Personal

yeah, i want to be kind of a big deal

/ Paul Burkhart / 4 Comments

paul-09-12

I fight with pride a lot.As I was telling a friend today: if you take a guy that is fairly smart, can put disparate concepts together, can talk well, and you make him a Christian, you get something very dangerous.He starts believing the press others say about him and begins to think he is much more mature than he actually is.This is me.My entire life people have set me apart for “something big for God.”Being able to understand and communicate even the deepest truths of God and His Word doesn’t equal maturity one bit.Seminary has certainly been showing me just how independent I try to be from God.

But nevertheless, something does resonate within me when I think about my place on the national/world stage.I feel like I’m being tailored by God for big, visible things out there in the world.I don’t know for sure what this means, and I’m fine with it not coming to pass, but I feel like I’m being prepared for a weight I could not bear apart from prior work by God.

But that’s not the point of this post.Now, like I said, I was grabbing coffee with that friend of mine – a friend who is quite visible on the national and international stage.But he’s been struggling with something recently that really struck me.He pointed out that no person ever used by God for really big things ever did it apart from great levels and displays of suffering.His problem was that he shirks from suffering while seeking comfort – the very thing that is antithetical to what he’s called to.I have a similar problem.

I’m only 22 and I feel like I haven’t suffered much.Some really dark family stuff, spiritual dark months of the soul, and severe emotional pains (loneliness and heartache, mainly), but really no classic forms of real suffering.Yet, in spite of this, God has given me a very developed theology of suffering and God’s Sovereignty within it.This terrifies me.I can not get away from this haunting sense deep in the recesses of my mind that severe trials lie ahead of me.So severe that God needs to prepare me now to survive the pains to come.

In one sense this reaffirms my desire to be well-known, influential, and in front of many people.On the other it sobers me, realizing (perhaps for the first time) what it means to “count the cost.”So perhaps all those that have been praising and building me up for big things in the future have actually been painting a target on my soul for the refining pains and trials of God.

So for those of you out there seeking renown, fame, and exposure.Know that if you really are doing it to God’s Glory, then no servant is greater than his Master, and you should expect nothing less than fulfilling in the body the sufferings of Christ, that His life might be seen through your death for your good and God’s Glory.

Get yourself some Metzger

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

I was reading this in an article by Bruce Metzger on the formation of the Biblical Canon:

“In short, the status of canonicity is not an objectively demonstrable claim, but is a statement of Christian belief.  It is not affected by features that are open to adjudication, such as matters of authorship and genuineness, for a pseudepigraphon [a letter written under a different author’s name, as some claim some of the letters of Paul to be] is not necessarily to be excluded from the canon…To some scholars the seemingly haphazard manner in which the canon was delimited is an offence.  It is sometimes asked how the canon can be regarded as a special gift from God to the Church when its development from a ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ canon progressed in what appears to be such a random and, indeed, haphazard manner…[But, as] William Barclay [said]: ‘it is the simple truth to say that New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them from doing so.’…If this fact is obscured, one comes into serious conflict not with dogma but with history….

The word and the Scripture are united in such a way that they constitute an organic unity; they are related to each other as the soul to the body [and] that relation is unique; its closest parallel is the relation of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the Word incarnate.”

I love our messy, sloppy, confusing, and authoritative Bible.

Get ’em, Bruce.

Seminary: Year 1, Semester 1

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

These are the just the books I actually bought for my first semester of seminary.  There were many more that were “required” texts that I didn’t buy.  Seminary is a time for reading.  Lots and lots of reading.  I put this up to let all you up and coming seminarians what’s in store.  Also, I want this to be a preview for an upcoming blog post I’m working on that will be up in the next couple of days.  So, for all the nerds out there who are interested . . .

Here are the book listings for each course:

Here are all the books:

and the Scotch is just because it’s a Presbyterian Seminary . . . and it’s good.

Get yourself some Calvin

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

They who strive to build up firm faith in Scripture through disputation are doing things backwards . . . Since for unbelieving men religion seems to stand by opinion alone, they, in order not to believe anything foolishly or lightly, both wish and demand rational proof that  Moses and the prophets spoke divinely.  But I reply: the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason.  Some good folk are annoyed that a clear proof is not ready at hand when the impious, unpunished, murmur against God’s Word.  As if the Spirit were not called both “seal” and “guarantee” for confirming the faith of the godly; because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts!

