I love Romans chapter 8. If you’re a Christian, I imagine you love it too. What Paul so beautifully describes rings with a hope we recognize, a hope that resonates deep within our souls and stirs longing for our far-off homeland, our heavenly one. In Romans 8, we catch glimpses of “the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). I’m sure this is one reason John Piper says,

I think Romans is the greatest book in the Bible. I think Romans 8 is the greatest chapter in the greatest book in the Bible.

And I especially love the paragraph that spans verses 18–25. I’ve probably quoted from this paragraph in my writings more than from any other section of Romans 8. In these verses, Paul gives a peerless description of our paradoxical experience of hope-filled groaning in a creation still in “bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21). We wait for “the freedom of the glory” God has promised us as his children, but we do not yet see it (verse 25). Which I’m sure is also one reason John Piper continues,

I won’t argue that [verses 18–25] is the greatest paragraph in the greatest chapter in the greatest book in the Bible, but it comes close.

Yes, it does. And I want to draw your attention to two marvelous parts of this paragraph that make it one of the greatest in the Bible.

Uplifting Pattern

First, notice the peculiar pattern of humiliation followed by exaltation Paul uses. We see it in the following verses:

“The sufferings of this present time” are followed by “the glory that is to be revealed to us” (verse 18).
“The creation . . . subjected to futility” is followed by its obtaining “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (verses 20–21).
The groaning of the whole creation — and we ourselves — is followed by the completion of our “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (verses 22–23).

For anyone familiar with Scripture, this peculiar pattern isn’t new. Humiliation followed by exaltation is laced all through the Bible.

We see it in Abraham, who “was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance” and ended up living “in the land of promise, as in a foreign land,” which God later gave to his descendants, just as he had promised (Hebrews 11:8–9).

We see it in Moses, who lived for forty years as a fugitive shepherd in Midian before God called him to deliver his captive people from Egypt.

We see it in David, who was subjected to Saul’s campaign of terror, pursued through the wilderness, before God gave him the kingship of Israel.

“We will not merely see the glory of God; we will be clothed with his glory.”

We especially see it in Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:6–9).

Why Humiliation Before Exaltation?

But why? Why has God ordained that humiliation should precede exaltation, that suffering should precede glory, that futility should precede freedom, that groaning should precede redemption? Since God has innumerable purposes in everything he does, I’ll venture just one reason — a very significant reason for fallen humans: faith. For

without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

The reason God subjected the human race and all of creation to futility is because of human pride. But he offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and eternal redemption to all who are willing to humble themselves under his mighty hand through repentance and faith (1 Peter 5:6). As Jesus said, “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

But mere words of repentance and faith are cheap. True repentance and faith are proven by the fruit they bear (Matthew 3:8; Galatians 5:6). And nothing reveals the humbled, loving, faithful hearts of the redeemed children of God like the bewildering, disorienting, painful experiences of humiliation, suffering, futility, and groaning. Those who have the “the firstfruits of the Spirit” walk through these valleys and groan along with creation, yet they eagerly wait for their full adoption, showing themselves to be God’s true sons and daughters (Romans 8:23). In other words, we are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8), but Christlike humility is necessary evidence that our faith is saving faith. Thus, humiliation must precede exaltation.

Free to Be Glorious

This brings us to the second marvelous part of this paragraph: the great promise that this age of groaning will end. Like all our forebears in the faith, those who compose the ever-growing cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), we greet these future promises “from afar,” and in doing so “make it clear that we are seeking a homeland,” desiring “a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” and therefore God will “not be ashamed to be called [our] God” (Hebrews 11:13–16).

In other words, like our forebears, we groan in hope. “Though our outer self is wasting away,” and “we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling,” we do not lose heart (2 Corinthians 4:16; 5:2). For God has made a promise to us, of which the Spirit bears witness: our bodies will be redeemed, and we will experience in full “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:16, 21, 23).

Did you catch the wording of that last phrase? We are promised “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” We will not merely see the glory of God; we will be clothed with his glory! Our new bodies will radiate his glory! We will experience something that, as C.S. Lewis put it, “can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it” (The Weight of Glory, 42).

Just think of it: we will be free. Truly free. Not only will we be free from all the grievous effects of futility; we will be free from every vestige of pride, free from any temptation to be an idolatrous rival to God, free from all vainglorious impulses period. We will be free to be glorious! We will be free to bear and wear the glory of the children of God! And we will dance and sing and rejoice over how God answered Moses’s prayer beyond all that he could ask or think:

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,     and for as many years as we have seen evil. (Psalm 90:15)

For the days of our glorious gladness will so outnumber the days of our affliction and the years we saw evil that they will be only distant and shadowy memories that enhance the gladness we experience. We will be free to be God’s glad, glorious children!

This is the hope we have in all our present groaning, and it will be the great reward of our faith.

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:24–25)

Yes, Lord, we believe and we will wait. But may this day come soon!

I just attended my fortieth high school reunion. It feels a bit surreal to write that. Forty years have passed already? It’s another reminder of my recent reflections: our lives are very brief, briefer than we’d like to think.

I remember graduation day like it was yesterday: all of us a mere seventeen or eighteen years old, and most of us feeling a flush of euphoria as we stood together for a moment at that milestone, on the very brink of adulthood, full of hopes and dreams.

Now most of us are older than our parents were when we graduated high school — in fact, a significant number of us are grandparents — which made our reunion somewhat bizarre to experience. Photos of us from our high school years played on the monitors in the venue as we reconnected with old friends and acquaintances, all of us now with thinning, graying hair and our bodies showing the tolls that gravity, solar radiation, and changing metabolisms have taken as we’re rapidly approaching our culture’s retirement age.

But those aren’t the only tolls we’ve paid. We’ve also experienced, in different ways and to differing extents, the universal reality that Moses spoke of when he wrote,

The years of our life are seventy,     or even by reason of strength eighty;yet their span is but toil and trouble. (Psalm 90:10)

We’ve discovered that life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.

“Life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.”

I know this all sounds a bit depressing. But our hope has to be real hope if it’s going to sustain us through real life, not the illusory hope of the mirage-like dreams my classmates and I likely had when we graduated. Real hope is only realized when we come to terms with the dismaying reality we all face in this age. Truly facing it is what forges in us “a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), the kind of heart that Psalm 90 teaches how to cultivate.

Why We Are Dismayed

It’s actually heartening that Moses, one of the godliest people to walk the earth, one who grounded his hope in God and his promises, was dismayed by his experience and observation of life — just like we often are. But in this psalm, he doesn’t take a shortcut to hope. His real hope is grounded in the reality of the human condition. Which is why we first hear him lament the end we all face: death.

