He grew up a preacher’s son. Which means he experienced the church’s warts from the inside.

We might have anticipated that he would become a skeptic, after seeing so many hurts and disappointments, and so painfully up close. Later in life, he would write publicly, and honestly, about the challenges the church faces in this age — many of them of her own making.

But this preacher’s son also became a pastor himself, one still remembered not only for his way with words but also for his hopeful spirit.

Amid the simplistic assumptions and distortions of our times, we might steady our souls with the rich, resilient theology of Samuel Stone (1839–1900). In his most famous hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation” (1866), Stone recognized the church’s many trials, from both without and within:

. . . with a scornful wonder,men see her sore oppressed,by schisms rent asunder,by heresies distressed . . .

Yet mingled with her present troubles is the anticipation of a stunning perfection, a glory, to come:

Mid toil and tribulation,And tumult of her war,She waits the consummationOf peace forevermore.

We tend to resist this complexity and reduce it. With little patience for the church’s long story of redemption, we default to oversimple assumptions — whether of a church immaculate or a church miserable. But the already and not yet of the church age is not so simple. On the one hand, every redeemed saint endures indwelling sin; on the other, perfect righteousness is already ours in Christ — and the perfecting Spirit has come to dwell in us.

Soon enough, this embattled age will give way to the church’s perfected beauty, without spot or wrinkle or any defect. In that day, says Ephesians 5:27, Christ will “present the church to himself in splendor.”

Majesty and Splendor

In English, “splendor” fits well the church’s coming glory — a glory that corresponds to, and complements, her Groom’s.

This “splendor” to which the church is destined shines out in conjunction with divine “majesty,” an often overlooked divine attribute. Israel encountered God’s awesome and fearsome majesty at the Red Sea; King David praised God’s royal majesty over all the earth (Psalm 8). Climactically, God the Son came as both long-awaited Christ and as one with no majesty, yet through the accomplishment of his mission, he now reigns over all in heavenly majesty. So, the supremely Majestic One, who once veiled his majesty, now displays it — through rescuing an unsplendid people and remaking them to be his resplendent bride.

The Old Testament’s frequent pairing of “majesty” (hôd) and “splendor” (hādār) presents us with overlapping excellencies, often bound together. Psalm 104:1 blesses God in his greatness as “clothed with splendor and majesty.” Such a Lord magnifies the glory of his anointed king, bestowing “splendor and majesty . . . on him” (Psalm 21:5). At a royal wedding, the regal son, heir to the throne, is celebrated with the charge, “Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!” (Psalm 45:3). So too is God himself worshiped as one whose acts display these twin excellencies:

Great are the works of the Lord,     studied by all who delight in them.Full of splendor and majesty is his work,     and his righteousness endures forever. (Psalm 111:2–3)

Majesty and splendor are complementary manifestations of glory that, when paired together, convey fullness of glory (Job 40:10; Psalm 111:3; Daniel 4:36). So, Psalm 145 heaps together the language of majesty and splendor to reveal layers and richness to the divine glory. Verse 5 says the psalmist will meditate, literally, “on the splendor of the glory of [God’s] majesty” — praise we find to be carefully worded as we explore these concepts across the canon.

Yet while “majesty and splendor” are often paired with rich effect, they also demonstrate distinct connotations in other texts, and contribute to the distinct glories of Christ and his church.

Strength and Beauty

The high praise of Psalm 96 may contain the couplet that best captures the discrete shades of “majesty” and “splendor”:

Splendor and majesty are before him;     strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. (Psalm 96:6)

Here “strength” echoes “majesty,” while “beauty” accents “splendor.” Given how the ESV translates the Hebrew (hôd and hādār) elsewhere, a more consistent rendering would be “majesty and splendor,” rather than “splendor and majesty.” The precise phrase appears in several other texts, always with the more masculine “majesty” (hôd) first, followed by the more feminine “splendor” (hādār). So too in the parallel praises of 1 Chronicles 16:27, “strength” echoes “majesty,” and this time “joy” (feminine in Hebrew, as in Greek) accents “splendor”:

[Majesty and splendor, hôd and hādār] are before him;     strength and joy are in his place.