Therefore, Scripture bears its own authentication.  Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated [by the Spirit].  Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men.

Therefore we seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as a thing far beyond any guesswork!  If God has willed this treasure of understanding to be hidden from his children [to necessitate revelation for us to know Him], it is no wonder or absurdity that the multitude of men are so ignorant and stupid!  Whenever, then, the fewness of believers disturbs us, let the converse come to mind, that only those whom it is given can comprehend the mysteries of God.

— selections from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ch. 7

The Mind of David Powlison

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

This is a picture I shot during my class last night.  This man is one of the most brilliant minds in Biblical Counseling, and this picture sort of captures the way his amazing mind works.  For all you CCEF or Redmption Hill folks, you can sort of make out a sun at the top center (Heat), a dead tree on the right (Thorns), the cross at the bottom, and then a living tree on the left (Fruit).  Yes, this is the mind that came up with that model we all learned so well.  Enjoy!

dpowlison

[I love this hymn right now]

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Thou Lovely Source of True Delight

1. Thou lovely source of true delight
Whom I unseen adore
Unveil Thy beauties to my sight
That I might love Thee more,
Oh that I might love Thee more.

2. Thy glory o’er creation shines
But in Thy sacred Word
I read in fairer, brighter lines
My bleeding, dying Lord,
See my bleeding, dying Lord

3. ’Tis here, whene’er my comforts droop
And sin and sorrow rise
Thy love with cheering beams of hope
My fainting heart supplies,
My fainting heart’s supplied

4. But ah! Too soon the pleasing scene
Is clouded o’er with pain
My gloomy fears rise dark between
And I again complain,
Oh and I again complain

5. Jesus, my Lord, my life, my light
Oh come with blissful ray
Break radiant through the shades of night
And chase my fears away,
Won’t You chase my fears away

6. Then shall my soul with rapture trace
The wonders of Thy love
But the full glories of Thy face
Are only known above,
They are only known above

If it weren’t for God, I’d be an Atheist

/ Paul Burkhart / 5 Comments

Forgive how disconnected my thoughts are. I’m taking a break from all my reading for Grad school to write this and I’m really tired. Anyway, I’m really frustrated right now.

For all those still in Richmond, the United Secular Alliance (U.S.A.) of VCU (the atheist “campus ministry”) is bringing in Christopher Hitchens, one of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism (as many evangelicals lovingly call them; the other three main evangelical atheists Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris), on Tuesday to debate a Christian apologist who I think they had to find after no campus ministry answered their call for a debater.

Several weeks ago, I was inspired by this news to watch some videos with this apologist, Frank Turek, and then watch a bunch of videos from Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens online (including a fascinating discussion between Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath at Oxford). Anyway, like I said, I’m really frustrated.

As I hope the leaders I know and love of the U.S.A. read this, I have one main take way from this post. If no one gets anything else out of this, just take this:

Christian conversion is first and fundamentally a spiritual event with intellectual implications, rather than the more outspoken model out there that it is an intellectual event with spiritual implications.

All the tenets of the Christian faith as encapsulated in what the Bible refers to as “the Gospel” are the highest of all Divine wisdom. They are. The Gospel is the highest of all possible “storylines” this world could go through. The Bible over and over again places this Gospel against human wisdom and shows the futility and hopelessness of a non-Christian, non-theistic worldview.But here’s the key: this is only truly seen from the inside.

I look at Hitchens and am reaffirmed in my belief that conversion is and must be a spiritual act initiated and accomplished by God, and not by man. Apart from God, I really would be a rational atheist. For someone not converted by God, Atheism really is the only logically consistent worldview.

“Conversion” is an act by God by which he changes the very nature of the individual so their entire perceptual framework is changed. Many Christians seem to act like every non-Christian out there is just miserable as they perpetually and willfully suppress the faith they secretly know is true; that they can’t have any healthy relationships, raise any good children, and their worldview necessitates a holocaust and wonton anarchy of bloodthirsty violence and debauchery.

