Beyond the Blue 

Stand on the shores of a site unseen 
The substance of this dwells in me 
Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep 
But the eye’s of my heart anchor the sea 
Plumbing the depths to the place in between 
The tangible world and the land of a dreams 
Because everything ain’t quite it seems 
There’s more beneath the appearance of things 
A beggar could be king within the shadows, 
Of a wing 

And wisdom will honor everyone who will learn 
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern 
And to do the right thing even when it burns 
And to live in the light through treacherous turns 
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns 
To keep on course from the bow to the stearn 
And throw overboard every selfish concern 
That tries to work for what can’t be earned 
Sometimes the only way to return is to go, 
Where the winds will take you 

And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto 
For the hope, beyond,the blue 

Yellow and gold as the new day dawns 
Like a virgin unveiled who waited so long 
To dance and rejoice and sing her song 
And rest in the arms of a love so strong 
No one comes unless they’re drawn 
By the voice of desire that leads em’ along 
To the redemption of what went wrong 
By the blood that coveres the innocent one 
No more separation 
Between us. 

So lift your voice just one more time 
If there’s any hope may it be a sign 
That everything was made to shine 
Despite what you can see 
So take this bread and drink this wine 
And hide your spirit within the vine 
Where all things will work by a good design 
For those who will believe 

And let go, of all, we cannot hold onto 
For the hope, beyond, the blue 

Said I let go, of all, I could not hold onto 
For the hope, I have, in you

"The Cost of Discipleship" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Notes from Chapter one "Costly Grace"

“Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.”

What does it mean to justify sin? Don’t I do that all the time? Like me thinking – “It is ok for me to do this or that. I am ok to drink that much or say those things or hangout there.” “It is ok for me to treat them that way or speak that way” Because I am justified. What is justified? Your actions? Your thoughts? I am justified in my sin?  God help me.

I want to be a justified person – one that is done with sin, not just looking to put perfume on the dung in my life. The thought that comes to mind is 007 a license to kill. Brett Harper, Christian, a license to sin – or at least a theology that allows me to equip my lawyers in order to defend myself when conviction comes….

“Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolation of his grace!”

Why not, thanks Jesus. You took one for the team?! Seriously, maybe it should rather be stolen grace rather than cheap. But you are saved only by faith in what Jesus did on the cross right? Nothing else saves you, not your performance, just his. So faith in cheap grace saves right? Did the thief on the cross understand the difference?  Is this more a directive on how we as believers should live as blood bought sons and daughters? Is this keeping ourselves from becoming ineffective and unproductive (2 Peter 1:3-10). Or a warning to those who are approaching the cross for the first time, this is not fire insurance, this is something so great that it breaks into this life now and beckons you to come and be reconciled – come live life, come and worship. This is why Christ has taken hold of you that you might receive the grace that cost him so much and participate in the divine nature and call in this reality. But does true belief in the saving work of Christ on the cross for the removal of a persons SIN mean that are saved? Or do they also have to understand that this is a life long relationship and is awesome and hard and crazy, but good?

When Moses lifted the bronze Serpent up on the staff and everyone who looked on it was saved from their bites – what if one guy after looking at it started playing with the snakes, even letting them bite him, tying them in knots, being flippant; could he still look at the serpent after that? Foolish comparison, but that is who Jesus compares himself to – just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever looks upon him shall be saved.

“That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation – the justification of the sinner.”

 Interesting comment in that most people were coming out of the old Roman Catholic church and I would presume with the rise of the practice of indulgences and quick fix say 3 of this and 5 of that and you’re cool mentality, people probably always were unsure of their standing before God. If I can cut my time down in purgatory then I will spend x dollars – no wonder cheap grace is cheap. But if Jesus came to justify the sinner once and for all on the cross and now there is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus then, whoa. Things have changed. I will sell all I have to follow that, that is costly grace. Grace that demands a response.

“The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer to try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest fore of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. “

I feel the call of Jesus to swim to the deep end, don’t just be satisfied with the shallows,” I have called you out where it is hard, but hard is a word that I will transform, my yoke is easy my burden light.”

This cheap grace has been no less disastrous to our own spiritual lives. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. Instead of calling us to follow Christ, it has hardened us in our disobedience.