Dismayed by the Dread of Death

Moses cuts right to the chase when he says,

You return man to dust     and say, “Return, O children of man!” (Psalm 90:3)

We all dread death. We dread it for myriad reasons, but underneath all others is a primal root reason: death is God’s judgment on sinful humanity, and we intuitively know God’s judgment is dreadful. When Moses prays, “You return man to dust,” we can see he’s in touch with reality because he’s quoting God’s words back to him:

You [shall] return to the ground,     for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,     and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19)

Perhaps you and I will be among those alive when Jesus returns, and we will experience our mortal bodies being “swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). I imagine every saint since Jesus’s resurrection has hoped and prayed for that experience. But there is wisdom to be gained from pondering the significant likelihood that someday soon — bewilderingly soon — God will say to us, “Return, O child of man.”

Dismayed by God’s Anger

Then Moses delves into the core of our dread of the judgment of death:

For we are brought to an end by your anger;     by your wrath we are dismayed.You have set our iniquities before you,     our secret sins in the light of your presence.For all our days pass away under your wrath;     we bring our years to an end like a sigh.The years of our life are seventy,     or even by reason of strength eighty;yet their span is but toil and trouble;     they are soon gone, and we fly away.Who considers the power of your anger,     and your wrath according to the fear of you? (Psalm 90:7–11)

For those of us living on this side of Jesus’s substitutionary work on the cross, these words can sound confusing and disturbing. Didn’t Jesus pay it all for us? And if so, in what way are we still under God’s wrath? Here is where we, as believers, find the ground for real hope.

Hope in Our Dismay

Moses’s description of our dismay over our toil and trouble reminds us of the mysterious experience of living in the already–not yet kingdom of God. For when Jesus died, he did pay the full price for the sins of all saints past, present, and future.

God put forward [Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins [of former saints]. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25–26)

Jesus’s death “delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), so that when we “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10) we will not stand condemned (Romans 8:1). Rather, we receive “the free gift [of] eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

But in this age, until Jesus returns, we still endure the wretched experience of living in a body where sin dwells in our members (Romans 7:23–25). We still suffer the toil and trouble of living in a world subjected to futility, along with the groaning that comes with it (Romans 8:20). And we still suffer the dreadful experience of the death of our bodies. In other words, we still experience the same kind of dismaying sorrows Moses lamented.

“Life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.”

But for those who have ears to hear, there is gospel in this profoundly sober part of Moses’s prayer. When he prays, “Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?” (Psalm 90:11), the answer is that the believing saint does. For those who trust in Jesus, our fallen bodies, our toil and trouble, and our approaching death cause us to consider the reality of God’s judgment and see that they all point to the gospel hope — the same hope Moses had, even if he saw it only in copies and shadows (Hebrews 8:5).

For believing saints, these sorrows cause us to lay up our treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:20), to fight our remaining sin with all our might (Romans 6:12), to sojourn as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), to share with others the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15), and to ultimately view death, however we may dread experiencing it, as gain (Philippians 1:21).

Teach Us to Number Our Days

On that happy June evening in 1984 when my classmates and I celebrated our high school graduation, not only did we not comprehend how fast our lives would pass; we didn’t comprehend how difficult our lives would be. We know much better now.

But that doesn’t mean we all have cultivated a heart of wisdom. Not all my classmates have a hope grounded in the sobering explanation of why our days are so brief and so full of trouble. Not all have considered the power of God’s anger and his wrath according to the fear of him. O God, have mercy! Open their eyes that they may consider these things and be delivered from the wrath to come!

But for those of us who have put our hope in God, it is good for our souls to continue to consider these things seriously — even, with Moses, to the point of lament. Because feeling the weight of our fleeting days and troubled lives can teach us to number our days and so teach our hearts wisdom. It also can teach us to feel more fully the joy that is set before us (Hebrews 12:2) and to be filled “with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

As I write, I’m sitting outside my home, basking in a verdant, cloudless midsummer day in Minnesota. The sun-drenched landscape around me is lush and green, except for the colorful interruptions of flowers in full bloom that draw the eye as well as the bees and hummingbirds. And from the trees, a virtuoso wren leads a choir of birds, providing a perfect seasonal soundtrack in surround sound.

And as I sit enveloped by this world flush with life, I’m thinking about how brief life is. I recently turned 59. One more quick trip around the sun, and I’ll be 60 — if the Lord wills and I live, that is. Given how fast the decades are speeding by, before I know it I’ll find myself at “seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty,” which both Moses and modern demographers say is the average span of a human life (Psalm 90:10) — if the Lord wills and I live, that is. The end of my earthly life now feels less like someday and more like someday soon.

Which is why, in recent years, I have increasingly returned to what has become one of my favorite psalms: Moses’s prayer in Psalm 90. I share Moses’s deep desire for God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). I want to know what it means to grow wise as we grow older.

And learning to number our days begins by coming to terms with how few days we are given.

Like It Was Yesterday

When I was a young man, the phrase “I remember that like it was yesterday” usually referred to events that occurred just a few years prior. Now, I find myself saying that about things that happened three, four, even five decades ago.

A fun grade-school overnight with my closest childhood friends, Brent and Dave.
Riding in a car with high-school friends, belting out “American Fast Food” to a Randy Stonehill cassette.
That moment in the Wayzata Perkins parking lot at age 18, when I knew deep in my soul that Pam was the one I would marry — and we weren’t even officially dating yet! Now we’ve been married for 36 wonderful years.
That first time I heard John Piper preach, and I knew deep in my soul that somehow my future would be intertwined with his — and we weren’t even part of Bethlehem Baptist Church yet! Now we’ve been serving in ministry together for more than 30 years.
That overwhelming moment in the hospital room 28 years ago when I held our first child for the first time. Now that child is nearly the age I was then.

I remember these events like they were yesterday. And they leave me wondering where all the time went. How did it go by so fast?

Like Yesterday When It Is Past

Moses felt this kind of bewilderment too, and even more when he compared our brief lives to God’s life:

Before the mountains were brought forth,     or ever you had formed the earth and the world,     from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90:2)

Given how prone we are to see ourselves as lead characters in the drama of existence, it does our souls good to sit and prayerfully ruminate on what it means for God to exist “from everlasting to everlasting.” It boggles our minds. It’s supposed to. It’s meant to reframe our exaggerated perceptions of ourselves and our lifetimes so we see them from a realistic and humbling perspective — God’s perspective. It’s necessary that we, who experience time in terms of decades, keep in mind that our experience is not like God’s:

For a thousand years in your sight     are but as yesterday when it is past,     or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

Moses is using metaphorical language here. If anything, he’s understating the reality. But God gives us this metaphor in Scripture so we have something comprehensible to help us get some idea of the incomprehensible.

So, if we imagine that God experiences a thousand years like yesterday when it is past, how does he experience the lives of creatures like us, who (“even by reason of strength”) don’t live much beyond eighty years? It means that, for God, the longest human lives don’t span even two hours of yesterday.

