Ben's Top Ten List

My good friend, Ben House, just couldn't wait to one-up my top ten list from yesterday's blog! He had to get in his picks--and lo and behold, there are no overlaps! Great picks; just different! So here they are, Ben's nods to his best books of 2004:

My wife has a real problem. I don’t know if it’s characteristic of all women or just her. She doesn’t understand the nature of work. By that I mean real work, the kind of work that I do. It’s not that my wife does not work hard herself; she just does not grasp my great labors.

Let me illustrate this. Most evenings, she is in the kitchen for several hours cooking and cleaning. Along with that she is bathing the children and getting clothes and lunches ready for the next day. Meanwhile I am at my workstation; some would call it a couch. I prop up several pillows, adjust the lamp, and read. Usually I have several books to read from along with a magazine or two. I would love to be doing housework or home repairs or rebuilding a carburetor, but I have to read. First, I have to read my homework assignments for the classes I teach: I cannot expect my students to read if I am not reading. Second, I have to read from books related to the subjects I teach. Since I teach history and literature, almost every book ever written is related to our current classroom topics. Then I have to read something as a diversion, a bit of cultural rounding not found in the ongoing required reading. And what about my soul? I have to read something to nourish the soul.

To add to this marital problem, I have over the past year been successful at writing book reviews that have been published or posted on the Internets (plural by executive Presidential decree). Now more than ever I have to read; then I have to write—this too is work. I keep explaining to my wife how important my book reviews and articles are to my literary career. She keeps asking a most unliterary question, “What do they pay?” Once in a fit of anger I responded by saying, “I guess you would prefer if I were a lawyer and made millions of dollars and hated my job.” Her answer to that was likewise not very literary.

In the future, I hope someone does do a review of my reviews. For now I have to settle for what future biographers will call ‘the years of obscurity.’ In this time of obscurity, I have found much delight in ranking and commenting upon my favorite reads over the past year. Now that 2005 is here, I can now announce my favorite books read from 2004.

1. The Genevan Reformation and the Founding of America by David Hall (Lexington Books, 2003). Bible believing people are being given the credit (or blame) for Pres. Bush’s reelection. But Christians have roots in this land preceding the recent election. America’s founding and greatness can be ascribed in large part to our Christian heritage. (Of course, the real credit and glory is God’s alone.) In particular, America was mainly founded and established by John Calvin’s theological heirs. Dr. Hall’s book proves this case overwhelmingly in this book, which is vital to understanding America’s colonial and early national history. Along with Calvin, other continental European Christians, Puritans in England, and Covenanters in Scotland laid the groundwork for what would become the American experiment. Much of the book focuses upon these Christian political thinkers and followers of Calvin. Massachusetts was once chocked full of Puritans and New Jersey was once brimming with Presbyterians. This book has no shallow end, but it is worth the effort to swim through.

2. Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein. In the 1964 election, there were only five red states. Only about 40% of the American voters cast ballots for the conservative Republican candidate. The campaign was so divisive that it would have made Michael Moore look like Santa Claus. The astounding victory of the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson seemed to assure a golden age of Big Brother-Great Society Liberalism. The conservative movement looked like the last old dinosaur limping off in search of a blade of grass. But some things flame up quickly and some things smolder for a long time. The spark that made the difference was Ronald Reagan, who made his maiden political address during the 1964 campaign. Any study of current American politics should begin with this book.

3. Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford Press, 2004). Everyone knows the painting—a stern Washington standing at the helm of the boat crossing the ice filled Delaware River. This is a wonderful account not only of the battle of Trenton, but of the whole campaign with an overview of the War for Independence. Fischer is a fine historian who writes with wit and eloquence. He has taken one of American history’s most exciting stories and told it fully and told it well. This book shows how Washington’s leadership, blessed by providential circumstances, turned the course of the war. Before the crossing of the Delaware, the American cause looked hopeless; after the crossing, the British commanders began losing hope of winning the war.

4. The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi (Free Press, 2002). Francis Schaeffer once said that most people get their worldviews the same way they get the measles. Not so with Lewis and Freud. Both of these men carefully and laboriously erected worldviews based on upbringing, on World War I, on their examination of religious beliefs, and on their prodigious reading and thinking. Freud abandoned his father’s Jewish beliefs for atheism. Lewis abandoned atheism for Christianity. Read a hundred writers and thinkers and you will still have to narrow the choices down to either the worldview of Lewis or Freud. This may be one of the most defining studies of the 20^th century ever written.