To develop this complementary relationship further, we might say more, first, about majesty, and then reflect on splendor.

Masculine Majesty

In addition to imposing size and strength, “majesty” frequently has regal overtones. Its various contexts refer to ruling authority (Numbers 27:20; Daniel 11:21), being “above” others (Psalm 8:1; 148:13; 1 Chronicles 29:11), issuing judgments (Isaiah 30:30; Habakkuk 3:3; Zechariah 10:3), and possessing royal honor and the kingly throne (Jeremiah 22:18; Zechariah 6:13). Job 37, a veritable meditation on divine majesty, speaks in warrior-like terms of God’s “awesome majesty” (verse 22). According to 1 Chronicles 29:25, “The Lord made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel.” In text after text, the associations are not only royal, but kingly, and masculine.

Significantly, when the regal sage of Proverbs speaks wisdom to his royal son about being master of his domain, he takes up the language of majesty:

Keep your way far from [a forbidden woman],     and do not go near the door of her house,lest you give your honor [hôd] to others     and your years to the merciless. (Proverbs 5:8–9)

“Honor” here is not only generically human, but kingly and masculine — majesty.

In the New Testament, even with fewer thrones and monarchs, the language of majesty endures, with connotations no less regal, ascribing glory to the King of kings (Luke 9:43; 2 Peter 1:16–17; Jude 25). Most memorably, Hebrews identifies Jesus’s ascension and session on heaven’s throne as his sitting “down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3; 8:1).

Feminine Splendor

Splendor, as a helper fit for majesty, typically has more feminine associations: especially of beauty and clothing, but also in reference to God’s people as his daughter or bride (Lamentations 1:6; Micah 2:9). Which brings us back to Christ’s church, God’s new-covenant people, and why splendor is fitting for her coming glory.

Splendid Clothing

As for beautification through apparel and adornment, when God answers Job out of the whirlwind, he challenges him to “clothe yourself with glory and splendor” (Job 40:10). In Ezekiel 27:10, “Persia and Lud and Put . . . gave [Tyre] splendor” by making her beautiful with the spoils of war (verses 4 and 11 say they “made perfect your beauty”). In the New Testament, one expression of “splendor” (lampros) is tied to beautiful adornment in the repeated phrase “splendid clothing” (Luke 23:11; Acts 10:30; James 2:2–3).

Splendid People

Even more pronounced are connections with a king’s people, city, or kingdom. The king himself is majestic; his kingdom accents his glory with its splendor. Psalm 145:12, a song of praise, refers to “the glory of the splendor of [God’s] kingdom.” In Daniel 11:20, the ESV mentions “the glory of the kingdom,” which is a particular kind of glory (hādār), a feminine glory, that of beauty. And in Lamentations 1:6, in grieving the destruction of the city, in a plainly feminine context (verse 1 refers to Jerusalem as “widow” and “princess”), we find the language we might now expect:

From the daughter of Zion     all her [splendor, hādār] has departed.

Most significant for our focus is the relationship between a people and their splendor. Again, Proverbs is instructive:

In a multitude of people is the [splendor, hādār] of a king,     but without people a prince is ruined. (Proverbs 14:28)

“Majesty and splendor are complementary manifestations of glory that, when paired together, convey fullness of glory.”

Vital to the majestic glory of a king is the splendid glory of his people. When the king’s people “offer themselves freely on the day of [his] power,” they do so, literally, “with the splendor [hādār] of holiness” (Psalm 110:3), which is not only (and finally) holy attire but good deeds (more below). They adorn themselves, and their king, with their holy acts and initiatives. So it is in Psalm 149: for God’s people, “the godly” (verses 4–5), even as they take warlike actions under his kingly charge (verses 6–8), their glory is that of splendor: “This is [splendor, hādār] for all his godly ones” (verse 9).

