his wonders to perform

William Cowper was a man who looked for hope. He was afflicted by severe depression and anxiety throughout his life, often leading to the conviction that he was thoroughly damned. His association with the Unwin family and John Newton helped bulwark him, as did the devotion to God that he developed during a period in an asylum. I knew of him before today through his handful of hymns that have become standards. This morning I was reading through the Norton Anthology of Poetry and came across their selection from his monumental work “The Task”.

This section, taken from Book VI “The Winter Walk at Noon”, blends the imagery of English carols, the psalms, the Hebrew prophets, Revelation, the letters of Paul, and the theology of contentment to describe the hope of God’s renewing work:

Oh scenes surpassing fable, and yet true,
Scenes of accomplished bliss! which who can see,
Though but in distant prospect, and not feel
His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy?
…
Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restored.
So God has greatly purposed; who would else
In His dishonoured works Himself endure
Dishonour, and be wronged without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shattered world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate His laws,
And suffer for its crime: would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases Him.
…
Come then, and added to Thy many crowns
Receive yet one as radiant as the rest,
Due to Thy last and most effectual work,
Thy Word fulfilled, the conquest of a world.

This hope, I think, is our key to Christian living. We have no excuse for failing to benefit the world when our God is so constantly working to restore it, and has given us the honor of working with him. Again, it’s not that we work to be good in God’s eyes; God makes all things good, and our hope in his efficacy inspires us to live well. We are always unsuccessful at making ourselves good, though we strive for it. Our hope is in Jesus (I still need to go back and reflect more on the crucifixion and resurrection) and the connection he gives us to God the Father, as well as in the promises of restoration God made before Jesus came to earth. Even when we are feeling dark and adrift, we can assert our confidence in the eternal source of light and strength.

I have heard thy voice

Each time I pray these days, I make sure to pray that what I do, I do to God’s glory. That’s a pretty frightening prayer, actually, since I spend a lot of time not really being “good” (not being “bad” per se, but sort of neutral). For example, as a grad student, I spend some portion of my day surfing the Internet. Unless I stick with strictly enriching/edifying websites, how does that give glory to God? And what about the time that I spend trying to work but just getting frustrated? I am not sober enough in temperament to spend all my time intensely goal-driven. I generally find self-help books annoying. Am I missing something?

I remember quite well one moment in a church in 2003, when I had just finished my Peace Corps service and was traveling before returning home. One spends a lot of time reflecting on how the service went and what it revealed about one’s character in that situation. I realized I had been struggling with increasing anger and self-doubt. I had nowhere specific I was going, and I needed to take some time to pray. I told God, “Whatever I am or become in the next few years, I am yours.”

Which reminds me of another story I enjoy telling. A friend several years ago asked me her favorite conversational question: what one word would you use to describe yourself? It posed an interesting, theretofore unencountered, challenge, because I had had opportunities (say, in English class) to describe myself in three words or something like that. One word is an entirely different issue. After thinking for a while, I replied, ”God’s”. Which really is the only answer I can give, because whatever else I am, I owe to him.

It’s not only to myself that I enjoy applying this adjective. I drew a sketch in my youth of all the pieces of the universe I could then conceive of, and included a “quote” which I attributed to God: “Man cannot describe the wonders of creation—the sun and moon, the planets and the stars—with his mortal words. I can. It is—they are—mine.” When something belongs to God, it isn’t constricted by anything. It becomes fully itself. God will bring glory to himself, and if we make ourselves his, then what we are becomes a reflection of and a testament to his glory. So perhaps a better way to phrase that prayer I’ve been trying to get at is, God, please make us yours.

in cloud and majesty and awe

I wasn’t sure what to write about this evening, so I went over to Sacred Space for inspiration; this is a website run by a group of Jesuits in Ireland, intended to guide daily prayer through contemplation of a Bible passage. Today’s passage was from Matthew chapter 5:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Each passage comes with an optional aid in understanding the message. This one included the following:

The law is good only because it leads to Christ. All of religion is good only insofar as it leads us to God and through Christ.

