SELF DECEIT


If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
(1 John 1: 8 – NAS)


John doesn’t really pull any punches in his letter. He has just praised the nature of fellowship – with each other and with Jesus Christ. He has indicated that a lack of love can keep us from fellowship. He has told us that we need to choose to walk in the Light of Christ.

So we’re thinking, “Yay! I can do this, easy-peasey.”

And then he brings us to this stop by pointing out that if we say we have no sin in us, we’re not telling the truth.

This is not something we want to hear, not something we want to face. At any time.

When we are working diligently to follow the Lord, to genuinely keep to his teachings, we don’t want to think about our small lapses, hidden resentments, suppressed angers. We want to believe that we have “let go” of all those things. But John knows human nature very well, and he knows that we are so often not honest with ourselves.

As followers of Jesus, we try to shape our lives to what He wants us to be as Children of God. So we watch out for the Big Sins: murder, adultery, thieving. We keep an eye on ourselves for signs of sinful inclination: greed, lust, anger. We lecture ourselves on indulging in these things. And we restrain our actions.

But we do not do such a good job on excising them from our hearts.

Anger and resentment are easy things to keep around, treasured in our hearts. Oh, we vow never to act on them, because we do not want to sin. But we savor our angers as if they were fine wines. We cloak them in the fine garb of Righteous Indignation and refuse to acknowledge it as sin. We make a judgment on the actions and intentions of others and feel justified in our disdain and dislike. Because their actions and beliefs are wrong or even sinful, we shun them, despise them, ridicule them, pour vitriol on them – because they are unworthy.

We forget that they also are beloved of God. We treat them as if they have already faced Christ on the Judgment Seat and have been cast off. We ignore the possibility of redemption.

Is this not sin on our part? To deny that redemption is possible, even in those who are (in our eyes) so steeped in sin that we are greatly repelled by them?

Occasionally, as a test of just how willing I am to trust the redemptive power of Jesus, I speculate on What Ifs that can challenge one’s faith. Let us suppose that we know as a certainty that anyone standing within the Gates of Heaven has been redeemed and accepted by the Lord, that such a person has indeed repented of all his or her sins, and has submitted themselves entirely to the sovereignty of God. Now then, suppose we are ourselves approaching the Gates of Heaven and the person standing there to greet us and lead us into the presence of God is the absolute last person we expected to see in Heaven. What is our reaction? Will we trust that God knows what He is doing by letting this person into Heaven?

As an artist, I love to go for bold colors and high contrast. And so I often cast this What If with Hitler as the greeter. Yes, I think it is highly unlikely, since the very act of suicide is a slap at God’s gift of life. But What If...?

As a believer, I am called to trust the Lord entirely. Not my own “wisdom” or “understanding.” I cannot possibly know what goes on deep in the heart of another person. I cannot possibly know what repentance they reach. And because I cannot know these things, what justification do I have for holding on to angers and resentments caused by the actions of another?

Oh, many say, “Their works speak for them! See how they continue to support these ungodly causes! They persist in them! That puts them utterly outside the grace of God, and I need show no mercy to them.”

Oh, really?

BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL, FOR THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE SONS OF GOD.

If we do not believe in the ultimate redemptive power of Jesus Christ, what will happen to us if we come face to face with the Least Likely Person at the Gates of Heaven?

I have long since stopped holding to the pretty story idea that we are met at the Gates of Heaven by Saint Peter. Yes, he was given the Keys to Heaven, but Jesus never said he had to do Greeter duty. It is a challenge to myself to imagine the redemption of the least likely person I know in my own life.

That, at least, keeps me from deceiving myself about God’s love for others, even those I consider unlikely.

But that is just one sin. What about others?

As a storyteller, I have to create evil characters. It is an honest reflection of the world around us, that some people choose to do evil because they get a pleasure out of it. Not because they were misunderstood or abused or injured in some way along their life-path (though those things may have indeed happened). No, some people deliberately, knowingly, choose actions they know are destructive to others. And so I write such characters from time to time.

As a creator, I have to love “my creatures” in order to give them life. Even though I know their choices, and their fates, and the dire things that will come from them, I love them as creations. But I take no pleasure in their actions.