Two Significant Hours

How should this observation land on us? If we come away with the impression that we’re insignificant and don’t really matter in the great divine scheme, then we’re missing the point. God doesn’t measure significance in terms of time duration but in terms of what he values.

“Learning to number our days begins by coming to terms with how few days we are given.”

Think of something you did for two hours yesterday. Were those two hours insignificant? Some of the most significant things in our lives occur in minutes and hours. They may have lasted a very brief time compared to how long we live, and yet we consider them priceless.

So, what are we meant to glean from Moses’s description? Simply put, our lives are very brief — briefer than we tend to assume, and far too brief to waste.

Teach Us to Number Our Days

What this glorious but fleeting midsummer day in Minnesota is preaching to me is that my life is too brief to waste. And at 59, I see it as a metaphorical picture of my past, not my present. I’m now in the autumn of my life and, like any Minnesotan, I know that winter is coming. And it is not merely coming someday; it is coming someday soon, almost before I know it.

So, I find myself praying with Moses, “Teach me, Lord, to number my days that I may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Because I want to grow wiser as I grow older.

And a heart of wisdom recognizes that while each day of mortal life is very brief, it is profoundly significant because its minutes and hours are priceless. Each brief day of mortal life counts, not just for an earthly life well-lived, but for eternity. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10) — and all of our good or evil happens during the ordinary, precious minutes and hours of ordinary, precious, and brief days.

A friend of mine recently asked me, given my 25-plus years of experience as a worship leader, “Why are men less likely to sing, or sing enthusiastically, in corporate worship?” Obviously, this isn’t the case in every church. But the question derives from a real phenomenon, one I’ve seen too often to deny, even in solidly evangelical, gospel-loving churches.

In my experience and observation, answering that question is probably not as simple as we’d like. It’s easy to assume the problem is mainly a man problem — that our men are spiritually indifferent or passive, or that they have immature hang-ups over worship songs and style.

Now, these factors may well contribute to the problem. But it’s also possible that we as leaders inadvertently may be contributing by either missing or underestimating some other important factors that hinder male participation in congregational singing. So, I’d like to briefly provide some historical context to this problem, and then I have five questions for church leaders to consider if a disproportionate number of their men aren’t singing.

Our Pop-Music Revolution

People don’t sing together like they used to. And in saying this, I’m not referring to the so-called “worship wars” of the past fifty years. I’m referring to a time that has passed out of living memory, a time when popular music was very different than it is now.

Up through most of the nineteenth century, communal singing in general (not just in church) was a regular and significant part of most people’s lives. Families sang together, neighbors sang together, workers and guild members sang together, warriors sang together, and tribes, villages, and towns sang together.

Singing was a primary way groups of people rehearsed and celebrated their shared sense of identity — their history, beliefs, traditions, and values — and passed them on to succeeding generations. It was also an important way they lamented their shared experiences of suffering and death together. And singing together was a major part of social entertainment. Of course, there were always popular, exceptionally talented musicians who would perform for audiences. But for the most part, pop music — the songs everyone knew — were composed for people to sing together.

“The primary instruments of corporate worship are not guitars, keyboards, and drums, but the congregation’s voices.”

But the twentieth century brought revolutionary changes to how pop music was made and for whom it was composed.

First came the emergence of the music-recording industry. It became possible to record exceptionally talented performance artists at a quality level people enjoyed listening to (keep that phrase in mind). Then it became increasingly affordable for the average person to buy these recorded songs (on records) and the devices required to play them (record players).

These changes were followed quickly by the straight-line winds of broadcasting technologies — first radio, then television, then the Internet — which blew away the folk-level communal singing in which everyone used to participate. In fact, the switch had largely occurred by the onset of World War II: recorded songs by performance artists primarily composed to be listened to had largely replaced songs composed for group singing.

Together, these shifts had a massive effect on how people viewed the purpose of pop music. Once, it was a way for an intergenerational group to celebrate or lament what they shared together; now it was seen primarily as a source of personal entertainment — and, almost simultaneously, as a vehicle for individual expression and generational identity.

Today, churches are among the few places left in our society where a community of people, regardless of musical aptitude, regularly sing together. But the pop music revolution has also significantly influenced how we sing (and don’t sing) in our churches.

Five Questions for Leaders

The above historical overview is admittedly brief and simplistic. But my purpose is to remind church leaders that many of our congregational singing issues, including the intergenerational tensions we experience, have their roots in these significant shifts.

So, with all this in mind, I’d like to suggest five diagnostic questions church leaders can consider regarding male participation in congregational singing.

1. Do we adequately teach men why we sing together?

In centuries past, leaders could assume most men would have experiential understanding of the significance of a verse like this:

Praise the Lord!Sing to the Lord a new song,     his praise in the assembly of the godly! (Psalm 149:1)

But we can’t assume this anymore. Nowadays, outside of a church, the only other place men are likely to sing together with enthusiasm is at a sporting event.

How well do our men understand why the Bible commands corporate singing? More pointedly, how well are we teaching them? Addressing the topic in an occasional sermon is helpful but not enough. Pastors and worship leaders need to regularly weave teaching about singing into the corporate worship time. I’m not talking about long teaching moments, but regular, brief explanations of what we’re doing and why it’s important.

2. Do we foster an environment that encourages men to participate?

One of the ways popular culture has influenced corporate worship is that our singing is now commonly accompanied by a worship band instead of an organ or piano. Now, in general, I don’t consider this a negative development. I led a worship band in a church for eighteen years, and both men and women in the congregation sang strongly.

But our people are shaped by our pop culture, where bands perform for the entertainment of an audience. Therefore, we need to keep in mind that the more congregational singing resembles a concert (dimmed lights, instrumental virtuosity, stage effects, loud sound levels), the more it signals to the congregation that they are an audience. And generally speaking, men tend to participate less in audience singing.

So, as leaders, how effectively are we fostering an environment that encourages men to sing? The primary instruments of corporate worship are not guitars, keyboards, and drums, but the congregation’s voices — male voices as much as female voices. If our men aren’t singing, perhaps we should seriously consider scaling down the band.

3. Do we sing about things men find inspiring?

Our popular culture has also influenced the content of many modern worship songs, leading to a disproportionate focus on individual spiritual experience. One thing I know is that men are moved by songs that offer communal expressions of strong affections for shared vision, beliefs, and values. So are women, of course. But when I’ve attended churches whose songs are primarily about intimate individual experiences, I’ve noticed a significant reduction in male participation.

So, if the men in our churches aren’t singing enthusiastically, it’s possible our song repertoire has a deficiency of songs that inspire men to sing.

