Divinely Determined

Psalm 15; Luke 9:51-62

“Smite the Samaritans! Smite the Samaritans!” suggested James and John, two brothers whom Jesus had so very aptly nicknamed the “Sons of Thunder.”    I imagine that in their past, when they were just boys, these two must have really reveled in violent old faith stories of God’s justice … stories such as how the prophet Elijah called down fire from heaven against Israel’s enemies.  It seems this must have been on their minds when they cried out for some Samaritan smiting.

            What was the immediate trigger for this punishing suggestion?  The people of a certain Samaritan village had refused to offer welcome and hospitality to Jesus.   But there was a deeper embedded animosity.  It had to do with the past, with the historic ethnic rivalry between Jews and Samaritans.  What was Jesus response to this?  With His face so firmly set forward toward His final journey into Jerusalem, He would have absolutely none of this old bad blood brouhaha.    So he quickly rebuked the brothers.  

            Jesus gave this sharp reprimand because He’d been teaching a new way of living in the world.   A significant way He’d been steadfastly demonstrating this was by ministering to the Samaritans all throughout his journeys.    He’d shown great and culturally radical compassion toward them, as when He offered His living water to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-42) and when He healed a Samaritan leper who had greatly glorified God (Luke 17:11-19).   And, as we are all most familiar with, He’d taught about the kingdom of God using the example of how a good Samaritan had once responded to a beaten man’s cry for help when proper Jews passing by completely ignored him.  

             I imagine Jesus must have been very frustrated that two of His closest disciples had quickly forgotten all this, had so swiftly expressed such merciless ethnic prejudice, had slipped so suddenly into living in the past.  In that historic moment, especially, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, so fully facing His future, knowing He was about to suffer for and save all humankind from the death snare of sin.   

            This passage about the Sons of Thunder is a cautionary tale for us.  Their knee-jerk response and the subsequent holy rebuke reminds us to let go of all the old ways of thinking that deter our determination to carry on our Risen Lord’s love in this world.   Old ways built on prejudices that divide people.  Old ways that believe God smites people for their sin.   Old ways of thinking that following Jesus isn’t going to radically reorient your life.   

            The way of Jesus is our new way of living.  His whole life was about being divinely determined to make all of humanity new in a way never known before by demonstrating the deepest, truest depths of God’s mercy, love and peace.    Following Him means forwarding Him!  It means daily looking ahead of us through the lens of His Good News and keeping our faces set in love toward all our brothers and sisters in the whole world.

            James and John aren’t the only people making an appearance in this morning’s Gospel lesson.    Luke tells of three others as well.   Jesus’ response to each builds on the same strong caution about how following Him means not looking back to life before His advent in our world. He did so using His usual holy hyperbole …

            To the person who declared they will follow Him wherever He goes, Jesus said prepare to never again return to your homestead for rest.  

            To the person who was willing to follow Him but only after first burying their father, Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:24) said let the reality of death go and go on for the sake of eternity.  

            And to the person who was willing to follow Jesus but only after saying farewell to their loved ones at home, Jesus drew on agricultural imagery to say don’t let  your furrows, your pathways for future growth, go crooked by taking your eyes of the kingdom fields in front of you.   

            Again, these are exaggerations made to hammer home the holy point.    Jesus wasn’t saying don’t ever long for home and loved ones and don’t ever grieve.  This holy hyperbole, along with his rebuke of James and John, falls under the “umbrella truth” that “being a disciple of Jesus gives us a whole new identity.”  It means recognizing that we are no longer simply “biological units on this earth,” but children of God whose lives are “now measured by eternal things.”[i]    Our determination to be faithful disciples, then, should also be measured eternally rather than by old, sinful worldly ways that seek to deter us.

            One inspiring modern day disciple who I believe lived this truth was a man named Clarence Jordan.   A magazine article from 1979 had this to say about him -- “Clarence Jordan was a strange phenomenon in the history of North American Christianity. Hewn from the massive Baptist denomination, known primarily for its conformity to culture, Clarence stressed the anti-cultural, the Christ-transcending and the Christ-transforming, aspects of the Gospel.   Clarence pursued this tradition to its very end, ending at the top with a Ph.D. in the Greek New Testament from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.”  

