Index Cards

When I was a young girl my parents had a real-estate business in North Adams, MA. I really enjoyed functioning as the receptionist and errand girl and overall 'gal Friday.'  About once a week I was sent downtown (15 min walk) to the local stationery store to pick up miscellaneous supplies. This was the highlight of my week! I would purchase what was needed but then roam around the store looking at all the fancy papers and pens and gadgets, running my fingers over them as if they were mine. I'm sure this is the reason behind my love, to this day, of index cards and steno pads and sticky notes.  Because of this minor obsession of mine I have always been a list-maker and a note-taker. As I am typing this blogpost my desk is even now littered with remnants of reminders and notes and random ideas I have written down.

So it was with great delight yesterday that I found the old index cards I used while writing a book review in 2018. One night Steve and I had dinner with Rev. Greg Reynolds and his super-wife Robin (Hi, Robin! 😉).  I was expressing excitement for a book I had purchased entitled Prayers of the Bible by Gordon Keddie.  Much to my surprise, Greg knew Mr. Keddie personally but had not yet seen his book. He glanced at the volume and was favorably impressed. At that point I was only on page 27 or so when Greg asked if I would be willing to write a review for Ordained Servant of which he is the editor. BIG GULP: I had never written anything for a publication so I was very overwhelmed with the idea of doing so. But more than that, I also squirmed because the book itself was 764 pages long, including Endnotes. YIKES! 

As it turns out, Prayers of the Bible was very much worth spending 6 intense months of reading and taking notes on file cards. It truly is a remarkable book and I would recommend it to everyone. (Local friends can take a peek at my copy if interested.)  

Here is the link to the actual review in Ordained Servant.

And now back to the index cards that I recently found in a desk drawer. Here are some fascinating facts I had discovered:

1. Where in the Bible was the first prayer meeting noted?  Genesis 4:26

Keddie's answer: "Only after the birth of Adam's grandson Enosh do we have the first record in the Bible of a public meeting for worship and prayer. There were now two growing families serving the Lord - those of Adam and Seth. It appears that they were moved to meet together for praise and prayer, This was when "men began to call on the name of the Lord."  

2. Where in the Bible was the first recorded prayer mentioned?  Genesis 15:2

Keddie's answer: "Lord God, what will You give me, for I continue childless?"  "God promptly promises a child... God also promised life beyond measure. In the end, Abraham would have descendants as uncountable as the stars in the night sky. This takes the promise to a higher level because this obviously vastly transcends the natural descendants of Abraham.

3.  What is the shortest prayer in the Bible?  Matthew 14:30

Keddie's answer: "But when Peter saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, 'Lord, save me.'  It is surely no accident that the shortest prayer in Scripture is about the largest problem in human experience - that of life or death for both time and eternity. After all, people in desperate situations do not have much time to pray."

4. What is the first intercessory prayer?  Genesis 18:23

Keddie's answer: "Then Abraham drew near and said, "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?""  This surely challenges us to pray for lost people - for even the most outwardly wicked lost people. If we have a love for souls, as did Abraham, than we will surely desire to see people saved by the free grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the vital test of our own love for Jesus, because saving grace for the notoriously wicked cuts against the grain of human nature and the natural desires we have for justice and even sheer vengeance. Anyone can love his friends."

These are but four of the hundreds of index cards I used to research and review Prayers of the Bible. What I have listed above may seem like trivia points, but Keddie's book was full of theological insights that I found very worthy of study. 

A Foretaste of Heaven

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” (Hebrews 12: 22-24)

There is something about this passage that makes me excited and glad and grateful and amazed all at once. It seems as though this is written to present day believers - even though it says that we have come to the heavenly Jerusalem now, as in today! How can that be? It must have something to do with worship - that somehow when we enter into that activity here on earth, we are also simultaneously entering into worship in Heaven. If that is the case, then our fellow worshippers are those that have gone ahead of us, namely our loved ones. Could it be that when we sing and pray and read God’s Word that the person sitting next to us in the pew is the very one that has departed from us and we are missing so much?

My theory here seems to be supported by the ESV Study Bible, which states:

“This (passage) draws on extensive OT imagery of a new heavenly Zion/Jerusalem to say that Christian believers have access, in the invisible, spiritual realm, into the Heavenly Jerusalem, and therefore participate in worship with innumerable angels and the great assembly of those who have died in faith and are already in God’s presence.”

Certainly the language of these verses confirms the reality of existence for those who have gone before us. The “assembly of the firstborn,” for example, while initially referring to Christ, has been expanded to include all the heirs of salvation. Those “enrolled in Heaven” probably refers to the Book of Life referenced in several places in the Bible. And finally, “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” clearly refers to believers who were made righteous on earth because of Christ’s work on the cross, but were made gloriously perfect upon their entrance into Heaven.