But there are some types of storytelling, very popular these days, where the storytellers invite the audience to identify with evil characters. The audience is drawn into enjoying the cleverness of a character’s cruelty, of reveling in the satisfaction of unfettered violence, without concern for the life or feelings of the victim. And I have heard people justify this type of storytelling as “Showing us the mess of this person’s life.”

What, I have to ask, is the audience member really enjoying in this type of story?

The truth is, the enjoyment is the pleasure of sinning. The audience member can excuse him or herself by saying, “*I* would not choose to do these things!” But by returning to it, time after time, the audience member acquiesces to the cruelty and evil.

We allow little indulgences into our lives, and pretend that because they are entertainments they do not affect us. But it does make us more tolerant of sin, not just in others but in ourselves.

We resented the service we get in a restaurant, so we feel justified in being curt with the waiter. “This is what you gave me, so this is what you’re getting back!” How is THIS what Jesus taught us? Didn’t Jesus say, “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”? He didn’t say, “Give as you get.”

We were slighted by a friend, and though we do not know why, we harbor the hurt and nurse it along with vinegar in the wound. We extend less love and care to that friend because we feel we had been injured in some way. Where does mercy lie in this?

These are little things we do every single day, even while we are endeavoring to follow Christ.

John is quite right when he says that if we say we have no sin in us we are lying and deceiving ourselves.

It requires daily examination of our souls. It is a constant weeding process to keep the garden of our spirit free of the weeds of sin. And just because we seem to have gotten all the weeds yesterday, we still have to check the planting beds and look for the wayward shoots of new, young weeds sprouting up.

But the reward for all this work is fellowship with Christ. Surely that is worth the pain of some self-honesty and weeding?

TO WALK IN LIGHT


but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.  
(1 John 1: 7 – NAS)


John gives us this simple setting for being in fellowship with each other – to walk in the Light.

Yet, we know how easily we hold on to our secret darkness, and how difficult it is for us to let go of our petty sins. How can we possibly walk in the Light?

John reminds us that the blood of Jesus was sacrificed on our behalf. It has swept over us and carried away the darkness of our sin. That is what allows us to walk in the Light.

The thing about being in light is that we can see all that is around us. Darkness hides things, but light reveals them.

It is a curious thing that one of the most powerful of human desires is the desire to be known by others. I don’t mean “being famous” – although that compulsion is a shadow of the real desire. We want to be known for who we really are, what we are really like. We want to be regarded fondly, with affection. We want to be understood, to have our thoughts understood and have our jokes laughed at. But this can only happen by revealing ourselves. And that cannot be done in darkness.

Yet ....

Revelation is a painful process. It requires vulnerability. And we tend to equate vulnerability with weakness. They are not the same thing, of course. But the weak frequently are vulnerable.

To be vulnerable means being open to the possibility of being wounded. It does not mean that we will be wounded, though.

When we walk in the Light, those around us can see us as we are. Our strengths and our vulnerabilities. If we wish to be known, if we wish to be loved, we have to allow this revelation to occur. We cannot hide parts of ourselves in darkness. If we want to be in fellowship with others, we need to be open.

If we let the protection of Jesus cover us, we can walk in the Light. We don’t have to drag our personal darkness along with us. And by walking in the Light, we attract others to us. We gain fellowship with others who are also willing to walk the same way.

The fellowship we gain is not just with each other, of course. We gain fellowship with Christ. We gain the companionship with the One who manifests the power of God. What a marvelous travelling companion!

Once, when I was a ninth grader, I wrote a short story that I titled “Dark Journey” (at least, I think that was the title I gave it). In it, my character maneuvers himself through a number of obstacles in darkness. I used indirect description and never specified what any of the obstacles were, just his physical sensations and movements. Until he reached his goal, that is. He opens a door, and “the little light went on as it always did.” There’s a note there from his parents that if he has another midnight snack, he’ll lose his allowance. So the boy goes back upstairs to bed.

It was written for a class assignment, and I was rather pleased with what I’d done. But even now, when I look back at this piece, I am struck by how much suspense can come from simply not knowing or not seeing what is around us. The moment I finally defined the setting, letting the light shine on it, it lost all its power to alarm the reader.

