The Works of God

Hannah’s eighth grade graduation was last night.  I had never been to an eighth grade graduation before.

I wasn’t too surprised when the worship song to open the ceremony was Our God by Chris Tomlin.  The woman who leads the young people in their chapel uses excellent judgment in her choice of music and lessons.

But I was surprised – and delighted – at what happened after that:

• The valedictorian concluded her speech with a reference to Jeremiah 29:11:
  • For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
• The father who was invited to speak (who told us he was not a pastor) did a really nice exposition on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:
  • So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
  • When I say ‘nice’ I don’t mean it was pleasant; I mean he dug into it in really helpful ways. When I thanked him for it afterward, his first response was to honor God.
• The salutatorians closed the ceremony with prayer “because that’s what we do here.”

I was expecting a nice evening; what God provided was wonderful blessing and encouragement.

Paul, as usual, was not impressed by any of this.

Hannah, as usual, wasn’t the least bit upset or embarrassed by her brother.

Some of God’s most encouraging gifts come at the most unexpected times.  It was a good day, indeed.

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In 2007 Pastor John was preaching in 1 Peter 3:1-7 on The Beautiful Faith of Fearless Submission.

This statement then and now reminded me of my Dianne:

So verse 5 said that the holy women of old hoped in God. And then verse 6 gives Sarah, Abraham’s wife, as an example and then refers to all other Christian women as her daughters. Verse 6b: “And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”

So this portrait of Christian womanhood is marked first by hope in God and then what grows out of that hope, namely, fearlessness. She does not fear the future; she laughs at the future. The presence of hope in the invincible sovereignty of God drives out fear. Or to say it more carefully and realistically, the daughters of Sarah fight the anxiety that rises in their hearts. They wage war on fear, and they defeat it with hope in the promises of God.

Today is Dianne’s birthday.

I’ve observed that the anniversary of another year of life produces great anxiety in some people.  Not true for her.

She also has an infusion appointment today related to her cancer.  For more than seven years she has endured an almost-monthly reminder that this life is unpredictable and the future is unknown to us.  She doesn’t live with anxiety about that either.

Not perfectly, of course.  Pastor John was right and wise to say we must wage war on fear.

God has granted her the faith to fight, and to make this Proverb a reality in our home:

Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. (Proverbs 31:25 ESV)

I am a very blessed man and very grateful to God for my wife!

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Do you have authors that just the thought of their next book gets you excited?  Then you’ll know how I felt when I learned that Crossway was publishing something by Michael Beates!

We’re about two months away from the public release of his book, Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace.

He has lived this life of disability longer than I have, starting when his oldest daughter, Jessica, was born with a chromosomal anomaly.  Everything I have seen by him has resonated spiritual depth, emotional maturity and deep affections for his family.

I found a short article he wrote in LIFT, a newsletter of the LIFT Disability Network in Florida, where he compares the experiences of Job, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his wife, Mary, and concludes how each experienced Jesus. Emphasis in bold is mine:

Through the similarities and the differences — Job, Jesus’ Mary, and my Mary — the three share a common conviction: they know their Redeemer lives! Job looked forward, hoping in faith to look on his Redeemer. Mary of Nazareth beheld the face of her Redeemer throughout His earthly life. My Mary looks back through the eyes of Scripture to the story, and forward like Job to the prospect of being finally and fully in the presence of the Redeemer. And we are confident because of God’s covenant promises that with us around the throne will be Jessica — whole and finally, perfectly able to praise her Redeemer.

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We interrupt our normal subject to celebrate God’s goodness to his people at Bethlehem – the overwhelming affirmation of Dr. Jason Meyer as Associate Pastor for Preaching and Vision!

In a few weeks following his installation we can officially call him Pastor Jason.  I think I’ll start now.  I love my pastors; it isn’t a title I use lightly, and hopefully always with affection.

Here the elders are praying following the announcement of the vote.

As always, our hope does not rest on any man except for the God-man Jesus Christ.  But isn’t God good to give us men who long for us to know God more clearly and passionately!

The worship in music before the meeting began was also sweet, including the music below.  God is good!

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I’m pretty sure most of you have already seen this video somewhere!  But I’m a sucker for boys born with no eyes and cleft palates – since I have one.  That’s a pretty rare combination.

Please pray for this young mom – she’s still very new to this life.

I’ve included a picture of Paul below when he was a baby.  Those were hard days. But they weren’t all bad, either.

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I really enjoyed this story about Claire Lomas who took 16 days to complete the London Marathon.  Why 16 days?  She’s paralyzed!  And she was using bionic suit!  How great is that!

Just think about the other new things that are coming to help equip people with disabilities (and probably everyone else) for their service to the world for God’s glory!

But before we get too excited about how great we are in making things, we should remember that what’s hard or even impossible for us is really, really easy for God:

And great crowds came to (Jesus), bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:30-31 ESV)

Someday God will make ‘all things new’ (Revelation 21:5) without breaking a sweat.  Until then, it is good to apply time, energy and intellect to things that serve people, like bionic suits, for God’s glory and for their good.

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George Will offered a great gift to families like ours when he wrote about his son with Down syndrome this past week:

He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.

I’m grateful God placed Jon Will into a family that includes a man who is read in newspapers and watched on television all over the world.  George Will has been a helpful voice for those living with disabilities.

But Justin Taylor, on his blog, offered a greater gift in his comments on George Will’s article:

In the fight for human dignity—which includes caring for the unborn, caring for orphans, caring for those with disabilities—we need to see hearts changed by the gospel and laws changed in the land. But we also need a cultural of encouragement for those who are in need, and more stories like this can only help.

And I pray that George Will, who is an agnostic, will recognize that the only basis for human dignity is our equality before our Creator, who made each of us in his image, and that redemption can only be found in the person and in the work of Jesus Christ.

I see Justin’s response as the greater gift for two reasons:

1. Justin points to Jesus.  That is so much more important than anything else anyone has to say about disability or any other topic.
2. Justin doesn’t have to point to disability, but he has come back to it time and again over the years.  His is a clear, consistent, Biblical call for the entire church, not just those of us directly impacted, to see this issue as important.  Those of us who live with this as a daily issue in our families owe men like him a great debt for his service.

God knows what he is doing, and I am grateful to God for Justin Taylor’s voice on this issue, for God’s glory and for our good.

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