a thought about heaven

I was walking down a path, enjoying the solitude, when I heard a rustling behind me and thought, "There's someone following...". I went on a few steps, uneasy, then turned around.

There was no one there. The rustling I heard was the wind running its fingers through the leaves of an oak, shaking brown leaves from among the green so that they fell slanting like rain.

It was one of those moments when you catch your breath and think, "If the earth can be this lovely, what will heaven be like?".

Where moments like this await us around every corner. Where each moment is free from even a hint of sorrow or fear. Where they slide into each other, moment after sunblown moment, until the years become one long story of joy.

image is by -Reji on flickr.com

online meanderings

Short but very sweet.

What if Jesus is still dead? - Then this, too, is true... David Murray.

How to start a conversation with a Muslim woman - Great advice in a small space. Kate McCord

7 practical steps to cultivate a heart for the lost - This is gold. John Piper summarised by Justin Taylor.

The birds and the bees - Ideas and resources for talking with your kids about the facts of life. A new series by Wendy. Can't recommend this highly enough.

Brothers, we are not professors - Teach people, don't floor them with your knowledge. RC Sproul Jr.

Some people fall asleep during the sermon, and we make fun of them. But in some sense, we always fall asleep during the sermon; we do that every night. Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament is constantly preaching about God. So it is not as though we are ever safe. There is no place you can go to get out of the presence of God. The world is charged with the presence of the living God.

Life in this universe, seen with true faith, is always high liturgy, always bursting with meaning, bursting with the life of the triune God, bursting with power to shape, to break, to mould, to crush, to save. The world is shot through with the glory of God. Toby Sumpter

To see the rest of my links, click here (Facebook) or here.

using the world and our bodies to fight for joy

We're bodily creatures. When we don't get enough sleep, we feel irritable. When we hear music, we're moved to tears or joy. ... Even if we don't admit it, we all use physical means to affect how we feel. So how do we avoid emotional manipulation and idolising created things, while using the world and our bodies in the fight for joy? ...

It's a little ironic, but as I sit hunched over the computer, neglecting a certain amount of exercise and rest to write these posts, it's these words which come to mind:

To sit long in one posture, poring over a book ... is itself a taxing of nature; but add to this a badly ventilated room, a body which has long been without muscular exercise, and a heart burdened with many cares, and we have all the elements for preparing a seething cauldron of despair . . . He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours’ ramble in the beech woods’ umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. (quote from C Spurgeon on p.204 extended)

How important this has been in my own fight for joy! As I walk through God's world and think and pray, I practise both of Piper's means for using the world in the fight for joy: I see God's glory revealed in the things around me, and I help my body to become a partner in the fight for joy through rest, exercise and the refreshing beauty of God's good world.

You can read the rest at EQUIP books today - just click here.

image is from saturn at flickr

John Piper When I Don't Desire God

I go to Piper for his breathtakingly enormous view of God and the gospel, his encouragement to a passionate and joy-filled Christian life, and because I think his strengths are often our weaknesses in Australian reformed evangelicalism.*

Here's a book which meets me right where I'm at.

I don't know about you, but I'm all too familiar with days - with months! - when the whole world feels flat and dreary. I know what it is to wake up so exhausted that praying and reading the Bible is the last thing on my "preferred things to do" list. I often feel anxious. I feel irritable. I feel like God is in a galaxy far, far away.

During November, I'll be reading and writing through a book written for times like these: John Piper's When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. I've read and dipped into a lot of Piper books, but this is one of my favourites (the other, if you're curious, is The Pleasures of God).

I especially love the second half of When I Don't Desire God. Here, Piper tells us how to turn to the cross when guilt won't go away (something I really struggle with!), gives some wonderful practical suggestions for praying and reading the Bible, addresses the mind-bending topic of how to use creation and our bodies in the fight for joy (my favourite chapter), and (most significantly for many!) talks about the issue of depression.

So why not grab a copy of John Piper's When I Don't Desire God and read it with me when I write on it for EQUIP book club this November? As usual, I'm hoping you'll enjoy my posts even if you don't read the book, but it will be lots more fun if we read it together!

* Or so I said in a comment on this post.

meditation on a morning walk

I haven't been to this park for some time, and the familiar trees and green curves of the hills welcome me. Like a friend seen after a long absence, my eyes trace the well-known features with delight.

In front of me walk two women in red, with a dog on a lead about as red as a dog gets. Normally I would find them disturbing, a blot on the purity of the landscape, like the red graffiti on the white bark of the gums. Today nothing can dampen my mood.

I look down, and the gravel moves with soothing rhythm under my feet. I look up, and the gnarled branches of oaks tell their long, slow tale of years. I look, at fat white eucalypts shedding strings of brown bark, at lichen-yellowed trees in their winter bareness, at peppermint gums clambering up the hillside.

I look.

The stillness is shattered by a passing gaggle of gabbling middle-aged women. A woman with electric blue eyeshadow and yellow curls shrills at the quiet-faced woman next to her, "I tell you, it was so peaceful, there was not a sound! Not a sound, I tell you! It was so peaceful!" I smile at the contrast between content and delivery.

A foam-freckled brown creek rushes alongside, through the unkempt loveliness of overgrown banks, scattered with haphazard piles of upended branches. Messy wattles and dead trees stand knee-deep in dandelions, thistles and clover. Bridal creeper spreads its glossy leaves impartially over logs, stones and shrubs, turning them into mysterious lumpy mounds.

I look. I think.

My reflections are interrupted by a bald man walking three dogs, crowded to the far side of the path on short leads. Two gangly youths pass by, regarding me with challenging stares, their hair gelled into bleach-tipped spines like twin echidnas. A teenager on his way to the local high school, meek faced and crew-cut neat, hurries past clutching a take-away coffee in a brown paper cup.

The smell of the onion grass is strong. A small rabbit regards me solemnly. The sky sheds tufts of white cloud. My muscles bunch and stretch, bunch and stretch. A train passes in glimpses through a tangle of trees. The air tips my nose with cold. Two shaggy ponies graze on an steep angle of field. Lemon-fringed cockatoos scream their wild, whooping calls overhead.

I look. I think. I pray.

The silence returns, and my thoughts turn to You: the One who shaped every twig as a tiny paean of praise, the one who sent his Son to die on ugly dead wood like this, the One who reaches out to all these people, holy interruptions in my walk, my thoughts, my days.

image is from stock.xchng