Category: God’s goodness

Do You Begrudge? Or Do You DIGLI?

Posted on by abigail
DIGLI dad and daughter happy dance

“God loves inequality…

In terms of gifts, talents, abilities, opportunities, blessings, God is unequally lavish, at least according to our standards, and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

Joe Rigney

Inequality is not a design flaw.

Differences mean inequality. While many would have you think otherwise, the inequality inherent in our differences is actually a good thing.

In beauty and intelligence, in wealth, health, and family of birth, we’re all different. By each of these measures, we are not equal.

But such inequality is not a design flaw. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made (Psalm 145:17). Since God gave his gifts this unequal way, and He’s always loving and righteous, unequal must not be bad.

The opposite must be true.

In God’s economy, unequal equals good.

But you are right: we are equal in the sense of bearing God’s image and being fearfully and wonderfully made.

But since differences were arranged by the loving Creator, and He dispenses his gifts in diverse and disproportionate ways, inequality must be good.

The body analogy helps us here.

And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. (1 Corinthians 12:16-18).

Our bodies teach us that God designed and arranged “unequal” body parts. He scatters grace as he wishes on whom he wills. And He is lavishly loving toward all he has made.

What do you with this truth? What do you do when you brush up against God’s gifts and blessings to others?

Do you say, It’s so unfair and envy? Or, As you wish, Lord, and DIGLI?

I mean, do you Delight In God’s Lavish Inequality?

Do you DIGLI or do you envy?

Envy: The Great Leveler

Contrary to popular opinion, inequality does not need a fix. We need not level the playing field. Five is not equal to three and that doesn’t make either digit a more necessary number. The world would not be better off with just fours.

Author Dorothy Sayers wrote, Envy is the great leveler. And it always levels down.

Envy and the resentment would have us lower the blessing bar to the lowest common denominator. If I can’t make a six-figure income, you shouldn’t either. If my kid can’t be a champ, yours shouldn’t be either.

Really?

Not Digging Our DIGLI

But get ready. The world may not dig our DIGLI. They won’t get our happy dance.

It redistributes wealth to make it more equal and pushes fair women to be combat-ready. High schools used to have a valedictorian. Then came a few, or a dozen. Now many scrap the whole thing. And forget a youth league MVP. Everyone gets a trophy.

If we believe the world’s lie, that unequal needs a fix, we can’t dance. But if we have eyes to see unequal as a gift, we can DIGLI.

Delight In God’s Lavish Inequality: DIGLI

My favorite dress is a hand-me-down from my friend Christin. I love secondhand gifts.

When God’s grace to others overflows to me, I’m not too proud to DIGLI.

I DIGLI when I listen to my friend Rebecca play piano and sing.

I DIGLI when a service tech looks under the hood and fix the clunk while I wait.

I DIGLI when I feast from my friend Jen’s gorgeous charcuterie board

I DIGLI when Tolkien and Lewis transport me to Middle-earth and Narnia.

I DIGLI when my cheeks are sore because of Tim Hawkins’ yoga pants.

When do you DIGLI?

You must have faith to love God’s scattered grace. Because only eyes of faith can see his works are perfect; a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.

But I don’t always DIGLI.

When I Don’t DIGLI

I don’t dance that happy dance when I compare. Instead, I covet what she’s got or complain about what I haven’t got.

But I can also complain about God’s lavish inequality as he offers mercy. The way God relents and forgives—how he just, swoosh, erases others’ punishment—that inequality of mercy can bring the Pharisee out in me.

And Pharisees don’t dance.

We become self-righteous, “equality” seekers when we say,

  1. I’m not so sure that’s how it should be. Why did she get picked when I’ve been here longer and I know I worked harder? That is so unfair.
  2. Isn’t this what I said? That’s why I made haste to flee; I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful… yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.
  3. Why does Sam get dessert? You said if he didn’t finish his broccoli he wouldn’t get dessert and now you’re letting him have ice cream. That is not right!

It’s hard to swallow God’s grace sometimes. I choke on mercy when I compare.

Life is better on happy feet. So let’s dance the DIGLI not begrudge God’s generosity.

How to Dance the DIGLI

These three practices help me to delight in God’s lavish inequality:

  1. Embrace the body analogy. When I see someone with gifts and abilities and blessings, do I thank the Giver of all good gifts who arranges the parts of the body as he sees fit? Do I delight in his secondhand gifts?
  2. Find yourself in the Bible stories. Are you Cain or Abel? Saul or Jonathan? Are you Jonah fuming under the shriveled vine. Do you cry, “Your mercy’s too great,” or rejoice with the blessed?
  3. Give thanks. Envy cannot coexist with gratitude. So anchor yourself in God’s grace with gratitude, says Rigney. Be grateful for gifts God gave them. No wrong has been done because God blessed them. His grace won’t run out.

As You Wish

Do you remember the beginning of Princess Bride? The part when Grandpa read,

Nothing gave Buttercup as much pleasure as ordering Wesley around.

Farm Boy, polish my horses’ saddle. Farm Boy, fill these with water. Please fetch that jar.

“As you wish,” was all Wesley ever said.  

Then one day Buttercup was amazed to discover that when he was saying,

“As you wish,” he was really saying, “I love you.”

It is that simple. Wesley’s words of true love and devotion should be ours, too.

