When I first began at Desiring God, a monitor hung on a wall in the office. Of many other useful functions, it showed our staff how many people were on the website in real time. If you looked at the smaller type at the bottom, you could see how many users were on particular pages. So, for a new article published that morning, you might look over and see a few hundred people on the page. You could watch the numbers rise as the article spread, and see it top out a few hours later, and begin its slow decline.

Over time, that monitor, like Sauron’s lidless eye, came to stare at me. I watched as some of my articles were shot down mid-flight. By afternoon, the article dipped into the dozens. The warm tingle would wash over me: insecurity. I worked hard on that article. I thought more people would read it. Is this really God’s call on my life?

I remember resonating with Shakespeare when he described man as not being able to feel what he owns, but by reflection (Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.99). He meant that a man could not know himself to be what he thought himself to be unless others acknowledged it. Was I any good? I could only know by reflection. Warm admiration or high numbers on a screen needed to tell me so. If a writer publishes an article, but it doesn’t receive any compliments, was it even worth writing? The temptation begins to creep in: Will they be impressed? Will it be good enough to be envied?

That screen not only showed me my own numbers, but others’. I’m sure you can imagine the temptation: Dashboard, dashboard on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Though not all writers, we all know the enticement, don’t we? They may track different stats, but we each have our monitors.

Sickly Eye

What is envy?

Envy: The favorite son of pride, the dark appetite that turns allies into enemies and angels into demons.

Envy: The rival moon unable to share the sky with the sun, for fear to discover itself to be the lesser light.

Envy: The genesis of human murder, a sin of which Abel’s blood still speaks.

Envy: The disease that festers with God’s blessings . . . given to others.

Envy: That bitter wind that chills the king’s throne, even after victory, as it hears the singing in the streets, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7 NASB).

When Pride heard that song, the text tells us, “Saul eyed David from that day on” (1 Samuel 18:9). The bloodshot eye set on others’ successes, the inward grimace when others are better noticed, better complimented, or (you hate to admit it) simply better than you at the thing that you’re good at. Do you know that sickly eye that looks down upon brothers, spear in hand, and thinks, I will pin David to the wall? We all have our javelins. We have our ways of explaining why our rivals aren’t really that talented or wonderful or beautiful or godly at all.

Envy, the bewitchment that bids a man kill his brother or a man his God: “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” Pilate once asked. “For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up” (Mark 15:9–10).

Wisdom of Demons

It was during that season of temptation that God gave me grace to do what my flesh protested: I took a brother aside one day and confessed to him my temptations to envy him and his recent success. It was a humbling, embarrassing, sin-slaying light. Are you tempted to envy anyone close to you? Consider confessing the temptation to them that you might war together against this demonic wisdom.

“Demonic” is no hyperbole. The apostle James writes, “If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:14–15).

How do we resist? To answer, I want to bring in C.S. Lewis’s fictional demon, Screwtape, to help us, not with the diagnostic (in which Lewis excels), but to guide us to a cure. In letter 14 of The Screwtape Letters, the demon writes to his nephew,

The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents — or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. (71)

Don’t you want that kind of heart? The kind that says with Moses, whatever your particular giftings, “Oh, that all were prophets!” (see Numbers 11:29). Or, “Oh, that all were mature mothers, powerful preachers, resourceful men living to the glory of God!” To be like Paul, so about his Master’s business that he remarks of jealous ministers,

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. . . . The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? [Only that in every way they should be silenced? Only that in every way God would curse their ministries?] Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. (Philippians 1:15–18)

O Lord, give us hearts like this.

Doctrine of Given Gifts

Screwtape goes on to highlight a doctrine that God has used in my life to bring down the monitors from the walls of my heart.

The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient’s mind a doctrine which they all profess but find it difficult to bring home to their feelings — the doctrine that they did not create themselves, that their talents were given them, and that they might as well be proud of the color of their hair. (72)

They might as well be proud of the color of their hair. Fellow Christians, your gifts — are you ready? — are gifts. You only and always exercise gifts from God — and that for the building up of others. Whenever you begin to think that you really are something after all, ask Paul’s question, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

Engraved over our best successes, our best works, our best moments will be two words: Things Received. Or one word: Grace. This doctrine frees us to live in community with others more (and less) talented than we are, and — dare I say — even celebrate the achievements of others.

Brooms to Sweep the Floor

John the Baptist is such a good example for us. His disciples tempted him toward envy: “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness — look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him” (John 3:26). What is the first thing out of his mouth? “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27).

Let me share with you a poem I wrote a decade ago, meditating on this scene between John and his disciples:

Disciples

Rabbi, I have news to tell,I’m afraid you will not take it well,Another brother has set sailTo the man across the way.

You said he’d take our sin away,But our brothers, night and day?I wonder what you have to say,Should he now rise to reign?

On the other shore he now remainsAre both baptisms just the same?Is ‘Baptist’ also in his name?We wait for your reply. . . .

John

A man cannot receive but from on High,His sandals, I still dare not untie,My question for you is simply whyAre you still with me upon this shore?

He who comes after me ranks before.I baptize with water, nothing more.I am but the broom to sweep the floor,Before the King comes in.

Behold, the One of David’s kin,The Bridegroom with his Bride to win,The Lamb who takes away your sin,And heals all our disease.

He who buckles sinner’s knees,Has not the Spirit in degrees,The One of whom the Father’s pleased,And all creation hails.

