Thanksgiving A.D. 2023

 

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

Another Thanksgiving is upon us—another riot of food and relatives and small children and mashed potatoes and singing and noise and joy and pie. What shall we do with it all?

We cannot hold onto it. Our minds are not big enough. No brain is spacious and tenacious enough. Try to recall every detail of last year’s Thanksgiving and see how far you get. One fleeting detail—perhaps two—and you’re done. We are locked in time and no matter how often we rattle the cage of memory, no one has a key. All our grasping and clutching for one produces only rage and empty wind.

The Book with the Curl in the Middle of Its Forehead

 

Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization is one of those really frustrating books whose overall value fluctuates depending on what chapter you're currently in. It's rather like that old Longfellow rhyme:

There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good, 
    She was very good indeed.
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Commonplaces--Sep/Oct 2023

“What is really lost when a civilization wearies and grows small is confidence, a confidence built on the order and balance that leisure makes possible.”—Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

“There is a kind of pedantry common to all the crafts which derives from the exaggeration and intemperance of those who practice them, making those affected by it seem extravagant and ridiculous. We smile with indulgence upon those drudges of the "republic of letters" who bury themselves in the learned dust of antiquity for the good of knowledge, bestow the light from this darkness upon the human

race, and commune with the dead (whom they know intimately) for the benefit of the living, whom they scarcely know. This pedantry, which is excusable somehow in scholars of the first order (prevented by their profession from circulating in the civilized world) is entirely unbearable in military men for just the opposite reason. A soldier is pedantic when he is too meticulous, when he blusters, or when he plays the Don Quixote. These faults render him as ridiculous in his profession as a musty appearance and Latin affectations do a scholar.”—Frederick the Great, Anti-Machiavel 

"You must not think that these priests were idle, or occupied only with sacrifices. An altogether greater responsibility and a greater burden

The Things At Hand

 

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Lord, we keep many things near at hand. Some of them are good things: blessings, honors, every kind and every sort of stuff. Some of them are not as good: fears, sins, even sheer indifference. But you call us here to remember that you are truly the God who is near, and so we bring our petitions to you with renewed awareness.

Book of the Month August 2023: The Prince

 

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”

This month's work might be called a classic, though we would be better served by inventing an adjective in English that means "famous by means of being continually controversial." Such a word is sorely needed in our online age of furor--but perpetual indignation is by no means a new idea, for this book has been furrowing brows since it was published in 1532.

A Garden of Bright Eyes

 Psalm LXIX: I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving.

Lord, we come before you absolutely loaded down with blessings. One of the greatest of these blessings stands (or sits, or wiggles) among us during this service. In this room are a horde of small immortal souls--the children you have given our families. We thank you for all of them. In an age of barren desolation we live in a garden of bright eyes, tiny fingers, and innocent laughter. We thank you especially for the safe arrival of Eben, Lucas, and Hazel. May they grow strong and holy over the coming years.

Commonplaces--August 2023

 

“So it teaches men both these truths: that there is a God we are capable of knowing, and that there is a corruption of nature which makes us unworthy of him. It is equally important for us to know both these points, and it is equally dangerous for man t know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can cure him of it. Knowledge of only one of these points leads either to the arrogance of the philosophers, who have known God and not their own wretchedness, or to the despair of the atheists, who know their wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer…Those who go astray only do so for lack of seeing one of these two things: one can then easily know God but not one’s own wretchedness, and one’s wretchedness without knowing God. But one cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing God and one’s wretchedness together.”—Pascal,

Pensees

“He is blind indeed who fancies that pardon is all we want in order to get to heaven, and does not see that pardon without a change of heart would be a useless gift. Blessed be God that both are freely offered to us in Christ’s gospel, the one as well as the other!”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“The influence of the two great philosophies upon theology was beneficial or injurious, according as the principle of Christianity was the governing or the governed factor. Both systems are theistic (at bottom monotheistic) and favorable to the spirit of earnest and profound speculation. Platonism, with its ideal, poetic views, stimulates, fertilizes, inspires, and elevates the reason and imagination, but also easily leads into the errors of gnosticism and the twilight of

On All Those Moscow Firebrands

I live in Moscow, Idaho and my town has something of an infamous name amongst a certain stripe of the Christian faith. And as one dust-up follows another kerfluffle, I often spot a certain amount of internet chatter weighing in on how the leaders here are heretics, or just after popularity, or aren't preaching the gospel but building brands, etc.

