Back to School

Today is the first day in a new school for my younger kids. They went off this morning after a summer of major changes with a little excitement and a whole lot of nerves. As we start the year, we’re focusing on Psalm 86:11 –

Teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor you.

We’re working on memorizing this verse together and so far we’ve lingered on the first phrase – Teach me your ways, O Lord. It’s easy to say, but we’ve been talking over the implications if we really mean it. Do we actually want to learn the ways of the Lord?

Because His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). They are higher, purer, and fully saturated with goodness. It’s likely we mean something more vague – Make me a better person, O Lord, the kind who pays their bills on time and doesn’t cut people off in traffic and is generally liked and likable. Most of the time, our goal is not the perfection that God intends for us. 

When Jesus told us, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” (Matthew 5:48) He meant it. At the same time, He knew that was impossible for us. Just like He knew it was impossible for the lame man to pick up his mat and walk or the woman to stop bleeding or Lazarus to rise from the dead without His intervention. So He has no expectation that we will, out of the reservoir of our own strength and determination, become perfect. It’s not a command for us to carry out. It’s His work to accomplish in us; our part is to actually want Him to do it. The rich young man went away sad because he didn’t really want what he asked for.

If we’re going to ask the Lord to teach us His ways, we should be prepared for Him to do it (1 Peter 1:1-2). And we should also expect that it will be uncomfortable for us. He will teach us things that aren’t natural for us and likely in ways that we wouldn’t have chosen. But we can trust Him through it because He is willing to do whatever’s necessary to make us “perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:4). His vision for us is much higher than what we can imagine for ourselves. The end result will be our perfection, not on our terms, but on His.

You will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power and work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Ephesians 3:20

Good Friday

It’s Good Friday and what’s been on my mind a whole lot is actually the death of my friends’ son, who was killed in an accident earlier this week. It’s been heartbreaking, even as an outside observer. But what I’ve also seen in the midst of their grief has been a persistent hope, a confidence that they will see their son again. And the only reason they can have that precious hope to cling to is because of Jesus, who died but didn’t stay dead, and whose resurrection is the source of our hope that death isn’t the end for us, either.

Heaven is a pleasant idea when things are going well. Kind of like a bucket list vacation spot. But when someone you love dies and heaven is the only way you’ll be together again, heaven becomes a very sweet promise indeed. I have seen the Lord use the intense process of grief to wean us of our love for this world and sharpen our longing for heaven. We mourn, but our mourning is saturated with hope.

So on this Good Friday, when it feels like an immovable stone has been rolled into place and the door is shut forever, may the silver-edged light of Easter morning lead us through the darkness of grief with this encouraging reminder – “Death has been swallowed up in victory!” (1 Corinthians 15:54)