I had done a couple of miles on the treadmill, and then my favorite time of day was coming. Clear sky, low winds, and cool temps. It was time to leave the gym and run outside. So I hopped off the treadmill, put on my reflective belt (fellow soldiers will understand and laugh here), and took off to the trail.

As I reached my turnaround point and made the turn, when I was running back, it was one of those moments that invariably makes me pause and utter thanks to God for such beauty. The oak was already showing shoots of green (as Spring is upon us), the sky was clear, and the moon was visible through the limbs from the spot where I had stopped running in order to capture this moment.

Some might scoff, “Really? That? Moonlight through the limbs of a tree?” Yes, indeed. Who made it? You? Me? Random chance? No, no, and no.

God, high and mighty, made it–just like he made us creatures capable of appreciating his creation and stewarding it. As the kiddos are wont to say nowadays, “Just sayin’.

It was a bit after 3 a.m. and I was weary from fighting to sleep … and losing the fight. I rolled over and switched on the lamp. The Hemingway story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” ended with the great lines, “After all, he said to himself, it’s only insomnia. Many must have it.” I have taught that story again and again to students, but this night I felt like the student rather than the professor.

I picked up my laptop to prepare for teaching fellow soldiers today. I made a cup of coffee. I checked my email. In my email inbox, one in particular stood out. It was from my friend D. He had written a tender email about Hannah’s prayer from 1 Samuel 2. As usual, he wrote of longing to have a heart for God the way that Hannah did. I wrote him back and commended his words and theology. Indeed, Hannah’s prayer is one of the most beautiful and stirring prayers in Scripture.

I went to my desk and opened my Bible to 1 Samuel 2, and read Hannah’s prayer. It has so many memorable lines like this one: “He [the LORD] will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall man prevail” (1 Samuel 2:9, ESV).

I read the prayer again. And again. And again.

I resolved to stay up. There was no need to try to wrestle among the sheets any longer this night. Just embrace the reality that it’s not meant for me to rest this night. Perhaps it’s because I was to read that email from my friend D. Perhaps it was to drive me to Hannah’s prayer, too, in order to have a heart like Hannah and like Samuel, her child of promise, a type of the Christ who would come in the New Testament era. Perhaps it was to prepare me for teaching my fellow soldiers in a few hours.

Perhaps it was just to have me quiet, with my face in my Bible, listening to God’s words inscripturated there. “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4, ESV).

Theme: Folksy wisdom is rooted in biblical wisdom: An Anecdote on Composure

I remember a conversation I had with my mom when I was a boy. I had returned from fishing one of my favorite fishing spots (we called them honey holes) and it had been one of those long sunny Spring days on the water replete with many of my favorite smells–jasmine, honeysuckle, fish on the bed, the pungent smell of the banks of a pond in Spring, where the skinny-legged herons stand like white bobbing cranes, plucking shad from the shallows, and bass roll and send that shiver up every eager angler’s spine, and you feel it in your whole being that Spring is here, the fish are moving, the dogwoods are blooming, and hope springs eternal, as the poet quipped.

I was telling Mom about the day on the water we’d had when we returned home, and I told her how much I respected a certain man. He’s so calm about it all, I told her; he’s retired from the military and has done so much. She just looked at me and said, “Still waters run deep.” I love that metaphor. Anything to do with water seems to bathe my imagination in meaning. And the idea of composure being like the surface of calm waters spoke volumes to me.

Connection: That folksy wisdom is rooted in biblical wisdom. Proverbs 17:1 (ESV) says, “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.” That’s so vivid, isn’t it? Peace/tranquility/composure is preferable to drama, in other words, because it’s rooted in wisdom. Better is a small simple pleasure (like fishing with one’s stepdad at a beloved honey hole), than a palace infected by drama and upheaval. Indeed those still waters run deep.

We have probably all been there–the morning after the storm. Violent weather moved through our area last night. It seemed to last all night. Lightning, thunder, strong winds, the sounds of wood bending and sometimes breaking, the rushing of waters in the creeks.

