Singing to a beloved turned away

I was privileged to have been invited to a party for a precious baby boy’s first birthday. It was absolutely wonderful to celebrate this event with such a beautiful family – to smile together after a year’s worth of love, dedication, time and energy poured into the life of this small child.

At one point, the father took out his guitar and began singing a song he wrote just for his son’s first birthday. It was wonderfully written and performed but the young child didn’t appreciate the precious gift – and who could blame him for turning his back on his father and playing with his toys instead? He is, after all, only a single year old.

I smiled as I watched this scene, partly because this is one of the very rare circumstances where such blatant disregard could be regarded warmly, partly because the song was so wonderful and partly because I couldn’t help but hear the echoes of something else.

A loving father doting on his oblivious beloved…

Not only has he already poured his all, his very life into this child of his, but the father continues to sing over him, crafting new melodies, new words of adoration, new songs each and every day – this in spite of the fact that this child fails to comprehend any of this.

His nascent ears are still too deaf to truly hear, his young eyes still too clouded to see, his budding heart still too numb to sense the songs of good love being sung for him – just for him.

The father’s love for the child is not fueled by, seeking or dependent on the son’s love, or even acknowledgment of him. It just is.

As the toddler matures he’ll understand and appreciate his father’s love more, and as he looks back will realize, amazingly, that this love was just as ardent yesterday as it is today, just as zealous now as it was then.

And the father continues…

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:10-11

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:6-8

Bolt, Wikus, Saul and greatness

• Bolt only became great when he left the fake world where he was fake great.

• Wikus van der Merwe only acted greatly after he was forced to leave his normal life behind and embrace his otherness.

• Saul received the Spirit of God and "another heart" after "he turned his back to leave Samuel." (1 Samuel 10:9-10)

I mention these three examples because they all reveal something that seems to ring true everywhere, every time - that in order to start on the path to greatness, you are required to leave behind the familiar, to trade the comfortable for the unknown.

The key is that this exchange and transition only begins the path to higher ground - it never guarantees it.

However, once we've moved on into that better realm we must heed Saul's example in 1 Samuel 15.

(It's here that I must borrow from some things I typed nearly four years ago.)

This chapter is the story of God commanding Saul to destroy the Amalekites, and to "devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Samuel 15:3) To keep a long story short, Saul obeys God's command - but not fully. He does kill the Amalekites, but in the process he spared the king, sheep, cattle and "all that was good." Saul's idea was to sacrifice the sheep and cattle to God at Gilgal.

God says that he "regretted" making Saul king because of his disobedience. Saul tried explaining his disobedience, but Samuel replies:

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams.

For rebellion is as the sin of divination,

and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.

Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,

he has also rejected you from being king."

- 1 Sam. 15:22-23

In the end, Samuel killed King Agag, mourned for Saul and never saw him again for the rest of his life.

(I didn't fully capture the essence of this chapter in this dinky summary, but please read it for yourself before reading on. It's really quite sad and moving.)

There are so many applications and insights in chapter 15, but the one that stands out most to me is this: Saul preserved "good things" that he thought could be better used to glorify God and, in the process, disobeyed and grieved God.

I think many times we do the same. The LORD commands us to utterly destroy or turn our backs on certain aspects of our lives - bad habits, friends, relationships, etc. But when we do so it's inevitable that we hold on to certain things that we think can be used rather than destroyed or neglected. Basically, like Saul, we think that we know better than God.

It is every Christian's struggle to fully obey the LORD, wholeheartedly, without any reserve or queries. We never, ever know better than He does, no matter how much of a waste His demand may seem to be.

How do we know this?

The Gospel, of course.

Did Christ really have to die? I mean, couldn't God have spared Him? Imagine all of the great things Jesus could have done on this earth if He had lived a full life span. Why waste such a precious commodity? Jesus should have exercised that free will of His and avoided the cross. He could have done so much more.

Good logic, good intentions, no? Just like Saul's logic and intentions.

Consider then, what would have been the outcome if good logic and good intentions prevailed over God's will on Calvary? I think the answer is fairly powerful - and haunting.

In the end, with much humility and reverence, we must lay our pride aside and confess and believe, wholeheartedly, that God is always right. In a world, in a "Christian" culture, that has become so liberal and unbiblical, perverted with excessive laxness and "grace," obedience is something that has lost its meaning and importance, but we must not fall into that trap. We must obey no matter how illogical the demands may seem at the time. Obedience is what God delights in. It is "better than sacrifice."

Is there something or someone that God is telling you to lay aside, to "utterly destroy?" If so, you have a very important choice ahead of you. You will be either more like Saul or more like Christ depending on the decision you make.

Saul's decision led to his dethroning.

Christ's decision led to his eternal enthroning at the right hand of God.

Saul found his path toward greatness when he turned his back to leave Samuel, but lost it "as Samuel turned to go away." (1 Samuel 15:27) From there on, as we know, Saul was stuck on a terrible downward spiral.

So, it seems, the first few miles of our path are lined with the bricks of denial and departure from what we know. It also seems that the rest of it is lined with the same - frequent denial and departure from what we thought was good, sensible and better - until the end is reached in an eternity filled with acceptance and arrival.

Earning death, receiving life

I just read Romans 6:23 during my lunch break and it blew a fuse in my mind:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Wages = what one works and strives hard for

Free gift = what one does nothing to deserve yet receives anyway

Can you imagine if your paycheck or degree was replaced by a paper bag filled with fermented fecal matter? Yet this isn't even close to what the Bible says our situation was.

We used to be people who worked incredibly hard to earn death - not money, fame, comfort, peace or joy, which we thought we were working for. Now, we are counted as those who do (and should) not (have to) work at all, and our reward for that is eternal gift, at no cost to us. (The last two words there are infinitely important.)

This is our salvation, this is our gospel, this is our God.

The prodigal sprinkler, or the prodigal God

There has been a phenomenon that I have noticed many times this summer here in Evanston, Ill. Here is a picture of an example:

There are many front lawns and patches of grass in this town and virtually all of them are quite small. Yet, for whatever reason, the caretakers of these tiny squares of grass seem to love placing normal-sized sprinklers on them. As you can expect, this makes for funny scenes of humans waiting for an opening to quickly pass by the water that the sprinklers inevitably spray onto walkways. For many, it's a nuisance; for some, it's an occasion for a patient smile.

Does the grass get watered? Yes. Would smaller sprinklers do this too, without watering surrounding walkways and spraying water on passersby? Yes.

This reminded me of God and his people.

It seems to me that I oftentimes find myself believing that God's fount of salvation and redemption in my life is only meant for me, for my improvement, healing and help. But what I fail to realize, in simple terms, is that the outflows of this fount, of its Source, are much larger than I care to perceive.

It also seems to me that this fount is meant just as much for the passersby in my life as for me. For many in this fallen world it will be a cause for curious pity that I should have had such a wasteful sprinkler installed on my lawn, in what they will think to be ignorance and misunderstanding. For others, it will be a plain nuisance. But I trust that for a few it will be cause, at the very least, to pause and smile, and at the very most, to inquire about how to install a sprinkler with a similarly wasteful range and spring of their own.

Concrete and pavement are watered by the sprinkler's wasteful flow,
In hopes that through the cracks, hidden seeds into beautiful flowers will grow.

“Joseph is a fruitful bough,
a fruitful bough by a spring;
his branches run over the wall."
- Genesis 49:22 (ESV)

I'm alive

I am still alive - some days, in new ways.

I still want to blog.

Forgive me for my slothfulness.