Matt Chandler

One of the blogs I read posted this video from Matt Chandler, pastor of an incredible church, who was very recently diagnosed with a large tumor on his brain.
Here is a video recorded shortly before he went into surgery.
Video from Matt.

This recap is more for my own memory.

Matt discusses Hebrews 11, which reads

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy— wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us,( that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

These God-followers honored Him through incredible accomplishments and incredible faithfulness during adversity.
Matt says he is honored that, after a lifetime of success, God has trusted Matt to honor God through adversity, too.

What a statement.

Homesick

“I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death.”
“Ah, Psyche,” I said, “have I made you so little happy as that?”
“No, no no,” she said. “You don’t understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … where you couldn’t see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.”
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”

– Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Things I Learn From My Dreams

My Bible does not have a bike horn embedded in the front cover, surprisingly enough.

On death and Life

My family and I serendipitously stumbled upon Trinity Church today in New York City. My mother loves walking through old cemeteries, so we stopped for a visit.

Wandering through these cemeteries, the old ones, gives me a sense of peace and a sense of perspective. These antique tombstones were custom made, and most have inscribed upon them undying confidence in eternal Life with Jesus.
For many of these people, all that remains to mark their life on earth is a simple tombstone in the churchyard. Those tombstones that proclaim their ultimate faith in Christ are all that I can use to recreate their life in my mind. I see groups of people living in New York before the Revolution, living each day with faces turned to God and hands doing His great work. Dying was just walking through the doorway that they had been approaching all their lives.

Many of the headstones are so old that nothing remains but the stone itself. No name, no date, no epitaph to identify the skull buried under it. The only clue to the person’s life is that he or she chose to be buried or had a family member choose to bury him or her at Trinity Church in New York City. What a reminder that, though many of our obligations and duties may be worthwhile, the choice for or against Jesus is the one that matters for eternity.

The memorial for Augusta Egleston particularly touched me.

“She was not ashamed to confess the
faith of Christ crucified, and manfully
fought under His banner against
sin, the world, and the devil,
and continued Christ’s
faithful soldier and servant
until her life’s end.”

What an honor. I strive to make those words true about my own life.

I also love what is said on the tombstone of William Bradford.

“… and being quite worn out,
with Old age and labour , he left his
mortal State in the lively Hope of a
blessed Immortality.
Reader reflect how soon you’ll quit this Stage.
You’ll find but few atain to such an Age.
Life full of Pain. Lo here’s a Place of Rest.
Prepare to meet your GOD, then you are blest.”

I especially love the phrase, “and, being quite worn out, … he left his mortal state in the lively Hope of a blessed immortality.” I read it in a very happy, light tone, as if the writer is stating something like, “And, being quite hungry, he went to the kitchen for a bit of cake.” It also sounds like Enoch, who walked with the Lord and simply was no more.  Death was nothing to be feared.
How beautiful a picture of who Christ is! From the dawn of consciousness, humans have worried about death. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest recorded human story, follows Gilgamesh as he travels to the ends of the earth to find a cure for death, and subsequent literature has only continued to attempt to make sense of death. The idea revolts us. We know innately that we are meant for eternity, yet to so many people death appears to be the end of it all.
Yet Christ is Life! He comes to bring us Life, and what abundant Life it is! For His followers, death has no sting. We walk through Hades’ now-broken adamantine gates and into the arms of our souls’ One True Love. Instead of the fearful spectre that has haunted the human race for thousands of years, death is simply the gateway to True Life. Like the infant emerging from the darkness of the womb into the world, death allows us to “shuffle off this mortal coil” and proceed into true Life.

I know that when, like these tombstones, all record of my life on earth has been eroded away, my Life will be hid with Christ on high. Amen.

God is God

Aeneas describes Hades:

A massive gate
With adamantine pillars faced the stream,
So strong no force of men or gods in way
May even avail to crack and bring it down.
-Aeneid, Book VI, lines 741-44

Yet Jesus tells Peter,

And I tell you, you are Peter, on on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
-Matthew 16:18

Though no men or gods could tear down the adamantine gates of hell, Yahweh did.
Great is He, and worthy to be praised!

Time

Tools used to attempt to stop time thus far this semester:

- Peanut butter
- Staples Pause button
- Duct tape
- Digging fingernails into the concrete

Muffins

I’m given a chance and a rock
See which one breaks a window
See which one keeps me up all night and into the day

It Shall Be Redeemed

I sit here with my bioinformatics book staring at me, while I stare at the open browser tab labelled “Traffic stop ends in suicide.”
News of a family friend’s death came today. It rattled me.
Not that he was my closest friend or a second uncle or anything. He dated and later married a long-time friend. She first taught me what a horse can do for a child. He showed me how to give a horse a shot and how to clean out a pussy wound on a horse’s belly. The summer I spent with them eventually shaped my honors thesis.
But I don’t know why the news is shaking me so. Perhaps because it was so unexpected. Perhaps because it puts life into perspective.
Then the news came from Fort Hood, too.

This world is not our home. This creation is broken, fallen.
And it. shall. be. redeemed.

Praise and Communion

Praise and Communion.
It is a service filled with praise and with communion (who knew?) that first drew me to my church and has now returned.

I stand awkwardly with my team at the front of the chapel. We hold on to the bread and juice with ever shakier hands as Kyle explains what communion is and why we take it.
As he talks, I stare at this group of college kids. I know so many of these faces.
I see people from my H. Phys class. I see people with whom I have walked the streets of New York. I see people with whom I have prayed in Connection Group. I see people from the Special Events team. I see freshmen and graduate students. I see fashion merchandising majors and aspiring engineers. I see people who are angry, people who are depressed, people who are joyful, people who are exhausted, and people who are perky.
And all of us are here because Jesus broke his body and shed his precious blood for us. For us! All of the descriptors that the word “us” includes, He loved us. Loves us.

When I get to my seat, I thank Him. The wafer crunches in my mouth as His body was crushed. The juice floods my mouth and rushes down my throat the same way His blood washes over all my sins.
Thank you, Jesus.

Leviticus

Leviticus is in the Bible for a reason.
This is my 6th time though it, and I’m still trying to convince myself of that statement. So I paid more attention this time.

Leviticus 14 tells the Israelites what to do if their house contracts leprosy:
1. Tell the priest to examine it.
2. Quarantine the house for seven days.
3. If not healed, scape the walls clean. Quarantine again.
4. If still not healed, dismantle the house and put it in an unclean place outside the camp.

That protocol came in handy tonight. I think we shall follow these Levitical laws in taking care of this chair, minus the priest bit:

On a more serious note, I have learned important lessons from Leviticus.
- God is Holy. Holy holy holy. He demands perfect sacrifices and ritual cleanliness.
- God knows exactly how He wants us to live, and He is merciful enough to tell us.
- Sacrifice is serious business. (See Leviticus 10)
- God took care of His people before they knew about the germ theory of disease by instituting cleanliness laws. (There are at least four chapters dealing with skin disease and bodily discharges.)
- Love your neighbor. Really.

And, I think most importantly,
- It is impossible to be perfectly blameless before God. No one can keep all His statutes.
That is, after all, the ultimate purpose of the Law: to show us that we cannot come to God without His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness. Christ is the perfect, unblemished, holy atonement sacrifice described in Leviticus, sacrificed to cleanse us in God’s sight once and for all.

And that, my friends, is why I continue to read Leviticus.