A lot of my reading lately has been in the book of Job, and one thing I've been thinking about is how we characterize Job's friends. Make no mistake, they were wrong about Job, and this made them terrible friends and worse comforters in his time of need. They were mistaken to think that they knew exactly what the wrath of God would look like, largely by assuming it would always happen in this life. They were especially wrong to think they could discern the will and plan of God without any help from God, just based on their own wisdom. They were wrong in a great many ways and, in the end, require Job's intercession on their behalf to avoid judgement themselves.

But they weren't entirely wrong about the content of their words. That is, they keep circling back to ideas that no man is truly blameless, that we all have sin and that this basic, common degree of sin is itself enough to justify the full wrath of God, which is a terrible thing to receive. They have a right understanding of fallen man, they have a right understanding of God as just and the judge of the living. They were wrong not because they knew wrong things, in fact much of what they say will come on evildoers is repeated elsewhere in scripture, but because they knew so little about the story that was actually playing out.

But David understands in the psalm above that God sometimes allows the unrepentant to have their best life now. To enjoy wealth and prosperity, to pass down their good things to children who will hoard them just as they have. And James warns us against showing favor to those for whom life seems to be going well, giving preference to the rich, and calls out those who gain their wealth through the unjust treatment of others to expect wrath to come. It is very tempting to look at our own situation and then look at the goodness that others experience and get angry or jealous. It is easy to lose hope that we are on the right path when the path is so hard to walk. It is easy to be like Job's friends and think that the outward experience of this life is an accurate measure of how well one is pleasing God. But like Job, we must look beyond the situation and cry out to the God who is behind it, and see that He is good, even if we don't understand what is happening right now. If we will be like David, seeking after God's face and taking our joy in knowing Him, we will not have the time or the energy to be weighed down with jealousy for the lives of others. We can trust that He who did not withhold His only Son will surely not hold back the good that He intends for us.

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone talk about the idea of an Acts 2 church, or at least a church that looks like that described in the first few chapters of Acts, I could probably afford to go out and just plant a church.

There is a lot of debate I've encountered about how to read the idea that the church in the beginning of Acts had all things in common. The more politically conservative groups I tend to know like to talk about this pointing to the need to live in community, even radical community sometimes, but there's little application to this notion beyond seeing each other outside of church on purpose. In far more leftist circles, the idea seems to be to take the communalism and directly place it in today's context, whether in a state-wide communist society or a more local, counter-cultural body that rejects personal property and shares all that they have with one another.

I submit that there is something we don't tend to talk about that shows up in this idea, and it comes to mind today because much of my reading was about it. Living the lifestyle described of the church in Jerusalem requires an awful lot of willful vulnerability. You cannot sell all you have and place it at the feet of your leaders without accepting that you will now be reliant on those leaders for your every need. However we would apply it today, we must have in our minds that one of the most basic experiences of this church would have been the knowledge that they were not only pouring their resources into supporting one another, but that they were submitting themselves to needing support and trusting that the support would come.

This also points us back to God. Who is our provider? From where does our help come?

I have for some time held that one of the great dangers of our modern idea of Christianity in America, the Religious Right and the marriage so many churches have with specific political powers, is that it is an attempt to seize control of that which we were never meant to control. We try so hard now to control the seats of power, to direct the forces that we fear will persecute us. And for what end? Do we expect that we can overcome Christ's promise that we will have trouble if we can just become the ones who give out trouble? Do we believe that we can reach the nations by dropping bombs on their homes and building walls to keep them out of our own?

Where is the humility in our expression of faith today? Where are we esteeming others above ourselves? In what way are we allowing ourselves to be at the mercy of God if we strive constantly to control our own fate and our own environment to make it something we consider safe? How are we telling the world that we are saved through God's great provision and that we trust in His generous giving while we dig our claws into more power, more authority, more wealth and comfort?

How can we expect anyone to believe that we are laid bare and vulnerable before our God if they cannot see us allow even an ounce of vulnerability to each other?

When asked about his age, Jacob described his life as a sojourning. This idea comes up fairly frequently in scripture, that our time on Earth is just a period of passing through, that this is not really our home. There is a sense in which it is--the new Heavens and new Earth where we dwell with God is a restoration of that which already exists, which means we will live forever on this very Earth after it has been renewed--but we cannot allow ourselves to see only this passing age of death and sin and turmoil as where we ultimately belong. This world cannot hold our affections, certainly not our allegiance, as it is not our true home, and we will not be here for long.

But we have been granted something greater than Earthly experience and wealth. Christ has given us a new home, a kingdom that Hebrews states Jacob and his fathers longed after. A kingdom that Christ proclaims our access to and affiliation with in Matthew 16, speaking to Peter regarding the church that would be built with him.

How would we interact with this world, with its affections and concerns and obsessions, with its nations and its peoples, if we truly understood ourselves to be sojourners in a world that is passing away? If we truly understood what it is that Christ has done by giving us a new home, a new identity, and a new status? I think we do a great disservice to ourselves and our God and our world when we try to divorce the doctrines of the Kingdom and the church from each other. After all, how can we ever bring the glories of our home to the land in which we sojourn, if we do not consider what the glories of our home actually are?

Probably the most difficult part of following God for me has been trust. I have a tendency to rely on myself and my own wits and planning, and it has come back to bite me multiple times. When God was finally able to confront me and get me on track, it was because He had removed every method I had to lean on my own understanding. I associate well with Jacob in that way.

A lot of my reading today had to do with trusting God. Trusting Him for provision, for healing, for fulfilling promises, and so on. But one of the most important, and in our culture difficult, aspects to trusting God is trusting in His timing. A lot of my reading today dealt with that, and even the psalm quoted at the top of this post has some of that flavor to it. I may be able to do things I believe God wants done, I may be able to pull the right strings and talk to the right people and brute force it into existence. But if it isn't built by God, if it isn't built in His timing and His way, then it will not accomplish His purposes and it will not last.

As someone with a lot of things on the horizon, this is very difficult for me. To know that the waiting is worth it. To know that His timing is perfect, and nothing I can do to speed it up will be better. Oh, Lord, please help me to be patient and trust You to work as You will.

The tradition for New Year's is generally to make resolutions, to look forward to all the ways we will aim to make our lives better in the coming year. This is fine, if you're into that sort of thing. One thing I think we should all be doing this year is spending more time remembering what God has done for us.

Of course this includes the mighty works of God as recorded in scripture and history, His creation of the universe, His calling out a people for Himself and His great acts of victory on their behalf, His coming to earth in the form of Jesus Christ and taking on the weight of our sin and rising again victorious over death. Go through the Bible and see how much of it is God acting in profound and powerful ways.

But also, think about where God has acted in our own lives. What did God do in your life last year that set you on the course you're on now in 2019? Keep track of the things He does for you in 2019. Praise Him for His involvement in your life, tell people about God's work in you, seek always to know Him more and see Him working more clearly. Stop and look back occasionally and take stock of places where God was working that you only saw in retrospect.

Let us commit this year to remembering and proclaiming the greatness of our God and the work He does in our lives.