Joy and the Essence at the Heart of the Covenant

My schedule is pretty packed for the next three weeks so–though this is a new blog–future posts will probably have to wait till I get back. But I'll be keeping up with my email, replying to comments–and sending out bookmarks! :-)

Meanwhile, I wanted to share something with you all! Coming from “Our Reasonable Faith” by Herman Bavinck (which I actually have not read), it touches on the deepest reality of our life.

To begin with: I love (I mean really love) discussing sound doctrine and faith, but sound doctrine always has hands and feet. It’s played out 24/7 in everything we do. Our faith is in a real, perfect Person and He cares how we scrub out the kitchen sink and pick up spilled sewing pins on the living room carpet and spread fresh straw outdoors–and He commands us to have joy in all of it.

~“The prophets and apostles, and the saints generally who appear before us in the Old and New Testament and later in the church... did not sit and philosophize about God in abstracted concepts, but rather confessed what God meant to them and what they owed to Him in all the circumstances of life. God was for them not at all a cold concept, which they then proceeded to rationally analyze, but He was a living, personal force, a reality infinitely more real than the world around them. Indeed, He was to them the one, eternal, worshipful Being. They reckoned with Him in their lives, they lived in His tent, walked as if always before His face, served Him in His courts, and worshiped Him in His sanctuary.”~

We reckon with, walk before, serve, and worship the God who breaks mountains and builds them up again. The God who cast all the constellations across the sky on the day when the sons of God shouted for joy with a shaking sound of thunder. The God in whose face (to borrow a phrase from Tolkien) there is a fountain of mirth–enough to set a kingdom laughing. The God in whom we live and move and have our being. The God (not only in whose tent we dwell), but who is building us–us–frail, sin-prone creatures that we still are–into the glorious temple of His own dwelling place. The God who delights in us with singing and who has given His sure and certain word to hew and shape us–not only into fit stones for His temple–not only into faithful soldiers and citizens in His kingdom service–but into the very likeness of His Son. The Son who loves us with a white-hot heat of passion and who descended into the darkness and horror and tearing, ripping pain of death to win His bride. The Son who was raised from the dead and is the Firstborn over all creation, reigning at the right hand of His Father, who is our Father as well.

And that is grounds for earth-breaking joy. :-)