'Snow Had Fallen, Snow on Snow'

It is hardly "Bleak Midwinter" in Minnesota, as some might think who have been spooked by recent recent weather reports. Actually it is very beautiful today, as you can see--with bright blue sky, sunshine, and caverns of snow all around.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," the saying has it. From a distance all this may seem bleak indeed, much too cold and confining. But you should gaze on it as we do, both from without our home and within. Its actually invigorating and beautiful, a true "winter wonderland of snow."

Don't feel sorry for us. The coffee is on. There's milk and coke in the fridge. And Alyce's cookies are even now fresh from the oven. You may not make it up the front walkway, but call ahead and we'll let you in from the garage. You won't believe how blessed you will feel looking out on it all.

Reflections on Reflecting

"There is life for a look at the Crucified One," an old hymn says. "Not thy tears of repentance or prayers can atone, but the blood which avails for thy soul.... Then come with rejoicing to Jesus today, life eternal he freely will give.... Look! Look! Look and live.... There is life at this moment for thee" (The Covenant Hymnal, 1931, No. 138).

These words came to mind when opening a older volume in my library today I discovered a random scrap of paper on which I had written the following some years ago: "The Christian life in all its aspects is a reflecting life--i.e., its power lies not in man's ability to achieve but, if at all, in his willingness to reflect his experience of God."

It was a wonderful reminder that spiritual power and influence, far from being an achievement of our own, is a gift of God--like life itself. Only as we reflect on and mirror in our daily walk the power of his redemption, his holiness, and his love are we enabled to spread the same abroad.

Absent that mirroring of the Triune God in our lives, all our human strivings for power and influence are but losings. Spiritual power and influence must be generated and given us from above.

Saturation and Inspiration

On many occasions throughout church history people have tried--even for noble reasons--to defend the Bible, as if somehow its inspiration was under question and it needed to be defended. An early Covenant historian and preacher named Hjalmar Sundquist ( 1869-1949) had his own take on inspiration, more in keeping with a Pietist understanding of the issue. Warmly personal and less argumentative, it never fails to feed my spirit and soul. Hopefully, it may both feed and challenge yours as well. Listen:

What ... is inspiration? It is the Spirit of God taking possession of an upright and devoted soul who listens for the voice of God, using him and all his mental faculties as his messenger. The writers of the Scripture are not like water pipes taking water from a distance to bring it a long way and deposit it for you without you taking the trouble to dig for it or to go and get it. Writers of the Bible are more like the mountainside, saturated with water which pours from its sides in springs for everybody to come and drink. The Bible writers were saturated with Divine truth; then out of that saturation the truth sprang forth into utterance. That is inspiration.

Much in the same spirit, Herbert Palmquist (1896-1981) once wrote:

The more I read the Bible and put faith and trust in it, the more it reveals itself to me to be true.... I do not wave the Bible. I press it to my heart. It is my time table, my light shining in a dark room ... my travel guide. I trust it implicitly and I am never let down. I find that 'all the sages said is in the book my mother read.' And I have no greater desire in all the world than that others shall find such treasures in the Bible as I find every day of my life.

"Take up and read," the unconverted Augustine once heard children chanting nearby. He did just that, was converted, and only then became the saint we name him today. The Bible does not need our defense. It needs our attention, our devotion to reading it, and our trust in its message.

A Yearning Heart

Advent is a season for yearning. Don't miss it by trying to take it by force--thinking that preparing the way of the Lord requires you to do something for him. All any of us really can do is wait on his coming, allow room in our hearts and minds for what he is coming to do. Only those who yearn for him will receive both the comfort he is coming to give and the power he holds in his hand to save.

"Humankind," Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said, "wishes to remain Lord of the world, the Lord of the future.... [But} without his doing anything this wonderful happening draws near, in the time of God, in the future of God, in his coming on the earth. Here the future becomes for him a living reality, here he lives today under the shadow of the coming, not some kind of threatening misfortuine, a fate, but the righteousness of the coming God, of love, and of peace. Not that he goes self-assured on the path into the future of God; no, he takes the future from God. He knows that he cannot go to God but that God must go to him in his inconceivable grace, otherwise he has waited in vain and will lose his life. He can do nothing else but watch and wait, which means enthusiastically, totally taken up, deaf toward everyone who would make him confused with doubts, blind to every force that comes between him and that future of God. Only one thing is of importance to him. He wants to see God; he wants to hear God; he wants to receive God; he wants to know God; he wants to serve God. He wants inconceivably nothing else, in any case nothing like he wants God" (A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 324).

O God, save us from our prideful heart. Help us not to hide from all our yearnings. but give them full expression as we await your coming to deliver us. Amen.