4. Do we sing songs designed for communal singing?

Many modern worship songs have robust theological content and are skillfully crafted for communal singing. But there are also many modern worship songs that make for clunky congregational singing — even though they sound great when performed by well-rehearsed recording artists and church worship bands. The less predictable a song’s meter, and the more idiosyncratic its placement of lyric syllables, the harder it is for a congregation to learn (not to mention its visitors). And again, in general, if men feel tentative in singing, they are more likely not to sing.

On a related note, if worship leaders introduce new songs to a congregation too frequently, eager to incorporate the latest greatest, it also will result in tentative singing and a loss of male voices.

5. Do we sing songs men can sing?

This last question also addresses an issue stemming from the influence of our society: today’s popular music favors male tenor voices. This is why many Christian recording artists and worship leaders are tenors. But approximately 80 percent of men sing in the baritone or bass registers.

So, if there is a dearth of volume in male voices, we might be singing too many songs in keys too high for men to sing comfortably. This point might seem obvious, but I have been in many corporate worship settings where the majority of the songs have been sung in tenor-friendly keys.

Help the Men Sing

I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface here. But my aim has been to help my fellow leaders keep in mind that spiritual indifference, passivity, or immaturity may not be the causal factors — or the only causal factors — discouraging our men from singing.

If we want to cultivate a culture of strong communal singing, we can at least begin by examining whether we’re teaching its importance, fostering a helpful singing environment, choosing our song content well, and singing songs designed for group singing and set in helpful keys. If the men in our churches aren’t singing, let’s make sure we’re doing our part to help them.

Anyone who reads the Bible from cover to cover will encounter passages that deeply disturb — anyone, at least, who’s paying attention. And the more seriously one takes the Bible, the more disturbing these passages can be.

I was reminded of this recently when an earnest believer, a mother of young children, shared something with me that had been troubling her for some time. Recalling the Genesis 22 account of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, she was haunted by this unsettling question: If God could command Abraham to do such a shocking, brutal thing in order to test his faith, couldn’t God command me to do the same?

It’s a good question, especially from a Christian who takes the Bible seriously as God’s inspired, inerrant word. Of course, this mother is far from the first to be troubled by God’s command to Abraham, even if most don’t voice it for fear of sounding crazy. But it’s not a crazy question. Since God once commanded a parent to take his child’s life with his own hand, why should we assume he wouldn’t do that again? That question deserves an answer.

So, for the sake of others who have been similarly troubled, and to help us all consider carefully how to approach disturbing accounts in Scripture, I’ll share with you the three reasons I gave to this concerned mother for why the Abraham-Isaac event was unique and unrepeatable.

Historical-Cultural Uniqueness

Looking at the whole of Scripture, it’s important to notice that when God communicates to humans, he does so within their historical-cultural context, their recognizable frame of reference. This is true even when he communicates things they don’t yet understand. So in that light, let’s try to consider God’s command to Abraham within Abraham’s recognizable historical-cultural frame of reference:

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22:1–2)

Foreign Frame of Reference

To our twenty-first-century ears, this sounds horribly strange. Of course it does! Unlike Abraham, our beliefs and values, the frames of reference we tend to take for granted, haven’t been forged in the Bronze Age cultures of the ancient Near East.

What’s crucial to remember is that when God called Abraham in Mesopotamia, the only religious framework he would have known was shaped by the prevailing Near Eastern pagan beliefs and rituals. Nearly everyone in this region believed their gods sometimes required human sacrifices to prove worshipers’ devotion or to grant some great request. They took this for granted just as we take for granted that human sacrifice is morally abhorrent. If you and I lived back then, we likely would have assumed human sacrifice was sometimes necessary.

Now, I’m not advocating moral relativism. I’m not saying the human sacrifices of Abraham’s day weren’t truly abhorrent (they were). Nor am I saying that God’s command to Abraham implies that God condoned such sacrifices back then (he didn’t — and I’ll explain why in a moment). I’m saying that when Abraham heard God’s command, he heard it through historical-cultural filters very different from ours. Up to this point, Abraham likely took for granted, as everyone around him did, that the Deity he worshiped might require a human sacrifice.

When Everything Changed

So, in faith that “the Judge of all the earth [would] do what is just” (Genesis 18:25), that God would not break his covenant promise regarding Isaac, even if it meant raising his slain, lamblike son from the dead (Hebrews 11:17–19), Abraham made the agonizing journey to Mount Moriah and, in obedience to God’s dreadful command, took hold of the knife. Then he received the most blessed shock of his blessed life:

The angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. (Genesis 22:11–13)

That was the moment when everything changed. God intervened to stop a human sacrifice and provided a substitutionary sacrifice instead. This inaugurated such a massive paradigm shift that the Hebrew tribes became unique among their Near Eastern neighbors in not engaging in human sacrifice — except during periods when pagan syncretism infected and defiled their worship, which God abhorred and repeatedly condemned (2 Kings 16:1–3; Psalm 106:35–38; Jeremiah 19:4–6).

So, viewing the event on Mount Moriah through a historical-cultural lens, we can see why it was unique and not to be repeated. Through God’s disturbing command to Abraham — one Abraham would have culturally recognized — God was orchestrating an abrupt and dramatic sacrificial paradigm change: the God of the Hebrews doesn’t require his worshipers to sacrifice their children but provides for them substitutionary sacrifices acceptable to him. This paradigm change was so revolutionary that now, four thousand years later, most people around the world view human sacrifice as morally abhorrent.

Typological Uniqueness

Another crucial thing to notice from Scripture is that after the Abraham-Isaac event, God never again made such a demand — not of Abraham or any of his biological or spiritual descendants. Two significant reasons for this also highlight the event’s historical uniqueness.

“Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.”

First, as the person God chose to be the founder of this new faith, Abraham was called to embody and exemplify the type of faith that pleases God: a faith in God’s faithfulness to keep his covenant promises despite circumstances that appear contrary (see Romans 4; Galatians 3; Hebrews 11:8–10).

Second, when God provided a substitute sacrifice for Isaac, he intended it to be a typological foreshadowing of God’s salvific plan in Christ: God himself would provide the ultimate and consummate sacrifice of his only Son “once for all” (see Hebrews 7–10). Abraham appears to have prophetically spoken beyond his understanding when, in reply to Isaac’s question about the sacrifice, he said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8).

Theological Uniqueness

This brings us to the third reason the Abraham-Isaac event was unique, the ultimate reason we need not fear God demanding of us a ritual sacrifice of any kind, human or animal: Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. As “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), Jesus was the ultimate and final sacrifice God provided. And unlike Isaac, Jesus was sacrificed voluntarily. He said,

I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10:17–18)

Since now “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10), God neither demands nor desires any further ritual sacrifices (Hebrews 10:5–6).