It’s not as though the mission fails,When the Master over the slave prevails.All disciples set your sails,To the One across the way!

He must increase; we must decrease. Our talents are given us for Christ. We are but brooms to sweep the floor before the King comes again.

A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë, Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin. “Excuse me: that is a part of my name for it; I do not know what the word is in the outside languages: you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world. . . . Did you say what you call it?” . . .

“Hill?” suggested Pippin.

Treebeard repeated the word thoughtfully. “Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, 465–466).

Names are powerful realities. But one thing names do is abridge. They shrink down. In haste, they label realities larger and deeper than themselves — things too wild to be caged by consonants and vowels.

Do you ever linger over what others label and discard? This world needs more Treebeards, repeating words thoughtfully in their minds, “Hill” (or “grace” or “wife”), concluding that these are hasty words for things that have stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped. Do you ever ache to pass the title to explore reality’s pages, to bring down with every pass what Coleridge once called the “veil of familiarity”?

Making the Familiar Unfamiliar

Our modern world seems comfortable with dull familiarities and hollow names. As its idols, it has eyes but does not see, ears that cannot hear creation declaring God’s glory. Oh, that? That is just a hill, an ocean, a mailman. Oh, that? That is a church, a pastor, a religious ritual called “communion.” Two-dimensional words thrown at realities that shall outlive the sun. Its metallic voice denies this world is enchanted, laughs to think that God’s eternity presses down upon us.

Against this veil, beautiful writing is a battering ram. Shelley put it this way:

Poetry [and poetic language] lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world; it makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar. . . . It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. (Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry)

The most imaginative Christian preachers and writers employ their lyrical hearts and prophetic powers to stir and awaken us to war with the hasty and bland word as an act of resistance against seeing this life as a hasty and bland reality. They stare. And stare. And see. And say, hill: “Earth pregnant with history.” “A pimple on the ground’s face.”

Then they delete. Reread Scripture. Stare again, and say, hill: “A place pagans climbed to reach their gods.” “A place once crowned with Jerusalem, God’s own city.”

When you ask and seek and knock for new doors into what is, you employ what John Piper calls “poetic effort.” But we dare not stop at the name. Poetic effort moves beyond the initial way of saying it, to soar higher, swim deeper, alight upon that “sweetness of speech [that] increases persuasiveness” (Proverbs 16:21). It is a hunt, an expedition, an obsession for words fitly spoken — apples of gold in settings of silver (Proverbs 25:11). It is salty speech, an apt answer, a poem, a parable, a labored and lovely sentence. It is a turn of phrase that we hope the Spirit uses to turn the reader’s heart from sin to the Son.

It is to bend the bowstring back, straining to send the arrow farther, deeper. Poetic effort is lexical sweat, keyboard calisthenics, the reworking of a sentence and paragraph again and again, arranging and rearranging twenty-six little letters that form little words that grow into little sentences and little pages and little books, each reaching, straining to grasp even the hem of his garment. Poetic effort.

Man’s First Words

Let’s travel back to behold the first time a man pushed past a name to describe more beautifully (and thus, more fully) the enchantments he felt and saw.

Gazing upon Eve, Adam’s heart vented beautifully:

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)

Don’t overlook the significance: From the very beginning, music stirred within man. The first time we hear the voice of man in the pages of Scripture, it’s lyrical. Let us finally put to death the Neanderthal man grunting monosyllables beside his fire — when the first man’s heart overflows with wonder and gratitude, it cascades forth as poetry. When Adam sees Eve, he doesn’t go and measure her height and weight. He doesn’t stop at a name. He serenades her.

He exclaims,

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh . . .

At last. This marks the closest thing to exasperation unfallen man can achieve in paradise. Adam’s journey to Eve was meandering.

God appraised, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” and he promised, “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). Creature after creature, God brings before Adam for inspection. Imagine Adam staring at the duck — and the duck staring back. The duck did not fit the bill (neither would the rhinoceros, the eagle, or the lion). Did his heart begin to sicken from hope deferred? He names them and sends them away.

Exhausted, Adam falls into a strange night. God wakes him to a dream, the fulfillment of the promise. Who is this, fairer than moonlight, sweeter than Eden’s fruit? Her eyes, caves unexplored. Her cheeks, new meadows. Her voice, soon to be his favorite song.

This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh.

She is him, but not him. His bones, his rib — enfleshed, reshaped, beautified.

Oh, she shall be called Woman,because she was taken out of Man.

He from dust; she from him. He staggers beneath God’s kindness. His wife, his helper, taken from him to fit with him on mission. Eve, the mother of all living, his wonder in paradise.

Eyes of the Poetic Life

The first words out of man’s mouth in Scripture form a poem. Man is poetic because his God, in whose image he is sculpted, is the Highest Poet. God is the Great Lover of beauty, and the Great Beauty Triune.

Expressive Adam, we may not necessarily say, practiced poetic effort — he seems to simply wake to sing his final draft without the thorns and thistles we encounter in our own composition. What he seemed to do seamlessly, we say and write with first drafts, deletions, edits, scouring for that word, that phrase, that image, that captures the naked reality God sets before us. A reality seen and marveled at by all who know and love the truth.

But let me further clarify. What I invite you to is not simply to add some color to your preaching or prose or evangelism — more metaphor and more creativity to your writing. I invite you deeper into the poetic life, to reclaim that due wonder at the world and her God.

