'A Capable Wife Who Can Find?'

"Strength and dignity are her clothing,

and she laughs at the time to come.

She opens her mouth with wisdom,

and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

She looks well to the ways of her household,

and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and call her happy,

her husband too, and he praises her.

'Many women have done excellently,

but you surpass them all.'

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her a share in the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the city gates."

Proverbs 31:25-31

Redemptive Light Sometimes Hurts!

One sign of a great leader is his or her capacity to accept criticism and learn from it. In our own history as a Covenant Church, C.V. Bowman (1868-1937) was that kind of man. Though one day to become president of our denomination, his autobiography, Son of the People (Covenant Publications, 1988), was not about that but about his childhood years in Sweden and what it was like to emigrate to America as a young lad of 11 in 1879.

A favorite story concerning him is one he himself told on being assigned as a student to preach a sermon in a homiletics class at North Park Seminary. Listen:

I was assigned to make a sermon outline on the text about Jesus feeding the five thousand in a desert place. I had done my work honestly and now was to give my outline in class. As my title I announced, "A Feeding in the Desert."

Responding quickly as usual, [President David] Nyvall said, "Yes, yes, just so, that's good," and with his lovely and unexpected acknowledgement ringing in my ears I continued to give the disposition of the contents: main points, subordinate points, and conclusion. When I had finished, the professor sat quietly looking at his Greek New Testament. Then he said, "Well, that was like being invited to dinner without getting any food." What a crushing moment! But the professor was right. As realized later, I had issued an invitation to dinner but had not put anything substantial on the table."

Redemptive light shed on our work often hurts. We all know how crushed one can feel. What is remarkable in C. V. Bowman's case is the humility with which he received his wise professor's criticism. In truth it was but one of many occasions that made clear to others the character of the man and the qualities of spirit that ennobled him in their sight and caused them later to elect him Covenant President.

Darkness Transformed by Light

Artur Weiser, in his seminal Old Testament Library Commentary on the Psalms (SCM Press, 1962), writes that spiritual assurance is "the indestructible energy of a life fed by the invisible resources of communion with God." In Psalm 73, for example, which begins with the psalmist's confession of weariness and frustration over the prosperity of the wicked, it is not until he enters the sanctuary of God that he truly perceives their sin and his own.

As long as he was enamored by all the things the wicked seem to have that he didn't have he was filled with nothing but cynicism and anger. He had not yet realized that the life of those people was as filled with as much sorrow as his own. Short of turning to God their way of living was "like a dream" that when one awakens from it "you despise their phantoms."

And not only so. On beholding God's glory he himself was transformed. As if for the first time, he sensed that God had been standing beside him in the company of the faithful, holding his right hand even while his eyes were dimmed and his heart was hardened. Though he himself had forsaken God--acting "like a brute beast" toward him, "stupid" and "ignorant"--God had been standing beside him the whole time, holding his right hand.

The vital energies now transforming him are different from what material pleasures he so long envied in others could ever have provided. His whole life now rests on a new foundation, and "its wealth consists in the inner possession of opportunities of life provided by God."

The life of faith, we learn, is not bound to circumstance. It is an inner thing, lit from within us by the Holy Spirit, sovereign over every darkness known to human beings, "the indestructible energy of a life fed by the invisible resources of communion with God."

A Blessed New Year Reminder

Prone as we all are this time of year to focus renewed energy on resolutions of our own, I was both braced and blessed by a poetic reminder from Fred Moeckel, an old seminary colleague of mine now home with the Lord, on what really matters looking forward.

From one collection of his poems we published in 1969, now out of print but perhaps still available through sources like Amazon, I came on the following poem he called "Objection." Read it, and re-read it carefully as I am doing, and respond yourself to the Lord's clear intention for all of us--not to project our will onto the future but to accept his, surrendering our souls to the power of his Spirit.

If Jesus had only argued,

we could have answered Him.

If Jesus had only said,

"Don't you think ... ?" instead

of "You must believe ..."

we could have answered Him.

But since He came

with all the authority of eternity

behind His every word,

and since He was Himself the Word,

we have no way to argue,

no way to connive, debate;

no right to speak.

If Jesus had sought an argument,

we might have given one.

But He seeks our souls.

Braced by my brother, and the Lord speaking through him, my resolutions seem vacant and pale indeed. What God wants of me is not my energies first, or my determination to do better in the new year. He wants my soul, that in and through it he may work his will in his world for his people. Have you given him yours?