That’s the theological significance of why, in God’s providence, he ultimately removed the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, ending its sacrificial system, and has since made it essentially impossible to reinstate because of the mosque on the Mount. And that’s why, as the influence of Christianity has spread around the globe, the vast majority of people have come to view ritual human sacrifice as morally abhorrent — and even animal sacrifice is increasingly rare.

Think and Pray Together

The Bible contains plenty of disturbing content. It demands a lot of hard thinking from its serious readers.

But none of us is so wise and educated that we can figure it all out on our own. Each of us is too limited and too weak and has too many blind spots. That’s why God gave the Bible to his church. He wants us to think hard and wrestle together — which is why I’m grateful for the dear saint who was willing to ask me this difficult, tender question, allowing me to share a few insights, most of which I have gleaned from others who in turn have gleaned from others.

The Abraham-Isaac event in Genesis 22 is understandably disturbing, especially to twenty-first-century Western readers so far removed from the time and culture in which it occurred. It can seem like God put a man through an unnecessarily cruel ordeal just to test his faith. It can also leave us wondering if he might do the same to us.

But seeing that there’s so much more to this story than first meets the modern eye has encouraged me to beware of presuming too much when reading other unsettling biblical accounts that appear to cast a suspicious light on God’s character. It reminds me that the path to understanding often involves prayerfully questioning my own assumptions, prayerfully putting in the hard work of thinking, and prayerfully seeking help from other saints, past and present, who have done the same.

We encounter one of the more difficult sayings of Jesus in Matthew 5:48: “You . . . must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And he issues this difficult command immediately after commanding us to “love [our] enemies” (Matthew 5:43). If we think of holiness like a high jump, it’s like Jesus sets the bar at twenty feet — more than twice the height that any human has yet cleared — and then raises it sky high.

Having been a Christian for a half-century, I must honestly admit I’m not perfect. In fact, the older I’ve become, the more aware I’ve become of just how much I am “beset with weakness” (Hebrews 5:2), which also seems to be the self-evaluation of the most mature Christians I’ve known. I have never met a perfect Christian. And neither have you.

So, given the seemingly impossible bar that Jesus sets for us, and the fact that no fallible saint in or outside of Scripture has cleared it, how are we to think of his command that we must “be perfect”? What does he expect from us?

Sinless Perfection Not Expected

We catch an important glimpse of Jesus’s expectation of us in the prayer he taught us to pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). We know what kind of “debts” Jesus has in mind because Luke’s version of the prayer says, “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). Jesus clearly doesn’t expect his followers to be sinlessly perfect if he instructs us to regularly confess our sins.

We also see throughout the Epistles how the apostles, some of the greatest holiness high-jumpers in history, understood Jesus’s expectations. James tells us that “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). John says that “if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:7–8). When speaking of the perfection we will experience in the resurrection, Paul says of himself, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12).

The New Testament neither teaches nor provides models of sinless perfection in redeemed saints. For people like me, that’s good news, because I know that I have no hope of clearing Jesus’s high bar of holiness. But if we stop here, we still haven’t answered the question regarding Jesus’s command that we “be perfect.” Does God let us off the hook because we can’t clear that bar? Not by any means. And here’s where it gets really good.

Sinless Perfection Required

While it’s true that the New Testament doesn’t teach that Christians will achieve sinless perfection in this age, it does teach that God requires perfection of us — that we “be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect.” So, we have a problem: God requires a moral perfection impossible for us to achieve. That’s a big problem. And solving that problem is at the core of the Bible’s message.

Scripture often refers to God’s moral perfection as his righteousness. And the central question it addresses is how God, in his perfect righteousness (sinless perfection), can be reconciled to unrighteous (sinful) humans without becoming unrighteous himself. The Bible reveals that God’s solution to this problem is what Jesus and all his faithful followers after him have called the “good news,” summarized here in Paul’s famous words:

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23–26)

In Christ’s substitutionary atoning death, God himself cleared the holiness high bar for us by satisfying the justice he demanded for sin — “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And in Christ’s triumphant resurrection, God can justly grant to those who have faith in Jesus the reward of the righteous — “the free gift of . . . eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Paul elsewhere captures in one sentence how God is able to justify unrighteous sinners like us and maintain his perfect righteous justice:

For our sake [the Father] made [the Son] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

‘Excel Still More’

That is very, very good news for sinners. It is the greatest story ever told in the history of the world. Yet the implications for us as Christians can still be misunderstood. Because it sounds like, when it comes to pursuing perfection, we’re off the hook. Jesus paid it all; Jesus achieved it all; we’re no longer required to try. We have Christ’s righteousness; what could we hope to add to that? In fact, all our sin magnifies how amazingly great God’s grace is! Aren’t all our efforts to kill sin and strive for holiness just works-righteousness — trying to atone for our sin by our acts of obedience? Paul’s answer to this is “by no means!” (Romans 6:15). Rather,

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12–14)

It’s wonderfully true that God doesn’t require us to achieve sinless perfection in order to be saved from his judgment against sin. But he does require of us “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5), which Paul describes above. The obedience of faith is not works-righteousness. Obedience is what genuine faith looks like as we live it out in real life. It’s why James says, “Faith apart from [obedient] works is dead” (James 2:26). And why Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“God himself cleared the holiness high bar for us by satisfying the justice he demanded for sin.”

Since the Son of God “loved righteousness and hated wickedness” (Hebrews 1:9), those who truly put their faith in him will increasingly pursue living in accord with what Jesus loves and hates, knowing that they’ll never achieve — or be required to achieve — perfect righteousness in this age. It’s part of what being “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son” means (Romans 8:29). And it’s why there are so many different ways the New Testament exhorts Christians to “excel still more” in pursuing Christlikeness (1 Thessalonians 4:1 NASB).

‘Easy to Please, Hard to Satisfy’

So, because of Jesus, God frees us from having to clear his high bar of holiness. But since he still requires us to “excel still more” in living out the obedience of faith, how do we Christians, beset with weakness and stumbling in many ways, know whether or not God is pleased with our present level of obedience?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Learning to discern what the Spirit is saying to us is particular to each one of us. But something I read years ago by C.S. Lewis has helped me remember God’s general disposition toward his children:

[God] who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.” (Mere Christianity, 202–3)

When it comes to the obedience of faith, God is concerned more with how our faith in him is growing than with how outwardly impressive and scrupulously observed our acts of obedience appear. As he was with the widow and her two copper coins (Luke 21:1–4), God may, for a host of reasons, be very pleased with one person’s apparently minor act of faithful obedience and less impressed by another’s apparently more significant act of faithful obedience.

But if we see God as a gracious Father who loves us so much that he did everything necessary for us to become his children, a Father who has promised to share with us his kingdom (Luke 12:32), we will receive his exhortations to “excel still more” as invitations to experience fuller joys and greater pleasures (Psalm 16:11) as we grow in Christlike maturity. Because the truth is, God’s being easy to please and hard to satisfy are two sides of the same priceless coin of his fatherly delight in doing us good.