The lightning is invariably the part that scares me most. I feel my finitude when lightning flashes. The cracks of whiplashing electricity, and the webbing of light in the night sky, it’s all sufficient to scare me. Even our Cavalier King Charles stood up on the bed when she’d normally be sleeping, looking at us, as if to say, “When will this pass?”

CJ and I were up almost all of the night with the storms. But we made it safely through.

When I left to teach this morning, as I was leaving our neighborhood, I crossed the water and had to pause. Beauty arrested me, even and especially after the storm.

Bottom line up front: Loyalty Is a Fundamental

Intro: “Solomonic wisdom” is a phrase for good reason. Solomon prayed for wisdom, and God graciously gifted Solomon with wisdom: “O LORD God, let your word to David my father be now fulfilled, for you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people . . .” (2 Chronicles 1:9-10, ESV). That is a beautiful prayer. Just let that sink in. Here was David’s son, a man who was going to lead the people of Israel into a time of blessing and opportunity unlike any they’d ever had, and Solomon prayed to God for wisdom. And God granted it.

Encouragement: In the Army Values, the very first one listed of the 7 Army Values is loyalty. When you have loyal and trustworthy people to your left and right, your effectiveness in the mission increases exponentially. Solomon, known for his wisdom, wrote the following: “A servant who deals wisely has the king’s favor, but his wrath falls on one who acts shamefully” (Proverbs 14:35, ESV). In other words, loyalty to our leadership is fundamental. We are not to betray a trust. And Solomon even tells us, the king’s wrath falls on one who acts shamefully. That is, disloyalty is a betrayal of confidence and poisons the formation. As Soldiers and Veterans, one of our core tenets must be loyalty. We must be found faithful to steward well the opportunities we’ve been granted by the king, so to speak. Loyalty reflects the wisdom of the king (leader), proves the fidelity of the Soldier/Veteran, and undergirds the accomplishment of the missions set before us.

My elders were right. “Don’t laugh; you’ll be there one day.”

That was their retort when we kids chortled at their “Ah!” and their “Ooooh!” when they’d crouch down and stand up, exhale loudly, and furrow their brows.

This evening after work, I overheard myself: “Ah!” and “Ooooh!” several times, in fact, as I drank glass after glass of water, downed a few aspirin, put compression sleeves on both knees, took a hot shower, sat in the sauna, and thought, “How’d this happen so quickly?”

Indeed. I have discovered the forewarned ‘one day.’

It all came faster than I thought. Lots of miles on these knees and joints now. Lots. But as Frost penned, I’ve miles to go (I hope) before I sleep.

***Looking forward to being with the saints Saturday for fellowship, food, and fun, and then, of course, class Sunday as we return to Matthew 16 for studies in Christ’s admonitions regarding discernment and why to ‘beware’ of posers.

Press on, knee pain and all, and we’ll make it.

Bottom line up front: Hope for the believer.

Introduction: Ever studied the life and ministry of the apostle Paul? Formerly named Saul of Tarsus, Paul was a scholar among scholars, a former Pharisee, a maker of tents, unmarried, a former zealous persecutor and murderer of Christians, and eventually, by the work of God alone, converted to the apostle Paul. He became arguably the greatest Christian of church history. He authored nearly 2/3 of the New Testament, planted church after church, was made an apostle to the Gentiles by Christ himself, mentored countless people in the Christian faith (Timothy, e.g.), and penned theological truths that Christians still plumb the depths of today.

This morning after PT, for example, I was reading and pondering Romans 8:18-19. Those verses read like this: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18-19, ESV). Let that sink in, especially considering Paul’s sufferings. We remember those, right? The passage from 2 Corinthians 11 bears revisiting and thinking through:

But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food,[b] in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

And yet … Despite all his sufferings, Paul writes in Romans 8 that the Christian is one characterized by believing the promises of God, looking to God in hope. Why? Because of God’s steadfastness, because of God’s faithfulness. The great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “If the creation has an earnest expectation, surely the Christian believer should have nothing less than that.”