This certainly is not the case, because it is not giddy emotionalism, healthy relationships, good kids, or the social benefits of any given worldview that defines its “truth”. Many Christians act like this is the case. This is the “christianity” that is often offered to the Hitchens’ of the world. The nice, perfectly packaged, logically superior worldview that makes everything better.

One need not look long at the world to see the absurdity and repulsion this profession must evoke. Christians often try to appeal to the same standard of rationalism to undergird their faith that Atheists do to form theirs. This can be helpful I suppose to a point, as long as the Christian knows that this is the standard of truth the Bible spends its entire time mocking, so none of our faith can rest in it.

Ultimately, it was not archaeology, philosophy, pragmatism, or logic that drew us to the realities of this “Christianity thing”. It was the effectual and Sovereign work of God that changed us so we then saw the evil of our hearts, the beauty of Christ, and the wisdom of this “storyline” of the Gospel.

What is this highest of all Divine wisdom, so far above human minds that it cannot be comprehended naturally but must be revealed to us? That God, being the source of all life, has a justifiable claim on those that use this gift of life, and He has so desired we use this life to be joined to the source of it and in that find our ultimate rest, joy, and peace. But humanity, seeking to find that rest, joy, and peace in lower things he can manipulate, control, and take responsibility for, left union with this source of life for lower things and in that allowed sin to weaken and corrupt every part of themselves – mind, will, and emotions.

And then, while we were the rightful repositories for the full wrath of God, He rescued us. For humanity committed these acts of treason, so humanity must be the one to pay for them. But weakened and corrupted, humanity has not the ability to do this fully and live.

So God came in the form of a human and lived the life of righteousness we were meant to live, and died the death we were supposed to die, taking the cup of God’s wrath that hung perilously over the heads of those that would be saved and pouring it fully upon Himself, suffering more than any sinner ever will in Hell, that he might bring his people to Him, to be joined once more with that source of life. And all he asks is that we would but trust that what he lived and died was adequate to do for us what we were not able to do for ourselves, and that we cannot add to it, nor take from it.

Does this answer “all the questions”? No. But no Christian becomes a Christian because all their questions are answered or because the flow of the propositional statements lined up. I don’t believe in Christianity because it makes sense; I know I have and will encounter things in life that will challenge that.

In short, I can’t not believe in God, because Christianity ultimately is self-verifying. This is so important. It’s ultimate validity and truth does not lie in history, philosophy, facts, human experience, logic, or reason. It lies in the within the Source of all Truth, God Himself. Can I use all the grounds listed above to show the superiority of the Christian worldview and the beauty of its wisdom? Yes, but that is not what converts people or changes their mind.

To the unconverted mind, this highest of all wisdom is foolishness. But this realization of the necessity of revelation should not be something that brings self-righteousness as if we Christians were able “figure out” and discern this highest of Divine Wisdom while those foolish Atheists just aren’t astute enough. No, this show of our absolute dependence on God to know anything about God should bring us to our knees in humility and praise.

That a God this good would still reveal Himself and change us when it would be absolutely just for Him to let us continue to wallow in our weakness and corruption, forever disconnected from this source of all true life, peace, and deep transcendent joy.

So, even though after my little bit of movie-watching I think Turek is going to embarrass himself and the other Christians in the room by reinforcing every bad stereotype, know that no one’s conversion depends upon Turek or anyone else, but it depends on God who can stop the mouth of Hitchens or Turek at any moment He pleases and change the hearts of anyone in that room to see the wonders and beauty of His Glorious, Wise, and Beautiful Self.

I pray He might.

“Do I?” (a poem)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

[Audio for “Do I?” from upcoming book of poetry “Of Clefts and Gardens”]

Just because I’m joined to One above
does this mean I am in want of desire for
one below,
one beneath,
one under?

Do I not dream the same as you?
A joyful consummation at the end of the day
of rising and falling
rising and falling?

Of breaths and sighs
of whimpers and cries
and half taken breaths whispered in my ear
under the weight of knowing

knowing
that which was good before we Fell,
before we fell away from Him-
fell away from one another.