Honestly, I can see why that could be your take-away. There are thousands of people who only know these men from their online presence. That's all they see. And just like when you're forced to view a room by peering through a keyhole, that can lead to some odd perspectives. And the particular perspective I want to focus on here is the "they're concerned with politics rather than the Gospel" charge. Closely related is the "they're just building their own brand" charge.

Book of the Month June/July 2023: Stealing the General

 This book of the month is dedicated to eight-year-old me, sitting enthralled on the living room floor, glued to the screen while Fess Parker battled to change the course of the War Between the States by wrecking a Confederate railroad in The Great Locomotive Chase. That movie intersected two of my great loves: trains and warfare. I recommend it to all of you who haven't seen it. And if you watch it and want to know more about what really happened, you should pick up this book. 

Russell S. Bonds' Stealing the General is a relatively recent (2006) monograph on the Civil War event usually called the Andrews Raid. During the early days of the war, a group of Western Union soldiers volunteered to go south in disguise, under a civilian blockade runner named James Andrews. They commandeered a train near Atlanta and headed north. The plan was to wreck track, bridges, and telegraph lines all the way to Chattanooga until the Confederate Army was unable to reinforce the town. 

It nearly worked, but the train's conductor, William Fuller, refused to admit defeat and chased the train; first on foot and then with a series of locomotives. He raised the alarm and prevented the raiders from doing much damage until the army caught up with them. The Yankees were imprisoned, but even there the story didn't end--there were two spectacular prison breaks, a hanging, and enough newspaper headlines and panic to drive up the price of ink. When the surviving raiders finally made it back to the north, they were awarded the very first Medals of Honor--still the nation's highest military decoration.

Bonds writes well and easily, and he evaluates the various first- and second-hand sources with a clear eye. Rather than simply accepting some of the famous accounts of the time, he compares them--both to the terrain and to other primary sources. The result is an insightful work that picks apart both the Disney version and some of the laudatory news myths of the time to show what happened, why it happened, and how the participants told it in their own words. 

This is, quite simply, good history. And if you have an interest in trains, the Civil War, spying, guerilla warfare, trains, the Medal of Honor, perspective, or trains, you should find a copy and enjoy the chase.

Commonplaces: June/July 2023

[On John VII 37, “Let him come to Me and drink”] “Nor let him go to the heathen philosophy, which does but beguile men, lead them into a wood, and leave them there; but let him go to Christ, admit his doctrine, submit to his discipline, believe in him; come to him as the fountain of living waters, the giver of all comfort.”—Matthew Henry, Commentaries

“Wherever a new generation takes up the attack against the resisting forces of evil or against a tense obsession with a security which clings to the delusion that the disharmony of the world is fundamentally curable by cautious and correct “tactics,” it is above all necessary to maintain a lively and vigilant awareness that such fighting can only reach beyond sound and fury if it draws its strongest forces from the fortitude of the spiritual life, which dares to submit unconditionally to the governance of God. Without a consciously preserved connection with these reserves of strength, all struggle for the good must lose its genuineness and the inner conviction of victory, and in the end can lead only to the noisy sterility of spiritual pride.”—Joseph Peiper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

“Weak people are those who know the truth, but who maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so. Beyond that, they abandon it.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Indeed, contemporary debunking of the author and the author's explicit intentions has proceeded at such a pace that it seems at times as if literary criticism has become a jolly game of ripping out an author's shirt-tail and setting fire to it.”—D. Stienmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis” Theology Today"

“Jesus says, ‘Take freely.’ He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions.”—Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M. June 13

“We dread fostering men’s favorite notion that a little church-going and sacrament-receiving—a little patching, and mending, and whitewashing, and gilding, and polishing, and varnishing, and painting the outside—is all that his case requires. Hence we protest with all our heart against formalism, sacramentalism, and every species of mere external or vicarious Christianity.”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are times when there is a mine of deep meaning in our Lord’s words, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” To such times we have come.”—Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are only two sorts of people who can truly be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart, because they do not yet know Him.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Armis munimenta, non munimentis arma tuta esse debent.”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Ferte signa in hostem!”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince