The Good Portion

Here in the Land of the Free, we don’t have a Sovereign—a king or emperor—holding the reins of power. We have a constitution and thousands upon thousands of individuals sworn to uphold it. We have a citizenry with the right to vote. We, the aggregate, are sovereign, though we, the individuals, are not, no matter how much we think we are. Every four years we are reminded of this as each of us invariably ends up less than satisfied with the government we, the aggregate, have chosen. Even in a properly functioning democracy one thing is certain: no one ever gets everything they want.  You would think we’d get used to it, but we never do. And if this makes us uncomfortable, the Bible will make us even more so. Christ is not a Republican or a Democrat. He’s not a Libertarian. He’s not even an American. His government is not a democracy; it’s a monarchy, and he is the King. One of the first things scripture does to its readers is kick them off the throne.  In the Old Testament we se...

When I finally trusted Christ, after nearly 40 years as a professing Christian, one of the first books I read was J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.  In the (1973) preface,* he describes two very different types of interest people have in Christianity: “[picture] persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. The 'balconeers' can overhear the travelers' talk and chat with them; they may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk; or they may discuss questions about the road, how it can exist at all or lead anywhere, what might be seen from different points along it, and so forth; but they are onlookers, and their problems are theoretical only. The travelers by contrast face problems which, though they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical - problems of the 'which-way-to-go' and 'how-to-make-it' type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too ...

In a couple of weeks I will begin teaching a class on Ephesians for the women of my church. I’ve spent a long time preparing, and I’ve read those six chapters more times than I can count. But the more I read it, the bigger it gets, and the less capable I feel of plumbing its depths.  But it’s not just Ephesians. The whole Bible is like this. The more times I read it, the more I see it as a TARDIS. Dr. Who fans know that the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space) is a time machine. It looks like a 1960’s English police box, big enough to hold two or three people. But once you step inside, you find yourself in an impossibly huge space. In it you can access the far reaches of the galaxies—past, present and future. Step out again, and it’s still little bigger than a phone booth. Likewise, when you open the pages of scripture the universe opens to you—past, present, future, and beings more glorious than ourselves dwelling in realms that human words can only struggle to describe...