Hello and happy Thursday,
The family is just back from a weekend in the North Carolina mountains. Families here tend to either be beach people or mountain people; we are mountain people through and through. I prefer the beach in the wintertime when there’s no one there.
We stayed in a house on a hill rightly named “The Tree House;” it was built into a steep incline grown up with oaks and magnolias. Our dog climbed more stairs over the long weekend than I think he’s done in his entire life (he is not allowed upstairs in our home). We visited bookstores and coffee shops; we wandered around in the woods and tried a zipline; we sat around and read and played old-school arcade games (that came with the house!).
The Part Where There’s an Essay: I Went to the Mountains Last Weekend
On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. Psalm 145:5
The Scripture says “do not love the world or the things in the world”1 but -- do not be deceived, my brethren.
Blackberries bursting forth off the vine, weighing down branches across gravel steps
Thick wispy mist billowing down into valleys, hemming in and hiding
Fat round raindrops beating on a tin roof and pouring down into gullies, racing for the creek
These are not things of this world. They are heralds of the next.
They go ahead and behind us, calling. Reminding. They shout; they make plain His glory.
He upholds these by the word of His power.2 He creates and recreates every moment.
Why then do we strain -- why do we struggle to be of our own making? We resist any evidence that we have not made ourselves. We shout against the created order, longing instead to be self-established.
We long to be creators instead of creations. We might join in the happy chorus which the morning stars began, but we resist. We desire autonomy instead, believing the lie that we craft a better melody.
God help us to wade into the waters -- to feel the current and sing along as we follow the streams of mercy.
For the Anglophiles
The UK government is in transition again after Boris Johnson’s resignation last week. That means it’s prime time for the BBC to break out its flowcharts. I became a big fan of the charts when Teresa May was riding out the last months of her administration on the eve of Brexit. There are lots of if this/then that in the UK process; it is not for the faint of heart. Here’s what might have happened if Johnson had not resigned and MPs had called for a vote of no confidence:
CHARTS! GRAPHS! It’s like the electoral college but with lots more arrows. You can find these most often over at the BBC politics page.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Lore Wilbert tells us what she saw: What Happens When a Pastor Repents. A lovely portrait here of how Matt Chandler handled himself humbly in the wake of trouble at The Village Church.
Our weekend in the mountains last week brought some extra reading time for me. I enjoyed Alissa Wilkinson’s Salty, a collection of short biographies of women who loved food and loved what it does for people. One of the women she writes about is the late Edna Lewis, cookbook author and food writer extraordinaire. Lewis was a remarkable Southern chef who stewarded a kitchen in New York City during the days when Southern food was looked down upon as “what poor people ate.” She never made biscuits, but Truman Capote always talked her into making him a few. Lewis’ beautiful essay “What is Southern?” was published by Gourmet magazine after her death. Spend a few minutes with this beauty. You might be hungry when you’re done.
Samuel James insists that You Can’t Possibly Believe That, just like everyone else on the internet. “This is how intelligent, honest, pious people nonetheless start to think and act like talk show personalities. It’s not that certain ideas are winning. It’s that the need for connection is winning.”
How quick come the reasons for doing what we like! - Jane Austen, Persuasion
I John 2:15
Heb 1:3