Let me fall back into Him, into you:
fall for you as I rise into Thy love
and thine
and mine.

Restored –
a picture thereof as my soul is known
and I know this union once more.

So can I want?  Can I dream?
Can I read the words of wisdom old
and long for your fingers to drip with myrrh
as I reach into your garden latch

and seek the rose I long to taste?

May I?

Sex (Of Clefts and Gardens)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Yes, that title was mainly to catch your eye and get you reading, though it isn’t completely off topic.  I’ve been criticized recently for this blog becoming too theological and not really very personal as it used to be, so the past few posts have been my attempt at getting back to that.  Don’t worry, there’s more theology to come, I’m just taking a breather.  Anyway, as many people know, I’ve spent the past six months or so writing an album entitled “So Tearful Apologies.”  Recently I “finished” it (as any musician knows, are you ever really “finished” with your music?).  Technically, it’s not completely done, but it’s done enough for me to feel free to work on my next project, which I wanted to write this post about.

So, I’ve been on a concept album kick.  That’s where you write an album with a unified theme or story as opposed to the typical random assortment of songs.  My next project is about sex.  The working title for it is “Of Clefts and Gardens.”  Using Song of Solomon as one of my inspirations, I was wondering if a Christian in 21st century Evangelical America could write and sing art that is explicitly sexual, but both God-glorfying and beautiful.  As I’ve jokingly said, my goal is to write stuff that is completely God-glorifying but that no Christian bookstore would carry.

With this project, I want to try something different.  I’m writing it as a book of poetry and also recording performances of that poetry and writing music to go along with it in a CD.  Some will be songs, some will just have background music for the poems, but I really want to try and publish this.  I have a lot of poetry already.  I might as well start trying to get it out there.  A little bit about the book/album:

I really do want to explore sexuality in all it’s different facets in this project.  It will be broken up into four sections, each dealing with a certain part of sexuality:
(1) Purpose: exploring the symbolism and design of sexuality
(2) Passion: looking into that drive that makes us sexual
(3) Perversion: exploring the sexual brokenness in this fallen world
(4) Purity: a celebration of sex in its purest and most God-glorifying forms.

As a treat to those who made it through this whole post and apparently care, I’ve included the audio to the first track/poem from the album/book.  It’s called “Do I?” and it sets the tone for the project, asking if I, as a Christian, have as much a right to talk about these things as secular minds do (as a contrast, the last track/poem will be called “I Do” and it will be a celebration of marriage).  Feel free to leave comments, criticisms, ideas for poems/songs, or witty insults.  Here’s the poem/track.  Just click on the title for the audio:

“Do I?” from “Of Clefts and Gardens”

Just because I’m joined to One above
does this mean I am in want of desire for
one below,
one beneath,
one under?

Do I not dream the same as you?
A joyful consummation at the end of the day
of rising and falling
rising and falling?

Of breaths and sighs
of whimpers and cries
and half taken breaths whispered in my ear
under the weight of knowing

knowing
that which was good before we Fell,
before we fell away from Him-
fell away from one another.

Let me fall back into Him, into you:
fall for you as I rise into Thy love
and thine
and mine.

Restored –
a picture thereof as my soul is known
and I know this union once more.

So can I want?  Can I dream?
Can I read the words of wisdom old
and long for your fingers to drip with myrrh
as I reach into your garden latch

and seek the rose I long to taste?

May I?

Final Monologue for Acting Class

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This is my “final exam” for my acting class I took this past spring.  I performed the death scene of Cyrano DeBergerac in the play by the same name.  He starts hallucinating all the flaws within him as real people and tries to fight them.  These flaws are what have kept him from being happy his entire life, and it is only now, as he’s dying, that he realizes this.  Thanks to film student/future director Dylan Goodwin for filming all our monologues.  Also thank you to my beard for making a cameo shortly before I left it.

For those reading this imported on facebook, you’ll have click on the “view original post” link at the bottom of this note to see the video.

