This space for rent.

Particular lines to ponder:

And in our hypertherapeutic culture, we all need to realize that sometimes being in touch with our pain and being real about our doubts and authentic about our struggles is a form of narcissism and self-absorption more than maturity. We could all use a little less complaining and a little more gratitude. It’s easy to blast the church for all its failures. It’s harder to live in it day after day, year after year, with all its ho-hum humdrum and slowly, consistently make a difference. (221)

What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church—God’s redeemed people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency. (222)

Until we are content with being one of the million nameless, faceless church members and not the next globe-trotting rock star, we aren’t ready to be a part of the church. In the grand scheme of things, most of us are going to be more of an Ampliatus (Rom. 16:8) or Phlegon (16:14) than an apostle Paul. And maybe that’s why so many Christians are getting tired of the church. We haven’t learned how to be part of the crowd. We haven’t learned to live with ordinariness. (224)

- Kevin in “Epilogue: Toward a Theology of Plodding Visionaries” from Kevin DeYoung & Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Moody, 2009).

And it is farther to be considered, that what God aimed at in the creation of the world, as the end which he had ultimately in view, was that communication of himself which he intended through all eternity. And if we attend to the nature and circumstances of this eternal emanation of divine good, it will more clearly show how, in making this his end, God testifies a supreme respect to himself, and makes himself his end. There are many reasons to think that what God has in view, in an increasing communication of himself through eternity, is an increasing knowledge of God, love to him, and joy in him. And it is to be considered, that the more those divine communications increase in the creature, the more it becomes one with God: for so much the more is it united to God in love, the heart is drawn nearer and nearer to God, and the union with him becomes more firm and close: and, at the same time, the creature becomes more and more conformed to God. The image is more and more perfect, and so the good that is in the creature comes for ever nearer and nearer to an identity with that which is in God. In the view therefore of God, who has a comprehensive prospect of the increasing union and conformity through eternity, it must be an infinitely strict and perfect nearness, conformity, and oneness. For it will for ever come nearer and nearer to that strictness and perfection of union which there is between the Father and the Son. So that in the eyes of God, who perfectly sees the whole of it, in its infinite progress and increase, it must come to an eminent fulfilment of Christ’s request, in John xvii. 21, 23.That they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be onein us; I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one. In this view, those elect creatures, which must be looked upon as the end of all the rest of the creation, considered with respect to the whole of their eternal duration, and as such made God’s end, must be viewed as being, as it were, one with God. They were respected as brought home to him, united with him, centering most perfectly, as it were swallowed up in him: so that his respect to them finally coincides, and becomes one and the same, with respect to himself. The interest of the creature is, as it were, God’s own interest, in proportion to the degree of their relation and union to God. Thus the interest of a man’s family is looked upon as the same with his own interest; because of the relation they stand in to him, his propriety in them, and their strict union with him. But God’s elect creatures, with respect to their eternal duration, are infinitely dearer to God, than a man’s family is to him. What has been said shows, that as all things are from God, as their first cause and fountain; so all things tend to him, and in their progress come nearer and nearer to him through all eternity: which argues, that he who is their first cause is their last end.

- Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World.

I am sick of books about community, so I’m hesitant to write about it in this space. I’ve learned that community rarely feels like that mountaintop experience in college, in the dorms, at midnight, when you and your buddies are confessing your sins, talking about girls, and perhaps talking about God and solving the church’s problem over cold pizza. That situation is tailor-made for community because you’re all the same, and you’re all stuck there with nothing else to do. It’s easy to love your friends in college because they’re basically like you. Community becomes much harder when there’s something on the line—like my time, my money, my ideals, my precious opinions, my ego, and my privacy.

That said, community is people arranging to pay each others’ bills when times get tough. It means arranging to grocery shop for someone when that someone suddenly has to be their primary caregiver to their sick spouse all day. It means spending time with your disabled family member or friend who is rapidly declining in health, when that time isn’t fun, rewarding, or especially productive. And it’s about those friends staying friends with us through our cynicism and sometimes bitterness.

- Ted Kluck, in Kevin DeYoung & Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Moody, 2009), 193-4.

Perhaps I should have let someone else save the world and saved my own home.

- Ronald Reagan

Last winter break I stayed briefly an old high school friend at Northampton University, England. It was a haphazard decision, following certain changes in lodging plans when I had already booked my flight to London intending to visit there. He, easygoing and welcoming, offered opened up his place to me for as long as I needed. I happily accepted his offer.’But what are you going to do la? There’s nothing around here. There’s the Stonehenge in the next town if you want, but besides that got nothing for you to do.’ He said, and I paraphrase. To make matters worse, he had several exams lined up for him in the coming weeks following my visit.

It turned out to be one of the most pleasant visits, to my memory. For all of the bus rides to and fro I leaned my head against the window, taking in the dreary, winter-worn English countryside while my mind mused merrily. For the next two days I spent cooking and eating with his housemates, walking with him through campus to the computer lab, hacking away at the VHP site design while he worked at his circuits and electronics. All so wonderfully mundane.

This winter break, working on campus and living, for the most part, with one of my more social schoolmates has taught me how rare it can be that someone would be happy to coexist with you. Two summers ago God gave me one such friend. If I were to sit here, and if you were to lie there; if I were to read, and if you were to knit; if the air weighed heavy with silence’s gold, perchance laced with gabble’s silver — it would be alright. Yea, delight.