More Edwards
“My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and infinitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or infinite mountains, over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. I go about very often, for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and in my mouth, ‘Infinite upon Infinite. Infinite upon Infinite!’ When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fullness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth, in all the majesty of his power, and in all the glory of his sovereignty; I should appear sunk down in my sins infinitely below hell itself, far beyond the sight of everything, but the piercing eye of God’s grace, that can pierce even down to such a depth, and to the bottom of such an abyss.”
From Jonathan Edwards’ Personal Narrative.
We don’t understand the depth of human depravity; nor can we comprehend the God that is willing to save us from it. May we never take lightly our sin; for sin, God died.
A Quick Break from Reality
Sometimes, I forget that I actually love to read. Usually, it’s when I’m knee deep in schoolwork.
P.S. Euripides and his Trojan Women can go run off a cliff–and hopefully not get seriously injured. Gosh. So boring I could possibly go comatose.
I took a break from writing yesterday and today. I’ve still been working, but I pulled back the throttle. So, today I decided to sit down and read something other than research writing.
I went to my boy Shel Silverstein and read a few poems–got some laughs, got the creeps a little. Then after that I went to my other homeboy Ray Bradbury and picked up a short story called “The Fox and The Forest.” It was dope. That’s my critique. Dope. I’m spent on trying to critique academically. I know what I like, and I know what I dislike.
Studying English has been a huge blessing. It’s definitely been a challenge, because writing doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had to really work my butt off to remember how to annotate, and bibliograph, and what vocabulary means what, and where to put a damn semi-colon. But despite what critics, professors and students who-know-so-much-more-than-you-do say, (I’m thankful for my homies Matt and Jordan though; they know A LOT more than I do, and it’s a pleasure to learn from them) sometimes you just gotta sit down with Captain Underpants, Goosebumps, and Peanuts comic strips and just let the time fly by.
Definitely praising God for the little things today.
A Sip of Eternity
In John 4, Jesus confronts a Samaritan woman about her sin. Before he does this though, they share a short discourse with respect to the type of water they prefer to drink. The woman loves her some raunchy well water, while Jesus on the other hand, in his infinite wisdom, chose to drink full and deep from the cup of God’s generous provision–in complete obedience and faith. I’m not going to quote the whole passage, just what Jesus ends his point about the water on, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again [the well water], but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” That’s John 4:13-14.
Here’s what I’ve assumed Jesus is saying, “if you take a sip of me, you’ll never be thirsty again because your thirst will be removed.” But that’s not true, and I praise God that he saw it fit to bless me with grace, and have the Spirit give me new eyes to see what he’s actually saying. Jesus is saying that there is a guarantee for that water to “well up to eternal life.” It’s not that my thrist will be removed–the day this happens will be a spiritual lobotomy. My thirst will continually be satisfied by the same water which has been eternally provided.
As people, we will always thirst for something, and in our foolish depravity we will seek everything but God to satisfy it. But Christ is making us an offer. He is simply saying that if you drink from the water he offers there is a guarantee for more water. And not only that, but that his water is better. Simply better.
There is an eternal thirst inside each of us; it is a product of the fall. Wells that we dig run dry quickly, and our souls are scorched. We become dead grass that is better for nothing else but to be thrown down to hell because we have scorned the benevolence of God and his provision. But there is a final offer; that if we drink from Christ, though we will always have thirst, he will always have water.
Consider this thought from Jonathan Edwards: “It is said that Christ is a river of water, because there is such a fulness in him, so plentiful a provision for the satisfaction of the needy and longing soul. When one is extremely thirsty, though it is not a small draught of water will satisfy him, yet when he comes to a river, he finds a fulness, there he may drink full draughts. Christ is like a river, in that he has a sufficiency not only for one thirsty soul, but by supplying him the fountain is not lessened; there is not the less afforded to those who come afterwards. A thirsty man does not sensibly lessen a river by quenching his thirst. Christ is like a river in another respect. A river is continually flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually, so that a man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; he is continually supplying his people, and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ, may have fresh supplies from him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end.” This is from his sermon Safety, Fulness and Sweet Refreshment in Christ based on Isaiah 32:2.
It’s not a question of whether or not we will thirst, but what we will drink.
-etry
“-etry” by Eddie Gauronski–a poem for November Blog Fest.
Poetry.
It is extremely gaudy,
Because it is the only activity
That ends in “-etry.”
Everything else is content in solidarity,
To end in the familiar vernacular “I-N-G,”
Except poetry.
What a douche.
Bed.
Sorry for the lack of blog last night. I was wrapped up in my senior paper. To be honest, I don’t really care. I believe in grace (that’s supposed to be a joke, don’t get all theological on me.) But I just worked a full day, after a full morning of writing and have decided that I before I put myself before a keyboard (for school purposes) I should catch a few hours of shut eye.