5. The Idiot by Fydor Dostoevsky (A New Translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Everyman’s Library). One of my yearly reading patterns is to tackle a great big Russian novel each summer. Last year I read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; this year Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. My Bulgarian friend, Bojidar Marinov, a true intellectual Christian thinker, says that Americans overlook lots of great Russian writers besides Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But I do not have enough summers even to read those two giants. I did not enjoy The Idiot while I was reading it. I was often as confused and lost as any American would be in a vast Russian landscape. But if it’s a classic, I plod on. Only after I finished the book and backed away did I see it. The message is that in this warped and wicked world, a truly good man, trying to save it, is really only an idiot. Dostoevsky reminds us that only in Christ’s atoning work is there any hope.

6. Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth. This book appealed to me because of a growing interest in J.R.R. Tolkien and a long time interest in World War I and the Twentieth Century. Tolkien was part of the university-educated class of men who made up the bulk of the British army’s officer corps. These bright young lads, fresh from the fields of soccer and from the halls of Oxford and Cambridge, headed off to war carrying copies of The Iliad. Not many survived the horrors of trench warfare. In the introduction to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien points out that only one of his close friends survived the war. Tolkien himself survived the war itself because, providentially, he became ill and was removed from active duty. More amazingly, he survived the pessimistic hopelessness that engulfed the Lost Generation of the war’s survivors. The battlefields of WWI would be recreated in the descriptions of Mordor, but the merry men of the Shire, not the evil minions of Mordor, would ultimately triumph in Tolkien’s Christian vision.

7. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Re-reading this book for school last fall, it was a case of love at third sight. Now Cooper has his critics, most notably and enjoyably, Mark Twain. Cooper’s style is wordy, his dialog stilted, the action slow, and the characters somewhat flat. But this man created the American novel; he was the first to write of American Indians; and his narrative of Natty Bumpo and his Indian companion Chingachgook during the French and Indian War is a first rate adventure. This book deals with the tenuous nature of man’s time on earth. The time of the Red Men was ending. The British and the French were fighting for land neither would ultimately possess. The American heirs to the land had to learn how to survive in it and how to keep it. Lots of great themes emerge in the book: Race and ethnic distinctions, the necessity of violence for survival, and balancing the advance of civilization with the preservation of the land.

8. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton. Reading G. K.C. makes me realize that if I were 18 and had read and discovered what I have now read and discovered, I would be smart. Being way past 18, I am one sad but wise fellow. If I could trade my college degree (throwing in a master’s in education for good measure) for a thorough knowledge of Chesterton’s works, I would be far better off. No study of Antiquity or early man can be complete without reading this book. This book so pulverizes many of the false assumptions of Darwinian science and evolutionary sociology that one wonders how the enemy yet stands. This book was a landmark in the long path to C. S. Lewis’s conversion. It is worthy of many readings.

9. Quo Vadis by Henrik Sienkiewicz. This is a long novel set in the time period after the Book of Acts. It humanizes the story of the spread of the Christian faith in Rome, the persecutions under Nero, and the conflict between Christianity and Paganism. Although it is fiction, it nevertheless warms the soul and fleshes out the history of a critical period of the Christian faith. George Grant recommends the recent translation of this Christian epic done by W.S. Kuniczak, published by Hippocrene Books.

10. Ripples of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson. Two years ago, Hanson’s book Carnage and Culture was my #1 pick of the year. The greatest fault of this book is its brevity. It covers aspects of three battles: the Battle of Okinawa in World War II, the Battle of Shiloh in the American War Between the States, and a battle from the Peloponnesian War. The ‘ripples’ Hanson deals with are all of the unintended consequences of battle. The consequences go beyond winners and losers and battlefield statistics: Every life connected with the battle is changed forever. Hanson’s military writings are all outstanding. His book Who Killed Homer? (coauthored by John Heath) is an excellent survey of Greek literary achievements and modern academic embarrassments.

Ten great books. (More detailed book reviews by me are available on numbers 1-7). There were many other good books and authors read, taught, enjoyed, dipped into, and gleaned from, all of whom did not make the rank. Authors like C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Virgil, Aristotle, Paul Johnson, Augustine, and George Grant will have to rest on their own laurels without my coveted honors.