This is often what we love most about those enchanted Christian writers, isn’t it? We don’t return to them so much for their pens, as for their eyes — eyes that saw the unseen, beheld God and his glory draped over all the world. The poetic life, the Godward life, is not just for artsy types who like that sort of thing, but for those who know they live in the concluding chapter of the best tale that could be told.

When Names Fall Away

Dumb idols cannot enrapture like our God. Even out of Eden, his cursed world still boasts of vivid blues and deep reds, still grows mangos and whispers sunsets. Our God upholds the galaxies with a word and then bends down to paint the cardinal red.

And we know that this is all but a stage to unfold the story where God’s Beloved Son spoke the galaxies into existence by a word and then bent down to paint a cross red. Hill, that is a hasty name for Queen Golgotha as she stooped low to enthrone her Creator. And at the end of this story (and in another sense at its beginning), the higher husband, the New Adam who slept a darker sleep and woke to a better dream, will sing with higher significance to his perfected Eve:

This at last is bone of my bonesAnd flesh of my flesh;She shall be called the church,Because she was taken out of the Son of Man.

We refuse to stop at names until names flee into irrelevance when we see him face to face.

“You are fettered,” cries Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. “You are fettered,” exclaims he, trembling before the spirit of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. “You are fettered. Tell me why?” (23).

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” comes the ghost’s reply. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it” (24).

Marley’s appearance uproots Scrooge. Marley had been dead seven years now — years, he reports, of “no rest, no peace” (25). At first, Scrooge tries to escape the solemnity with a joke: “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” But “the truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones” (22).

Marley soon raises a frightful cry and shakes his chain “with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon” (23). When the ghost’s jaw drops down to his chest, Scrooge cries, “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?” (23). Marley presses the ill omen upon Scrooge’s unsettled conscience, intimating that he can see Scrooge’s waiting fetter. It was the length of Marley’s seven years ago, and “you have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain,” he portends (24).

Scrooge looks around, waiting to be devoured by the irons, but nothing. “Jacob,” he says imploringly. “Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!” (24). “I have none to give,” the ghost replies.

What Marley did not have to give, the story of Christ and Christmas does. But too many will not have it — not because they’re too despairing, but because they’re too untroubled and carefree. Christmas is merely the luxury of time off of work, visiting family, delicious food, and exchanging presents. They are not sensible enough, desperate enough to receive the glad tidings. So I’ve come to ruin our Christmas — at least the commercial, tinseled, gift-wrapped, Christ-neglecting, man-centered, consumeristic festival it too easily becomes when we forget our total calamity without the Messiah’s coming.

I want one soul in Scripture — a ghost in his own right — to unnerve us, to shake his chains of despair in our ears, and bring biblical sobriety to our Christ-sprinkled Christmases. May he disturb us to the marrow of our bones, as Marley did Scrooge, and lead us beyond the fright to a truly felt and deeply merry celebration of our only hope, Immanuel.

Ghost of Christmas Past

He dressed in purple linens once. He threw the greatest holiday parties and feasted sumptuously every day. His life, like Scrooge’s, was paved with gold coins — “the rich man,” Jesus calls him. His luxury lifted him too high for the concerns of one poor creature whimpering outside his gates — a man itching his sores and swatting away the dogs who licked at his wounds. This hungry man dreamed of a day when he could eat the scraps from the rich man’s table. “Lazarus,” Jesus names the poor man (Luke 16:19–21).

Lazarus dies, doubtless believing in the coming Messiah, and is carried by angels to Abraham, the father of faith (Luke 16:22). In the twinkling of an eye, his soul travels from outside earthly gates to inside those of paradise. No more blisters, no more hounds, no more scratching at an empty stomach. Miserable in life; merry in death.

“The rich man,” Jesus tells us, “also died and was buried” (Luke 16:22) — having heeded neither Moses nor the prophets, nor having waited intensely for the Messiah, nor having loved his neighbor, nor having repented of his sin. He sinks into Hades and,

being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” (Luke 16:23–24)

Here in sacred Scripture, Jesus gives voice to a spirit, locked in burning chambers on the other side of death, pleading. We hear him in terrible anguish, tongue-twisted by fire, utterly parched and imprisoned on one side of a great chasm. “You are fettered,” we say. “Tell us why!”

“Sin!” returns his sweltering reply. “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” He is now the dog, begging to lick the flesh of Lazarus’s finger to taste some dew upon it. How awful those flames, and how dreadful those blows, that make even a drop of water seem like heaven.

Wish of a Dead Man

Before our eyes of faith appears a ghost, horrible his image, hideous his voice. “Speak comfort to us,” we implore him. He has none to give. But this fearsome soul has something to say. Jesus tells us: “I beg you, father,” says he, “to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house — for I have five brothers — so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment” (Luke 16:27–28).

He wishes his (and our) family gathering would no longer be a warm fireplace to escape the cold realities of sin and death and judgment, a time of triviality climaxing in a fat man falling down a chimney. He would warn all who would listen of what lies just past the careless drinking and laughing and eating: a place of torment.

If he cannot make the trip, he pleads for Abraham to send the spirit of Lazarus back into his body so that he can show up to their party with grave omens and solemn appeals. The rich man reasons, “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!” (Luke 16:30). Imagine it: the pale body of Lazarus now vomited from the grave, placed again outside those shut gates, banging, howling, warning of the wrath to come. This would be enough to amend their erring judgments and change their sinful ways, he thinks. O Abraham, please!

