of the discussion, I think, is bound up with what the church as church is responsible for, and what Christians as Christians are responsible for: I have argued that failure to make this distinction tends to lead toward sad conclusions.

[H/T Jollyblogger


¹ The Thinklings by-laws stipulate that I must say this, but he is anyway.

Overheard at Element's PRAXIS small group, via Gospel-Driven Church:

"I became a Christian eight months ago. If I go back to my country, they'll hang me." (Pause) "But it's okay."

Beautiful . . .

We've heard lots of rhetoric these past months, and we're about to hear a whole lot more. We're going to be hearing a lot of promises, a lot of proposals and plans, and - this season at least - a lot of if will have a certain apocalyptic and messianic flavor.

Regardless of your political persuasion, here's some wisdom to hang your hat on:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.”

– C.S. Lewis

[H/T The Anchoress]

Something to ponder on this Friday morning . . .

“It was this advice that led me to one of the biggest paradigm shifts in my entire conversion: the realization that to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God's story . . . Up until this point, I would have described my goal as a Christian as "to make God a big part of my story!" To understand that it's not about me, that the story was never mine to being with, was so humbling, so intimidating. What would this mean? How was I supposed to control everything if I didn't even know where God was going with all of this?!

. . . Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God’s story is to ask in every moment not ‘What is God trying to tell me with this situation?’ but rather, ‘How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?’ It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.”

[From Et Tu, via Sherry]

From a conversation with a Facebook friend who lives this quote:

"I will never give up on the wandering soul."

Thank God for people who will leave the 99 for the 1.

"Warning: If you treat your church like a business, you will treat other churches like your competition."

From Jared. I look forward to when he's famous so I can be one of the fawning lackeys in his entourage.

Great quote regarding this most recent round of pop Che Guevera worship:

I can’t imagine what it must be like to hold an ideology where Wal-Mart outrages me more than the slaughter of 600 people.

[From Libertas, via Brandywine Books]