Splendid Bride

Given what we’ve seen so far, we might anticipate that splendor would be the fitting attribution of glory to the wife of Proverbs 31:

Strength and [splendor, hādār] are her clothing,     and she laughs at the time to come. (Proverbs 31:25)

Now several strands come together. We find a splendid woman, along with the image of clothing, as well as the complementary pairing with strength, an expression of the fullness of her glory. As in Psalm 96:6, strength and beauty, in our English, holds as the distinguishing connotations of the overlapping majesty and splendor.

Yet all this now prepares us to freshly appreciate the two most important splendor texts in Scripture, one in the Old Testament, one in the New, and the two are linked: Ezekiel 16:14 and Ephesians 5:27.

Splendor of the Queen

Scripture’s classic text on marriage, Ephesians 5:22–33, is often rehearsed today, and for good reason, but with little explanation about its Old Testament background. One piece is more obvious, and less overlooked, as Paul quotes explicitly from Genesis 2:24 in verse 31. But more subtle is his allusion to Ezekiel 16. We might see his reference to the cross in verse 25, and yet find verses 26–27 to be the most enigmatic in the passage:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [at the cross], that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Ezekiel 16 is the prophet’s longest and most notorious oracle. Before this metaphorical account of Israel’s history turns tragic in verse 15 (“But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore . . .”), it tells the surprising story of the people’s ascent to queenly splendor. The nation was not of noble birth, or in any respect deserving of God’s favor, but was like an infant unpitied and abhorred at birth — cord uncut, unwashed, unclothed, cast into an open field and left for dead (verses 1–5). But God passed by and

saw you wallowing in your blood, [and] I said to you in your blood, “Live!” I said to you in your blood, “Live!” (verse 6)

God raised up Israel, made her to flourish, nurtured her to full adornment (verse 7), and entered into covenant with her (verse 8). “Then,” says verse 9, “I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil.” He also clothed and adorned her (verses 10–11, 13), such that she

grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor [hādār] that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God. (verses 13–14)

Fittingly, the ESV has splendor in both Ezekiel 16:14 as well as Ephesians 5:27 (Greek endoxos, which refers to “splendid clothing” in Luke 7:25). Paul’s “washing of water with the word,” then, focuses not on baptism, but on the spiritual cleansing Christ achieved once for all at the cross and ongoingly applies through his Spirit and word.

Putting it all together, then, Ephesians 5 draws on Ezekiel’s account of God rescuing, beautifying, and raising up to royalty his first-covenant people as a type of what Christ is now doing, in this age, for his new-covenant people from among all the nations. He rescues an unloved, unwashed, unclothed bride, left for dead, that he might love her, give his own life for her, make her holy, wash her, and perfect her beauty even to the heights of royalty — that she, as his queen, in feminine splendor, might share with her husband and king in the glory of his majesty.

Clothed in Splendid Deeds

For now, we find ourselves in the middle of the church’s story. She has been loved and died for. Her Groom has acted definitively to set his people apart. Now, in the present, he ongoingly works to build and beautify his bride. She is not yet perfect. Often her spots and wrinkles and blemishes are all too obvious and embarrassingly public. But a future presentation is coming.

One day, at long last, she suddenly will appear in perfection. Like Adam enduring the long parade of every living creature before awaking, in an instant, to the helper fit for him, the universe will say, “This at last!” In that day, writes Peter O’Brien,

Not even the smallest spot or pucker that spoils the smoothness of the skin will mar the unsurpassed beauty of Christ’s bride when he presents her to himself. Hers will be a splendor that is exquisite, unsurpassed, matchless. For the present the church on earth is “often in rags and tatters, stained and ugly, despised and rejected.” Christ’s people may rightly be accused of many shortcomings and failures. But God’s gracious intention is that the church should be holy and blameless, language which speaks of a beauty which is moral and spiritual. (The Letter to the Ephesians, 425)

This is a splendor not only reckoned to the church through union with her Groom, but realized in her own body through his cleansing and beautifying power. Which means that the glory of splendor will not only be the garment of Christ’s righteousness covering her own unwashed flesh (Isaiah 61:10), but she will shine with “the righteous deeds of the saints” (Revelation 19:8), worked in and through her by his own Spirit.