Then comes the final, stunning reply: “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

O Holy Night

Do we now begin to feel (again) what makes Christmas glorious? Warm holiday smiles, good food, fond memories with family do nothing, on their own, to overcome our peril. Ponderous our chains would remain; unspeakable our torment would soon be. Tree lights and Christmas decor and anchorless sentiments cannot overcome our winter’s darkness. At Christmas, we celebrate that the only one who could overthrow our curse and its unending consequence came. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. . . . For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:2, 6).

Midnight, our darkness; shattered, our hopes; a blaze of unquenchable fire, our rightful destiny. We were “condemned already” (John 3:18), but suddenly the clouds broke and multitudes of angels sang to earth, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). The Father foretold of this coming one,

I will give you as a covenant for the people,     a light for the nations,     to open the eyes that are blind,to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,     from the prison those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:6–7)

Such glory makes it a befuddlement to heaven (and to even the rich man’s tortured soul) why we should partake in a Christmas without Christ shining at its center. What madness to lift our glasses to the Messiah’s birth, but not cherish him; to pretend to notice the fallen prison door, but not follow him out into life; to know the Savior shall be born in the town of Bethlehem, but not go fall at his feet to worship him. Christmas, if it means anything at all, means everything. We celebrate a miraculous night, a divine night, an indispensable night when God came to dwell with man as man to save man from eternal misery.

Far as the Curse Is Found

Look about you this Christmas. Can you catch even a glimpse of the ponderous chains that these, your unchristian family, coworkers, and friends, or perhaps you unmindfully wear? Impenitent coworkers and relatives already in the grave, if anything like our rich man, would return as apparitions at Christmas, pleading for us to escape the unendurable wrath to come. Will we who know the truth and have escaped such a fate not pray earnestly and speak intimately to even one lost soul? What do we mean when we say we love them?

“I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate,” says Marley to Scrooge. “A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”

“You were always a good friend to me,” replies Scrooge. (28)

Will we be a good friend to any souls this Christmas? Perhaps the soul you need to be friendliest to is your own. With the chains of this rich man still jangling in our ears, let us be intentional in our celebration, prayerful in our witness, and overjoyed in our Jesus, who shines the brighter because of such terrible darkness. Our Christmas does not hide from the grimness of the world, but sings the heartier of its coming redemption:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,nor thorns infest the ground;He comes to make his blessings flowfar as the curse is found.

“As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7 KJV). What a man thinks in his heart — not what he says with his mouth — is where to find the man naked in his natural habitat. He may say warmly enough to be convincing, “Sit, eat, and drink,” but sweet words can coat a bitter heart. He may brood against you while he bids you to his table. What he thinks inwardly, his soliloquy uttered in secret chambers — that is the man as he is.

But we may go further: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.” That man in the inner chamber may change — for better or worse — depending on where he sets his innermost thoughts. Beautiful or beastly, peaceful or disturbed, heavenly or hellish — as a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.

Knowing this, Scripture knocks loudly upon the inmost door.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1–3)

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:5–6)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. (Romans 12:2)

The Holy Spirit would open the windows and flood our soul’s inner rooms with fresh beauty and light:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Have such texts prevailed with you? The secret thoughts of your inner man — upon what do they dwell? Are you being transformed by the renewal of your mind?

Thoughts in the Darkness

This principle makes all the difference for us in life generally, but especially in our suffering. As a man thinketh in his heart while under the knife of affliction, so he will become — hardened and drifting away or “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

We see this truth illustrated after one of the darkest events in holy Scripture: the destruction of Jerusalem. The book of Lamentations is aptly named, its pages stained with tears and blood. In it, the poet brings us into the ruins of his heart and the conquered city he loves. From within that cave, Jeremiah teaches us how to find warmth amidst the bitterest winter: he calls truth to mind.

As others sink irretrievably, Jeremiah goes down to the threshold of his heart, unlocks the door, and forcibly turns the thoughts of his soul away from his “affliction and . . . wanderings, the wormwood and the gall” (Lamentations 3:19), to his half-remembered God.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:21–24)

In the midnight of despair, he brings the lantern of memory into the secret place of his spirit and there reads of God’s goodness and faithfulness from the sacred ledger. Behold the heavenly alchemy. He has seen recent nights haunted by unspeakable terrors and sins, yet he pens lyrics of God’s every-morning mercies and tireless love. His world has been stripped from him, but “the Lord is my portion,” he catechizes the inner man. “Therefore I will hope in him.”

Memory Raises a Star

He refuses to stop until he sees goodness even in this bleakest moment. Watch how he speaks to his soul and how far up the mountain he climbs to gain a higher perspective.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust — there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. . . . [But why?] For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:25–33)

In a cave so black he cannot see his own hand, memory shines forth with starlight. His God’s self-revelation flashes from Sinai: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). He sends his and the nation’s plight into the orbit of this God. He doesn’t indulge pain’s false preoccupation with self, but, bent in prayer, begins to see by faith flowers among the ruins, the goodness in a man bearing his yoke in his youth. And he travels to heaven’s throne to find his footing, reminding himself that his God will indeed afflict his people but not from his heart.

Though God will in no way clear the impenitent and guilty, he overspills in steadfast love and mercy toward his children. He loves them from his heart. His mercies that never cease flow continually to them from his essence. His goodness burns as a ball of fire above and beyond cold caves of grief. Jeremiah reasons to himself: God’s fatherly discipline will pass, our trials will someday cease, tears will have a final day, but his mercies shall never end — and they have not now ended. The sun, though distant, has not yet diminished.