To the left of my desk is an original oil painting by an award-winning artist named Audrey Strandquist. Unless you live about an hour west of Minneapolis and are above the age of fifty, I doubt you’ve seen her work. Audrey was my wife’s maternal grandmother, and her awards were conferred mainly at regional fairs. She typically painted landscapes, but in the painting next to me, titled “Threshing” and dated August 8, 1940, she beautifully captured a portrait of her tall, strong 24-year-old soon-to-be farmer husband, Wally, standing next to a bin of freshly threshed grain. In the background is a field of mature corn. Audrey was 23 when she applied the oils to this old canvas.

Audrey passed away in October 1998, and Wally in April 2013. Both are buried a short distance from the farm they worked from the time they married well into their elder years, in a small cemetery next to the little evangelical country church they faithfully attended and served for most of their lives. They were what we might be tempted to call “ordinary folk.” But that would be a misnomer, an oxymoron of colossal proportions.

There actually exists no such thing: an ordinary human life. To think a life ordinary is to believe a delusion. It reveals the shameful fact that we can barely bear true beauty — we who tire quickly of sunsets, often curse the rain, find wind an inconvenience, and define boring as watching the grass grow. How strange that we find violent virtual deaths in our films more captivating than the gentle life that miraculously awakens when buried, pushes up through the dark soil, catches the sunlight for food, and grows into a brilliantly green brushstroke of beauty in the very real landscape art we view every day.

“As for man, his days are like grass” (Psalm 103:15). Perhaps that is why we find the lives of men boring and ordinary. Watching a man is like watching the grass grow.

Lives Like Grass

Wally and Audrey were like grass. But being farmers, they found the adventure of grass less boring than most of us. Year after year, in a choreographed dance of collaborative labors, they tilled the dark soil, buried the seeds, and watched the epic of nourishing life slowly unfold. They endured the suspense and sometimes the tragedies of storms, droughts, and pestilence. They knew that the flower of the field was both fiercely resilient and fearfully fragile.

Like the grass they so carefully tended, their lives were a portrait of unassuming beauty. In the landscape of reality, you likely wouldn’t notice them unless you took the time to look. Wally was strong yet gentle, and his voice was calm and soothing. Audrey was kind and encouraging, and the bounty of her dinner table was unsurpassed. They moved like the slow, steady rhythms of the seasons. They were human poetry in motion. But we frenetic twenty-first-century Westerners, who have largely lost the patience required for poetry, might call it slow motion.

“There actually exists no such thing: an ordinary human life. To think a life ordinary is to believe a delusion.”

With unpretentious drama, they both came to faith in the living Christ while young, being raised by faithful parents and in faithful church communities. They met, fell in love, got married, and then faithfully loved one another for more than half a century. That alone is a marvelous feat, given how many dangers, toils, and snares half a century brings to anyone. The lyrics of these living poems tell of how Wally patiently and tenderly cared for Audrey through the numerous health challenges she faced throughout her adulthood, and how both of them, in thousands of ways over many decades, served the saints of Oster Covenant Church.

But the most profound effect they had on me was how they faithfully raised a daughter who came to embrace the faith she saw them live out in the so-called ordinary ebb and flow of life, which of course is where all the truly epic events of life occur. They had no idea the priceless gift this would be to me since their daughter would become my godly mother-in-law — 48 years after Audrey put her brush to canvas on that hot, midsummer, threshing day.

The Grass Withers

Wally and Audrey were like grass. Grass might seem to grow slowly, but in reality, its poetic life is brief. Which is why this painting moves me deeply, this portrait of a hardworking young man crafted by his gifted, hardworking young soon-to-be wife, both in the flower of their youth. That was 84 years ago. The painting is still with us, but the mortal bodies of the artist and her subject are not.

These blades of the grass of God flourished in the morning, but in the evening, they faded and withered (Psalm 90:6). Scorching winds of disease eventually passed over Audrey and then Wally, and now they are gone (Psalm 103:16). Two more casualties of the curse. Another reminder of the ignoble prosaic ending to the poem so noble and full of wild glory that tongues of neither men nor angels can fully capture it: a human life. An ordinary human life.

All flesh is grass,     and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.The grass withers, the flower fades     when the breath of the Lord blows on it;     surely the people are grass.The grass withers, the flower fades,     but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isaiah 40:6–8)

Where Grass Withers No More

I was there on the mournfully joyful days when we sowed the perishable remains of that kind, encouraging, artistic woman, and then, fifteen years later, the remains of that gentle, down-to-earth man, like seeds, into the hallowed ground beside the meeting house of the church they loved.

But make no mistake: we indeed sowed them. For it is the core of the Christian hope, the hope Wally and Audrey treasured in their souls, that what is sown perishable will be raised imperishable, what is sown in weakness will be raised in power, what is sown natural will be raised spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). They died in the hope all believers share: that the Sun of righteousness, the bright Morning Star, will make it possible for us, even though we die, to live in the eternal morning where the grass of God withers no more (Malachi 4:2; John 11:25–26; Revelation 21:4; Revelation 22:16).

And a day is coming when we will know that the epic stories of these quiet, grass-like saints have always been far more thrilling than the best novels and the greatest films. We will marvel at our former dullness, having ever considered such lives ordinary.

Someday, the curse will be reversed, and we will not have the patience to watch the millisecond epics of cinematic mass murder that have captured the imagination of fallen man. We will not have the capacity to find such dim phantasmal shadows entertaining at all. Not when what is playing out before us in vibrant colors now inconceivable is the gloriously wild real story of everlasting grass that, having burst from the ground, is alive with the light of the undying Star.

Father’s Day is a wonderful common-grace gift, an explicit reminder to fulfill a gracious obligation God has placed on us: “honor your father” (Exodus 20:12).

But for some fathers, this day is a painful reminder of ways they haven’t been able to fulfill all a typical father’s responsibilities, often due to circumstantial or physical weaknesses largely or wholly outside of their control. Which means that, for some, Father’s Day can seem to highlight more shame than honor.

I imagine Father’s Day might have had that effect on my own father. You see, Dad suffered from a humiliating affliction, a mental illness that took a significant emotional, relational, and sometimes economic toll on our family. His affliction was, in certain ways, our affliction — a fact of which he was all too painfully (and no doubt shamefully) aware.

But Dad was an honorable man — more than he probably knew. And I’d like to share why, both as a way to honor my father’s memory and as a way to encourage fathers who battle shame over ways their weaknesses have limited their fathering capacities. Because our weaknesses, if we steward them as faithfully before God as we’re able, can reveal greater, more spiritually significant strengths than those our afflictions steal from us (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Background of My Boyhood

My most vivid early memory of my father is seeing him running over the crest of a hill to rescue me.