Of course, as wonderful a concept as it is, we should not be overly fixated on the fact that our family and friends in Heaven are worshiping together with us on Sunday mornings. The most important person we should be focusing on is Christ, “the mediator of a new covenant,” who made all this possible. Without His sacrificial life and death, we wouldn’t be excited and glad and grateful and amazed at all.

Thanks be to God for the incredible privilege of entering into Heavenly worship while we are still living as sojourners here on earth. Better still, one day we will experience the fullness of worship that we now know by faith alone; in just a little while, our faith will be sight!

(From the Archives)

Searching for a Great Novel?

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to read. I've written before in this blog that it was my mother who started me off. I frequently contracted bronchitis while a little kid and one day she brought me a huge stack of library books and placed them on my bed. WHA?!?!  I couldn't believe that SHE believed that I could read these huge chapter books... but as usual I was wrong and she was right. And then and there my life-long journey began to seek out and find good fictional novels.

So of course a recent article entitled "25 Great Novelists Who Affirm Faith" certainly piqued my interest. Along with the name of the author a brief description is given of the type of literature written by each. Although I was originally discouraged to find that I had only read 14 of these great novelists, I finally realized YAY!  I have many more books to read!

If you want to read an amazing set of books, start with Marilynne Robinson. Steve has read her most famous book series 3 times, and we just got the latest in that collection delivered to us a couple of days ago. They truly are a delight to read. Start with Gilead (which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.) 

As an aside: Steve and I are now on the hunt for good movie adaptations of the classics that we love. To that end this week alone we enjoyed Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. We have watched all the Jane Austen novels several times each and of course The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Tolkien multiple times (although not all this week!) 

Have fun with this list, and let me know if you would recommend any of these books.  👍

Here is the list

Heavenly Gifts For The Here And Now

I recently read an amazing article entitled "Ordinary Life Is Crammed with Heaven." It is an interview with an author who has written Sensing God: Experiencing the Divine in Nature, Food, Music, and Beauty. (And yes I've ordered it already. 😉) I was immediately drawn to this because of my previous study on the realities of heaven which culminated several years ago with the writing of my book Heaven's Comforts for the Grieving Soul. 

My interest in this topic has not diminished since that time. While I still rely every day on the promises of God that will find their greatest fulfillment in the coming of the new heavens and the new earth, a different focus has emerged over the years, a desire to experience 'a little bit of heaven' here on this side of eternity. 

Of course this 'taste' of heaven can come in many different common gifts of daily experience. The observation of a beautiful sunset or the exploration of an ocean beach with grandkids or the birth of a newborn babe certainly come to mind. So do various expressions of music and food and art and scientific endeavors or contemplating how our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made. There truly is an endless list of gifts that God provides for us to marvel at and enjoy. If you would like to explore that idea further, please read this article mentioned above. 

How did I get to the place where I can say with certainty that heaven even exists? It was not without a lot of angst and fears and doubts. I'll include here part of the introduction to my book which explains my journey. I give all praise to God for causing me to come to a settled understanding of the joys that await us because of the work of His son on the cross. 

I have been assigned the duty of writing an Introduction to my book on Heaven after struggling for more than two years with doubts about its very existence. Fortunately, I am in good company. C.S. Lewis also found himself fighting disbelief: "You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you." This is my experience; this is my challenge. 

So how did I come to write Heaven's Comforts: A Guide to the Grieving Soul? I lost someone very dear to me, my twenty-two year old son. It wasn't until the initial shock of his death wore off that I could even begin to process what I believed or did not believe. Spiritual anesthesia is a wonderful mercy, but it doesn't last forever. Little by little and in various ways the notion of life after death crept into my consciousness. Did I believe in Heaven or not? Was this concept real or a figment of my imagination? Everyone around me assured me of Heaven's existence, and that my son was surely there, but was it true? I desperately needed to know. I needed to feel the truth, not just know it. And therein was my first problem. 

Over the last few years I have often said that I experienced a real disconnect between what I knew to be true, in my mind, and what I felt to be true, in my heart. This mind/heart barrier was so painful to experience. On the one hand, I have studied the Bible continuously for nearly twenty-five years and believe it to be God's handbook for doctrine and living. On the other hand, my heart was so sorrowful that I felt no comfort because I couldn't actually experience Heaven while I still lived here on earth. In the words of C.S. Lewis again, "Only the locked door, the iron curtain, the vacuum, absolute zero." What to do? 

But then something curious happened. I began to study what Scripture said about heaven, and found that there is so much contained in the pages of the Bible that was previously hidden from me until it "...became a matter of life and death." Surprisingly, I realized that the only times I really 'felt' the truths of heaven were when I was teaching them to someone else, particularly to the wonderful, caring women of my church. Is it possible that convincing others of the comforts of heaven brought me comfort as well? Could it be that God really does reward those that diligently seek Him? (Hebrews 11:6)