The stunning promise of a sure and beautiful future awaits Christ’s church. Soon, “the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder,” will sound and declare, “The marriage of the Lamb has come” — and with it will come this great announcement: “and his Bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:6–7). Not only has she been made ready. She has. But also the King gives her the dignity of rising, with his help, into the splendor of cosmic queenship: “It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure,” which verse 8 then explains: “for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

Majestic Christ, Resplendent Church

Such a promise of the church’s coming glory, almost too good to be true, hopefully will help us weather the griefs and challenges of our ongoing warts and wrinkles. It also gives us, as Christ’s people, the dignity of holy agency, indwelt by his Spirit, washed with his word. He taught us, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) — and he means to produce in us what he commands.

These complementary categories of majesty and splendor help us to understand, and humbly receive, and strive to embody, the weight of his glory, imparted to us now in degrees (2 Corinthians 3:18) and finally at the Supper to come. It helps us acknowledge and aim to live out the otherwise perplexing parallel in the doxology of Ephesians 3:21: “To [God] be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.”

“Majesty and splendor” are the glory of king and queen, man and wife, sun and moon, as Francis of Assisi celebrated these complementary lights, distinct in power and beauty:

Thou burning sun with golden beam,thou silver moon with softer gleam . . .

To the bride is the glory of splendor, reflecting the majesty of her King. One is the glory of grandeur, imposing size, attractive strength, the golden beam. The other gleams softer, though no less genuinely, and invites the eyes to linger — a beauty to behold and enjoy, even now, as a reflection of the original light and warmth.

Audio Transcript

Christ is our Sabbath rest. We celebrate this beautiful truth every Lord’s Day, every Sunday. But what about on a day like today, on Monday? Is Christ my Sabbath rest today, at work? That’s Pam’s question for you, Pastor John, a good one. “Pastor John, hello,” she writes. “Christ is our Sabbath rest. A hearty amen to that wonderful truth — to the degree that I understand it, and I don’t think I fully understand it quite yet! This seems to mean a lot more than Christ has set apart one day of rest for us, the Lord’s Day, Sunday. At the very end of APJ 658, you called Christ our ‘eternal rest,’ and that means, you said, ‘pervading all our work . . . we are restful in Christ.’ Can you explain this to me? How is Christ our Sabbath rest even while we are working?”

If we had time, we would dig into Hebrews 3 and 4, because there, that amazing author presents an argument for the present rest of the people of God and the future eternal rest for the people of God. He urges us in Hebrews 3:19 and 4:1 to “fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it [the rest]” — meaning, “fear unbelief,” because belief is the only way into the rest of Jesus Christ, both now and in the future.

“The burden and the yoke of the lordship of Jesus is easy and light.”

But we don’t have time to do that — as much as I’d love to — and I want to go straight to Pam’s main question: “How do we experience the Sabbath rest of Christ at work?” In other words, what meaning does it have, while we’re expending great energy, to speak of enjoying the restfulness of Christ in that very moment of wearying exertion?

Christ’s Easy Yoke

The text that I have in mind now is not Hebrews, but Matthew 11:28–30, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The burden and the yoke of the lordship of Jesus is easy and light.

In the midst of our labor — our strenuous efforts to do our very best in our vocation — the submission at that moment to the demands of Jesus is called a restful experience. “You will find rest for your souls” precisely in the midst of your exertions to do your job with excellence for his glory. What is that experience like? I think that’s what Pam’s really asking. What is it like working as hard as you can and, in the very doing of it, experiencing Christ as our soul’s rest? Not just after it, not just before it, but in it — in the very exertion of our life’s work? Here are four ways that we can experience the soul rest of Christ as we are doing our work.

