Author Archive
Singing
Ephesians [5:1] says that God treats us as children. Since Scripture shows how He treats us, we should desire to be like Him in how we treat our children. As He deals with us, so we should deal with our own children. And we see from Zephaniah [3:17] that He rejoices over us.
When Jesus intervened to save us, He did so at great cost to Himself. When He took the loaf of bread that represented His own broken body, He picked it up and gave thanks. As Hebrews 12 says, Jesus did what He did on the cross “for the joy that was set before Him.” . . . God is mighty to save, and He saves with singing.
Now we know from the story of the whole Bible that saving people involves sacrifice, blood, and things being broken. He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, but He did it with singing. Not only did Jesus give thanks the night He instituted the meal, but afterward they sang a psalm, and then they went out (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). Jesus literally sang as He was preparing to go to the cross.
So, the sacrifices that you will make for your children should be something you can sing over. If there is not a song in it, it is not a biblical sacrifice. Without a song, it is a poor-me, look-at-the-martyr-go sacrifice, and those kinds of sacrifices have a very poor return. You are not just supposed to sing over your children when they are being adorable, asleep in their bed, and you can be at peace with them since they are not misbehaving at the moment. Life is messier than that, and the whole thing—including the mess—should be met with a song. The delight that we are imitating is not an unrealistic delight. This kind of delight takes account of the world as it is, and even so, it rejoices. You sing over your children when you are sacrificing for them, when you are taking the hit for them, and when they have no idea what you are giving up for them.
Douglas Wilson, Why Children Matter, Chapter 3
See also: Singing and slaying
Shapes
If children belong at the table, if we’re to rejoice at the feast of the kingdom with our sons and daughters, then they’ve got to be washed up. If our children belong at the table of the Father, if they participate in the body and blood of the Lord, if they share the holy things as living stones in the temple of the Spirit, then they should also receive the effective sign of baptism.
The role of children in the church divides Baptistic Christians from others. It’s not a minor issue. Whether we baptize babies or not, we’re making a statement about the boundaries of the city of God. And not just a statement: The way we baptize, whom we baptize, shapes the kind of city we are.
Without children, the church is a club for the religiously mature. Without children, the feasts of the church are more restrictive than the feast of old Israel, as if God’s hospitality had, unthinkably, contracted after the coming of the Son and Spirit. Without children, the church cannot be the new humanity that extends as far as the old humanity, from the cradle to the death–bed. Without children, the church is something less than the city of God. Without children, it may be a city under judgment, a city without children laughing in the streets and playing in the squares.
Peter Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision, 39–40
Always
The Lord’s Supper should be part of every Lord’s day liturgy. Worship in the Bible always takes place at a table. An altar is a table (cf. Ezek 41:22), and ever since the flood the people of God have erected altars at places of worship (Gen 8:20; 12:7–8; 33:20; Exod 20:24).
If you could see an ancient Israelite preparing for a feast, you’d see him pick an unblemished animal from his flock or herd, prepare flour or bread, and grab a flagon of wine. If you didn’t know better, you might suspect he’s preparing for a barbecue. Because he is. At the tabernacle and temple, priests offer the Lord’s bread and worshipers share His food (cf. Lev 21–22). Covenant renewal climaxes with a covenant meal, a sign of restored harmony between the parties to the covenant.
Biblically, worship without a meal isn’t worship at all. When we worship without the Supper, it’s as if we’re disciples on the road to Emmaus, who hear Jesus speak but never recognize Him because we don’t stick around for the breaking of bread (Luke 24). A liturgy without the Supper is like a contract without signatures; it is (not just like) a wedding feast without food, a party without hors d’oeuvres and wine, as if the Lord were to open His house to extend hospitality but never offered chips or brought the beer out of the fridge.
Peter Leithart, The Theopolitan Vision, 31
The Dawn Wind
At two o’clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
Rudyard Kipling, The Dawn Wind
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
. . .
Contentment
You should probably be using the tool that you hate the most. You hate it because you know the most about it.
Dan McKinley
Crossposted to full◦valence.
Self-discipline
Why not do the thing you admire, instead of admiring the thing you do?
Lisa Moonen
Two tables
In 1 Samuel 28, king Saul of the tribe of Benjamin consults a witch and shares a midnight meal with her. This is a table of demons, an anti–Passover, an anti–exodus ending in defeat and death and disgrace.
In Acts 16, the apostle Paul (or Saul) of the tribe of Benjamin casts a demon out of a witch and shares a midnight meal with the Philippian jailer. This is the table of the Lord, a Passover, an exodus ending in deliverance, victory, conquest (salvation), and vindication.
On a different tack, this is also a victory of Paul over a serpent, as the spirit of divination is literally the spirit of a python. This adds to the exodus motif as it parallels Moses’s and Aaron’s victory over the Egyptian magicians in Exodus 7, and also points to Jesus’s great victory over the great serpent.
The LORD God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:14–15 ESV)
Rehearsal
A theme, a melody, is a definite statement in tones—and apparently music can never have enough of saying over again what has already been said, not once or twice, but dozens of times; hardly does a section, which consists largely of repetitions, come to an end before the whole story is happily retold over again.
How is it that a procedure which, in any other form of expression, would produce sheer nonsense proves, in the language of music, to be thoroughly sensible—to such an extent that rehearing what has already been heard is one of the chief sources—for many, the chief source—of the pleasure given by music?
Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol. HT: John Barach
Anti-natural
Gentlemen, organic processes delay the fall. . . . When you build a wall of a house, you do not delay the fall, but you dam it up. You prevent it. You put on the brakes. You dam it off. So, gentlemen, you stop the fall. That’s what all work does, because all work tries to build, energetically, resistance against what would otherwise happen by nature. Work is always an anti–natural. By nature, the thing would crumble. By your work, you stop the fall. . . .
If you are passionate, gentlemen, you defy all the gravity. A lover, and anybody who is passionate can swing—can overcome hurdles and obstacles. He can swing himself over fences, which no impassionate man can. Passion, therefore, gentlemen, overcomes gravity. It defies gravity, and it can soar with the wings of the dawn.
(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
Gravity
I don’t believe in passion just as a word, my dear man. Passion means to be given wings so that you can do deeds which otherwise you couldn’t do. The drab worker who works eight hours a day, when he is in love can suddenly work on the site four more hours to build a house for his sweetheart, or whatnot, I mean. Or he can suddenly get a better job, because he is winged. Love, you see, . . . goes uphill. . . . Wherever you are in love, gentlemen, the difficult becomes the easy. . . And that’s why the salmons go upstream, to spawn. That shows their vitality. When you are in love, gentlemen, you overcome gravity. That’s the test. This is the test of love, gentlemen, that you do overcome gravity. Otherwise you are not in love.
(Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
I gotta have my orange juice. 