             The article goes to explain that this disciple nonetheless remained a humble, hard laboring farm worker all his life.    In 1940, in Americas, Georgia, he founded Koinonia Farm.[ii]    The name comes from a New Testament Greek word meaning “deep fellowship.”   Indeed, the powerful heart of this deeply southern community in the era of Jim Crow laws was its people – an interracial community working together in a spirit of true partnership.   They all set their faces firmly towards the teaching of Jesus -- seeking to treat all human beings with dignity and justice; choosing love over violence; living simply and sharing possessions;  being stewards of the land and its natural resources.[iii]    Clarence Jordan did a good deal of writing about all this, which he especially set down through four volumes called the Cotton Patch Version of the Gospel.  You may be more familiar with Harry Chapin’s musical interpretation.  

            One night, in 1954, all the buildings at Koinonia Farm were suddenly ablaze.   This was the result of arson from the hateful hands of the Ku Klux Klan.   The next morning, with the rubble still smoldering, a reporter showed up to interview Clarence.   The reporter found him in a field.  He was planting seeds.   So the reporter said, “I heard the awful news of your tragedy, and I came to do a story on the closing of your farm.”   Clarence didn’t reply.  He kept planting.   The reporter kept prodding, “You’ve got a PhD, you’ve put 14 years into this farm, and now there’s nothing left.   Just how successful do you think you’ve been?”   This statement caused Clarence Jordan to pause.    He then replied, “You just don’t get it, do you?  You don’t understand us Christians.  What we are about is not success, but faithfulness.”[iv]

            Yes!  Amen!  Faithfulness firmly in the face of old sinful ways Jesus died and rose again to make new –  violent prejudiced thoughts and actions determined to smite our koinonia in Christ; news stories that sensationalize measures of worldy success instead of celebrating sacred truth; entrenched traditions that counter the new Christ-transcending, Christ-transforming world we disciples faithfully seek to live in.   

            As we all leave this worship service, go back into world made new through our Lord, may we prayerfully reflect on the following comment and question from a Bible commentary on this passage – “These verses jar us into asking, ‘How are our lives different as followers of Jesus than what they might have been otherwise?”     Amen.

                       

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[i] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1720

[ii] http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2005/november/16222.html

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koinonia_Partners

[iv] http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2005/november/16222.html

 

Deep Call to Deep

Ephesians 1:15-22; Psalm 42

 

 

           

 

 

Our divinely designed bodies absolutely depend on water.  Our general well-being depends on it to do such things as flush out toxins and carry nutrients to cells.    Yet we lose water every day through our breathing, perspiration and uh, other bodily functions we all know well enough.   And boy do we feel it when we fail to replenish this water.   Dry, sticky mouth.   Desperate thirst.   A dangerously wilted kind of feeling.   Our bodies indeed let us know that not having enough water can be very much a matter of life and death.              

          The voice speaking to us from Psalm 42 is one desperate to slake their thirst.   Now, it may well be that this faithful ancestor was physically dehydrated at the time when this prayer song was penned.    But this ancient talk of thirst is less medical and rather more metaphorical, for this is the voice of desperately parched soul.   

            This person hadn’t always been so spiritually dehydrated.   There had been healthier, happier days … days of being wonderfully replenished by the steadfast, life-sustaining love of God that streams most noticeably – indeed, like a river -- through a community of faithful people offering thankful, joyful worship.    Being in such blessed company gathered in a house of God felt as peaceful and powerfully restorative as what the Psalmist imagines a deer must experience when finally partaking of fresh, flowing streams after long searching and panting for it.

            Yes, there had been healthier, happier days … the days before whatever dire circumstances had cast this soul face down into a spiritually dehydrated desert, feeling forgotten by God and trampled upon by the mocking of unbelievers.  Instead of experiencing nourishing flow from the Living God, the Psalmist felt only the salty trickle of their tears.    

            Yet Psalm 42 is not just a song of deep lament.   Its words sympathetically companion any and all experiences of feeling forgotten by God and lost to faithful community any human has ever had.    But as it does so, it simultaneously begins lead us out of the desert of spiritual dehydration.    The tear-trickled face rudely mocked by unbelievers and by memories of healthier, happier days somehow finds a fresh hope welling up from within.    In reply to the ridiculing question, “Where is your God?” the Psalmist suddenly and resolutely sings, “Hope in God … I shall again praise Him, my help and my God.”