1. Justified by God

First, we work with the sweet assurance that we stand already justified before God — not on the basis of our work, but on the basis of faith alone in Christ’s work — even as we work. How sweet are these words: “Now to the one who works [and he has in mind working for justification, working to get right with God], his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work [for justification, to get right with God] but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5).

If we don’t get this right, nothing will be right. Our souls enjoy the glorious, precious, sweet restfulness of knowing that we are right with God through faith alone and that the work we are doing — sweat on our face, weariness in our bones, exhaustion in our minds — is not done to get right with God. We are delivered from the horrible torment of soul that thinks, “I must work. I must do a good job so that I can get right with God, or so that I can get a right standing before God.” That kind of restlessness, anxiety, and striving is over. The verdict has been rendered by the King of heaven: “Not guilty, my son.” “Not guilty, my daughter.” So, go about your work with a deep restfulness of soul.

2. Loved by God

In Christ, we work hard with the thrilling energy that we are loved by God very personally and forever. Ephesians 2:4 is an amazing verse. Paul says that God’s “great love” — I think it’s the only place in his letters where he uses that very phrase — “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4–5). That means we were dead, and he made us alive because of love before we did anything to get that love. We do not work with the restless, nervous anxiety of trying to win the affections of a lover that we’re not sure of. If we’re alive in Christ, it was great love that put us there already.

Picture this analogy to feel what it means to work out of the thrilling energy of being loved. Suppose I have been dating Noël — who’s now been my wife for 54 years, but this was true once upon a time — for just several weeks, and I feel very strong affections welling up in me. I’m thinking, “This is the woman I want to marry,” but I’m not sure what her affections are yet. Then the day comes when she needs some heavy lifting done for her as she moves — a dozen boxes or so, books, furniture — from one apartment to another.

I go to her apartment to help her move, and as I start to go down the stairs to where she has everything packed up, she puts her hand on my arm, and I turn to look at her, and she says right into my eyes for the first time, “I love you, Johnny.” What happens to my exhausting work that afternoon? Oh my goodness, there flows into it a thrilling energy of being loved! There is in the exhaustion of the heavy boxes a restfulness of soul, of not wondering anymore, “Am I loved?” I am loved. I am loved!

Of course, the analogy breaks down a little bit because God doesn’t need any help with lifting heavy boxes. I get that, but the principle is the same. He gives me the privilege of serving his purposes in the world, and he takes away all of its burdensomeness by saying, “I love you. I’ve got you. I love you! I choose to love you.”

3. Helped by God

The analogy of Noël’s love, however, is not nearly good enough to capture the point. God’s love doesn’t stand by, like Noël stood by, and watch us lift the boxes of life — watch us do our job at work. He doesn’t stand by and watch, counting on us to muster the energy because we’re loved. His love commits him to help us. He steps into our lives by his Spirit within us and becomes the kind of energy that turns our work into something far greater than mere human achievement, even in response to love. It becomes a kind of God-wrought miracle that gets him praise and touches other people in ways we can’t begin to explain when we’re operating in the strength of God.

“There is a restfulness in work because God is an inexhaustible helper in our work.”

I say this because in 1 Peter 4:11, Peter says, “[Let] whoever serves [you could say works], [serve or work] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” In other words, there is a restfulness in work because God is an inexhaustible helper in our work, so that our energy is really — in a profound sense — his energy supplied to us.

4. Peace in Christ

Therefore, the obstacles that always meet us in our work and that formerly robbed us of peace and restfulness, and filled us with anxiety don’t have that effect anymore, because now we know that “nothing is too hard for [the Lord]” (Jeremiah 32:17). Nothing. He works everything together for our good (Romans 8:28).

For at least those four reasons, we can speak of Christ being our rest — rest for our souls — even in the very exertion of our daily work.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back. John 9:3 is a classic text for us at Desiring God when it comes to understanding God’s good design in human disability. In six APJ episodes, we’ve talked about the man born blind and Jesus’s explanation for why he was born blind. It’s just a profound story, a profound revelation of God’s purposes.

