righteousness – Mum's devotional

‘…and you can do good for them whenever you wish’

December 26th – Feast of St. Stephen

He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given..

“If I have kept the poor from their desire,
Or caused the eyes of the widow to fail,
Or eaten my morsel by myself,
So that the fatherless could not eat of it
(But from my youth I reared him as a father,
And from my mother’s womb I guided the widow);
If I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing,
Or any poor man without covering;
If his heart has not blessed me,
And if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep;
If I have raised my hand against the fatherless,
When I saw I had help in the gate;
Then let my arm fall from my shoulder,
Let my arm be torn from the socket…

“If I have made gold my hope,
Or said to fine gold, ‘You are my confidence’;
If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great,
And because my hand had gained much;*
…This also would be an iniquity deserving of judgment,
For I would have denied God who is above.

“If my land cries out against me,
And its furrows weep together;
If I have eaten its fruit without money,
Or caused its owners to lose their lives;
Then let thistles grow instead of wheat,
And weeds instead of barley.”

Job 31:16-25, 28, 38-40 (NKJV)

*Admittedly, this is followed by a passage about idolatry, but it interrupted the flow so… *snip snip* Heheh.

On this the second day of Christmas, I remembered that Feast of St. Stephen is traditionally a day for giving to the poor, and, as such, is associated with Good King Wenceslas. Here is the Irish Rovers’ version on Youtube and Spotify, because it’s virtually impossible to play this song straight. (Fun fact: the reason the music sounds about seven hundred years old is because it is; it was a Spring carol -which actually has much better lyrics- and then some weirdo Victorian decided to totally confuse everyone by making it a sort of limping Christmas carol.)

So oops… we have one more carol. If I were really evil, I would wait and spring it on you in January, on whatever the Eastern Orthodox date is (the 8th, I think), but this was always meant to be a one year thing, and I’d hate for my trolling to be the last thing on here.

Additionally, here is the Sinfonia of the 2nd day of Part 2 of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV248. (Possibly overdone, but it’s frankly thrilling to me that there is no German in this part of the oratorio. In the famous words of whoever wrote the screenplay for Amadeus: “…it’s too brutal.”)

O, Dayspring!

December 21st

O Dayspring, brightness of the everlasting light, Son of Justice, come to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

O Oriens* antiphon

These are the last words of David:

“The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse,
the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High,
the man anointed by the God of Jacob,
the hero of Israel’s songs:

The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me;
his word was on my tongue.
The God of Israel spoke,
the Rock of Israel said to me:
‘When one rules over people in righteousness,
when he rules in the fear of God,
he is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.’
If my house were not right with God,
surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant,
arranged and secured in every part;
surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation
and grant me my every desire.”

2 Samuel 23:1-5 (NIV)

*If this sounds familiar it’s because O Come, O Come Emmanuel is based on the Greater [‘O’] Antiphons. As I may have said before, they are very, very old, and have been translated, paraphrased and re-translated many times.

Here is another John Wesley hymn: literally the only version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing I found that I liked, by the U.S. Army Band of all things. (I think it’s just because it needs a lot of deep voices, but most of the men’s choruses that did it used the Willcocks arrangement, which I loathe with a passion.)

…and here is an image of another spiral galaxy, M74, from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic.

Here’s this year’s calendar, if anyone’s interested.

the Benedictus

December 10th

…and because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.

W. H. Auden For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio (Simeon speaking)

John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has visited and provided redemption for His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, just as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets in ancient times; salvation from our enemies and from the clutches of those who hate us. He has dealt mercifully with our fathers and remembered His holy covenant — the oath that He swore to our father Abraham. He has given us the privilege, since we have been rescued from our enemies’ clutches, to serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness in His presence all our days. And child, you will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give His people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s merciful compassion, the Dawn from on high will visit us to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:67-79 (HCSB)

The Benedictus is so called because the passage in Latin begins with ‘Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel.‘ That’s just how they did things.

I posted this, not because Auden represents a great model for Christian living, but because insight is always welcome, wheresoever I find it. Also, there would be a lot more from this poem, since it covers the whole Christmas theme in a kind of interesting way, but I’ve never actually gotten to read the whole thing, only tantalizing excerpts. This, in turn, is because, despite being written during World War bloody II, I think it’s still under copyright (and we all wonder why no one ever reads great literature).

Anyway, rant finished, happy tenth day of Advent to you, and here is Matt Maher’s Love Has Come on Youtube and Spotify.