For many years it seems I have been a subscriber (in some part) to the notion of cheap grace. I have often wondered why I found myself lifeless in my faith or even worse trying to manufacture some sort of life. Which often would take the form of how the world tries to find life – experiences, substances, and living for ME. When I feel the tug of Christ reminding me in scripture I quickly pull out the cheap grace card and slowly shrink back into my hole of disobedience. Now I hear him say clearly:

I have more for you

I want all of you

Trust me

Risk

Let go

I am with you

This is why I came

They are why I came

Lets go 

Edward Payson - Circa 1813

"The pride of the wicked is the principal reason why they will not seek after the knowledge of God. Pride consists in an unduly exalted opinion of oneself. It is, therefore, impatient of a rival, hates a superior, and cannot endure a master. It is evident that nothing can be more painful to a proud heart than the thoughts of such a being as God. Such a being pride can contemplate only with feelings of dread, aversion, and abhorrence. It must look upon Him as its natural enemy, the great enemy, Whom it has to fear. 

Pride plunged Satan from heaven into hell; it banished our first parents from paradise; and it will, in a similar manner, ruin all who indulge in it. It keeps us in ignorance of God; shuts us out of his favor; prevents us from resembling Him. Beware of pride! Beware lest you indulge it imperceptibly, for it is perhaps, of all sins, the most secret, subtle, and insinuating." Edward Payson  - wikipedia Edward Payson

Though the Earth Cried out for blood
Satisfied her hunger was
Her billows calmed on raging seas
for the souls on men she craved

Sun and moon from balcony
Turned their head in disbelief
Their precious Love would taste the sting
disfigured and disdained

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

So three days in darkness slept
The Morning Sun of righteousness
But rose to shame the throes of death
And over turn his rule

Now daughters and the sons of men
Would pay not their dues again
The debt of blood they owed was rent
When the day rolled a new

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
To Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke with keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

He has cheated
Hell and seated
Us above the fall
In desperate places
He paid our wages
One time once and for all

Giving Tree

Book Read By Author

I recently again read Shel Silverstein’s book, “The Giving Tree” to my 3 year old son and after was left with a strange sense of hopeful gloominess. I had read the book several times before but have never been so uneasily affected by its message. The next day, in a great moment of Otium Sanctum (“Holy Leisure”) I think the Spirit connected some dots for me. The hopefulness pushed out the gloominess and actually got me excited about becoming a Tree.

Below is my dialogue with God:

The giving tree - the boy takes and takes, the tree gives and gives, to the point of giving everything. Am I the boy, and you the tree? It is sad because in the end the tree is left as a stump. I find myself angry at the flippancy of the boy in taking from the tree, even though the tree contends that she is happy. She is happy to be useful, but in the end she is used up. You however although in appearance were cut down, came back, glorified, at the right hand of The father, and you received a name that is greater than all other names. You can’t be used up.

You are an infinite forest of giving, not just a tree. There is no limit to your provision - but it seems that you beckon me to be a tree. One that would be a cheerful giver, to the point of stump, but it seems I need not fear, for my strength and provision pulls from your forest, not my branches, but yours, not my leaves, yours. Not my trunk yours. " I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

I am to participate with you, in your mission, of giving. To be completely emptied of myself and find great joy in giving to others, to let Love drive...to the point of stump. Not to glorify the act of martyrdom as the chief ideal, but rather love, and the greatest demonstration of love is as you say - Greater love has no one than this: to lay down ones life for ones friends. So love reigns.

John 12:24-26

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

We remain a single seed, full of potential and potential energy, not willing or understanding the potential harvests that could come from within. We have great ability, fearful to some, and this ability although innate, is not manufactured in our individual efforts, but because of the system of reproduction God has put into us we have this potential. All we must do is come to the end of ourselves and die.

Maybe the last chapter of The Giving Tree should be that because the tree gave it's apples, and branches, and trunk, it castes it seeds and created a forest. And the boy's children and grandchildren were able to come and play the forest - and the Tree was very happy.

Blaise

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

And yet after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.

A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us little. No resemblance is ever so perfect that there is not some slight difference; and hence we expect that our hope will not be deceived on this occasion as before. And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us to death, their eternal crown.

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”

Blaise Pascal Section VII – Morality and Doctrine 425

The Blood that Speaks

Hebrews 12:23-24 -"You have come...²⁴ to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

"Here, then is the voice of the gospel; it is not the sound of a trumpet, nor the voice of words spoken in terrible majesty (Sinai); but the blood speaks, and assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more prevailing. God heard the voice of Abel's blood and visited Cain with condign punishment for killing his brother; and the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cries in the ears of God with a voice which is ever heard. How can it be imagined that the Lord God should be deaf to the cry of His Son's sacrifice? Lo, these many ages the blood has cried - 'Forgive them! Forgive them! Accept them! Deliver them from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom!' " CH Spurgeon "The Blood of Sprinking" February 28, 1886.

Oh! precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow;

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

For my pardon, this I see,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus;

For my cleansing this my plea,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Now by this I’ll overcome—

Nothing but the blood of Jesus,

Now by this I’ll reach my home—

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing but the Blood of Jesus - Lowry - 1876