One spring day when I was three years old, my good mother sent me out in a jacket to play in the backyard. When I came back in, she noticed I was lacking my jacket, so she sent me back out to retrieve it. I, however, being three, quickly forgot about the jacket when I saw the path, one that wound off through an adjacent meadow leading to . . . where? Some wonderful Land of Oz? It seemed like a good idea to find out. So, off I merrily went.

All I recall of the journey was that the meadow path shortly gave way to grassy hills, and the Oz I discovered was just some strange houses bordering a busy, loud highway. Just when I realized that there’s no place like home, I also had the frightening realization that I had no idea how to get back there. I was lost and alone and little. All I could think to do was to sit down and cry.

I don’t know how long I was gone, but it was long enough for my mother to search in vain for me, begin to panic, and call my father at work — and for him to come home and join the search (which by that time also included a policeman).

My cries had turned to despairing chest heaves when I looked up and saw the beatific form of my father cresting a hill, running toward me. Daddy! In my (emotionally enhanced) memory, there’s a golden glow around him. The man who loved me most, the man I loved most in the world, had left everything to find me and bring me home — the best place in the world. I was flooded with joy inexpressible.

That memory captures my father as I knew and viewed him as a child. He seemed larger than life. His presence (even when absent) permeated the atmosphere of my world and filled it with a unique brightness.

The background of my boyhood,The apple of my eye,The meaning of my manhood,The sun in my young sky,The shelter in your sovereignty I felt with you close by:You were my young world.

Meaning of My Manhood

To most, Dad wouldn’t have appeared extraordinary. He wasn’t a prominent leader, didn’t have a socially prestigious job, and wasn’t physically imposing. But when I was young, he wasn’t ordinary to me. To me, Dad was the paragon of manhood.

I remember how he stood straight and exuded an unpretentious confidence when he walked. I remember his big, strong, calloused hands. He wasn’t an excessive talker, but when he spoke, he looked people in the eye and treated them with dignity, honesty, and good humor — laughing easily. And when he gave his counsel, it was measured and wise.

He taught me what it meant to work hard through instruction and example. Throughout my childhood, Dad got up at 2:00 in the morning to drive downtown to the Emrich Baking Company, load his truck, and deliver baked goods to scores of restaurants and hospitals. A couple of times, I rode his route with him. Few things are as wonderful as the smell of a bakery in the early morning and spending the day with a father you deeply love and admire.

Dad taught me how to skate, throw a baseball and football, and play golf. I can still see his graceful swing and how the ball would sail off the tee, landing way down the fairway. If at all possible, he attended my hockey, baseball, and football games and even coached some of my teams. He taught me to compete hard and show my opponents respect.

But of all the ways he shaped me, two were most formative. The earliest one was how dearly Dad loved my mother. When he was well, I never heard him utter an unkind word to or about her. And he would by no means tolerate us kids showing her disrespect.

Then, when I was about nine years old, Dad experienced a spiritual renewal. His faith in Jesus became noticeably more vibrant. He studied his Bible more earnestly, prayed more openly, and became more engaged in the life of our church. It’s hard to overstate the profound and lasting impact this had on me.

The resolution in your walk,The strength in your hand,The easy laughter in your talk,The poise in your stand,The power of your presence my respect would command:You filled my young world.

Devastating Weakness

However, there was a shadow that followed Dad throughout his adulthood. There were these strange, brief, episodic seasons when, for inexplicable reasons, this normally even-keeled, loving, kind, honest, patient, hard-working man suddenly began speaking and acting completely out of character. For a short time, he became a different person. These episodes were then followed by a bout of stubborn depression. Dad was left as confused and disturbed by these episodes as everyone else was.

“Don’t underestimate the powerful influence a debilitated father can have on his children.”

Until age fourteen, I was blissfully unaware of this shadow, since its last emergence occurred when I was too young to remember. But in 1979, when Dad was 47, the mysterious malady struck again with devastating effect. Suddenly, he began to descend into madness. He stopped sleeping. He made bizarre declarations about God, the universe, and people he loved. He hallucinated, turned suspicious, and, for the first time in my memory, said harsh things to my mother.

Dad had to be hospitalized, and his illness was finally diagnosed: manic depression (later renamed bipolar disorder). He was placed on numerous medications, which mercifully helped stabilize his moods, but which also dampened aspects of his gregarious personality.

Dad was never quite the same again. His illness and its treatments significantly limited his capacities to concentrate and engage socially as he had before. He had to push himself to participate in the activities he had previously enjoyed so much — and that we had enjoyed with him. He found it hard to trust his own mind, and having been humiliated in front of his family, friends, church community, and coworkers, he found it difficult to take initiative in the ways he had before.

Strong Legacy of a Weak Father

But Dad’s weakness caused different strengths to manifest in him, ones that I now view (as an adult and a father myself) as even more honorable than the ones I perceived as a child.

I watched Dad persevere in suffering. Only those who have experienced severe depression understand the indescribable darkness he battled. My own experiences of depression (low grade compared to his) have increased my respect for him greatly. He battled valiantly. I know at times he fought the temptation to end it all. But he didn’t surrender. Out of love for God, his wife, and his family, he endured.

I watched Dad resist self-pity. I never heard him complain. When I would ask him how he was doing, he was humbly honest about difficulties he faced, but never in a way that telegraphed self-pity or solicited mine.

I watched Dad model faithfulness. He did not reject or express bitterness toward God because of his affliction. When his health permitted, he faithfully continued to worship at his local church. And I have priceless memories of Dad expressing his longings for heaven, when he would at last be whole and free to enjoy all that God prepared for those who love him.

And I saw in Dad — and Mom — deeper dimensions of what it means to love. Among the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed is the steadfast covenant love Dad and Mom extended to each other over the three decades following that devastating episode in 1979. Both suffered due to Dad’s illness, each in different ways. Life and marriage did not turn out as they envisioned when they married in 1954. But they stayed together, for better and worse, in sickness and in health, and determined to love each other, which at times called for steely resolve, desperate prayers, and deep faith in Jesus.

Mom in particular lived out a beautiful sacrificial love for Dad, tenderly caring for him for the rest of his life. And Dad loved her for it. Few had the privilege to see what a wonder this was. I was privileged beyond measure.

I Remember

Life is hard. Brains can be just as defective as hearts, hands, legs, and livers. Dad, like many fathers, suffered in ways beyond his illness. He suffered the indignity of losing the capacity to be the kind of husband, father, and grandfather he wanted to be.

But his formative impact on me by no means ended when the worst of his affliction struck. His example of perseverance, faithfulness, and love are just a few of the ways he continued to shape my character and prepare me to face my own bewildering afflictions.