For me now, it’s back to the couch. I have a new stack of books that I got for Christmas and my December 28 birthday. My wife is laboring away in the kitchen, and I too must get to work.

One Disaster After Another

We are all too quick to forget. The fact is, we live in a world of woe. Sin has ravaged God’s good creation in horrific ways. The stunning destruction of life in the tsunami disaster this past week, only highlights the fact that history is often little more than a mind-boggling, bone-jarring, and soul-wrenching litany of sorrows—making the very real and substantial hope of the Gospel all the more remarkable. Consider:

1556: In the Chinese province of Shensi the most deadly earthquake in history resulted in an astonishing 830,000 deaths.

1976: Tangshan, China suffered an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter Scale. Twenty square miles of the vast city was utterly devastated. Three years later, the New China News Agency released figures following the inaugural Congress of the Chinese Seismological Society which claimed 242,000 dead and 164,000 injured. But, the U.S. Geological Society estimated that the actual death toll was probably nearer 655,000.

1642: Chinese provincial rebels destroyed the Kaifeng seawall; as a result more than 300,000 people drowned in the coastal floodwaters.

1970: Some 200,000 people in eastern Pakistan were swept away to their deaths by a cyclone-driven tidal wave from the Bay of Bengal.

1138: A deadly earthquake in Aleppo, Syria claimed the lives of at least 230,000 people.

856: Multiple historical records indicate that more than 200,000 people were killed in central Persia (modern Iran) in one of the deadliest earthquakes on record.

1920: In Jiangsu Province, China, an earthquake measuring 8.6 in magnitude killed more than 200,000 people.

1927: A magnitude 7.9 earthquake claimed approximately 200,000 victims in and around Xining, China.

1923: The Great Kanto Earthquake, estimated at 7.9 in magnitude, destroyed one third of Tokyo and most of Yokohama, leaving 2.5 million people homeless. The quake resulted in the Great Tokyo Fire. Floods followed as the rivers Fukuro Chiyo and Takimi burst their banks. At least 143,000 people were killed, although unofficial estimates say as many as 300,000 may have died.

1991: A cyclone killed over 131,000 and left as many as 9 million homeless in southeast Bangladesh. But thousands more died from hunger and water-borne diseases in the weeks and months afterward.

1948: An earthquake measuring 7.3 in magnitude killed at least 110,000 people in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

1228: More than 100,000 people drowned in Friesland, when a North Sea storm surge flooded much of Holland’s lowlands.

1908: The city of Messina was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake. The death toll ranged anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 throughout Sicily and southern Italy. A tidal wave followed, causing even more devastation to the town of Reggio across the straits.

1755: An earthquake leveled much of the city of Lisbon and was felt as far away as southern France and North Africa. More than 70,000 were killed.

1970: An earthquake measuring 7.8 magnitude destroyed the northern Peruvian towns of Casma, Huaraz and Chimbote. A quake-induced rock and snow avalanche on Mt. Huascaran buried the towns of Yungay and Ranrahirca. There were some 66,794 people killed and more than 400,000 were left homeless.

2003: An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale left more than 41,000 confirmed dead as the entire ancient city of Bam, Iran collapsed into a heap of rubble.

1985: An earthquake registering 8.1 in magnitude struck central and southwest regions of Mexico, devastating part of the capital city and three coastal states. Somewhere between 12,000 and 25,000 were killed and another 40,000 were injured.

1976: A 7.5 magnitude quake and the resulting mudslides caused horrific destruction just north of Guatemala City, leaving over 23,000 dead, 80,000 people injured, and 1.5 million homeless.

1993: Up to 22,000 people were killed and 36 villages were destroyed after a series of powerful earthquakes rocked western and southern India. The first of the five tremors measured 6.4 in magnitude.

1999: Heavy rains caused catastrophic flooding and mudslides, killing an estimated 5,000 to 20,000 people, in Venezuela’s worst modern-day natural disaster.

The historical evidence is simply that our fallen world is a dangerous world. This is nothing new--despite what the harum-scarum prophecy "experts" may contend. "The whole creation groans for the day of redemption." It always has. And until Christ's triumphant return, it always will.

