A Servant of the Day

This article by Dr. Esolen struck a chord with me, a fundamental chord. It is about doing rather than planning to do. All my life I've avoided doing, because doing is hard, dirty, painful, and usually humiliating. I never seem to notice that doing also brings the sweetest rewards and deepest pleasures. This past year and a half especially, I have fought the concept of "doing." Theory is so much more fun than practice! Why? For me, it is because theories are under my control. I can play with them, arrange them any way I like. A computer game has the same effect. But my theories very seldom work out in practice, and I know it.

In fact, the only "theories" that apply to reality are principles of divine law. It makes a little sense, after all, to suppose that God would order His creation according to His own rules, and that creation would have to live by those rules. Therefore if I were to actually set out to do something, I would have to do in obedience to the structure of reality, which means obeying the Bible - obeying what Schaeffer calls "verbal propositional revelation": verbally, propositionally revealed rules for living long and well in a universe which I did not create.

Is it any wonder that I'd rather theorize? But here's the kicker, the awful truth. I am never so truly glad, so deeply and solemnly joyful, as Lewis might say, than when in this very obedience. It's not hard to see why. Am I not also a creation? Have I not also been made to take pleasure in certain ways? Is it so strange that I should find my deepest good in doing as I was created to do, that is, glorifying God? The works of John Piper taught me this, but they are a modern version of St. Augustine.

"And man, being a part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that Thou 'resistest the proud, ' -- yet man, this part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." - Augustine

Until I rest in Thee....

A Wise Nymph

I found today The Mountain Nymph. How is it that the people of yesteryear had so much more in their faces, in their eyes and mouths, than I see around me today? I have been in the mall and at Starbucks for hours, just watching people, yet it is seldom indeed that I have seen such a look of having suffered. And yet, isn't she beautiful? Her eyes are not dead. They are wise. If she smiled, you would know that there was really something to be glad for. She knew about life, and about pain I am sure. Yet - her eyes are not dead; not nearly so dead as those that I saw staring out yesterday from the smiling face of a woman at Starbucks.