This comes back to something I’ve mentioned before but haven’t had the chance to properly develop: namely, that religion isn’t about making us look or feel good, or beating ourselves or others down. It is about connecting with God. If God gave us a law, it wasn’t to provide a gauge of spiritual superiority; it was to bring us closer to him. Arbitrary? Hardly. We sort through the legal minutiae of the Old Testament to try to determine “what still applies today.” But if we’re simply arguing over whether or not to wear clothes of mixed fabrics to prove our dedication, we’re once again missing the chance to ponder what God has in mind for our way of living. How do we give glory to God?

I can’t say this is the most comfortable selection from Jesus’ words. For one thing, what does Jesus’ fulfillment of the law have to do with our keeping it? And how firm is this dichotomy between being “least” and “great” in the kingdom of heaven? At least a little law-breaking doesn’t seem to cast us out of the kingdom, although it does change our standing there. In a place where faithfulness is the ultimate expression of love—where God, who alone is perfect, alone is perfectly loving and faithful, having already demonstrated how far he will reach to fulfill his promises—our faithfulness will shine like silver, our weaknesses having been burned away (like dross in a refiner’s fire, as an image from the Bible suggests). If we are faithful with what God has given us (as I wrote about on Sunday), then we may be rewarded with the words “Well done, good and faithful servant”—back to the parable of the talents.

What’s clear is that we are not immune from responsibility after Jesus’ coming. Our freedom cannot come at the cost of our faithfulness, or we are building up lives of chaff. God gave us the law to chasten us, but also to save us through and from the law. Much goes into that statement; I hope it has some kind of clarity, since I don’t have the energy to expound more. I hope you all have a good night, and find a way to honor God by being faithful.

phone call from abroad

At 4:00 this morning, I received a phone call. From “Unavailable”. The first time, the rings cut short and I thought it was a mistake. The second time, I picked up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Allo? Daouda?” came the response.

“Oui! C’est Daouda!” I exclaimed.

You see, Daouda was the name given to me by the people in Kérouané. It’s quite common for Peace Corps Volunteers to adopt or receive new names from their village as part of the welcoming process. “Daouda” is just the Arabic form of “David” (it’s a palindrome in Arabic, too, just three letters da-wa-da, which is exciting). My new family name was Camara, which is one of the dominant family names around there.

The phone call was from Sery, the father of the family I had lived with. He is a blacksmith and farmer; his forge, a low hut with a bellows in the middle, was just behind my hut. Since today is Wednesday, I expect he was about to head down to the market to sell the tools he had made. Annie had told me she would try to arrange a phone call from Sery, when she described the weird alternate-reality Kérouané where everyone carries cell phones, old men in their boubous and kaftans shouting “Inike!” into their (or their grandchildren’s) phones.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, the notion of a rural town in a third-world country suddenly becoming equipped with cell phones, consider the following: when phones first started being used, there was a lot of physical infrastructure that had to be installed. Precisely the sort of thing developing countries had no manpower or use for. Now it just takes building and powering the appropriate kind of tower—no digging to lay down cables or anything like that. Why did cell phone use arise so much more quickly in Guinea (or, say, India, where some of the same effects held)? They weren’t already invested in the old technology. Plus, there are lots of people working right now to bring the “information gap”, which has been predicted to be at least as important in hindering development in this era as the “income gap”.

Sery sounded quiet and tired. We just talked for three or four minutes, mostly exchanging greetings. Greetings are an essential part of maintaining relationships in West Africa. At the time Annie and I were serving there, it seemed like such superficial conversation. But every society has glue, and some vocabulary that forms part of that glue. It’s just rude to cut the greetings short. I wanted to be able to talk more, but I hope the time we had was meaningful to him. He said he received the notes I had sent (via Annie), and he asked about Hannah, whom I had mentioned in my letters. He said his family was doing well. He asked if I could still speak Malinké (which I probably could, but not well enough to use it over a phone). It was sort of an incredible experience. I just thought I’d share it with you.

the birds their carols raise

We’ve been talking about creation in our Monday night Bible study. It’s led to some very broad and challenging topics—the nature and character of God, the problem of evil in the world (viz. Job), the Fall, the resurrection, evolution, predestination, eschatology, and so forth. Tonight we touched on most of those. At the end, we spent time in worship with the hymn from which the following verses are taken:

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.