            How is this possible?   How does human hope in God’s help ever manage to well up during times of spiritual desolation?   

            It happens because deep calls to deep.    God’s deep, wide, steadfastly flowing love calls out to the deep spiritual essence all of us who have been created in God’s image have.   It calls out to our very souls.  

            Thought much about your soul lately?  I find people tend not to think much about it until they find themselves contemplating their mortality.  The focus seems to be more about what happens to it after we die than the where, what and why of it is while we are alive.    But I rather much agree with C.S. Lewis who once pointed out, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”   In line with this faithful perspective, I find we can say that God calls to our souls through the mind, emotions and free will God created us with.   The life-replenishing realities of this calling are fully revealed to us through Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of our souls (1 Peter 2:25) and in whom our souls find their true rest (Matthew 11:29).    

            I get so inspired whenever I hear witness of deep calling to deep, especially when it is boldly and beautifully expressed by people who have suffered greatly.   We find this in Psalm 42 and so very many other places in the Bible.    We also find it inspirationally expressed beyond Scripture.  One such expression that I dearly love is through the hymn, “It is Well With My Soul.”

            Do you know this one?   Regrettably, I don’t find it our Blue Hymnal.   If you do know it, though, would you care to sing the first verse with me now?   “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way … when sorrows like sea billows roll …whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say … it is well, it is well, with my soul.”   Lovely, isn’t it?    And all the more so when you learn the deep calling to deep story of the man who wrote the words.

            His name is Horatio G. Spafford.   He was born in Troy, NY in 1828 and became a very prominent lawyer in Chicago.   But more significantly, he was a deeply spiritual Presbyterian.  He was a devout student of Scripture, turning to its wisdom and revelation of Jesus Christ to keep the eyes of his heart enlightened.     We can trust this is what helped him discern deep calling to deep as he endured several severely spiritually dehydrating tragedies – the death of a son, followed by the loss of all of his real estate holdings after the great Chicago fire of 1871, followed two years later by his being unable to attend a scheduled family trip to Great Britain.  But his wife and four daughters, ranging from ages 2 to 11, traveled on across the Atlantic … a trip tragically disrupted when their steamship was struck by an iron sailing vessel.    His wife, Anna, survived.  Their daughters, along with 226 other people, perished at sea.    As he traveled in grief to be with Anna, with sorrows rolling like sea billows, he was inspired to write the words to this moving hymn.   

            How?   With all that cascading grief in this life, how could he possibly say all was well with his soul?   Deep called to deep.    And so he found himself clearly communicating his peace, comfort and hope in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ.   The beautiful and inspiring tune, by the way, was given the name Ville du Havre … so named after the steamship that was struck but that did not sink Horation G. Spafford’s hope.  

            There is so much that happens in this world that can cast us down, taunt us, disquiet and spiritually dehydrates us.   Just as our bodies absolutely need plenty of water each and every day, so too our souls need to daily experience spiritual replenishment.    And the deep spiritual essence within us all finds a particularly sustaining peace when we keep gathering here in this house of God each week with our glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving to the greatness of God’s power in Jesus Christ.  The living flow of our Lord’s love is right here, right now … can you hear deep calling to deep?   Amen.  

 

 

At the Center of All Vulnerability

Psalm 145:1-9; Luke 7:11-17

            I don’t believe I’ve ever met someone who really doesn’t want well-being and security for themselves.   I also don’t believe I’ve ever met someone who, in wanting this, hasn’t wrestled with the fact that they have very real vulnerabilities to contend with.    Everyone is capable and susceptible to being wounded emotionally, physically, spiritually, economically.   Everyone is open to criticisms and temptations and circumstances beyond their direct control.    Given that we all live with the vulnerabilities facing us as well as our loved ones, what is something we believe about the love of Jesus Christ that gives us serenity and courage?

            Our lesson from Luke this morning offers us this wonderful biblical truth – when it comes to meeting us and ministering to us in our most vulnerable circumstances, our Lord doesn’t mind at all getting his hands dirty. Verse 14 bears witness exactly what I’m talking about.   