Top Ten List

I decided I would compile a list of the ten best books I read in 2004 a couple of days ago. Even though my reading has been very deliberately ecclectic for the past several years, even I was surprised by what I ended up writing down. Despite the fact that I read a good bit of serious theology, nary a volume from that genre made the list. And I read fiction voraciously, yet only one novel made the list. I love books on art and architecture, but I don't read all that widely in the area--nevertheless, the list seems to be dominated by such books. At any rate, here's my surprising list:

1. On Writing by Eudora Welty (Modern Library) This new collection of old essays is a delight. It is far and away the most inspring book I read this year. It is a very thin volume so I've already read it cover to cover three times. I'm resolved to read this master of Southern fiction more thoroughly this year--there are still a host of her novels and short stories that I have yet to enjoy.

2. Art: A New History by Paul Johnson (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) I read everything Paul Johnson writes if I possibly can. I find his histories indispensible. His essays are delightful. But, it seems to me that this is the book he was born to write. It is monstrously huge, but I when I found out that he had cut nearly 25% of the book out, I lamented that I did not access to those additional 180 pages and 72 illustrations and color plates.

3. Building Codes: The Aesthetics of Calvinism in 17th Century France by Catherine Randall (Penn) This book is stunning. It brilliantly combines several of my deepest passions: Reformation history, architecture, worldview applicability, and prophetic clarity. It also is adorned with fabulous pen and ink renderings of some of the most amazing buildings in the history of the modern world.

4. The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker (Piquant) This splendid six-volume set is a gold mine of wisdom and insight. Rookmaaker, who was a friend and aesthetic mentor to Francis Schaeffer, was a prolific art historian and critic who laid the philosophical foundations for a whole new generation of Christian artistic dynamism.

5. To the Lost City by Colin Thubron (Chatto and Windus) Thubron is one of my favorite contemporary novelists and perhaps the best travel writer currently working today. He combines both of his very different disciplines in this remarkable novel of cultural clashes, psychological tensions, and interpersonal interactions. And he undertakes it all with a prose style that is breathtakingly beautiful.

6. The School of Infancy by Jan Comenius (Chapel Hill) This classic work from the father of modern Christian education outlines his vision for Reformational and Classical education. It is a vision that is as relevant, applicable, and essential today as it was three centuries ago.

7. Modern Painters by John Ruskin (Hurst) This three volume set represents Ruskin's finest and most eccentric work of criticism. Here the 19th century's most sage observer of aesthetics ranges widely over the whole field of artistic vision. I felt like I had gotten several semesters of art school under my belt by the time I had turned the final page.

8. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd (Doubleday) I try to read everything Ackroyd writes too--but he is even harder to keep with than Paul Johnson is. In this volume, he looks at the uniqueness of English literature and the peculiar culture it has developed. His wide knowledge is a marvel in and of itself--but to convey that knowledge so coherently is really beyond fathoming. This is a book to savor over long winter evenings by the fireside with one of those C.S. Lewis-sized cups of tea at the ready.

9. Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile by Joseph Pearce (HarperCollins) The prolific biographer of Chesterton, Belloc, Wilde, Tolkien, and Lewis has delivered another tour de force. Solzhenitsyn is sorely neglected by the literatti and this work shows why. All the more reason to distrust the literatti! All the more reason to read the entire Solzhenitsyn corpus!

10. Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson (Penguin) If I could make a required reading list for every elected official in Washington, I would probably create quite a pile of classics. But, at least two of the books I would select are brand new: Niall Ferguson's Empire published two years ago and Colossus published this last year. These are both are literate, wise, witty, sober, and thoroughly sane--but somebody please sneak this newest one into the White House! And hurry!

Tsunami Relief

UN pronouncements notwithstanding, American Christians have already begun to respond with overwhelming generosity even as the magnitude of the Asian tsunami disaster becomes all too evident. Two of the organizations presently on the ground delivering much needed emergency aid to the hardest hit areas are also among the most effective in connecting Word and deed: Food for the Hungry and Samaritan's Purse. If you have wondered where your charitable giving might have the best and most immediate humanitarian and Gospel impact, I encourage you to visit their websites and donate today. You might also want to consider supporting King's Meadow's discipling and educational work at the classical Christian school in Jakarta, Indonesia--now more vital than ever before--though at this point, the relief work of organizations like Food for the Hungry and Samaritan's Purse must assume first priority.

The "Happy Holidays" Flap

The banning of carols, creches, and Christ from a season that only has a whit of significance precisely because of carols, creches, and Christ is more than a little ironic for all of the obvious reasons. But it is more than a little ironic for all of the not so obvious reasons as well. For instance, the politically-correct season's greeting is now "happy holidays!" This uber-chic replacement for the outre-gauche "merry Christmas" is itself fraught with difficulty. It is a difficulty that has been equally ignored by the well-intended defenders of Christmas tradition and the iconoclastic secular-Scrooges.

