Taking every thought captive

We sang this hymn today. It is a delightfully encouraging and hopeful hymn. There is no other comfort in life and in death but our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all our sins.

I greet thee, who my sure Redeemer art,
My only trust and Saviour of my heart,
Who pain didst undergo for my poor sake;
I pray thee from our hearts all cares to take.

Thou art the King of mercy and of grace,
Reigning omnipotent in every place:
So come, O King, and our whole being sway;
Shine on us with the light of thy pure day.

Thou art the life, by which alone we live,
And all our substance and our strength receive;
O comfort us in death’s approaching hour,
Strong-hearted then to face it by thy pow’r.

Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness,
No harshness hast thou and no bitterness:
Make us to taste the sweet grace found in thee
And ever stay in thy sweet unity.

Our hope is in no other save in thee;
Our faith is built upon thy promise free;
O grant to us such stronger hope and sure
That we can boldly conquer and endure.

Attributed to John Calvin, 1545 (Je Te Salue Mon Certain Redempteur); translated from French to English by Elizabeth L. Smith in Schaff’s Christ in Song, 1869.

Yesterday Tim Challies wrote an insightful piece that argues persuasively that books are the perfect technology. I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t succumbed to the temptation of the Kindle, though I’ve considered it, but I’m less and less persuaded by the benefits of electronic media for reading. Almost all of my serious reading is done from dead trees, and I think Challies is right when he says, “Despite being printed on dead trees, there is a living quality to books that is lost on e-readers.”

Apart from the way we interact with a real book versus an electronic one, I have some treasured volumes that could never be replaced by electronic copies. They belonged to real people from my past and my family’s past, many now in glory. They have memories that nothing electronic could ever match.

And I’m also sticking to pen(cil) and paper for my serious writing/thinking. I find that I produce much better writing that way than on the computer, though I usually transfer it later to the computer.

No batteries, no booting, just straight down to business: reading, writing, and thinking. Definitely the perfect technology.

At the end of his discussion of the God of the psalms, Geoffrey Grogan mentions those psalms where the psalmists come to God with their deeply troubling problems. It is noteworthy that they come to God with them, and that their troubles do not cause them to lose their faith.  “To be puzzled and to give up belief are not the same thing,”\1/ he says. I really found his conclusion heart-warming and helpful:

Christians too may be puzzled by the ways of God, but he has given us such affirmations of his holiness, grace and wisdom in the cross and resurrection of Jesus that faith is constantly renewed as it contemplates these wonderful facts in a spirit of trustful worship. \2/

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Geoffrey Grogan. Prayer, Praise and Prophecy: A Theology of the Psalms. Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor (Christian Focus), 2001. \1/ p. 75, \2/ p. 76.

Geoffrey Grogan gives Psalm 23 as an example of metaphor in the Psalter. “In asserting that the Lord is his shepherd,” he says, “the psalmist uses a figure familiar to his readers and which therefore conveys more, and does so more vividly, than any abstract statement about God.” (p. 58) *

But for the modern, western, urban reader, I suspect the metaphor has lost a lot of its force. We have romanticised the shepherd, and we have elevated the status of sheep as animals to an unnatural position in the created order. Our Shepherd has become little more than a provider who gives us sheep what we want. Yet, the Shepherd is the dominant figure, not the sheep. He owns the sheep for which he cares. He calls the shots, not us. So he provides graciously what we need, not necessarily what we want. We need to bear in mind that the Shepherd was also a metaphor for the King.

There’s more to the metaphor than we might at first suspect.

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* Geoffrey Grogan. Prayer, Praise and Prophecy: A Theology of the Psalms. Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor (Christian Focus), 2001.

Last night at our church Bible Study several phrases struck me forcibly. One is where Peter tells us that angels long to look into the things of salvation (1 Peter 1:12).

This is obviously more than trivial knowledge. After all, God’s salvation is not for angels. But at the same time it is not of no concern to them. They minister to the heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14). So as God’s servants and agents they will have a desire to be fully informed about their charges and duties, and God’s purposes for them.

But, more than that, God’s purpose for the Church is to display his manifold wisdom to them (Ephesians 3:10). Little wonder that what happens to us is of intense interest to them. Daniel gives a tantalizing glimpse of those angelic discussions (Daniel 8:13; 12:5-7).

What struck me about this angelic longing was not that it happened, but that if they had no personal stake in salvation, as do we who are the heirs, how deep is our longing to look into the things of Christ?

How embarrassing could it be one day to bump into Gabriel and Michael discussing some aspect of salvation as they walk down the golden street. They turn to us and ask us to explain just what that passage in Jeremiah, or Ezekiel or wherever, means. And we have to admit that we haven’t studied that Bible passage ever! Perhaps we might have to admit that we never knew it was in Scripture.

If that isn’t an incentive to serious study of Scripture, I don’t know what is.