            Jesus interrupts a funeral procession.  He puts his hand directly on the frame supporting the deceased body.   Jesus may well have gotten his hand a little dirty from this action, but this detail isn’t actually significant.    What’s significant is that this seemingly simple action broke a really big cultural rule, shattered a traditional status quo …

            As the men from our Wednesday morning Bible study know well from their brave and weeks long study of the Old Testament book of Leviticus, Jewish culture had extensive rules regarding ritual cleanliness before God and in faithful community.   And from what I understand of this, touching a dead person or anything related to this condition was an extremely unclean thing to do.   It was especially forbidden of Jewish rabbis.[i]    I’m quite grateful that if you or I aren’t comfortable with someone touching a casket or a deceased loved one, it’s not a traditional rule of our culture to then force the person into being a social outcast for a period of time in order to get right with God.  

            At the time of this story, Jesus had become a widely praised and powerfully new kind of Jewish teacher (which also, of course, means many people found him to be a threat).   He fully knew the traditional rule about ritual purity.   He fully knew everyone at the funeral would be aghast the moment he broke it.   Knew there would be big buzz, people whispering things like, – “Woah, did you see that?  Did the great Teacher really just touch the dead?   Spiritually spoil himself before us all?”

            Yes, yes he did!    He was, of course, no ordinary Jewish leader, no status quo defender of the faith.     In fact, nowhere in Luke’s Gospel is Jesus given the traditional title of “rabbi.”    He is instead referred to as Lord, as Savior, and, quite significantly, as we hear in our lesson today, as Prophet.  

            Do you recall what prophets do?  They reveal God’s plans to people in very vulnerable circumstances.  They speak of how God will lead and protect God’s people.  They back up their words with often radical actions and don’t care about whether it’s the popular thing to do.   So, yes, Jesus was a prophet!  As he was fully human and fully God, he was the most powerful prophet of all time.  Being seen by the eyes and ways of this world as getting his hands and his whole person unclean was a small cost on His way to completely revealing God’s purifying love. 

            Incomparable, unbridled, everlasting compassion is what moved Him to help a woman who had lost her sole means of economic support when both her husband and her son died. We should notice that Luke gives us no indication that she asked for this, that she had any idea who Jesus was, or that she was a particularly religious person at all.     She was just a destitute sister in a sad, desperate, economically unjust situation.   And even more importantly, we should notice that there was no condition attached to Jesus’ offer of holy compassion.   Talk about God’s abundant grace!  

             Writing about this scene, a colleague in ministry did get to wondering why she didn’t ask for help.   Here’s how he answered his own question – “Perhaps she has already past the dim hope that her son would be given back to her. Perhaps her future is so dark that she cannot imagine another way out. Perhaps all she can do in this moment of despair is grieve for her son and for herself. Perhaps there is nothing left for her to do but to face death.  But Jesus intrudes into this scene of death and hopelessness, sees in the widow’s tears a cry of anguish God has long promised to heed, and boldly brings her from death into life.”   Did you catch that?  This story of Christ’s compassion is really more about bringing her back to life!   This same colleague then offers a beautiful and thoroughly biblical definition of resurrection, writing -- “For Luke, resurrection is not just the resuscitation of a dead body but the invigoration of people and their communities in God’s righteousness and justice.”[ii]

            Yes, the deceased son sat back up.  Yes, he spoke.  And don’t we just wonder what he said?   But Luke is simply silent on this matter.   He’s more focused on telling us about the great compassion of Jesus blessedly transforming the vulnerabilities of the widow.   Luke wants us to then join the crowd, who, though initially terrified, quickly became invigorated to praise the righteous and just power of God’s kingdom at work on earth as it is in heaven.    “God has looked favorably upon his people!” were the words they spread far and wide after this blessed event born of Jesus’ incomparable, unbridled, everlasting compassion.

            Where is this compassion today?  Through the power of the Holy Spirit working God’s amazing grace, and through our faith, it lives within our hearts and minds.    While we don’t have the power to touch the dead and bring back life, we are empowered to act in ways that help reveal the life and world changing presence of our compassionate Christ, who is alive at the center of all our most vulnerable human experiences.   

            But to do so, we have to be willing to open up our hearts and minds more than we are comfortable.  We have to be willing to become more vulnerable by developing a deeper relationship with God and with all our neighbors.    We have to be willing to step out of any status quo that is not invigorating us and our communities with God’s justice and peace.   We have to honestly ask ourselves if we are afraid to be prophetic, to speak and act on behalf of God’s inclusive, radically compassionate love.