When it comes to navigating our physical surroundings, we definitely prefer to have light about us. Why then do we continue to “walk in darkness” when it comes to our emotional, intellectual, moral and spiritual lives? Sometimes, I think it is simply because those aspects of our being are not physical. Oh, they can have physical consequences. But they are not, by nature, physical themselves. If they were, I wonder if we would keep the darker aspects around. I don’t think they would be comfortable.

That is just one reason I am thankful for the sacrifice of Jesus. That act, and my acceptance of it on my behalf, is the one thing that makes it possible for me to stay walking in the Light. As Christ is the Light, and His presence drives away the alarming aspects of darkness. It is the Light of Christ that lets me truly see my friends and be in fellowship with them, giving them understanding and love and receiving the same from them.

TO WALK IN DARKNESS


If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not practice the truth.
(1 John 1: 6 – NAS)


Why would anyone who announces that they are “in fellowship with Jesus” choose to still walk in darkness? It seems a silly proposition. And yet, it does happen. Should we just write it off to “human nature”?

But the fact remains that in this fallen world, figurative darkness has its attractions, its temptations. Darkness can hide many things. When we wish to keep someone from knowledge of a particular event or activity, we “keep them in the dark.”

Little children love to play peek-a-boo. The limited awareness of the world that such a child has leads him to believe that if he cannot see a thing, it is “out of existence.” If a thing is hidden from his sight or he closes his eyes, it is very easy for the child to think it is gone. That it comes back is always a delight to the child. Gone. Back. Gone. Back.

Some of that outlook tends to persist in our hearts and minds as we grow older. We hide parts of our lives, our activities, our attitudes and beliefs, from others – for all sorts of reasons. It might not even be because we are lying about anything. It may simply be that we wish to keep something secret. It’s nobody else’s business, right?

But what happens when we claim to be followers of Jesus, and we still hold on to such hidden things, such “dark secrets”?

John had previously said that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

If we claim to have fellowship with the Lord, what is it that we are bringing into the situation? It is said that as believers we are in Him as He is in us. Is it possible for us to bring our “little darknesses” into the Lord?

John says that no, it is not possible. There is, in Him, no darkness at all.

So, if we persist on keeping our dark secrets and choosing to “walk in darkness,” we cannot also claim to be in fellowship with the Lord. It just doesn’t work that way. We can’t be in the Lord and still hold on to our private darkness. There is no darkness in the Lord.

John is quite bluntly truthful when he says that anyone who claims fellowship and yet walks in darkness is lying.

There’s a phrase that people misquote a lot these days. People say, “He wants to have his cake and eat it too.” But the fact is, that is the ordinary sequence. You have to have a cake before you can eat it, after all. The original phrase is slightly different: “He wants to eat his cake and have it too.” It means that the person wants the pleasure of eating the cake, but that after eating it, he still also wants the pleasure of having the cake before him, enticing, promising yet more pleasures. It is the picture of greed. We want to consume and we want to have the prospect, the possibility, of continued consumption before us. We want no end of cake or the eating of cake.

That is what we are doing when we try to drag our personal darkness into fellowship with the Lord. Yes, we want that fellowship with Jesus, the closeness with God. But we also do not want to give up on our little sins and vices. We don’t really want to let go of all our angers (That guy really deserves my anger!) or pride or little greeds. “It’s a small thing. I’m just a flawed human – God loves me anyway, doesn’t He?” We try to use the great good nature of God against Him, in order to hold onto those things we want.

Yes, God loves us in spite of those flaws and darknesses. But having God love us is not quite the same thing as being in fellowship with Him.

Fellowship is so much more than just being in the presence of the other person. We can be in the midst of a huge crowd and not be in fellowship with a single person there. To be in fellowship with someone is to share an interest, to be engaged, to be a peer of the other person, an equal partner.

And we are invited to be in fellowship with God through Jesus. What an astonishing thing! The Creator of the Universe is willing to connect and engage with me, this speck on the surface of a small planet circling a small star on the edge of one of a myriad of galaxies. Fellowship!

But....

God is light and there is in Him no darkness at all.

I cannot hold on to my private darkness and still claim to be walking in the Light of the Lord. It just doesn’t work.

One year at Vacation Bible School, we whiled away the time learning the meaning of our given names. For some of the children, it made for an amusing game, because we wondered if their parents had known the meaning of the names (unlikely juxtapositions of personality and name-meaning seemed quite frequent).

