What the Shepherds Heard/What the Shepherds Saw

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

                                              Luke 2:20

Faith is belief before sight. Faith is conviction about what God says before confirmation through what God shows. Our faith is tested, tried in fire. Peter writes that believers are priests and we know that God will purify the sons of Levi. He refines us like gold is refined. We each have our seasons of burning.

The testing necessarily includes some kind of disappointment. We hope things will go one way, we pray accordingly but the thing we didn't want prevails. The great thing is to be sure the disappointment is not degraded to the point of doubt or even despair, to the place where faith begins to break upon the rocks.

If nothing we ever learned from God's Word ever appeared to be true in our experience few of us would have remained Christians very long. But what God says about the world, about history, about the way people are as they abide in their respective spheres of belief and unbelief, is more than enough to shelter faith when the test comes. That and the overwhelming sense that, like the Hebrew children in Babylon, we are not alone in the furnace.

The elapsed time between what the Shepherds heard and what the Shepherds saw was short. The time was made even shorter because they made haste and searched out God's promises without delay. Not a bad model for ourselves.

We are not likely to be favored with a vision of angels. The privilege of the Shepherds was enormous. They worked in the right neighborhood at the right time. But they doubtless knew their trials in after-years. Perhaps trials which even made them doubt the reality or the relevance of what they saw that night.

But it WAS real. 

And it remains eternally relevant.

The elapsed time in our own case will be longer for sure. But our prospect is just as sure.

Like them, we shall behold Him.

No longer lying in a manger but seated upon a throne.

The shepherds will be there too.

Still glorifying and praising God.

Merry Christmas from Memphis

A Preface to Paradise Lost: Remembering CSL on His Birthday

Today is the birthday of CS Lewis, the most quoted Christian author of the 20th Century. This blog has been virtually retired for the better part of a year while I was applying for residence in a country unfriendly to the faith. The lower my profile, I reasoned, the better my chances. Now that my application has been turned down there's no reason not to pay tribute to my favorite writer.
Many pass through a Lewis phase and grow out of it. I never graduated, and my awe of the man increases with each passing year.
I don't discount Lewis' failings. He never tired of reminding his readers that he was an untrained layman and no authority on doctrine. We heartily agree. Sometimes his mishandling of doctrine can only elicit groans. In "The World's Last Night" (otherwise a wonderful essay) he concluded that the limitations of the Incarnation (explained by Jesus' own declaration that " concerning the day and hour no one knows...not even the Son" ) led Him to a mistaken  prediction of a 'this generation" Return. That of course is awful.
But where Lewis is good he is splendid. If the proof of an apologist's worth is conversion then Lewis is the probable leader in market share. Better than anyone he shows with clarity and power not only that Christianity is true but that it is right and good that Christianity should be true.
The choice may surprise but I'm not sure that “A Preface to Paradise Lost " does not showcase Lewis' peculiar genius as much as any other effort. Though a work of Literary Criticism, Lewis was able to smuggle in a considerable quantity of Christian Apologetics since Milton wrote on a biblical theme. Lewis wrote all his non-fiction in the first person.
He turns that policy to advantage when he slips in a testimony which approaches the border of personal witness.
"...I should warn the reader that I myself am a Christian and that some of the things which the atheist reader must 'try to feel as if he believed '... I do believe. But for the student of Milton my Christianity is an advantage. What would you not give to have a real, live Epicurean at your elbow while reading Lucretius?" (Chapter 9)
One of Lewis' great assets is his ability to diagnose some misfortune on the modern scene we already sensed but never understood. We could not understand because, like Dr. Watson, we looked but we did not observe. Had we understood we may not have been able to express. Our powers of articulation would have failed us. The marriage of acute observation and memorable classification is a happy commonplace in the Lewis canon.
"The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility: rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual." (Chapter 3)
or ,again, on the same subject
"(Ritual) renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable, (it) hands over to the power of wise custom the task of being festive or sober, gay or reverent, when we choose to be and not to the bidding of chance." (Chapter 4)
What Lewis says about Milton we can say about himself:
"The whole art consists not in evoking the unexpected, but in evoking with a perfection and accuracy beyond expectation the very image that has haunted us all our lives." (Chapter 8)
In all his books he displayed the capacity to illumine his subject by citing correspondences from disparate spheres. In 'Mere Christianity' he famously compares regeneration to toy soldiers coming to life.
The folly of Satan's unwitting self-destruction by rebellion is thus related:
"  "It is like the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower." (Chapter 13)
Lewis' stock in trade was the startling spiritual insight-
" ...the only point of forbidding it (the fruit on the tree) was to instill obedience." (Chapter 10)
He offered convincing historical summaries-
" The older Puritans took away the maypoles and the mince pies: but they did not bring in the millennium, they only brought in the Restoration." (Chapter 19)
He persuaded by analogies unexpected but exceedingly apt. His language, in the words of JAW Bennett his successor in the Cambridge chair, would "always elucidate, never decorate."
He was born 114 years ago. His departure is now nearly 50 years past.
No one with a remote claim to be his equal has graced our horizon since.

Confession

Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843)

Daily I try to follow the Bible readings of Robert Murray M'Cheyne. M'Cheyne, who entered Heaven before his 30th birthday, is reputed to have been Scotland's greatest preacher. Today I am at Matthew 28-The Resurrection and The Great Commission. Matthew 28:19 is called The Great Commission. The Saviour enjoins those who are His to go and tell. The next (and last) verse of the First Gospel is a kind of Great Comfort. We are promised that when we go He will accompany. The first recorded words of Jesus (Luke 2:49) are an explanation of why He was not with His parents. Jesus' last words in the Gospels are a promise that He will be with His disciples. More specifically the promise is made to disciples who carry out His orders.
And joyful orders they are.
Three days ago a friend told me "My enthusiasm about living the Christian life is exactly proportional to my willingness to share my faith." CT Studd, who enjoyed celebrity at Cambridge in the 1890's, died in the Belgian Congo in 1931. He confessed that when he stopped sharing his faith as a way of life his love for Jesus grew cold.
My assignment in the Church where I worship affords me the title 'Pastor'.
Because the church I serve is in Hungary I am sometimes called a 'Missionary'.
Because I am called both Pastor and Missionary it is a reasonable assumption that my life is adorned by much prayer and constant witness.
That assumption is false.