            We show that we are not afraid to be prophetic whenever we decide to share our personal witness to the ways Christ’s compassion has touched and transformed us.    This happens in all sorts of blessed ways, and this morning, I am so pleased it’s happening through the presence of our neighbors from the Good News Home for Women.  We’ve been leading worship together like this for several years and it’s always so deeply meaningful.   It is for me as a spiritual leader who strives to point out all the places where our compassionate Christ is active.   And it is for me personally as the son of a mom who has long been in recovery from various addictions and has been economically destitute most all her life on through this present day.    My call to ministry started in twelve-step recovery rooms for children of alcoholics.   So every day I celebrate all the ways Jesus has strengthened and rescued both me and my mom from great vulnerabilities, done for us what we could not do for ourselves.     Thank you all so much for ringing, singing, offering words of witness and inspiration with us today.

            Our Lord continues to interrupt life as we all know it in surprising and sometimes initially frightening ways.   His hand continues to reach out and touch what many people may regard as untouchable.   His heart continues to be deeply moved to action against all kinds of injustices we many people have grown indifferent and apathetic towards.    May we all have faith to stop, listen, follow and proclaim the words and ways of the greatest prophet still at work in this world … through us, even with all our vulnerabilities.   Amen.   

           

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_of_Kohen_defilement_by_the_dead

[ii] Eric Barretto @ http://www.odysseynetworks.org/news/2013/06/04/women-work-and-the-word

 

Sing Your New Songs!

2 Timothy 1:6-14; Psalm 40

            Two weeks ago, Stefanie and I traveled seaside to Avalon to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.   On one of the totally relaxing days we were there, we got to talking about the meaning of happiness.    We anchored our conversation with something Stef had recently read in a magazine.    It was an article that made reference to a Hungarian psychologist’s book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.   I’ve since read that his ideas about happiness have influenced a good many people in business, government, education and the arts.[i]    By the Holy Spirit, his theory flowed right on up to two vacationing pastors sitting beside the Atlantic Ocean!   

            This University of Chicago professor teaches that we most experience happiness when we find ourselves in the flow of being fully, creatively focused on a situation or task for its own sake.   It happens, he writes, when “You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger.”[ii]   When we are in this flow, we experience a greater sense of inner clarity and serenity, and whatever is produced from the flow is its own reward.   We come to enthusiastically trust that life is truly worth living.

            Can you recall times when you’ve happily gotten “lost” in positive experiences of work and play?    I sure hope so!   One recent and wonderful flow experience for me was putting together and leading this year’s Pentecost and Confirmation worship service just before heading down the shore.    There was much to incorporate into this special worship service, and I’m glad to witness that I felt the flow as I both prepared for and offered it all to the glory of God.    

            There’s one part of this theory that I find particularly interesting.  It’s that this kind of genuinely happy flow happens between the times when we feel bored and the times when we feel anxious.    This makes sense.    Boredom comes about when we feel fatigued from tedious repetition and from an overwhelming sense of dullness about what you are either doing or supposed to be doing.    And anxiety comes about when we are distressed and fearful about any number of things happening in our lives.     Both are flow stoppers.  How awesome, then, when we are able to focus on a situation or task with calm, clarity, and happiness instead of apathy and foreboding.

            There’s one situation with all sorts of tasks that each one of us here has in common.  It’s our life together as the Body of Christ in the world today, and, more specifically, as Fairmount Presbyterian Church.    I’d like to be able to honestly say that each of us is constantly in the optimal flow of this.   That you and I are always able to forget ourselves, have our sense of time disappear, and feel part of something larger as we glorify God in our daily walk and through participation in this church family.    That we never experience any undercurrents of boredom and anxiety.    That we are always genuinely happy, delighting to carry out the will of God in Jesus Christ.     All of this is indeed optimal, our highest ideal, but when it comes to flow we know we can get to feeling more truly in a trickle. 

            During times when are too focused on ourselves, on tightly managing time, and being part of the Bible big picture fails to come into view … what can you and I do and pray for to be more fully, happily engaged in freely sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed?  Both of our Scripture readings this morning point to the same answer – maintain focus on trusting God.