Since I had been born into a church-going family, I of course knew the significance of my first name, Sarah. Much amusement was hand in my family, because of the Biblical story of the wife of Abraham. Originally, her name was Sarai, and I was taught that it meant “quarrelsome or contentious”. And I was contentious as a child, very much so. But the Lord changed Sarai’s name to Sarah, which means “princess.” (Many scholars do not hold that “Sarai” means “quarrelsome,” however, indicating that “Sarai” is not significantly different in meaning from “Sarah”.) To me, at that time, there seemed a particular responsibility in being designated a “princess.” I was not enveloped in visions of fairy tale princesses, being waiting on hand and foot. Somehow to me it had a weight of responsibility and authority, a weight I was not particularly eager to carry. What added to this weight, particularly for a child growing up in a Christian home, was learning that “Lucy,” my middle name, meant “light.” The combination of names, for a child of believers, had a haunting significance.

There have certainly been times in my life when I have wanted to clutch my private darkness and hide away from God. But when one’s very name does not allow that sort of escape .... I became resigned to it. I cannot escape the Light of the Lord. It is impressed into my very identity. I might as well learn to “walk in the Light.”

I am not so foolish as to claim that I have excised all my own inner darkness. I believe it is a life-long process, a life’s work, to reach that goal. But I do not want to lie, when I claim to be in fellowship with the Lord. I would much rather be in the Light than I would to walk in darkness.

REFLECTION OR TRANSLUCENCE


This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 
(1 John 1: 5 – NAS)


John gets down to his message swiftly now. He announces the basics of it and the authority of it. This message was heard from Jesus Christ Himself, who is God Made Manifest. And John puts it in terms even little children can grasp: God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

A few years ago, the blinds in my apartment were replaced. The old blinds were old when I moved in, and that had been many years previously. They were so ancient I never touched them as they threatened to fall apart. The slats themselves were metal, and so opaque entirely, letting neither vision nor light get by them when they were closed. And they were closed most of the time because I like my privacy, and I am light sensitive (meaning I respond to changes in light even when sleeping, which is annoying if you went to bed at 2:30 and first light starts sneaking in at 5:30).

Then the management chose to do some major maintenance on all the apartments, minor repairs and such, and so I requested new blinds. I asked for vertical blinds for the living room, as they are more like curtains for allowing variances in light. The new blinds were installed, light-weight white plastic. And they seemed to be opaque, blocking vision. And they certainly block my interior lights from spilling out into the night, when they are drawn.

But I discovered an interesting thing about the power of sunlight. Although these blinds are excellent at blocking artificial light (you can only tell if my interior lights are on if there is leakage between the slats), they are translucent to sunlight. The first morning after their installation, I was wakened by a dim light filling the whole apartment.

We all know that sunlight is powerful. But that was the first occasion in a long time that brought it home to me (so to speak). My blinds could block man-made artificial light, but sunlight was not hindered by it at all. It would still make its way into my living space. Oh, some of the effect was hampered, of course. But as soon as there was light outside in my world, as dawn began, there would be light inside my apartment to see by.

We can chalk this effect up to modern technology, of course. Metal blinds or wood blinds would have blocked everything. But once I got used to the translucence, I rather liked it. And it became a daily reminder to me of how pervasive God can be in our lives, if we let Him shine through.

John wants to make the point of the purity and holiness of God. “God is light and there is no darkness in Him.”

There is darkness of all sorts in the world, of course. Visual darkness, that keeps us from seeing things around us. Mental darkness, that keeps us from understanding things. Emotional darkness, that interferes with our relationships. John knew this as well as the next person.

But people had come, as it is human nature to do, to ask the question, “How can there be so much of this darkness, if it does not come from God Himself? Therefore there must be some darkness in God!” Human nature has not changed all that much at all, for people still  ask that question. Living within Creation, we have a hard time grasping that God is much more than the boundaries of Creation.

So John states it plainly, up-front: God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

When we talk about being followers of Jesus, we often say things like “I want to reflect the Light of God to others.” And it can be a useful way of talking about it. Reflected light can be a very pleasing thing: we often enjoy mirrored corridors when they are lit up, and the moon when high and full in a clear night sky can be so bright as to cast strong shadows. But since the translucent blinds came into my life, I have begun to wonder about the metaphor of reflection.