…and here is an image of a pulsar in the Crab nebula from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic. I’m pretty sure it was one of the first ones discovered, but, honestly, I don’t care enough to check.

Here’s this year’s, if anyone’s interested.

‘Mercies felt in childhood’

November 26th

…hitherto God hath not failed us: we have no reason to suspect him for the future… God hath so ordered it, that a man shall have had the experience of many years’ provision before he shall understand how to doubt; that he may be provided for an answer against the temptation shall come, and the mercies felt in his childhood may make him fearless when he is a man. Add to this, that God hath given us his Holy Spirit; he hath promised heaven to us; he hath given us his Son; and we are taught from Scripture to make this inference from hence, ‘How should not he with him give us all things else?’

from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living (Ch. 2, sect. 6)

Better the little that the righteous man has than the abundance of many wicked people… The Lord watches over the blameless all their days, and their inheritance will last forever. They will not be disgraced in times of adversity; they will be satisfied in days of hunger…

The wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous is gracious and giving… A man’s steps are established by the Lord, and He takes pleasure in his way. Though he falls, he will not be overwhelmed, because the Lord holds his hand.

I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous abandoned or his children begging bread. He is always generous, always lending, and his children are a blessing.

…The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord, their refuge in a time of distress. The Lord helps and delivers them; He will deliver them from the wicked and will save them because they take refuge in Him.

from Psalm 37

I started a bit earlier in the psalm than I otherwise would have because that whole section in Holy Living has more overlap with Psalm 37 than you would think.

Kierkegaard’s tripwire

November 23rd

One who is righteous has many adversities, but the LORD rescues him from them all. He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken.

Psalm 34:19-20 (CSB)

Now and then someone speaks of “suffering punishment, when one does the Good.” How is that possible? From whom shall that punishment come? Certainly not from God! Is it, then, from the world — so that when in its wisdom the world is mistaken, it rewards the bad and punishes the Good? And yet no, it is not as that word “world” implies. For the word “world” sounds great and terrifying, and yet it must obey the same law as the most insignificant and miserable man. But even if the world gathered all its strength, there is one thing it is not able to do, it can no more punish an innocent one that it can put a dead person to death.

To be sure the world has power. It can lay many a burden upon the innocent one. It can make his life sour and laborious for him. It can rob him of his life. But it cannot punish an innocent one. How wonderful, here is a limit, a limit that is invisible, like a line that is easy to overlook with the senses, but one that has the strength of eternity in resisting any infringement. This may be overlooked by the world whose attention is focused upon that which is big —and the limit is insignificant, is for the present, a quiet-mannered nobody, but yet it is there. Perhaps it is completely hidden from the eyes of the world. For that, too, can be a part of the innocent one’s suffering, that the world’s injustice takes on the appearance of punishment — in the world’s eyes. But the limit is nevertheless there, and is in spit of all the strongest. And even if all the world rose up in tumult and even if everything were thrown into confusion: the limit is nevertheless there. And on the one side of it with the innocent ones is justice; and on the other side toward the world is an eternal impossibility of punishing an innocent one. Even if the world wishes to annihilate an innocent man and put him out of the way, it cannot put the limit out of the way, even though it be invisible. (Perhaps it is just on that account.)

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Ch. 5)

Or does this already have a clever name like Chesterton’s fence, or Jacob’s ladder? I like ‘tripwire,’ but I’m open to suggestions.

‘We cannot grow into Christianity’

November 21st

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Ephesians 1:17-21 (NIV)

We cannot grow into Christianity, we must be born from above and then grow. And so sanctification is progressive, and yet it has a definite beginning. Christ is completely formed within us, but He is the infant Christ, and grows up to the maturity of the perfect man in us just as He did in His earthly life. … So the first step in our advance must be a new conception of the truth as it is in Jesus and a larger view of His word and will for us. We do not need a new Bible, but we need new eyes to read our Bible…

We need to see, not simply a system of exegesis or a system of Biblical exposition and criticism; a thorough knowledge of the letter and its framework of history; geography, antiquities and ancient languages; but a vivid, large and spiritual conception of what it means for us and what God’s thought in it for each of us is. We want to take it as the message of heaven to the present century and the last decade, the living voice of the Son of God to us this very hour, and to see in it the very idea which He Himself has for our life and work; to take in the promises as He understands them, the commandments as He intends them to be obeyed, and the hopes of the future as He unfolds them upon the nearer horizon of their approaching fulfillment. How little have we grasped the length and breadth and depth and height of this heavenly message! How little have we realized its authority and its personal directness to us!

from A. B. Simpson’s The Larger Life (Pt. I)

…and here is Amy Grant’s one good song, Fat Baby on Youtube and Spotify. (Mostly because it’s funny, but also because it’s 40’s-ish and bears very little resemblance to her other work.)