            Psalm 40 is boldly honest about life outside the optimal flow, life in the trickle.    It speaks about times when we feel as though we are in a deep well of despair, times when it’s hard to be patient with God as we repeatedly cry out to be lifted up.   In her interpretation of this Psalm, psychotherapist and poet Donna Hardy describes this as the times we feel “poor, needy, bogged down.”[iii]  

            Once this ancient song of faith helps us identify such low flow feelings, it then leads us to hear a full, free flowing and totally happy tune of salvation.     The Psalmist clearly gets lost in love, wonder and praise and invites us to sing our own new songs of putting wholehearted trust in the Lord our God – the One who makes our steps secure, who has uncountable and incomparable good thoughts and deeds for us.  

            I particularly like the verse 6 reference to God opening our ears.  Though our pew Bible translations don’t reference it, the original Hebrew accurately used here refers to God doing excavation work.    This may sound a bit odd.  But think … what is it God is always excavating in our lives?   All the sinful sludge that blocks the happy flow!    So I read this verse to be saying that God moves all this for us so we can receive divine revelation and further place our most fundamental trust where it truly belongs.

            Our reading from 2 Timothy is also very honest about experiencing times of obstructing trickle instead of optimal flow.   Specifically, these are the times when we feel our sufferings tempt us and do cause us to feel cowardly and ashamed before the Lord.   Such terrible tunes are responded to with liberating melody about the grace given to us through our Savior Christ Jesus who, as it says so powerfully in verse 10, “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”    This is the central holy truth that gives our lives full and focused meaning!   By doing, our well-being is opened up to receive and happily celebrate the standard of faith and love that we share in Christ Jesus.   We enter into the flow of the “spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” that has been entrusted to us with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

            Trusting God in all circumstances is the pulse beat of our being the Body of Christ.   It is what always increases our inner clarity and serenity.  It is what always empowers us to help our Lord’s liberating Good News freely flow to every human heart.     The greater our trust in what our Scripture readings this morning declare, the more we will find ourselves happily lost in wonder, love and praise wherever we are and whatever we are doing.  

            A really powerful witness to people optimally worshipping and trusting in the Lord comes out of the massive Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya.     I haven’t yet had a chance to ask Pastor Chris Scrivens, my colleague in Chester, if this is where his very dramatic black and white photos were taken during one of his many trips there.   But I believe so.  The witness I know of comes out of book whose author, Steve Corbett, is part of global movement called “Helping Without Hurting.”   He speaks of seeing simply inhumane conditions and thinking this place was “completely God-forsaken.”[iv] 

             But then the Gospel song reached him.   He writes, “To my amazement, right there among the dung, I heard the sound of a familiar hymn.”  Following this flow, he found that every Sunday about thirty slum dwellers cram into a ten-by-twenty foot sanctuary made of cardboard boxes stapled to some woods studs.    Upon his visit, he listened as one prayer of trust in the mercy and sovereignty of our Lord was lifted up after another – prayers to fill hungry children, to protect wives being abused, to heal blindness.    Awful flow stoppers.  

            This experience led him to deeply honest faithful self-reflection.    “I thought about my ample salary, my life insurance policy, my health insurance policy, my two cars, my house, etc.,” he writes, and “I realized that I do not really trust in God's sovereignty on a daily basis. I realized that these slum dwellers were trusting in God's sovereignty just to get them through the day, and they had a far deeper intimacy with God than I probably will ever have in my entire life.”

             Everywhere we have ever gone and will ever go, there are songs and sites and the flow of fully offered trust in the Lord.    They are born of happiness.   Not the sort of happiness that superficially ebbs and flows along with short-term pleasures.   They are born of the happiness that flows out only from those who truly make the Lord alone their greatest trust, who know sin is always being divinely excavated from their lives, who gladly offer songs of salvation from their unrestrained hearts, who intimately know the ever-multiplying, incomparable and uncountable good deeds and thoughts of God towards us.     It is the happiness of those who, though suffering, live the words of 1 Timothy 1:8 about “relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.” Amen.  

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[i] http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-biography.htm

[ii] http://www.ted.com/speakers/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi.html

[iii] http://www.faithandleadership.com/blog/02-05-2009/nathan-kirkpatrick-psalm-40

[iv] Steve Corbett, When Helping Hurts (Moody Press, 2012), pp. 64-65