Reflective surfaces are hard. The point of them is that they do not let light “get through” to whatever is behind that surface. We are all familiar with the one-way glass that gets used for police interrogation rooms. The way these function is that the treated glass acts as a mirror on one side, in a well-lit room filled with light. On the other side, the observation room is darker. This allows observers to see through the treated glass into the subject’s room. But the darkness on the other side, for the subject, keeps the glass only reflective, for no light from the other side is passing through it.

Which would I rather be like? The translucent blinds, which allow true light – sunlight – to pass through and illuminate things on the other side? Or would I rather be like the one-way glass, that reflects back the brightness on the mirror side, but requires darkness on the other?

John’s words come back to me: there is no darkness in God.

I think we are called to be translucent, not reflective. God’s light should shine from within us, whether softly (as the daylight in my apartment does when the blinds are drawn) or brightly (like when the blinds are wide open to full sunlight). I don’t think we should be lurking inside the shell of our lives in darkness, letting our hard surfaces reflect back on others the bright light of God. For we need the light as much as the next person.

This is what John learned from Jesus Himself. And surely those two are trustworthy witnesses.

WE HAVE SEEN


What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life -- and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us -- what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. 
(1 John 1: 1-4 – NAS)

I have always been struck by how earnestly John begins this letter. Biblical scholars place the time of the writing of this letter around A.D. 90. And assuming (as I do) that it was written by the Apostle John, he would by that time have been quite an old man. He had been a young man when he walked with Jesus (possibly even the youngest of the twelve disciples), so almost his entire life had been lived based on what he had seen and heard and experienced in those three momentous years with Jesus.

Sixty years or so is a longish time between an historical event and people “now living” discussing what it was and what it meant. I’ve been recently doing some research on the beginnings of World War II in Europe, and it struck me how quickly something can slide backwards into “historical dust.” The artifacts of such a period become curiousities (although innovation moves much faster for us than it did in the ancient world), and there become fewer and fewer eye witnesses to events as participants age and die off.

By the time this letter was written, such aspects were beginning to sneak in to the community of the followers of Jesus. What a joy it must have been to John to see that the teachings of Jesus could indeed be passed on to others, understood and followed. How exciting it must have been to realize these wonderful things would not pass away.

But there is something about the way he opens this letter that indicates also that other reactions to the teachings of Jesus had begun to creep into the community of believers. I suspect that the distance of time had allowed newer believers to treat many aspects of the life and teaching of Jesus as something “open to interpretation.”

Interpreting scripture was, after all, something that had a long tradition amongst the Jews. In Jesus’ time, it was, in fact, the past-time of the “scribes and Pharisees.” The students of one scholar could argue interpretation with the students of another scholar, and no one felt that they were imposing their personal interpretation on ancient events because there were not witnesses from the days of Moses to tell them otherwise.

It must have distressed John to see that beginning within the communities of believers. For at this time, Gnosticism was beginning to push its way into the church. According to my Ryrie Study Bible, Gnosticism held that (1) knowledge is superior to virtue, (2) the nonliteral sense of Scripture is correct and can be understood only by a select few, (3) evil in the world precludes God’s being the only Creator, (4) the Incarnation is incredible because deity cannot unite itself with anything material such as a body, (5) there is no resurrection of the flesh.

For John, who had walked with Jesus, seen miracles performed by Jesus, watched Him die a horrible death on the cross, and then – wonder of wonders – saw Him again, in the flesh, alive and walking with His followers, even touching Him after the Resurrection, to have newer believers, younger believers coming along and dismissing the heart of John’s life, it must have been a challenge of pain.

At the heart of Jesus’ teachings are the basic commandments “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul and mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.” All other commandments grow from that. John new this and heard this from Jesus Himself, so the idea that this core virtue was of less value than “knowledge” would be such a great error. The virtue and power of love greatly exceeds any security that can come from “knowledge.” This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with “knowledge” for it is as much a part of what God has given us as love is. But it is not superior.