But today we’re looking at a different part of that story. You’ll remember that Jesus spit on the ground, mixed his saliva with dirt, made mud, applied the paste to the man’s blind eyes, and then sent him off to wash it all off in a pool. And that’s where his eyesight was restored. Let me read this account in John 9:1–7: “As he [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” There has to be a reason why, right? “Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” There’s the key text. Why does disability exist? It’s a profound response, with wide-ranging implications. Then we read this. “Having said these things, [Jesus] spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.” Here’s Pastor John.

He healed him with mud. Why? He could have said, “Eyes open,” and they would have opened. He’s done that. He used mud and spit. I have a lot of ideas why. I’ll just give you the one that’s most obvious in the text, least controversial. I think it’s manifest.

Stirring Controversy

Namely, he used mud because he knew it was Saturday, the Sabbath, and it’s against the law to knead dough or clay or mud. One of the 39 interpretations of the Pharisees as to what it means not to work on Saturday was you can’t knead dough. And the word for “dough” is identical (pēlon) to the word “mud” or “clay.” It’s like brickmasons: “Hey, give me some more mud,” and all they mean is a big clump of moldable cement. Or it’s like women working with their bread, because they could call it mud. They usually don’t, but it’s the same word.

He knew exactly what he was doing. “I’m going to break the law; I’m going to do it in a way that breaks the law” — the law as the Pharisees understood it. Why would he want to do that? Because he’s the Lord of the Sabbath, and he wants to show that he is — or to show what the point of the Sabbath is: rest. Why? Why do you need rest? Healing. If you don’t rest, you die. Rest is weekly therapy for dying bodies. Get well; stop working. So I’m just really illustrating with this, What else would you do on the Sabbath but make eyes see? Especially if you’re God and you want to show that you’re the Creator and Sustainer and Healer.

But I don’t think any of those is the main reason why he did it. I think the main reason was to trigger the controversy.

Miracles Through Human Means

Yes. And it sure did that. But there’s a second reason why Pastor John thinks Jesus used the means of spit and dust and mud and a pool — a second reason Pastor John didn’t deliver from the pulpit, likely due to time limits. But it’s included in his written manuscript online, the sermon notes he had with him in the pulpit. So I’ll read this second one myself. Here’s what he wrote in his manuscript.

“God usually uses means in doing his wonderful works in this world.”

The second reason for the mud is to show that God usually uses means in doing his wonderful works in this world. Jesus could have simply spoken, and the man’s eyes would have been opened. But most of the wonders of God in the Old Testament were brought about by the use of human means. “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31). God is decisive in the victory, but he uses means. He doesn’t need the horse, but he uses the horse.

Ponder this in the bigger picture of life for a moment. What this means is that God does not despise the physical world he has made. He uses the means of food to sustain life. He uses the means of sex to beget children. And he uses a thousand remedies to bring about healing — from sleep to penicillin, from vitamins to radiation, from sunshine on the skin to cough syrup for the throat.

“If our hearts are alive and humble and worshipful, we will not stop until we see God at the bottom of everything.”

And lest you think this removes the mystery of God’s wonderful work, consider boring down through layer after layer after layer of physical causes for why antibiotics work against strep. Forty or fifty layers down into the molecular, subatomic activities of the smallest particles, or non-particles, there comes a point where there is no explanation inside this closed material system. The final explanation is always God. And if our hearts are alive and humble and worshipful, we will not stop until we see God at the bottom of everything.

Glory of His Work

It is no small thing to believe that God uses means to accomplish his purposes. And his purposes are that the glory of his work would be displayed. And therefore, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). And so does all the rest of creation, if we have eyes to see.

Jesus used mud. We may use mud — or medicine. The difference is how close to the surface the miracle is. Let your life be full of wonder at the works of God — and full of worship.