The difficulty is simply that the word "holiday" is just an alternate spelling for "Holy Day." According to Samuel Johnson's authoritative English Dictionary, the definitions of "holiday or Holy Day" include:

1. The day of some ecclesiastical festival within Christendom;

2. An anniversary feast day on the Christian liturgical calendar;

3. A day of gaiety and joy in light of Gospel truth;

4. A rare occurence of God's grace.

Replete with example quotations and epigrams from Shakespeare, Milton, Ainsworth, Walker, Dryden, and Pope, Johnson's definitions highlight the great irony of modern disputes about language, culture, history, and worldview: we are so ignorant of language, culture, history, and worldview that it is all too common for both sides of an argument to actually miss the point of the argument.

The next time Target, the ACLU, Macy's, and the public schools decide to play the role of Grinch to sweep into Whoville in an effort to steal away every vestige of Christian civilization, they probably ought to do their homework a little more thoroughly. And the next time some well-intentioned Christian decides to defend us all from such cultural conspiracies, perhaps they ought to do their homework as well.

The whole flap rather smacks of one of Johnson's illustrative epigrams from Dryden, "Courage, like intelligence, is but a holiday kind of virtue, only seldomly exercised."

Ho ho ho! Happy Holy Days, indeed.

A Resolve to Pray Twelve Days of Christmas

Today in the midst of our series on Nehemiah, I taught on the subject of prayer. Nehemiah was a remarkable prayer warrior--a fact that we often overlook when we focus on all of his other leadership traits. I am convinced however that it was his life-long resolve to be a man of prayer that made him so effective in all of his nation-building endeavors.

I am equally convinced that Nehemiah's example in this regard ought to wrest our attentions from all other distractions if we are to have any hope of undertaking such culture-restoring work in our own time.

By all accounts, prayer is the universal language of the soul. There is hardly a Christian who does not know of prayer’s importance, prayer’s power, and prayer’s solace. The irony of course is that there also is hardly a Christian who does not struggle to actually make prayer a priority in their daily lives. Prayer may be our unconscious heart-cry in times of distress; it may be the currency of our spiritual vitality; but prayer, as a hallmark of our deep and committed soul-bond, our communion with Almighty God, is an exceptionally rare and precious jewel.

We tend to take our time with God in snatches. We throw out petitions rapid-fire on the run. At best, we rush through our laundry lists of wants and needs. Even in the corporate life of the church prayer gets short shrift--only briefly imposed like charms at predictable intervals in worship services, business meetings, and meals. The great romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge sadly observed, “The act of praying is the very highest energy of which the human mind is capable; praying that is, with the total concentration of the faculties on God. The great mass of worldly men, learned men, and yea, even religious men is absolutely incapable of such prayer.”

In contrast, the heroes of the faith through the ages have always been, like Nehemiah, diligent, vigilant, and constant in prayer. They humbled themselves before God with prayers, petitions, and supplications always acknowledging their utter dependency upon His mercy and grace. Athanasius prayed five hours each day. Augustine once set aside eighteen months to do nothing but pray. Bernard of Clairveaux would not begin his daily activities until he had spent at least three hours in prayer. John Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer--beginning well before dawn. John Fletcher regularly spent all night in prayer. His greeting to friends was always, “Do I meet you praying?” Martin Luther often commented, “I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.” Francis Asbury rose each morning at four in order to spend two hours in prayer. Samuel Rutherford began praying at three. If ever Joseph Alleine heard other craftsmen plying their business before he was up, he would exclaim, “Oh how this shames me. Doth not my master deserve more than theirs?” John Calvin, John Knox, and Theodore Beza vowed to one another to devote two hours daily to prayer. John Welch thought the day ill-spent if he did not spend eight or ten hours in prayer. On and on and on we could go. “The story of prayer,” E.M. Bounds once said, “is the story of great achievements.”