Mark Nicks of Cool Hand Luke

/ Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Anyone that knows me well knows that my favorite band is Cool Hand Luke.  They have had this title since about my sophomore year of high school and it seems that their musical stylings have matured along with my musical tastes, leading me to love them all the more through the years.  Anyway, I saw them play a show in Newport News last night and it was absolutely incredible.  Mark Nicks, the lead singer/songwriter of the band stopped before the last song to talk for a bit and ended up preaching this seventeen minute-long sermonette that touches on everything from politics to current church trends.  Usually, bands talking for a while can get annoying, but this was awesome.  He’s so humble in what he says and so right at the same time.  So, I decided to post this up for everyone else to hear as well.

Click here for Mark’s “Sermon”

_

A Theology of Acting

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

My “final exam” in this acting class I’ve been taking at VCU was on Thursday of this past week. For the class, I had to keep a “journal” to record my experiences through the course. This is one of my “entries.” I hope you all enjoy:

So where is God in acting, anyway? I really do think that all art points to and represents God in some way. So what about acting? I’ve been wrestling through this for a bit now and I’ve come to a couple of ideas:

1 – All parts of the Bible are dramatic representations of the ultimate plan of God – the Gospel. So, Abraham and Isaac, Joseph, Moses, the Exodus, the Exile, the sacraments are all dramas (“shadows” as the Bible calls them) of realities greater than the sum of these parts. SO maybe acting is true art (or more accurately, drama is) because the basic organizational structure of personality, history, and reality itself is a giant dramatic arrow pointing to God and the Gospel.

2 – Acting explores various aspects of the “Imago Dei” – or, Image of God in man. It’s purity, potential, purpose, and perversion. All these aspects of the present reality of that “thing” that makes us human are the substance of good acting. When you touch that part of us, perhaps you touch something divine. The same thing that the incarnation touched in people as Jesus – divinity in humanity – walked among us. The same thing that will be touched for all time when all God’s people adore and behold Jesus for the rest of time. This leads me to my last point.

3 – Acting could be a symbol of the Incarnation. Jesus became that which he was not (human) to such an extent He became that while not leaving the reality of who He was (divine). It is in this process of God taking on the nature of what He was not in order to redeem it, that the greatest “method acting,” if you will, was ever seen. This is a very weak and poorly developed parallel, but hopefully thought provoking nonetheless.

Indeed, these are just possibilities, but they made me think about and love Christ more, so my hope in writing this is that all of you will to.

–paul

Jesus? May I?

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

Jesus?

I sit here at this laptop, a vision bouncing ‘round my head
to write a prose to you that shows your grace, beauty, and strength.
But I’m tired and I keep typoingt ypos, over and iver again.
And you know what?  I’m not going to correct that above,
because that really was an accident.

I know, I know.  “Nothing’s new” I heard the wise one once said.
No thought, no word, no deed has the sun not shone itself upon.
Looking down, looking down upon my filthy rags, mocking and burning,
mocking and burning.  I just need to get this out!

Oh, Christ! Will thou not enable me to write these words?

He won’t.

Some may say I’m attempting some not so subtle display of irony,
trying to be original, profound, or cute; noting the use of prose to Him
as my medium for my diatribe on not being able to write a prose to Him,
but it’s not.

These words are nothing, they are filth, not fit for the King I serve.
No edits, no plans, no thoughts or “brainstorming” went into this.
Just the feeble cries of a broken man, wallowing, drowning, fighting,
losing.  It seems.

The weight of people not yet known – their souls upon my shoulders.
The sin I bear upon my back, the doubt that grows within.
I’m lost.  I’m depraved.  My futile thinking, my hardened heart,
my ignoble desires, my Glorious King! the One I have! the One I need!

Oh Christ!  Oh Sovereign Lord!  Be the God to me You are!
Oh that my tongue were loosed with the tongues of angels
to say all your Grace could say!

Let my soul take flight! Rise me into Thy Love!
Faster.  Faster!  Make me only Thine!  I need it!
I must! I lust, covet, and gluttonously gorge myself upon
the Grace I so desperately need desperately. . .

desperately.

And even with that, I end this now, not having said
what I wanted to say – what I needed to say.
Your Grace did not come, or at least in the measure I hoped.
This burden thus stays, this wineskin won’t burst,
this angst will continue to grow.