My post for tonight: how wonderful beds are. Creating a post about bed right before I go to bed is like foreplay (spelling? that’s not a word I use, like, ever) but with sleep. Gosh, I should probably delete that sentence. I think I’m going to regret it in the morning. I am incredibly stoked to lay down and catch some rest, so goodnight. No regrets, I’m letting the creativity run around naked tonight. Peace.
I’m probably going to delete this in the morning…
Excuses.
I’m writing a paper. But here’s a rad video! Enjoy:
Dreams of the Living Dead
Everybody has that one thing they’re dying to be. That one dream job that they think would just fill the gap in their soul (for the record it never does.) You know what mine is? I want to be a prosthetics guy for horror movies. I’m dead serious (pun emphatically intended.)
I mean come on. Who doesn’t want to make something like The Evil Dead? Guts spewing, chainsaws blazing, limbs flying across the screen, green dye and oatmeal seeping from the pores of possessed campers. Dude.
Writing this out makes me realize it’s going to take a real special kind of girl to love me…
No, my blog isn’t all that deep tonight. But I love horror movies–more specifically, cheesy zombie movies. I actually thoroughly hate being scared. Especially over demonic stuff. The only reason I can get into something like The Evil Dead is because it’s so clearly made up. Come on, Necronomicon Ex Mortus–”dead book of dead”? I don’t know Latin (Greek? Clearly, neither) but that just sounds so fake.
Also, terrible 80′s movies are awesome too. Cheesy zombie movies done in terrible 80′s style–you had me at “hello.”
“Heaven is For Real”
I’ve heard a lot about this book lately.
My intent in this blog isn’t to discredit the book, or say that the kid is wrong. What if the Spirit really did a work and that boy saw Heaven? I don’t know. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not qualified to respond to that. I know, I’m probably not qualified to blog about it. But my blog isn’t going to be about the book. I’m not taking a position on the truth of that story. What I’m going to say is, even if that boy’s account is true–we have something more sure than his story. We have the word of God.
In 2 Peter 1, Peter describes the transifiguration account in the gospels. He says this, “For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes when he received honor and glory from God the Father. The voice from the majestic glory of God said to him, ‘This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.’ We ourselves heard that voice from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.”
Now see to what he continues to say in the next verse, “Because of that experience, we have even greater confidence in the message proclaimed by the prophets.” His experience did not replace his reading of Scripture. His experience strengthened his confidence in the Scriptures.
Like I said, that boy’s story–I don’t know. I’m not going to comment. But Luke records Jesus saying this in his parable about the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, “But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen even if someone rises from the dead.’”
That being said, if this boy’s story is false, okay–he’s a child. Children exaggerate. If it is true, praise God, but only if his story doesn’t conflict with Scripture. Like Jesus says, Moses’ testimony (aka your Bible) is better proof of God’s existence and his sovereign rule than this child’s story.
Hanging out with Luke
I’ve decided to go through the book Luke. I read it a few weeks ago and I realized that I don’t think I had ever read the whole book through before. So, I decided that I’m going to go through the book again along with Mark Driscoll’s sermon series on it.
I listened to the first sermon today and got super stoked. Luke sounds like he was an exceptional follower of Christ. According to the sermon, Luke’s writing constitutes over half of the New Testament because he wrote both Luke and Acts. Word-wise, he beats the apostle Paul. This is according to the sermon, so if it’s wrong I apologize. I don’t want your angry comments.
Also, Driscoll went through a second century commentary on the book of Luke that contained a little information about his life. I think he mentioned that the reliability of the source was questionable, but it doesn’t say anything ridiculously unimaginable so it’s probably cool. One thing it mentioned was that Luke was a man that was full and in love with the Holy Spirit. That’s so rad. I want to aspire to that.
We should look up to the dedicated followers of Jesus who’ve gone before us. I’ve decided that I really look up to Luke. Having read through both his contributions, I think that he is my favorite person mentioned in the Bible. This is of course after God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Again, I don’t want your angry comments. He was a humble servant and friend of Paul. He was dedicated to the gospel by being such a servant and gathered objective, eye witness and textual evidence to help compilate a reliable documentation of Jesus’ life, ministry and sacrifice. That’s dope.
Heaven is Jesus
I have to confess that at times I don’t want Jesus. I just want Heaven.
It’s the probably one of the most disgusting things that I can admit about myself, but it’s true. I feel like I use Jesus as a means to just get out of Hell. I know that I love Jesus, but I know that I don’t love him perfectly or enough. I pray that would change. And when I’m not pursuing him I know what my heart is like and I know that I am just confessing his name to avoid eternal punishment. I am wicked.
But because of the greatest twist that God play on my disgusting heart, I have hope. I can have hope because Heaven is Jesus.