We know too that the Scriptures are brimming over with exhortations to likewise be constant in prayer: “Oh, give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing psalms to Him; talk of all His wondrous works! Glory in His holy name; let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord! Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore” (1 Chronicles 16:8-11). “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Clearly, we are to be men and women of prayer. We are to pray with whole-heartedness (Jeremiah 29:13). We are to pray with contrition (2 Chronicles 7:14). We are to pray with all faith (Mark 11:24). We are to pray with righteous fervor (James 5:16). We are to pray out of obedience (1 John 3:22) and with full confidence (John 15:7). We are to pray in the morning (Mark 1:35), in the evening (Mark 6:46), and during the night watch (Luke 6:12). This is because in accord with the good providence of God, prayer is a dynamic means of grace. It binds and it looses (Matthew 18:18). It casts down and it raises up (Mark 11:23-24). It ushers in peace (1 Timothy 2:1-2), forgiveness (Mark 11:25), healing (James 5:14-15), liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17), wisdom (1 Kings 3:3-14), and protection (Psalm 41:2). Clearly, “the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).

Samuel Chadwick, a Puritan of great renown, once wrote, “Satan dreads nothing but prayer. Alas, activities are multiplied that prayer may be ousted, and organizations are increased that prayer may have no chance. The one concern of the devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” Thus, Homer W. Hodge could say, “Prayer should be the breath of our breathing, the thought of our thinking, the soul of our feeling, the life of our living, the sound of our hearing, and the growth of our growing. Prayer is length without end, width without bounds, height without top, and depth without bottom; illimitable in its breadth, exhaustless in height, fathomless in depths, and infinite in extension. Oh, for determined men and women who will rise early and really burn for God. Oh for a faith that will sweep into heaven with the early dawning of morning and have ships from a shoreless sea loaded in the soul's harbor ere the ordinary laborer has knocked the dew from the scythe or the lackluster has turned from his pallet of straw to spread nature's treasures of fruit before the early buyers. Oh, for such.”

The question of course, is how? How in the world are we ever to recover this extraordinary Biblical perspective of the priority of prayer? In the midst of our 24/7/365 rush, how do we actually find the time, establish the discipline, and attain the focus necessary for genuine intimacy with the Lord? When our lives seem inescapably governed by the business of busyness and the tyranny of the urgent, how do we do what we know we ought to do, what we know we need to do, what we know we really must do? How are we to “really burn for God” like the saints of yore?

Surely guilt-tripping won’t work—most of us have tried that at one time or another. If you’re anything like me, sheer discipline works for a few days at best. Then my resolve starts to lessen, my mind starts to wander, and my body gets fidgety. Most of us would readily confess that we would like nothing better than to have prayer be “the breath of our breathing, the thought of our thinking, the soul of our feeling, the life of our living, the sound of our hearing, and the growth of our growing.” But we’ve tried and tried, to little or no avail. Our hearts and minds and lives are cluttered with a thousand distractions. Our time and effort and energy are claimed by a million other demands. So, what to do? How should we then pray?

There is a very simple and practical answer. According to Thomas Chalmers, the great Scottish pastor, reformer, and educator, what is needed for the total reordering of our hearts and minds for prayer is “the expulsive power of a new affection.” In other words, it is a greater love that pushes aside all other competing affections, all other insistent concerns, and all other noisome bothers. It is not a consuming discipline that will make us more constant in prayer; it is a consuming love. It is a love that pushes aside—with expulsive power—every other lesser love.

When a man or a woman falls in love. Chalmers reminds us, no one needs to tell them to “think continually on the object of their affection.” No one needs to remind lovers to spend their every waking moment pondering the beauties, the excellencies, and the delights of their beloved. No one needs to prod them into spending time conversing into the wee hours of the night. No one needs to help them develop the discipline of shutting out other distractions. The smitten can think of little else. There is nothing more exciting for them. They want nothing more than to spend time with, to nurture intimacy with, and to commune with their new affection.

All throughout the Scriptures we see this principle at work in the lives of the faithful. The priority place of prayer in their lives was the result of the expulsive power of a new affection. Abraham was a man of prayer. He was “the friend of God” and thus, enjoyed close and intimate relations with Him (Genesis 15:1-21). Moses too, was constant in his fellowship with God. He delighted in His presence not out of duty but out of sheer love (Numbers 14:11-38). David, a man after God’s own heart, prayed as he arose in the dawning of the day, yielding the very meditations of his heart to the scrutiny of his beloved Lord (Psalm 5:1-3). Though naked, beaten, imprisoned, and shackled, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God in the inner prison of Phillipi (Acts 16:25). They marvelously exemplified the “expulsive power of the new affection.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His disciples about this sort of consuming prayer—prayer that was dramatically different from anything they had ever seen before (Matthew 6:5-8). Then, Jesus drove home the idea with a warning, a command, and a promise in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). First, He reminds them that prayer is not a means for self-promotion--either before men or before God. The throne room of the Most High is not some kind of cosmic vending machine for our every want, whim, or worry any more than it is a showcase for our eloquence or our reverence. It is instead the dwelling place of our beloved father. Others make a spectacle of themselves when they pray selfishly, brazenly, and introspectively. “Do not be like them,” Jesus warns.