But I know, in the quietest parts of my soul, those deep whispers
and silent voices, echoing within:
my Beloved is mine and i am His, and His Grace is at His whim,
for if it were up to me, I would not need Him,

and it’s in my need I have Him most.

The Sweet Taste of Sovereign Suffering, III (Selah)

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

“This is not hard to see in the Bible. And it is precious beyond words! I don’t like to get angry at people who call themselves evangelicals; I don’t delight in critiquing people who have major leadership positions [who are] very popular, nice people. This is not fun. It’s heartbreaking! But what can you do when they attack the center with blasphemous cynicism? What can you do?”
— John Piper

John Piper said this concerning N.T. Wright, the British bishop who is now bringing doubt to the orthodox doctrine of Justification. When Piper said this, he was weeping. It has been haunting me these past few days. What you are reading now is my third attempt in writing this post. I keep writing a bit then having to toss it out. Each time my heart still hasn’t been in the right place.

I need to repent. My heart has not been in the right place in these rebuttals. While I feel I’ve done a good job of not letting that effect what I’ve written, sin management is still sin, and it eats you up more than most other sins. My heart has only in the past couple of days been brought to the place that Piper’s quote above comes from. As of a few days ago, I was excited. I, the “great Paul Burkhart,” have been successfully dismantling the argument of a real Pastor. I was defending the faith. I was rebuking lies. I was showing myself better suited for this task than this man. Though I never said these things, I see now this was the state of my heart. Pride. Making my theology an idol, no matter how right it may be, is still sin – and for that I am sorry.

At the end of all these posts, I intend to send them to Pastor Slye and to the person who (with glowing praise) referred me to his sermon. I let unrighteous anger and pride drive me to write, rather than love, and I need to let Slye know that I see this, and I repent. All the Bible says about us young guys is that we are strong, prideful, and foolish. The Bible knows us better than we do, and I thought I could rise above the norm for other twentysomethings. How wrong I was! “O what a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Now, I need to do the rest of this tactfully and biblically. The verses right after the verses I just quoted (Romans 7:24-25a) are as follows: “So then, I myself serve the Law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” I think I relate to Paul here. Though with my flesh I have served the law of sin with my pride and arrogance, I still believe I have been serving the Law of God with my mind. I am still certain in the things I have been writing and writing against, I just need to repent for the heart from which I wrote them.

So, I’m going to finish this series, but I hope the tone is different. I no longer look at Slye in contempt as a heretic who needs to be rebuked and shown proper exegetical and theological integrity by the punk VCU student about to go into seminary. I go through this now as a fellow wounded sojourner, seeing why he thinks how he does. I see him as a man who stands week after week in front of God knows how many people who have been burned and hurt by the church, that come to him with their broken suffering hearts needing to know why. Needing to know God has not abandoned them. Needing to know that God is still good and they are still loved. O how calloused I’ve become because of my theology! After Lazarus dies, and Mary doubts Jesus for not being there earlier. Jesus doesn’t say, “Now now, Mary, your theology is all wrong. How dare you doubt me? O you of little faith.” No. He weeps with her, and then lives out those theological truths before her.

Though I am certain that Slye’s view on suffering is unbiblical and ultimately only leads to more cynicism and pain on behalf of the sufferer, I know that as a man who was reluctant to become Pastor in the first place (as their website says), it must have been hard when faced with the weight and realities of real life that I have yet to experience. But experience aside, the Bible is the greatest commentary and authority on true reality, and as such, I believe I have Biblical warrant to honestly and humbly show where Slye has erred in his theology.

This process now for the first time hurts me and breaks my heart. Please pray for me as I continue in this. I no longer want to do this, but the Gospel of Christ compels me, as I have seen that there is only one true comforting view in the midst of the hardest pains. And that is the view of a loving Father who lets nothing touch you that does not first pass through his loving, ordaining hand such that all things that come our way have been ordained and brought to pass ultimately by a God working for our good – building us into the strong, persevering, hope-filled, Glory-loving, broken clay vessels that we need to be to truly enjoy Him and fully worship Him when He finally takes us home.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”

Selah