Though the days of childhood have now long since passed by,I still see you clearly in my memory’s eye,And I remember, Dad,I remember . . .

The constant love I felt from you,The disciplining grace,The ear I told my dreaming to,The pleasant, patient face,The faith that did not die despite the dark of your disgrace:You shaped my young world.

In June 2010, one last disease brought Dad’s earthly sojourn to an end. Now he knows fully what he knew only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). Now he is whole and free to enjoy all that God prepared for him. The lyrics I’ve woven throughout are from the song I wrote and sang for his funeral. I wish I would have written and sung them to him before he died.

But I do remember. I remember how he ran over that hill to rescue his frightened, lost little boy. I remember how profoundly he filled and shaped my young world. But even more profoundly, I remember the strengths that manifested in him because of his weaknesses. His influence didn’t die when he no longer was able to be what he was when I was young. And it didn’t die when he did. I am still learning from him. My admiration and respect for him has only increased as I’ve aged.

To fathers who have suffered in ways that seem to have robbed them of being the kind of father they desperately wish they could be, and who perhaps experience Father’s Day as a painful (or shameful) reminder, I say this: Don’t underestimate the powerful influence a debilitated father can have on his children. Remember, even in the worst of times, that God’s grace will be sufficient for you — in ways you may not yet see and perhaps may not live to see. Steward your weaknesses as faithfully as you’re able. For there are dimensions of God’s power that manifest most clearly to fallen people, like me, through your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The longing has stirred deep within me, I suppose, ever since I’ve been old enough to long for it. It’s an intense, bittersweet longing for something unnamed I’ve always wanted but can’t quite put my finger on. And it doesn’t so much stir as stab, striking when I’m not expecting it — not even looking for it. Then all too quickly, it’s gone, leaving me wanting that pleasurably painful pang again. I say it’s bittersweet, but it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever known.

Growing up, I don’t remember anyone I knew ever describing this experience of longing. Nor do I remember trying to describe it myself. Perhaps it’s because English doesn’t have a word for it. Or perhaps it’s because the experience is so subjective and what prompts it varies from person to person.

But I learned from C.S. Lewis that German speakers have a word for it: “Sehnsucht” (Surprised by Joy, 6), which means a wistful yearning for one’s homeland when living in a foreign country, or a painful pining when someone or something dear is absent. That gets very close to the feeling.

Sehnsucht Mentor

In fact, Lewis not only gave me vocabulary for this familiar soul-longing, but he also became my first and foremost teacher regarding its significance. Lights came on when, as a young man encountering Lewis’s essay, The Weight of Glory for the first time, I read about the “inconsolable secret” I carried inside (just as you do) — “this desire for our own far-off country” (29). And he explained why we find this Sehnsucht secret difficult and awkward to talk about:

We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. (30)

In my childhood and teen years, I had loved Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and his Space Trilogy, no doubt because they were seasoned with Sehnsucht. But it was in reading many of his nonfiction works later that I really began to understand why I had this “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction” — an experience Lewis called “Joy” (Surprised by Joy, 19).

Beautiful Signposts

It’s telling that my experience of this Joy has always been stirred by beauty. Not everything I find beautiful stirs it. And a beautiful thing that stirs it once may not stir it again — certainly not every time. Nor can I predict what kind of beauty will rouse it. But a whole spectrum of beauties might: An old house long abandoned. Clouds in an N.C. Wyeth painting. Orion striding toward a crescent moon, noticed on a late-night dog walk. My granddaughter on the porch, entranced by Narnia, which she discovered through the magical wardrobe of an audiobook. A long-past moment in Lutsen, Minnesota, frozen on film, when my then-young children leaped from a boulder, laughing for joy.

Lewis frequently experienced the stab of Joy in works of literature. I frequently experience it in music. I’ve been stabbed when listening to Rich Mullins’s rough demo of “Hard to Get,” the melancholy cello in Rachel Portman’s “Much Loved,” Andrew Peterson’s “The Silence of God,” Eva Cassidy’s rendition of “Fields of Gold,” Ola Gjeilo’s “Winter,” and Bob and Jordan Kauflin’s “When We See Your Face,” to name just a few.

When I perceive beauty in such things, what am I longing for? The abandoned house? The clouds? The stars? The memory? The music? No. It’s something else, some beauty I’m glimpsing through them. Lewis explains it this way:

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. (Weight of Glory, 30–31)

Or we could say they are signposts directing us toward the place where all the beauty comes from.

Where the Signposts Point

When I was around age ten, I remember listening to my father’s record of Christopher Parkening performing Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and feeling that bittersweet pang of Joy. As far as beauty-signposts go, few are more obvious — spelling it out in the title. You might think I’d have recognized where my longing led, especially since I came to faith about this time. But I didn’t — and wouldn’t for another decade.

Lewis’s road to discovery was longer. In Surprised by Joy, he describes how he spent the first half of his life engrossed in the pursuit of Joy, experiencing repeated disappointment when it vanished from every beautiful object he thought contained it. What surprised Lewis was his slow realization that it wasn’t Joy he desired; rather, “Joy was the desiring.” And “a desire is turned not to itself but to its object” (269, italics mine). All along, Joy had been saying to him, “Look! Look! What do I remind you of?” (268).

Having searched high and low, Lewis realized that his desire was one “which no experience in this world can satisfy,” in fact was “never meant to satisfy . . . but only to arouse . . . to suggest the real thing” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). The greatest surprise of Lewis’s life was when he followed the direction of his otherworldly desire and discovered that it led to the Satisfaction he hadn’t believed existed. All those years he had mistaken the signposts as the sources of his treasured Joy, when all along they had been telling him that Jesus was the ultimate Joy of Man’s Desiring.

The Ultimate Destination

I call Lewis my “Sehnsucht Mentor” because through his writings I gained a vocabulary for my “inconsolable longing,” priceless conceptual clarity for what before had been a hazy intuition, and a richer understanding of the heartbeat of the Christian life, which I learned from John Piper to call Christian Hedonism.

And when I read the last novel Lewis published in his lifetime, Till We Have Faces, his reworking of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros into a story of Sehnsucht, he gave me one of the most beautiful statements I’ve ever read, uttered by the character Psyche:

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from. (86)

I feel the bittersweet pang of homesickness almost every time I read it, “a desire for [my] far-off country,” “a country [I] have never yet visited” but recognize as home (Weight of Glory, 29, 31).

Home. That is our inconsolable secret, isn’t it? We long to be in the place where — or more accurately, with the Person from whom — all the beauty, all the glory, comes from (John 17:3, 24). We’re longing for home, for the Mountain. And all the signposts that prompt our piercing, bittersweet desire tell us that’s where we truly belong.

I call it bittersweet, but it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever known.