Reader, are you suffering? What are you calling to mind? What promises from the faithful God do you need to seize? When all lights fade, Christian soul, the Lord is still your portion.

Call Him to Mind

Today, Jeremiah’s Lord has revealed himself more wonderfully still. When we call his truth to mind, the one we see is Jesus. Weary soul, are you remembering Jesus? The author of Hebrews exhorts us,

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:1–3)

Desponding, struggling, exhausted saint, call the Lord Jesus to mind. Bring his sweet remembrance — and living presence — into the inner chambers. Think much of him, and the stone under your head shall become a pillow, the gall in your soul become sweetened. Do you feel weighed down by this life? Do sins cling to your mind? Do you begin to faint on the journey, tire from all the running, wonder how you will make it through the week? Look to Jesus. Call him to mind, and therefore have hope.

Look to him as the founder of your faith. The one who pioneered it, made it possible, laid the foundations, charged before you into battle. He is the architect, the great conqueror, your triumphant Alexander. He made the path, built the structure, leads into the battle of an already decided war. Does not the sight of him awaken fresh reserves to endure the broken edges of this life?

But not only the founder: he is the perfecter of your faith. Jesus is not like the foolish builder who begins a project without the resources to complete it. Look to Jesus; call him to mind, the finisher, the completer, the Perfecter of your faith. As you double over, begin to veer from the path, faint under the sun’s heat — see him at the finish line, as the finish line. He will bring you home; keep running. He is the one who finishes our faith (Philippians 1:6). He is the Great Shepherd — the great Perfectionist — unsatisfied with ninety-nine out of one hundred sheep brought home. Look to Jesus, troubled soul, the perfecter of your faith.

Died to Win Thee

Moreover, consider him “who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” Consider him spit upon. Consider him stripped. Consider him whipped, mocked, and slapped. Consider him pierced. Consider him bleeding. Consider him paraded through the streets and placarded upon the tree. Consider that he endured this from sinners. Angels did not perform the salvific surgery — but orcs laid grimy hands on him, demons taunted him, men of foul breath spat upon him. He died shamefully, at the crossroads of Jerusalem, at the dirty hands of rotten men. Consider it; consider him: the very embodiment of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

As a man thinketh much of Christ in his heart, especially in his suffering, so like Christ he shall become, and with Christ he shall dwell eternally. In the lyrics of Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken, Christian,

Think what Spirit dwells within thee,Think what Father’s smiles are thine,Think that Jesus died to win thee,Child of heaven, canst thou repine?

The Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) is not simply insightful in its content, but delightful in its craft. As dwarves with rare jewels, these authors didn’t just discover golden nuggets of wisdom; they shaped them, forged them, hunched over their obsession, inspected them, held them up to the light, cut them, and framed them into sentences poetic and memorable.

We are wise to enter their mines and learn their skill, not just to discover beauty but to adorn it beautifully. Briefly, then, I want to travel into the mountain of these sages’ eloquence, exploring the deeps of their craftsmanship. Notice what was spoken of one such sage:

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10)

Handcrafted writing, beautiful writing that adorns God’s wisdom, weighs and studies, arranges with great care, and seeks out words of delight and writes words of truth uprightly.

Weigh the World, Study Scripture

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying.

First, to write well, this master-jeweler prepared well. Superior gifting did not alibi sloth. That the Preacher possessed superlative wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:16) did not shorten his preparation. He pored over the wise sayings of others; he wrote wise sayings of his own. And we, with lesser wisdom and ability, also measure and ponder, read and study, roast the truth over in our minds, never tire to hunt each morning for fresh discoveries in the forests of God’s Book.

Particularly, we do not just study how to write, but what we write about. We must have knowledge to teach. Here, some of us step along a cliff’s edge, tempted to preoccupy oneself with how we say over what is said. Many have lost their footing. Pride drags much of man’s toil over the edge to shatter upon the rocks. I grimace when I discover myself painting, like the worst of modern art, indistinct displays of my own artistry, instead of the landscape or the glories beyond.

No, the writing life gropes for metaphor and imagery and beauty because it has heard creation singing God’s praises and has seen his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we love God’s diamonds more than our metal rings and sentences that hold them. In all things, his Son must have preeminence (Colossians 1:18). The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as [the reader’s] servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). So, first, we weigh and study and place all in the light of God and his truth.

Arranging the Flowers

The Preacher did not merely weigh and study, however; he “taught the people knowledge, . . . arranging many proverbs with great care.” He made straight, he put in order, he composed. He forged proverbs, wisdom compressed into Hebrew poetry, what Robert Alter calls “the best words in the best order” (The Art of Biblical Poetry). He engraved the truth to be remembered, considering both style and structure. He knew that to add order was to add beauty and force. He knew a proverb or poem could be less or more than its parts.

Whether compiling proverbs of others or composing his own, he saw that truly beautiful writing has pleasing cohesion. One note out of place disrupts the recital — and is detected even by those who have never heard the music before. How? Because beauty has its anatomy, its symmetry, its mathematics, its order. Assonance, alliteration, metaphor, contrast, and more — the science of lovely prose.

Our God is a God of order and beauty, and he will not have his children fight. Beautiful writing is not a collection of notes struck on a whim, but a symphony; not a handful of casually picked flowers, but a pleasing bouquet. Marvel has their Avengers; Christian eloquence her Arrangers — of words and phrases and paragraphs and chapters. Such writers position their thoughts, others’ thoughts, and (most importantly) God’s thoughts into the vase with “great care.”