It follows then that the idea that the real meaning of scripture can be understood only by a select few would also be something that would disturb John. The idea that everything in scripture is only metaphor to be interpreted would seem silly to John. Imagine it: he hears some young believer influenced by Gnosticism spouting off about how the story of the loaves and fishes being multiplied is just a metaphor for the abundance of the Lord, and all he can remember is the desperation the disciples felt when they realized the huge crowd was hungry and could be a problem, and Jesus blessed five loaves and two fish and then told the Twelve to feed the hundreds, possibly thousands, who had come to hear Him teach. And at the end of the day the disciples had to pick up the left-overs, and there were baskets overflowing. Some metaphor! Lugging around baskets of left-over food in the dusk after a hot day in the sun.

“We have seen, we have heard, we have looked at, and we have touched.”
At the moment, let us skip over the issue of evil and God as the only Creator. For this moment, as John is making his declaration of being an eye witness authority, let us come to the matter of the Incarnation and the resurrection of the flesh.

The denial that God would humble Himself to enter into flesh somehow offended the minds of Gnostics. “God wouldn’t do that!” “How could He be God and yet man?” It’s incredible, impossible. Therefore the entire concept is to be dismissed, in order to preserve the holiness and purity of God.

“Jesus was just a good man. Perhaps THE Good Man. But he wasn’t God.”

The seeming impossibility of divinity becoming human boggles the mind. So many people drop to a “more probable” interpretation. There was nothing divine about Jesus, he was just a human. (Of course, by saying the Incarnation is impossible, such "experts" are saying that there is something God cannot do, thus limiting the very nature of God.)

Again: “We have seen, we have heard, we have looked at, and we have touched.”
There is nothing metaphorical about calling Jesus the Word of Life, nor yet again in calling Him the Son of God.

With every fiber of his being, John knew that what he had seen and heard and touched in those three years when he was a young man was the Real Deal.

God had chosen to become manifest among us, in the flesh and blood. Wonderful things had happened, and we were given something amazing in the life of Jesus. God Himself taught us how to come near to Him, as simply and directly as was possible. So simply and directly that even the littlest child could respond! No special knowledge that required levels of initiation and study. Love.

And John, bursting with the reality of that in his life, has to re-convince newer believers who were being affected by Gnosticism, that he had the authority of an eye witness, that he was not an old fool telling comforting stories, but who did not understand the implications of what “really happened.”

He writes the letter to spill out the wonder and joy he has had all his life because of the things he heard and saw and touched. He knows this joy can be communicated to anyone, if they but listen. The fellowship with Christ Jesus and God the Father is available at all times, ever present for those who believe.

John was willing to stand as a witness and testify to the reality of what he had experienced. Not interpret it. Not present it as a useful metaphor for challenges. He was willing to state, flat-out, that he had witnessed the actions of Jesus Christ.

How willing am I to witness like that? I do it a bit. But often, it feels like I’m just “stating the facts.” I look at what John says here, and am humbled and challenged. “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.” Do I convey the JOY of knowing the Lord and His actions in my life? Or do I just tell people it is there, but make no effort to infect them with my joy?

These things I have seen, and they are marvelous and wonderful, and there is great joy in knowing that the Lord God is so close at hand! For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. Jesus came that we might have this Life, and have it abundantly.

SPENDING TIME IN THE WORD


So, after all these months of working my way through the Sermon on the Mount, I've finally finished that project. Well, at least the writing of it. The intention always was to collect the finished product in a volume (and probably an e-book as well). So there is still that work to be done - doing the editing and lay-out, for instance, as well as designing a cover for it.

The discipline of sitting down, if not every day, than at least many days, and writing on a set subject for about 1,000 words was a good experience. I had certainly learned that last year during Advent, which is what led me to attempt the Sermon on the Mount. But it is very strange to have completed it!

Doing the study of the Sermon on the Mount has been on my "Writing To Do" list for quite some time. But I kept shunting it aside. But once I'd gone through the Advent to Epiphany writing, I had felt compelled to try something else. And the Sermon waited for my attention. So I began.

There were days when it was a real challenge. This last year has been the roughest I have ever experienced. And there is much in the Sermon that admonishes us to trust entirely to God for provision for our needs. I admit that there were days when I resented that fact. There were days when it felt like everything was crashing down on me, but the verses for that day were about how God provides for small things like grasses, so how much more would He provide for His beloved children. I'd whine "But grasses don't have rent to pay!" I wasn't feeling particularly beloved at that moment, because I didn't know how God was going to address the matter.

