It is good to have great parents. . .
Today I got up to find this email in my box from DOD (Dear Old Dad):
History is still HIS story. In all that is happening Jesus is Lord and is present in the process. He has not abandoned the remnant. STAND AND HAVING DONE ALL STAND!
DOD
As usual, DOD has packed a big amount of truth into a short email. I don’t know about you, but I needed this today.
History is still HIS story.
Jesus is in charge of history. As Augustine points out, this is not obvious from the news. Our news is selected for us by broken people (like we are) and we lose the big picture of what God is doing. This cosmos in interconnected, science proves this, and so any small action, even as small as my writing this post, connects with every other action past and present.
Jesus is always shaping history so that the best outcome possible, compatible with the cosmos He made, is happening. Think of all the beings to whom God gave motion, some degree of autonomy, and all the human free choices. Just our dispositions change everything. Jesus keeps all of this running smoothly toward the most merciful, loving, and just outcome.
We are in a highly complicated story, but we know this truth: it will end the best way any story can. History will end with a glorious party where gratuitous pain will be gone and joy will be full. God’s character, His total goodness, is our guarantee that this is so.
In all that is happening, Jesus is Lord and is present in the process.
The prophet Habakkuk saw Babylon swallowing up Judah when Babylon was more evil than Judah. How could this be? God showed the prophet that God’s purposes are hard to see, but that at some point, all wickedness is judged. God uses His order because God does not judge wickedness the way we do. He sees all: every context and every connection.
Whenever I think of this, I am not immediately comforted because this makes God seem like some Giant Rational Good Outcome Machine. He is not. He is also a person. He came into history in the person of Jesus and took on Himself the pain of the entire world. He does not just make rational choices, but also compassionate choices.
Jesus weeps with me when there is necessary pain and He rejoices with me when I get a sneak preview of the awesome party to come.
He has not abandoned the remnant.
All through Biblical history the true believers, those with right belief and practice, have been a minority. Orthodoxy has known more periods of martyrdom than of power and the evangelical message is rejected more often than accepted. This is what it means to be in a broken world.
Our object is to be in the remnant (God helping us) that does justice and loves mercy. We want to be God’s children in deed and not just in word. If we can be part of the remnant, we have Jesus’ promise that He will not abandon us. He did not abandon his daughter, the righteous gentile Corrie Ten Boom, in the Nazi concentration camps. He did not abandon Saint Elizabeth Romanov in the pit where the Communists threw her. Corrie lived to testify that God was enough there and Saint Elizabeth was heard, as she died, singing the songs of Zion. Her last acts were to tear her own clothes and bind the wounds of a brother.
This is good news: in victory or in defeat, Jesus is here. Jesus loves me. This I know.
STAND AND HAVING DONE ALL STAND.
I love this wisdom from God and DOD quotes it frequently. We don’t have to attack or run. We must stand. We wait on God in His armor for His victory. The battle is not ours to win, but God’s.
I hope The Saint Constantine School will be a place for the remnant to stand. Jesus is with us here and everywhere. We can stand firm and in love in Him.
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