“The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell.”

Again, the man to whom God gave “wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore” (1 Kings 4:29), had to work at writing (and rewriting) — but also in arranging (and rearranging). Solomon did not publish first drafts. We almost hear his exhaustion (and see his smile) as he finally puts down the quill: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

Words of Joy and Truth

You’ve experienced it, right? Halfway through the second paragraph, the writing tastes stale, unappetizing. You travel on, if you travel on, against the wind. It has words of truth, perhaps, but not delight. But then you turn to another writer whose beliefs all but nauseate, but whose prose allures. As in Athens, his verbal idols are well crafted. Here, we find words of delight, but not much truth.

The Preacher sought something different. He “sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.” He loved beauty and he loved truth, and he took great measures to wed the two.

He quested for sweet sayings. He climbed mountains, entered forests, dove as a merman into the sea, searching for words of delight. Not smiling, quirky words such as “platypus” or “whizzle,” but sayings that gratified, “‘words that would give pleasure [to the listener]’ — presumably because they were well phrased and elegant.” He hunted them with a fierce love. “Elegant expression, deep and satisfying meaning — these were the goals of [the Preacher’s] work as a thinker, a teacher, writer and collector of wisdom” (A Handbook on Ecclesiastes, 436).

Lovely Christian writing does not apologize for its poetry. For those suppressing creativity in unloveliness, be free to search for words of joy. We know secularism only pretends to hate beauty; dark angels still dress as angels of light. To fight only with aesthetics leaves the bow without arrows; to fight only with naked truth is to toss your arrows at the heart. But let the archer place the golden arrow into the bow of bronze, let earnest prayer draw it back, and who knows how mightily the Spirit of the living God will let it fly?

Pens of Pure Hearts

The writing of Solomon has a further detail easily overlooked: “Uprightly he wrote words of truth.” Straight words did not emerge from a crooked heart: “That which was written was upright and sincere, according to the real sentiments of the penman, even words of truth, the exact representation of the thing as it is” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible).

The painter, not just the canvas, is in view for the Christian writer. He speaks the truth truthfully, sincerely, as he knows it before God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. He says with Job, “My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely” (Job 33:3). And with Augustine, “What I live by, I impart” (quoted in James Stewart, Heralds of God, 10). We err if we finely craft content but not our lives. Christian writing is done from a higher art.

Holiness adds to the force and wholesomeness of our writing, just as bad lives spoil otherwise good content: “Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools” (Proverbs 26:7). We don’t fit this paragraph after that because it fits together — while obeying neither. Here lies the grand departure from all sub-Christian writers.

This means we obsess over reality. “I talk of love — a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek,” Lewis once wrote in a poem (As the Ruin Falls). As far as it goes with us, we refuse to write of God’s truth, of the wonders of the world, of deplorable and enduring things as a parrot overhearing its owner speak what it doesn’t understand. We do not arrange and weigh and judge and search for words of joy and truth from a heart that loves none of it.

The words of joy and truth the Preacher found first pleased his own soul. He loved what he wrote for more reasons than that he wrote it. He searched the tropics because he valued beauty — not to cage and sell what he found. He didn’t love ingredients just to cook meals he never tasted; he really loved the food. He delighted in the spiritual taste of words because words were doors into reality.

Dispatches from the Shepherd

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. (Ecclesiastes 12:11)

What we’ve seen is that beautiful writing for Christ considers the object of its writing more than the writing itself, yet spares little expense to arrange words of joy and truth in the most pleasing and effective ways possible. Beautiful writing for Christ also passes from the pen of a pure heart. And now finally, striking Christian writing descends from the Great Shepherd.

We might imagine this Shepherd picking us up in his arms and laying us down in green pastures — and so we have warrant, given Psalm 23, perhaps the most beloved beautiful writing in the Bible. But here, the Preacher instructs us that wise sayings are not down pillows for the soul, but rather nails and prods spurring us onward. And here is one of the most important lessons for Christian writers today: the beauty of the writing must not blunt truth’s blade.

Otherwise, beautiful writing can devolve into flattery and man-pleasing when it never cuts to the heart. Too many skilled writers try to give the God-breathed word a breath mint. It doesn’t need one. Against purple prose that only soothes, what imagery did the lover of joyful words find to describe the carefully arranged sayings? “Goads” and “nails firmly fixed.” They stand behind readers as cattle drivers and prod us forward with sharp pokes. They animate us. They bestir us. They protect us from veering from the path of holy living.

Christian writing, eloquent and comely, crafted and arranged, will not always be comforting or encouraging. The message is not ours, but that of the One Shepherd.

He does not want to go home after daycare. During those hours, he experiences the nurturing care of women — that mothering touch that makes a little boy’s world go round. He cries when it’s time to leave. He stammers to leave the maternal — a second language in which he was born fluent — when he has to go back into the home of two men. The “married” men are openly promiscuous with other men. One pretends to be more effeminate than the other, but effeminacy (the boy knows by experience) is a gross and cruel substitute for the gloriously feminine.

He is trapped with men who “gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27). Men who did not keep that penalty to themselves. They took the little boy directly from the hospital room to live in the lust-filled, wrath-stamped house of two men despising God and his design.

