This Classical Life

Every week in the middle of the communion liturgy, we proclaim the mystery of the faith and recite these words: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Sometimes I really need to be reminded that our faith is centered on a wonderful mystery, the mystery of how God became incarnate, humbled himself to die on a cross, was resurrected, and will return to make things right. It’s not the way anyone would predict God would save his people. And yet, that’s what he did. It helps to remember this when things aren’t working out as I expected. His character is to work things out in less than predictable ways.

God of my life, to Thee I call;
Afflicted, at Thy feet I fall;
When the great water floods prevail
Leave not my trembling heart to fail!

Friend of the friendless and the saint,
Where should I lodge my deep complaint?
Where but with Thee, whose open door
Invites the helpless and the poor!

Did ever mourner plead with Thee,
And Thou refuse that mourner’s plea?
Does not the Word still fixed remain
That none shall seek Thy face in vain?

That were a grief I could not bear,
Didst Thou not hear and answer prayer;
But a prayer hearing, answering God
Supports me under every load.

Fair is the lot that’s cast for me!
I have an Advocate with Thee;
They whom the world caresses most,
Have no such privilege to boast.

Poor thou I am, despised, forgot,
Yet God, my God, forgets me not;
And he is safe, and must succeed,
For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead.
[WILLIAM COWPER, 1779]

I posted this several years ago when I was reading Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin and thought about it the other day. In this time of transition and reflection, it is something worth meditating on. You can read a little more context here.

“A spiritually whole person longs in certain classic ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual hygiene itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied. She longs for other human beings; she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.

She is a person of character consistency, a person who rings true wherever you tap her. She keeps promises. She weeps with those who weep and, perhaps more impressively, rejoices with those who rejoice. She does all these things in ways that express her own personality and culture but also a general ‘mind of Christ’ that is cross-culturally unmistakable.

Her motives include faith — a quiet confidence in God and in the mercies of God that radiate from the self-giving work of Jesus Christ. She knows God is good; she also feels assured that God is good to her. Her faith secures her against that ceaseless oscillations of pride and despair familiar to every human being who has taken refuge in the cave of her own being and tried there to bury all her insecurities under a mound of achievements. When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spirit of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again.

Since faith fastens on to God’s benevolence, it yields gratitude, which in turn sponsors risk taking in the service of others. Grateful people want to let themselves go; faithful people dare to do it. People tether to God by faith can let themselves go because they know they will get themselves back.”