God's Infinitude

God doesn't extend into space; God contains space. C.S. Lewis said that if you could think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended in all directions, and if you took a pencil and made a line one inch long on it, that would be time. When you started to push your pencil it was the beginning of time, and when you lifted it off the paper it was the end of time. And all around, infinitely extended in all directions, is God. -- A.W. Tozer

Ann Voskamp: One Thousand Gifts

What in the world, in a world of certain loss, is grace?
And the more of the blessings I name, this theological problem deepens… If I am numbering gift moments to one thousand and now beyond—what moments in my life count as blessings? If I name this moment as gift, grace, what is the next moment? Curse? How do you know how to sift through a day, a life, and rightly read the graces, rightly ascertain the curses?
What is good? What counts as grace? What is the heart of God?
Do I believe in a God who rouses Himself just now and then to spill a bit of benevolence on hemorrhaging humanity? A God who breaks through the carapace of this orb only now and then, surprises us with a spared hand, a reprieve from sickness, a good job and a nice house in the burbs—and then finds Himself again too impotent to deal with all I see as suffering and evil? A God of sporadic, random, splattering goodness—that now and then splatters across a gratitude journal? Somebody tell me:
What are all the other moments? ….
To read His message in moments, I’ll need to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world.
Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world, because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, “I know. I know.”
The passion on the page is a Person, and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea but the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain. …
I stand in our bedroom by the window and hold a cue card to the light I’ve had for years, carried around with me. I can hardly now make out the water-splat words of Isaiah 14:24, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand” (NASB). As God plans … so it stands.
I read the faded ink below, and I remember what I felt the day I copied those words, “Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?” (Amos 3:6). And I feel it again today and I breathe: A good God plans everything. Everything. So a good God can only … make plans for good? He only gives good gifts? A thing of evil cannot be created by a good God? …
Without God’s Word as a lens, the world warps. …
I awaken to the strange truth — that all new life comes out of the dark places, and hasn’t it always been?
Out of darkness, God spoke forth the teeming life. That wheat round and ripe across all these fields, they swelled as hope embryos in womb of the black earth. Out of the dark, tender life unfurled. Out of my own inner pitch, six human beings emerged, new life, wet and fresh.
All new life labors out of the very bowels of darkness.
That fullest life itself dawns from nothing but Calvary darkness and tomb-cave black into the radiance of Easter morning.
Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way.
Then … yes: It is dark suffering’s umbilical cord that alone can untether new life.
It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace.
And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering….
My pain, my dark—all the world’s pain, all the world’s dark—it might actually taste sweet to the tongue, be the genesis of new life?
Yes. And emptiness itself can birth the fullness of grace because in the emptiness we have the opportunity to turn to God, the only begetter of grace, and there find all the fullness of joy.
So God transfigures all the world…
I have hacked my life up into grace moments and curse moments. The chopping that has cut myself off from the embracing love of a God who “does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow” (Lamentations 3:33), but labors to birth grief into greater grace. Isn’t this the crux of the gospel? The good news that all those living in the land of shadow of death have been birthed into new life, that the transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun.
That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart—and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son?
What in the world, in all this world, is grace?
I can say it certain now: All is grace.
I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved.
God is always good and I am always loved. …
And all is grace — only because all can transfigure.

To God be the glory. We sent out our first arrow in August -- only to find that the arrow, while flying strong and straight, was not enjoying the flight. John Jr. has found the isolation of New York City and a stark contrast to all he has grown up with, and has been valiantly fighting to press on. He appreciates the faculty and the classes and the mission of this brave little school. But living conditions are nearly unbearable.

So now our boy has a tough choice to make, and the choice is between him and the Lord. We have chosen not to intervene.

This is a new place for us. And the Lord has been extremely gracious in dealing with us. He has listened to the prayers of His people and has made both the option to stay and the option to come home more palatable for John. He did not have to do that. That is the hand of a gracious God, who knows his frame and meets him there.

Before, both options were oppressively bad in John's eyes: to stay meant agony and loneliness, to come home meant to give up any decent educational opportunities. But on Sunday, God showed us the option of many online classes with Patrick Henry College -- and allowed us to discover these one day before the application deadline. And then on Monday, He planted the desire in a dear friend to do a semester at The King's College this spring.

So now, the Lord has lightened the burden that weighs on John. He still has a choice to make. It still is not easy. But the lies that could flood the mind and cloud our thinking have been dispelled. God is not a harsh father, demanding that you do the thing you hate and caring nothing about your wants. God is a loving father, whose plan for His glory intersects perfectly with His plan for your good.

I can trust God with my son.

My Heart in Manhattan

I've talked to him nearly every day since he left, usually more than once. I have never loved or been so achingly proud of him. The last time I saw him (in person), he was racing to catch up with the other boys in the House of Reagan at The King's College, bound for a Circle Five boat tour on the Hudson River. His tie was flying back over his shoulder, and at the last minute he looked back at us, smiled and waved. Then we couldn't see him anymore. Other parents leave their children safely in a dorm room housed in some bucolic setting, with sloping green lawns and the ivory towers of academia. Not us. We left our son walking down a sidewalk in Manhattan, looking back over his shoulder, grinning and waving.

I would not have chosen any other way.

Not that this has been easy. Not that even he is entirely sold on it yet.

But the Lord in His Providence has led us here. And the lessons so far are both painful and sweet. I can't even write them yet, because they are still being written in life. I don't want to smudge the ink on what is still so fresh and incomplete. But all of it I am storing in my heart, and all of it matters so very, very much and is so different than I ever could have imagined. I praise God for His story, His mercy, His faithfulness and His very real presence right now.