The little boy clings to his Christian auntie whenever she comes, she tells us, and cries when it’s time for her to leave his house, a house full of testosterone, aberrant desire, and a cheap mimicry of both fatherhood and motherhood. The boy, despite his catechizers, knows the real thing from the fake. He knows what it is to be held by the real, soothed by it, cuddled and made to feel secure in the safety of its arms.

The men who took him are “expecting” their second any day now.

What’s Wrong with the World?

A true story like this should anger us, fracture our hearts, and bend our knees to pray. What is wrong with the world?

What is wrong with the world? Paul gives us an answer in Romans 1:18–32: Mankind is at war with its Creator. Each generation has its own way of saying to the Father and his Son: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). Or with Pharaoh, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” (Exodus 5:2). Romans 1 takes us behind the scenes for some context to desperate times.

Here we learn that fallen man, timid little creature that he is, dares not make eye contact with the Almighty, so he suppresses the truth about God to continue, all too happily, in his filth (Romans 1:18). A popular form of suppression today is atheism. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” — and he does so because “they are corrupt” and “do abominable deeds” (Psalm 14:1). And those deeds do not wear masks and quarantine. Man denies God to practice and continue practicing homosexuality, as one of many rebellious ways, and then adopts children into his perversity.

But the grandeur of this world leaves ruined man without excuse (Romans 1:19–20). He, even he, lives within a masterpiece — God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). The great artist signs his name everywhere to be seen. Man quivers within heights and depths he cannot explore, in a cosmos more expansive than his imagination. Man’s brain (which is hostile to God apart from grace, Romans 8:7–8) surpasses a computer. His cells contain baffling intricacy. And yet his love for sin makes modern man shrug and call himself an atheist. His religion says that all came from original nothingness, from the great I Am Not. Claiming to be wise, he has become a fool.

The old watchmaker analogy highlights the absurdity of explaining nature by mere nature. If that atheist man finds an iPhone in the woods, he will always conclude someone must have left it there. That it was made. Chance did not design it. The passage of time cannot take credit. Though an Apple, it did not fall from a tree. Yet he lives and moves and has his being in the wide world of complexity that towers the iPhone as the heavens above earth and yet he says it all came from impersonal, unintelligent forces. They are without excuse.

Fattened by Sin for Slaughter

Unregenerate men of all sexual professions do not see God because they do not want God. They would pin him up and nail him to a tree again if they could. “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). As criminals want no All-Seeing Judge, so natural man chafes at the God who reminds him that man is no god and is not good. How dare God tell us what to do with our bodies? How dare he tell us what to do with our babies? How dare he tell us what marriage is? How dare he!

So sons of Adam reject God. They do not render him the honor due his name, or thank him for his goodness and mercy (Romans 1:21). Instead, they offer the Almighty insults and spit upon the hand of their Benefactor. As a madman who pulls out his teeth to throw them at the sky because he hates the moon, men harm themselves in their rebellion. They become useless in their thinking, and their foolish hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21). Deny God, and you deny reason, deny sanity, deny goodness, deny beauty, deny life. One becomes a spiritual Nebuchadnezzar — nails grow as talons, he stoops to eat grass like an ox — though he may live in a lake house, drive a fancy car, and be thought charming by this God-hating world.

He is at war with God, and God is at war with him. He is under the wrath of God, a wrath that is just now preheating (Romans 1:18). He has exchanged God for images, and now God gives him over to suicidal sinfulness: to the lusts of his heart, to impurity, to the dishonoring of his own body (Romans 1:24). He bowed before idols and prostituted God’s truth, so God brings him to grassy plains where he will grow fat for the day of slaughter.

Bloodshed of Toddlers

God has given these two men up to dishonorable passions, to commit “shameless acts with men” (Romans 1:27). And then they conspire to adopt what God has forbidden them by nature. And then the delirious powers that be place kids in their “home” to be hit by the shrapnel of this skirmish with God.

And this is what God’s judgment does: Like striking a wasp’s nest, it incites man’s stinging left and right.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28–31)

Who do these “haters of God” envy? Deceive? Slander? Murder? Themselves, others, and sometimes, children.

Rebellion against God becomes a wildfire. Wickedness is never satisfied to keep to itself; it mutinies. It enlists bedfellows. It stirs up and demands compliance. It slithers and has scales, takes over school systems and adopts children. And it co-opts those who know better: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). These know such sins beg for God’s capital punishment, but instead of imploring them to repent — as love would dictate — they instead applaud them for their courage and “authenticity.”

Flee the Wrath to Come

God’s reality is inflexible. His law is perfect; his rules are true and righteous altogether. The Judge of the earth shall do right, and this is a terror for all here who despised his mercy, despised his designs for love, sex, and marriage, despised his day of salvation, and despised his crucified Son.

Today, dear reader, is the day of salvation — seek King Jesus. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. He has made a way, with his own blood, for you to be received. Are you a vast sinner? Have you murdered, taught false doctrine, adopted children into an abominable union before the Lord? Your wicked life is a wide opportunity for God to display the fathomless depths of his compassion and the eternal power of Christ’s sacrifice to forgive you. The terrorist of the church, the blasphemer of God, and murderer of Christians wrote,

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)

Look to this great example of mercy to give confidence to receive your own. Abundant pardon for abundant crimes. There is enough mercy for all who come.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;     call upon him while he is near;let the wicked forsake his way,     and the unrighteous man his thoughts;let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,     and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6–7)

Jesus Christ has a throne of grace for the repentant, and a seat of terror for the impenitent. What is wrong with the world? Man’s sin. What alone is right with the world? Jesus Christ — his person, his redeeming work, and his church of redeemed sinners. He shines in the darkness, and still the darkness has not overcome him.

