Eucatastrophe

Tomorrow we will finish our last study on Pilgrim's Progress.  We finished the book a few weeks ago, and have a pizza and movie night planned.  We previewed the video on Monday and C. was here with us.  Last night we were talking about it  as we read stories:

C- "What's that part where it's scary and the bad's gonna happen? You know..."

Me- "Ummm..."

C- "You know the bad part, then the good comes!" (Fierce faced and claws outstretched)

Me-(chuckle)"Oh! You mean the eucatastrophe."

C. - "Yeah! The eus so tras to phee...that was like the part with the fiery arrows.  I like that part, and the arrow went through his hair like this." (With animation and passion to melt a greatauntie's heart)

Me- "Yes, exactly!  Goodwill pulled him inside the gate.  He was saved."

C- "Yeah, he was saved from the eus so tras so phee."

Eucatastrophe was a new word for me and I learned right about the time we were reading about the Dungeon of Despair in Pilgrim's Progress. God, in His good grace and sovereignty, sent that story just as I was entertaining enemy thoughts of giving up.  I love that - His timing... always pushing us to the brink - the eucatrastrophe, no way out and then... there is. 

This is my year of story, I want to learn how to read stories, I want to learn how to love my story, to love the stories around me... not to love the sin, but to see how Christ's grace saves  us from our sin, how His Holy Spirit surrounds us in Truth and how the Father's love always pursues us.

So, I give thanks for eucatastrophe, I wouldn't order 'em on life's menu - I'm not certifiable.  But, I want to thank God when they come...they are from Him, and besides - the whole arrow through the hair and Goodwill yanking Christian into the gate  - well, now that I think about it- that is the good stuff of life...

Afraid of the dark

"SALVATION IS OF THE LORD!" Charles H. Spurgeon

And if GOD does require the sinner—dead in sin—that he should take the first step, then he requireth just that which renders salvation as impossible under the gospel as ever it was under the law, seeing man is as unable to believe as he is to obey, and is just as much without power to come to Christ as he is without power to go to heaven without Christ. The power must be given to him of the Spirit. He lieth dead in sin: the Spirit must quicken him. He is bound hand and foot, fettered by transgression; the Spirit must cut his bonds, and then he will leap to liberty. GOD must come and dash the iron bars out of their sockets, and then he can escape afterwards, but unless the first thing be done for him, he must perish as surely under the gospel as he would have done under the law.
I would cease to preach, if l believed that God, in the matter of salvation, required anything whatever of man which He Himself had not also engaged to furnish.. I am the messenger. I tell you the master's message; if you do not like the message quarrel with the Bible, not with me; so long as I have Scripture on my side I will dare and defy you to do anything against me. Salvation is of the Lord The Lord has to apply it, to make the unwilling willing, to make the ungodly godly, and bring the vile rebel to the feet of Jesus, or else salvation will never be accomplished. Leave that one thing undone, and you have broken the link of the chain, the very link which was just necessary to its integrity. Take away the fact that God begins the good work, and that He sends us what the old divines call preventing grace-take that away, and you have spoilt the whole of salvation; you have just taken the key-stone out of the arch, and down it tumbles. There is nothing left then.

Faith

I believe in the world and its bigness and splendor:
That most of the hearts beating round us are tender;
The days are but footsteps and years are but miles
That lead us to beauty and singing and smiles:
That roses that bloom and toilers that plod
Are filled with the glorious spirit of God.

I believe in the purpose of everything living:
That taking is but the forerunner of giving;
That strangers are friends that we some day may meet;
And not all the bitter can equal the sweet;
That creeds are but colors, and no man has said
That God loves the yellow rose more than the red.

I believe in the path that to-day I am treading,
That I should come safe through the dangers I'm dreading;
That even the scoffer shall turn from his ways
And some day be won back to trust and to praise;
That the leaf on the tree and the thing we call Man
Are sharing alike in His infinite plan.

I believe that all things that are living and breathing
Some richness of beauty to earth are bequeathing;
That all that goes out of this world leaves behind
Some duty accomplished for mortals to find;
That the humblest of creatures our praise is deserving,
For it, with the wisest, the Master is serving.
- Edgar Guest

Riveting, pivoting lines:

The days are but footsteps and years are but miles
                                              ...the footsteps of a good man are ordered by the LORD.

That taking is but the forerunner of giving;
                        ...we can only give what God has put in our hands and worked through our hearts.

And not all the bitter can equal the sweet;
           ...Fall, Gethsemane, the Cross, Resurrection, Redemption, Reconciliation - that's the plan.

That even the scoffer shall turn from his ways
And some day be won back to trust and to praise;
                 ...enemies brought near - that's the norm, and there are no exceptions!

If I did FB I'd like this...

Coming Home from work I saw this great CHURCH SIGN, in front of a  little bitty brick church with flower buckets and I think it had a red door, too ( no surprise there!)

God wrote the first valentine with two pieces of wood and three nails.

My response: Yes, You did Lord, we ascribe glory to Your Name, and in You alone, do we live.
 