Encouragement/takeaway: Unlike false worldviews, Christianity does not deny suffering. It deals with it head-on. Scripture is the story of the God who was “pierced for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). The Messiah was called a man of sorrows. And yet, Christians are more than conquerors because of this one true and living God. The triune God of Scripture ransoms sinners from every tribe, language, people, and nation in order that we who wait with eager longing wait in hope. I say again, in hope.

The Reader, a superb film, alludes to the masterful Chekhov story, “The Lady with the Dog,” several times. I concede my appreciation for the acting skills of both Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet, and the film The Reader. But my focus here is on the story itself, not the film, which explores different themes altogether.

But it is my love for Chekhov’s story, “The Lady with the Dog,” that inspires this. It is one of the stories I’m currently teaching my university students, in my short story course. There are many true masters of the short story form, and Chekhov remains one of its best exemplars.

The story revolves around an affair of sorts (it’s not prurient) between Gurov and Anna. Both are married to other people. But both Gurov and Anna are caught; they long for something their lives have not satisfied. What it is, exactly, is a profound question for exploration.

If you’ve not read Chekhov in a bit, pick up a volume of his short stories and plays, and discover understated wisdom and beauty.

Sunny days on the 800-meter track, I count on seeing the tall, sun-bleached, woodpeckered pine, long dead but still standing, and the black crows that land upon its brittle limbs and call to one another, and just as swiftly take flight again in a black wash of silent lift, and I pause on the sandy track and watch, as if Edgar Allan Poe’s apostles watched from the skeletal bough, high under this Spring cerulean sky, to see if I noticed. I did. It’s the small things–that aren’t.

Bottom line up front: It is hard to argue with faithfulness.

Clarification: What do I mean by faithfulness? A general pattern of consistent fidelity to Scripture and God’s revelation via one’s Christian witness. It is likely that many of us know folks who have made professions of faith in Christ, have perhaps been members (at least on paper) of a Christian church of some stripe, may’ve been baptized, may’ve even done work related to Christian missions, etc. but have since departed from the faith they once professed. One would find it hard to find current evidence of having ever been regenerated and saved by God. Their labors seem altogether consumed with things other than the gospel of Christ. That’s the reality of many.

Alternative: But I would like to look at the other side, too, the side of faithfulness, the side wherein you see perseverance in the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the side where you see a pattern of fidelity to God and his revelation. Psalm 71 is such an example. In this psalm, we see the picture of one who continues to trust the Lord, even and especially when Satan and forces of the wicked speak against him. Here are verses 7-21 of the 71st psalm:

I have been as a portent to many,
but you are my strong refuge.
8 My mouth is filled with your praise,
and with your glory all the day.
9 Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
forsake me not when my strength is spent.
10 For my enemies speak concerning me;
those who watch for my life consult together
11 and say, “God has forsaken him;
pursue and seize him,
for there is none to deliver him.”

12 O God, be not far from me;
O my God, make haste to help me!
13 May my accusers be put to shame and consumed;
with scorn and disgrace may they be covered
who seek my hurt.
14 But I will hope continually
and will praise you yet more and more.
15 My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,
of your deeds of salvation all the day,
for their number is past my knowledge.
16 With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come;
I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.

17 O God, from my youth you have taught me,
and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
18 So even to old age and gray hairs,
O God, do not forsake me,
until I proclaim your might to another generation,
your power to all those to come.
19 Your righteousness, O God,
reaches the high heavens.
You who have done great things,
O God, who is like you?
20 You who have made me see many troubles and calamities
will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again.
21 You will increase my greatness
and comfort me again.

Encouragement/takeaway: In a world where words sometimes do not mean very much because you know the source to be untrustworthy, in a world where there’s no-fault divorce, in a world where today’s headlines are tomorrow’s shred for the landfill or recycle bin, it is good to see that God does not change. He remains consistent yesterday, today, and forever. That is why all those who are in Christ are commanded to persevere in the truth. In short, we are to be faithful. Why? Because our faithfulness should redound and point to the faithfulness of the One who ransomed us. We remember the powerful words and example of Paul in 1 Thessalonians, don’t we: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thess 5:23-24, ESV). Faithfulness.