Second, prayer is to be habitual. It is the expression of our day-to-day relationship with God. It is to be intimate. It is to be personal. It is to be as practical as our daily bread. It is to be as lofty as the outworking of providence in heaven and on earth. It is to be as pointed as our trespasses and our trespassers. But above all, it is to be regular. “When you pray,” Jesus said. Not “if you pray,” but “when.” This is His mandate, His command. “In this manner, therefore, pray.”

Third, prayer is objectively hedged by God’s perfect, protective, and providential will. As the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession says “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God for things agreeable to His will.” We are not to pray simply in order to get something. We are to pray in order to be something (James 4:3). We pray in order to be conformed to God's will. And “He who sees in secret will reward openly,” for He “knows the things we have need of before we ask Him.” That is His promise. And, oh what a promise! In the presence of our Beloved, we are transformed. The new affection makes all things right, good, and true!

Thus, prayer is not a job to be done. It is not a duty to be fulfilled. It is not a task to be undertaken. It is the marvelous outworking of a love that displaces ever other love. It is the blessed overflow of the smitten heart. It is the happy result of the expulsive power of a new affection.

E.M. Bounds once said, “There ought to be no adjustment of life or spirit for the closet hours. Without intermission, incessantly, assiduously; that ought to describe the opulence, and energy, and unabated ceaseless strength and fullness of effort in prayer; like the full and exhaustless and spontaneous flow of an artesian stream.”

Those stalwart heroes times gone by who practiced that sort of free flowing, natural prayerfulness were not super saints. They did not have unique constitutions that peculiarly equipped them for prayer. They simply drank deeply from the well of grace. They embraced the “expulsive power of a new affection.” And thus freed from monkish discipline, they reveled in the love of their Savior. So it ought to be with you—and with me.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Throughout the halcyon days of Christendom, every day from December 25 to January 6 was a part of the traditional Yuletide celebration. Dedicated to mercy and compassion—in light of the incarnation of Heaven’s own mercy and compassion—each of those twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany was to be noted by selfless giving and tender charity. In many communities, gift giving was not concentrated on a single day, but rather, as in the famous folk song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, spread out through the entire season.

Interestingly, all of the gifts in that folk song represent some unique aspect of the blessing of Christ’s first Advent in anticipation of His second. They portray the abundant life, the riches of the Christian inheritance, and the ultimate promise of heaven. They also depict the essential covenantal nature of life lived in community and accountability. Thus, the song was a clever sort of catechism tool for oppressed religious dissenters, written during the tumultuous conclusion of the Tudor period in England—though it is not altogether clear from the historical record if the song was intended for Puritan dissenters during the reign of Bloody Mary or for the Catholic dissenters during the reign of her half-sister, Elizabeth.

What is clear is that festive song praised the feasting and good will of the Yuletide season by detailing the gifts of Gospel. So for instance, instead of referring to a suitor, the "true love" mentioned in the song refers to the wooing suitor of Heaven: God Himself. The "me" receiving the gifts is symbolic of every covenant believer. The partridge in the pear tree is Jesus Christ, and in the song, He is symbolically presented as a mother partridge who feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings. The pear tree itself is often portrayed in Medieval literature (as is the apple tree) of the means of grace by which the gifts of God are bestowed upon men and nations.

And so it goes throughout the whole song: the two turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments; the three French hens are faith, hope and charity; the four calling birds are the four Gospels; the five gold rings are the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses in the Old Testament; the six geese a-laying are the six days of creation; the seven swans a-swimming are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; the eight maids a-milking are the eight Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount; the nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Spirit; the ten lords a-leaping are the freedoms of the Ten Commandments; the eleven pipers piping are the eleven faithful disciples; the twelve drummers drumming are the twelve cardinal doctrines of the Apostles' Creed.

All in all, the song is a joyous reminder of all we celebrate this Christmas—from the crèche to the cross.