Guest Poet

The voice of Edgar Guest sounds a lot like that of my Daddy and Momma's voices.  I guess that is why I have such an affinity towards his poetry.  I also like the down home dialect he often employs, it's funny and powerful.  He gives the simple, ordinary life an elegance of hope and weight.  Life and love is not mostly lived in lofty towers but in little two and three bedrooms house all around the towns and cities.
If Cowper shouts at eternal truths, and Milton explains their origins, Guest smacks of daily bread and living out the physicality of worship - he takes Cowper and Milton's orthodoxy all the way home to orthopraxy.  I like him. 
I'll be posting a little run on Guest's poetry, because as Andrew Peterson, so poignantly states it, "they were singing out my song, when the song in me had died.' My voice is a little reclusive these days, so I'll borrow the words of others as  my own repertoire of praise, at least for awhile.

When he has more than he can eat
To feed a stranger's not a feat.
 

When he has more than he can spend
It isn't hard to give or lend.

Who gives but what he'll never miss
Will never know what giving is.

He'll win few praises from his Lord
Who does but what he can afford.
 

The widow's mite to heaven went
Because real sacrifice it meant.
                        -Edgar Guest, "Sacrifice"

 

I love the challenge of giving in all areas - you don't know you've given until you feel the loss.  That loss comes in manifest in suffering and when the dross of it all is scraped, you are left with joy.  Loss and suffering is a teeny, tiny, itty bit of what Christ did for us - and we get to share in that with Him. Now there is something to be thankful for... a good bit thankful, indeed.
 

Maturity bids

If you know me well at all, you would probably say I speak mostly fluffese. I have a pattern of seeing silver linings and encouraging -- that is not really  uncommon with folks, like me, who are primarily mercy oriented by bent; however, my predominate pollyanna disposition can bug the bageezers out of the logical, justice oriented thinkers that surround me (who are awesome btw for aligning feeling with fact and futhermore ARE my most favorite of all people: Ed and Kel).
I haven't posted regularly for quite awhile, I post mostly as a open personal journal of sorts, and well, there hasn't been much, that I wanted others to hear me say, openly, recently.  My thoughts have been too close to the vest to share. Polly split town some months back, when her surreal sister, Get Real, showed up.  Get Real with her firmness and self reliances scares me as she challenges every statement that has even been pushed as one of God's little platitudes. 
With a deeply hurting heart and the bottom dropping out of the world as I've known it, truthful sayings smack like barbed clamoring cymbals, and I find myself in hand to hand combat with urge to do a 180 in the opposite of "the good word".  A wonderful little gift, from my newer companion, Get Real. She says,"It is what it is, and IT ain't so good."
The Bible, although true TRUTH, is not a not a book of little promise pills -- you can't just pop in the scripture with the pain popping out as the word goes in.  AM I the only person stupid enough to have carried this baby view in my back pocket for 40 some odd years.  I sure hope so, but, I fear not.
I'm finding Job is a little like the Psalms, lots of words are lost in translation, until God decides it is time for a little language school. 
 God is faithful to wound us to the next maturing level and that is exactly what He is doing in my life, although, I won't, couldn't and am truly reticent to try to label the course, because I know nothing of it, accept a few tidbits.  I know that God is calling me to see His good and loving steadfastness through trouble waters and tricky precipices...and I know that God is calling me "to do the next right thing", for me, that comes in the form of getting up, picking up a dish; or sitting down to pick up a book; or talking when I want to be a hermit; or shutting up when I want to scream.  It also takes the form of praising when I'd rather doubt, and worshipping when I'd rather run.
Pollyanna, has a bit growing up to do- silver lining pain sounds nailish on a chalk board when wounds run deep...however, the thought of becoming that"GET REAL" kind of lady is repulsive - tricked out muscles on a feminine frame - too gross to describe.  I'm struggling to find the balance - where do the two kiss - doo mach (the Kurdish phrase) and how do I learn to live there.  I lack wisdom, I ask of God, it seems every place I turn His Spirit bids me live, bids me hope...bids me health through, not apart from, the hurting.

Conviviality

 

He’s excused himself from Spencer, the Student Body King-

That grabbed my gaze, and now--I see him rocketing towards me.

The twink’lin eyes and rippling build has caught my breath and thought-

A friend to each had aptly said, .. “to freshman she’ll talk not.”

Exception made, he’s wiser than the boys that ‘round there grazed-

So there we were, convivial --setting precedent in tome

In chapel met—for two weeks straight, ask’n, “Can we make a home?”

The interview at me was aimed, or ‘twas, it, at him, leveled—

We chuckle now, saying “Wasn’t me who was bedeviled!”
-JN,  January 2012; opening stanza, A Poem from a Wife so Amply Loved,  a life tale

Today is our 21st wedding anniversary.  IT all started a little over 22 years ago when Ed tracked down my name and number through mutual friends and asked to meet me in the dining commons (college cafe) during dead week ( the week set aside to cram before midterms).  By then, I'd chatted with friends and found out he was an older student that had come in that fall, (I was a junior).  When I walked in, Ed left the most important guy in the room to come greet me, I was impressed, enamored and put at ease, immediately.  He stills sees me, I know that this is a gift, a blessing from God, and I'm so very thankful.  I'm no gnostic, and the good gifts of God come in people of dust.  We are cut from dusty cloth indeed... but today I give thanks for a home filled with goodly, redeemed dust.