Practicing virtue

November 20th

…Practice these things; be committed to them, so that your progress may be evident to all. Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

1 Timothy 4:15-16 (CSB)

We have an idea that we have to alter things, we [don’t]; we have to remain true to God in the midst of things as they are, to allow things as they are to transmute us. “Things as they are” are the very means God uses to make us into the praise of His glory. We have to live on this sordid earth, amongst human beings who are exactly like ourselves, remembering that it is on this plane we have to work out the marvellous life God has put in us.

The life of a worker is not a hop, skip and a jump affair, it is a squaring of the shoulders, then a steady, steadfast tramp straight through until we get to understand God’s way. It takes the energy of God Himself to prepare a worker for all He wants to make him. We need a spiritual vision of work as well as a spiritual vision of truth. It is not that we go through a certain curriculum and then we are fit to work; preparation and work are so involved that they cannot be separated.

If the worker will obey God’s way he will find he has to be everlastingly delving into the Bible and working it out in circumstances, the two always run together. It requires all the machinery of circumstances to bring a worker where God wants him to be—“co-workers with God.”

from Oswald Chambers’ The Love of God,
The Message of Invincible Consolation (The Worker and Things as They Are)

Helping humans, not ‘humanity’

November 18th

For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:3-7 (NASB)

The New Testament way of looking at humanity is not the modern way. In the New Testament men and women exist, there is no such thing as “Humanity,” the human race as a whole.

A materialist says—Because my religious beliefs do for me, therefore they are satisfactory. Not in the tiniest degree. The test of a man’s religious faith is not that it does for him, but that it will do for the worst wreck he ever knew. If every one were well brought up and had a fine heredity, then there are any number of intellectual forms of belief that would do. The materialistic line works like a searchlight, lighting up what it does and no more, but the daylight of actual experience reveals a hundred and one other facts. It does not show a clear simple path, but brings to light a multitude of facts never seen before. The evolutionist looks at man and says, What a glorious promise of what he is going to be! The New Testament looks at man’s body and moral life and intelligence and says, What a ruin of what God designed him to be!

from Oswald Chambers’ Shadow of an Agony
(Humanity and Holiness)

New life

October 29th

I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness. The wise man has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both.

Ecclesiastes 2:13-14 (HCSB)

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from allegiance to righteousness…. But now, since you have been liberated from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification–and the end is eternal life! For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:20,22-23 (HCSB)

Many a clean-living man is in the condition these verses describe.* The domain Jesus Christ represents does not awaken a tremor of sympathy, something has to stab him wide-awake, rouse him to other issues and bring him to his wits’ end before the things Jesus Christ stands for are even interesting. You cannot make Jesus Christ mean anything to a man; He may be nothing to him one minute and everything the next; it depends on what happens. A man may go on well contented until something pierces his hide, or brings him up against the things which profoundly alter life; then suddenly he is within another frontier and it begins to be possible for him to see the kingdom in which Jesus Christ moves.

from Oswald Chambers’ Shadow of an Agony
(The Psychological Phase-II, Man Becomes What He Is)

*Not initially meant to apply to the verse from Ecclesiastes, but I’m a rebel that way.

Peace

October 20th

…where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

James 3:16-18 (NASB)

First, keep yourself in peace, and then you will be able to keep peace among others. A peaceable man does more good than one that is learned.

A good peaceable man turns all things to good.

He that is in peace is not suspicious. But he that is discontented and troubled; he is not quiet himself, neither does he allow others to be quiet. He often speaks that which he ought not to speak; and omits what it would be more expedient for him to do. He thinks about what others are obligated to do, and neglects what he is obligated to do himself.

It is no great matter to associate with the good and gentle; for this is naturally pleasing to all, and everyone willingly enjoys peace, and loves those best that agree with him. But to be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse people, or with the disorderly, or with those that are contrary to us, is a great grace, and a most commendable thing.

There are some are that keep themselves in peace, and are at peace also with others. And there are some that are neither in peace themselves, nor allow others to be in peace: They are troublesome to others, but always more troublesome to themselves.

And there are those that keep themselves in peace, and study to bring others to peace.

from Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (Book II, Ch. 3)