“Could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part would have been perfect.” So thinks Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If only her sister were there, if only they could go for walks together, all would be complete — then she would be perfectly happy.

Yet another moment’s reflection teaches her a lesson untraveled by much of humanity:

“But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain. But here, my carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my sister’s absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized. A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defense of some little particular vexation.” (166)

Did you catch it? This paragraph will be surgical if you let it. Upon reflection, Elizabeth discovers that she doesn’t really want her sister there at all. Why? Because she wants to maintain at least one excuse for why she isn’t finally happy. She knows that if her sister comes — if they go for their walks through the gardens — she will still not possess that happiness she longs for. And what is worse: she will no longer possess any reason for why not. What then?

Then she would have to turn and face it: she does not know what will finally make her happy, what will finally banish the ache. Maybe in the end, all hopes are false. Should she risk touching bottom? No, thinks she, the shallow disappointment of a missing sister must shield from the deeper, tongueless throb silenced of rebuttals.

Chasing Our Tail

What makes Elizabeth’s reasoning so unsettling is that she knows her sister would not fulfill her happiness — yet she prefers deception to reality. Her passions rise in mutiny against reason; she allows them the helm without struggle. She prefers to wish for her sister than to have her sister (and so break the spell). Does that sound familiar (though we are less honest)? Sure, we sigh loudly enough, but have we ever noticed the relief that comes from realizing at least one of our Janes is elsewhere, and so certain disappointment is kept at bay?

Peter Kreeft describes man’s plight this way:

If he experiences winning, he is not happy for long; but if he plays with the hope of winning, he can be happy for a long time by being both diverted (by playing) and deluded (believing he’d be truly happy if he won). Success is the sure spoiler. We are happy only climbing the mountain, not staying peacefully on the summit; only chasing the fox, not catching it; only courting, not marrying; only traveling, not arriving; only fighting wars, not keeping a boring peace. (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 181)

Success is the sure spoiler. And so, the 27-year-old Tom Brady gives an interview with 60 Minutes atop the world’s mountain — three Super Bowl rings, fame, money, power — only to question, Is this it? There has to be more . . . And so, Yo-Yo Ma tells the story of getting halfway through a perfect concert — for which he trained his whole life — only to notice, of all things, his own perfect boredom. And so, the king of Ecclesiastes, who denied his heart no pleasure, writes over and over from within a stupor, “All is vanity.” Elizabeth, with great foresight, knows the yawn found at the world’s mountaintop, as we should too, if only we were brave enough to sit in a silent room and consider it.

Well at the World’s End

I wonder if our love for the chase but not the catch, the distraction but not the dominion, doesn’t also explain some of envy’s saltiness. If jealousy be that “green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” have we no pleasure in being consumed?

We have a saying for finding our unmet desires (our Janes) living in another’s lawn: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But what if we almost prefer it that way? What if our neighbor’s green grass (so pristine from this side of the fence) keeps our hopes of greater happiness watered and fed? Perhaps if we were unfortunate enough to receive an invitation into our neighbor’s yard, we might make the ill-fated discovery that our grass, in fact, is just as green (if not greener). What now?

This is orphaned man: we have not known what we desire, yet we say it is just over there. Boys chasing dragons through the forest. “On whatever plane you take it, it is not what we were looking for,” C.S. Lewis writes. He whispers what we already know over our shoulders:

Lust can be gratified. Another personality can become to us “our America, our New-found-land.” A happy marriage can be achieved. But what has any of the three, or any mixture of the three, to do with that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? (Afterword to The Pilgrim’s Regress, 237)

No idol has yet stayed true to its promises — but who could live in a world without worship? Should the next love, next promotion, next child finally be that ladder who makes a name for itself by placing its top in the heavens? We know (oh, we know). They too will fail to punctuate; our desires will remain running sentences. We thirst but cannot find the Stream, but our thirst proves there is a stream somewhere. “Nature makes nothing in vain” (237). “Nearly there now” — the refrain of our lives. But we’ve been “there” before. The nearer we got, the browner the water. We are lovers of if only.

Walk with Elizabeth

If I were to go on a walk with Elizabeth, I would tell her exactly what she fears to know: The child of her joy is too thin and frail to survive. Her honeyed hope is false, and she is but half-serious about living to be so freely swallowed by a dream. But the irrepressible longing to crown something her mirth’s monarch is not given in vain.

Her God has placed it there.

But she stands evicted from such heights of happiness, gripping a branch below with broken wings because of sin. Justice holds a rifle at her; her life (and joy) hang by a thread sustained by the God she has sought to find happiness without. She has not honored him or given him thanks, and so that “God-shaped hole in her heart” — along with her God-programmed conscience — bears witness (graciously) to her estrangement (Romans 1:21; 2:15). Both denounce her pride and her prejudice, and point her, if she has eyes to see, to the Lord of glory who authored her.

“If only” cannot defend against the inevitable disappointment (and what is much worse) of a life unreconciled to God. Only Christ can, who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And this Christ, fully God and fully man, through his sinless life and substitutionary death and subsequent resurrection, received by faith and repentance and evidenced by living obedience, offers to put his joy — supernatural joy — in you. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Here, and nowhere else, can your joy be made full. One drink from this well, says he, and you shall never thirst again.