But even on days like that, I could not really sink all the way into the muck of self-pity. Time after time, day after day, God would send help and assistance from odd directions. It doesn't mean that things have been comfortable, for they have not been. But then, I don't think that God worries too much about physical comfort for us, especially when there are things in our souls, in our hearts, that need work.

One of the things that struck me early in working on the Sermon on the Mount, was the indication in the Beatitudes that as followers of Jesus, believers become heirs to the kingdom of heaven. But Jesus goes on to indicate that this new status for us is not just a promise of things to come, it is a mantle of power and authority that we are given in the here and now! That's both a bit scary and intimidating. But to claim it, to exercise that authority, we are obliged to try and be the person Jesus called us to be using the Beatitudes as a guideline.

I have been challenged on just how much I do trust the Lord and His providence. I have had my choices questioned. I have been asked why, if I am in so much need, I do not do literally anything to "get by." I'm not sure others understand the complex flow of things that brought me to this point. No matter how much I assure them that I have tried to find a job I knew I could do, without regard to what level position it was, I often have the feeling that the person questioning goes away thinking "She must be slacking off somehow. It must not be enough." When I explain that in spite of a flow of resume submissions for jobs of all sorts, in this last year, the only instances where I have actually earned money have all been connected with writing activity: sales of my book, learning SEO content writing, doing editing and writing consulting. I feel I can safely deduce that God is blessing one direction for me (writing and writing related activites) and not another (office work of any sort). I dutifully continue seeking the ordinary jobs I know I can do, including office work. But the evidence so far points that God's blessings for me are elsewhere -- and He has provided for my living needs.

One thing has been clear to me in this study, and that is that the Lord deals with us individually. The specific circumstances that one person has to deal with will not be the same as another person. Nor do all of God's People experience the same challenges at the same time. While one person may be lifted up in worldly prosperity, another may be obliged to let go of much they have possessed. And those circumstances do not reflect at all upon the quality of their faithfulness to the Lord. It is no more easy to stick to the line of God's guidence when our hands are full and flowing with money than it is when even a penny is precious wealth.

The Sermon has given me insight on what the Lord calls us to be and how we ought to respond to life. Jesus challenges us to a greater boldness. If we are God's servants, then it is His job to make sure we are maintained and ready to do service. He is reliable, especially when we trust Him. And that trust means more than just sitting and waiting for the divine delivery truck to pull up and meet our needs - it means that we trust Him enough to get up on our feet and step forward to do the job He gives us, even if the delivery truck hasn't arrived yet.

I can't say I'm very good at that. I do it in fits and starts. Some days, anxiety slows me down. But the more I trust the Lord, the easier it becomes. And some days - today is one - even though I have concerns that need God's providence, I can rejoice in how faithful He has been to me through all these months of struggle. I can rejoice that I am still able to do the writing work I love, in spite of the situational challenges. I can rejoice at how God has unfolded to me how wonderful His people really are. God is very great, all the time.

All this I gained by spending time in the Word. But not simply the reading, meditating, and praying time that we usually consider to be "spending time in the Word." What began almost as a whim - "Why not write on something, some Bible verse or passage, every day?" has become something richer, even compelling.

But I've finished that project. What now?

As I was finishing the work on the Sermon on the Mount (which will be collected, under the title The Measure most likely), I begain to wonder, "What next?" I had initially thought of working my way through the book of James, since I consider that to be the second "operating manual" for Christians. But yesterday, I began to feel the tug of something else. I may get to James eventually, but right now, I've been taken over by the desire to study my way through the first letter of John. The study has even proclaimed its title to me: Witness to Light.

This particular blog has become given over almost entirely to my writing and thinking about religious matters, faith matters. It is only one corner of my life, one aspect of it. But it is the foundation I stand upon, that everything else rests upon. It reflects "where I'm coming from."

I have been blessed, and for that I am thankful. I don't know what the Lord will do for my life next. I do have my hopes and dreams that I want to achieve. But it is all in the Lord's hands. I'll just take the next step.