Too Good to Be True?

Author and social prognosticator Alvin Toffler is often wrong but always interesting. In an interview in Modulations: A History of Electronic Music Today, he discusses the peculiar cultural hazards of effective modern propaganda in the media, a la Fahrenheit 9/11:

"The technologies of deception are developing more rapidly than the technologies of verification. Which means we can use a television camera, plus special effects, plus computers, etc. to falsify reality so perfectly that nobody can tell the difference. And the consequences of that eventually could be a society in which nobody believes, everybody knows that seeing is not believing, and nobody believes anything. With the exception of a small minority that decides to believe one thing fanatically. And that's a dangerous social/cultural situation."

He concluded:

"One of the consequences of living through a period like this, which is in fact a revolutionary period, is that the entire structure of society and the processes of change become nonlinear. And nonlinearity I think is defined almost by the statement that 'small inputs can have large consequences while large inputs can sometimes have very small consequences.' That also means in a political sense that very small groups can, under a given set of circumstances, achieve power. And that is a very threatening idea for anything remotely resembling what we believe to be democracy. So we're going into a period, I think, of high turbulence and considerable danger, along with enormous possibilities."

If he is right, and I think he is at least partly so, we've got a good deal of work to do.

Why Christmas?

Christians have celebrated the incarnation and nativity of the Lord Jesus on December 25 since at least the early part of the third century, just a few generations removed the days of the Apostles. By 336, when the Philocalian Calendar--one of the earliest documents of the Patriarchal church--was first utilized, Christmas Day was already a venerable and tenured tradition. Though there is no historical evidence that Christ was actually born on that day--indeed, whatever evidence there is points to altogether different occasions--the conversion of the old Pagan tribes of Europe left a gaping void where the ancient winter cult festivals were once held. It was thus both culturally convenient and evangelically expedient to exchange the one for the other. And so joy replaced desperation. Celebration replaced propitiation. Christmas Feasts replaced new Moon sacrifices. Christ replaced Baal, Molech, Apollo, and Thor.

Some have argued that this sort of thing was little more than an accomodation to the world. They deride Christmas celebrations as rank worldliness. In fact, they are beautiful pictures of the Great Commission in action. Christianity did not compromise with Paganism; it subsumed the old mores of the world into the new mores of the Church; it transformed the old barbarian rites and rituals into the new godly patterns of work and worship. In other words, Christmas converted cultures and calendars--demonstrating with particular practicality the fact that Jesus is Lord over the totality of life. Glad tidings of great joy, indeed.

Tristan Sighting

When I was in Memphis last week, I could have sworn I actually saw Elvis. No really. And not just once--several times. In fact, there were at least two Elvises (is that a word?) cheering on runners at about mile twelve--but I was seeing double by then so it might have just been me. Even so, I am now convinced that Tristan Gylberd is more elusive than even the King. But, I have it on good authority that there will be an authentic Tristan sighting tomorrow evening at the Christmas Spirit Readers Theater (7 PM at Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN). Tristan will be reading from his own work. He may also, I hear, try to slip in a work or two from his Texas kith and kin, Ben House. If he does, I hope it is this one, entitled The Incarnation:

I stumble at the thought of God sleeping on hay,
With scent of cow manure and cud-chewing blank stares;
Or of God twisting a tiny finger around the young mother’s hand,
As he nurses and drifts to sleep to her weary psalm.
I stumble to see the slow afternoon, the rhythm of planing wood,
Halting to fetch Joseph a saw.
Or figuring accounts of his father’s business
As God plans to change his career.
I stumble to believe that he fluffed and propped a pillow,
Then fell into sleep too deep for storm to waken;
Or to see God, dust covered, with tired feet resting;
Longing for a drink and talking to a cheap woman.
To be found wandering Roman territory without papers—
No letter from Heaven certifying his claim.
To be lumped with every radical with blazing eyes
And visions who portrayed the certainty of society’s fall.
A wine making, mud dabbing, temple brawler God,
Broke, homeless, surrounded by weak and foolish men.
God can be myth and metaphor and image;
A rock, a mountain, sun, light, or sea;
But the sweating flesh of a middle age man—
A descent that would often be heresied away.

I stumble at the thought of God incarnated—
But not drunken night stumbling down an empty road;
I stumble at the thought of God incarnated—
Intensely light blinded, fearfully secured, irresistibly drawn.