The first of these two verses is often the concluding verse in hymnals. The latter I had never seen until I searched on Cyberhymnal (somewhat justifiably, because although the text isn’t bad, it doesn’t scan well with the traditional tune).

When I was younger, I thought the phrase “though the wrong seems oft so strong” meant that, when we are making choices, the wrong option is frequently attractive. “God is the ruler”, and so we should take that into account when we are trying to make the right choice. The context of the verse shows that, rather, a fundamental question is being addressed: why are things still going wrong all around us? It answers only with hope: we have plenteous evidence of God’s presence, not least in the natural world, and we have faith that Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s sovereignty will conquer at last sin, and death, and sorrow. (Another line reads, “This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?”) This is the constant problem one finds people in the Bible facing, particularly in Job, Ecclesiastes, and the psalms: why do the wicked prosper? And usually the only answer we receive is that God is waiting for the proper time to intervene and stop the world with its suffering. Not good enough, we want to say. But when we turn from the question of why is God allowing these things to why are we carrying them out, we have to face some dark features of ourselves. We can’t fix them; somehow, we can’t stop ourselves from being bad. We will need God. Maybe he’s just waiting for us to realize that. Once we do, we realize that all we ever needed was God.

small things

It happens time and again, naturally and often quite correctly: dreams start out small. Which is to say, their fulfillment does. The folks who won Academy Awards tonight got them for deeds small (e.g., the musical duo that won the “Best Song” award) and great (e.g., Robert Boyle’s “Lifetime Achievement” award), all done well. Doing a job well is what earns you respect and professional trust. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I draw nearer my graduation. I have a few phrases from the Bible posted in my office; the main one is simply a printout of Psalm 103 (which I read a meditation about some years ago at a time that made it particularly touching):

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
…
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

These are reminders I need daily.

But lately there’s been a quote from a parable of Jesus that I’ve thought about adding to the wall (almost certainly the thinking is more important than the putting up the words):

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?

To be honest, I had remembered this in my head as a paraphrase: “If you cannot be trusted with small things, how can you be trusted with great things?” This question is simple and direct, and very useful for a struggling grad student. Jesus’ question is more complex, particularly given the context. This, too, I had slightly misremembered, thinking it came from the story of the talents, which instead has the exchange:

And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

And later:

‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’

Already this is a bit puzzling, but it is at least clear that we will be accountable for what we have done—how we have “invested”—the gifts and resources God has given us.

The actual story from which the quote I had in mind is taken is even more confusing:

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Here is a man who has been lazy and careless, yet when he finds himself at risk, through “shrewdness” (which seems like even more mismanagement and cheating) he gains his employer’s approval (although it’s not clear whether he gets to keep his job). This story seems to pick up thematically where the other left off (despite appearing earlier in Luke’s gospel than the parable of the talents). What it seems to be telling is that we should prove ourselves trustworthy of the worldly goods we are charged with, and that we should learn to be cunning (while remaining honest).

My work is time given to me, entrusted to me by God, but more directly by my university. If that’s not encouragement to use it well, I don’t know what is. What it leads to is how you can be trusted with greater things—higher posts, more prestige, better tasks—once you’ve shown how you handle the lesser ones.

There are other aspects to the phrase ”small things,” as well, such as in understanding. One grasps the greater things only upon a firm foundation of more elementary matters. Sometimes the genius of a master’s work is in making what seemed far off and distant more immediately accessible. But my devotion for today and for always in my work is to try to live up to the potential of what God have given me. Goodness knows I find it hard, and I feel inadequate plenty. But let me at least turn back some interest to my earthly and heavenly investors.

word of the eighth day

For no good reason (nor do I have a good reason for still being awake), I came across the word zenzizenzizenzic. As a service to those who collect such words (you know who you are), I now make it available to you. If you don’t want to read the essay I linked to, then I’ll sum up: it means the eighth power of a number; it’s so antiquated that it only has one entry in the OED (from 1557); and its root is “zenzic”, meaning “squared”, which comes from the Latin “census”, through German, as a translation from Arabic, with an implication of area (the way one measures property).