When we trust God, we dance the happy dance.

When we DIGLI we are really saying to God, the Giver of all good gifts, As you wish, Lord.

Which is really saying, I love you.

Dear Lord, please help us to rejoice in the ways you dispense your gifts. Forgive us for our envy and discontent. Help us to say, and to really mean, “As you wish.” Help us delight in your lavish inequality. May we forever be to the praise of your glorious grace. Amen.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?

–Jesus, in Matthew 20:15

Trust Issues?

Posted on by abigail
Child holding adult hand, trust

Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. 

Psalm 62:8

Do you have trust issues?

I do. But my trust issues aren’t so much with trusting others so much as with others trusting me. 

Trust Me

I don’t mean trusting me to decorate a cake or back a semi-trailer into a loading dock or entertain a two-year old. I don’t even trust me to do those things well.

No, my trust issues come when people don’t trust me to do what I said I’d do. I mean, trust me to keep my word and come through without micromanaging or second guessing me. That kind of carte blanche trust means the world.

Trust, I know, is built on trustworthiness, tested-ness, character. We trust others because we know something about their character. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. 

And I am thrilled to the depths of my firstborn, take-charge, competence seeking soul when people trust me with a task. I still glow to think about the affirmation a leader gave me when I proposed a project a few years ago. “Abigail’s got this,” he said to the team. “Best thing we can do is let her run with it.”

But it’s also why it’s such a blow when I get demoted. When people don’t trust us to do a job that’s in our wheelhouse or to keep our word, that can cut us to the core.

I mean, mistrust hurts.

Don’t Grieve God’s Heart

This got me thinking about trusting God (more than the GPS Girl) and how our lack of trust- our little faith- must displease him. Could it be that our fear and anxiety and grieve God for at least some of the same reasons that others’ mistrust grieves us?

At the heart of this hurt, I think, is the fact that others’ lack of trust in me betrays the truth that people don’t really know me as well as I thought they did. Mistrust can betray a lack of intimate knowledge. 

I know it borders on audacious to compare my sin-twinged reactions to distrust with our Holy God’s. But I dare.

Because if it hurts my puny fail-and-drop-the-ball-self how much more it must grieve the faithful God’s heart when His people don’t trust Him. Like the disciples in the boat, with the waves splashing in on them (Matthew 8:23-27). Can you hear Jesus saying, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” 

In “The Theology of Rest” Oswald Chambers imagines how that felt. 

“O ye of little faith!” What a pang must have shot through the disciples — “Missed it again!” And what a pang will go through us when we suddenly realize that we might have produced down right joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, no matter what was ahead. 

At rock bottom, our anxiety and distrust reveal that we don’t trust God. Which means we really don’t know him as well as he wants us to know him. 

Trust Him Wholly

So trust God. I know- easier said than done. So I’ll let you in on a little secret. It will be way easier to trust God more if you know him better. So get to know God. Seek him where he is to be found. Read his self-revelation. There are 66 books of the Bible all about him. He wrote them because he wants you to know him. 

And He wants you to trust him. Because He is faithful to all his promises. God always keeps his word. Because, as the old hymn reminds us, those who trust him wholly, find him wholly true.

God is the only one worthy of our complete trust. Even the best of friends will sometimes disappoint us. But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Psalm 145:13. The LORD is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. Faithful and loving. Could there be a better pair of traits to gain our trust?

Like James Forsyth said, 

If he gave you breakfast this morning, and he’s given you life everlasting, can you not trust him with what comes in between? If he has demonstrated his love and his concern by even dying on a cross to give you life everlasting can you not trust him with your concerns?

Still it’s hard. Trusting an unseen God with our hopes and our hurts and our very lives is hard. I feel the tension to trust him or to go my own way every day.

But I can assure you of this. Often sooner and for sure later, it’s way more sweet to trust in Jesus. And it makes God glad.

The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who trust in his unfailing love. 

Psalm 147:11

For our heart is glad in him, for we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:21-22

 

Number Our Days

Posted on by abigail

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

Ever had on of those fragile, frail-feeling days? The kind that leave you feeling how vulnerable and feeble and one breath away you really are?  Those days when you just feel so…mortal?

Sunday was one of those.

So teach us to number our days.

After church, we dashed over to Mom and Dad’s for the annual corn roast. This year was a special combo: potluck and dunked-and-buttered corn first, then out back for the baptism service. Thirteen born-again souls, including our two sons, were slated for immersion in the borrowed baptismal. But only 11 went under, because Son #2 got stung by some bees.

So teach us to number our days.

He’d been stung before, so first- no worries. But when rash and itch and panic grew despite baking soda and Benadryl, we knew. Help the boy be calm and breathe, dear Lord, I prayed. And, after my poorly timed words about his being sans phone, Jim steered the van out of the hayfield, onto the highway.  For the next four hours, that was the last I knew.

So teach us to number our days.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, my friends told me about their Teddy. After more than 15 years together, Saturday was the last day with their little Japanese Chin. and forever-pup part of the family named Teddy. We knew Teddy from years of weeks of his warm, wiggly welcomes. If we were lucky, or salty, while we waited during piano lessons, we’d get friendly licks too. But effervescent Teddy won’t be greeting this week.

So teach us to number our days.

Before Gabe got home and soaked up theTLC (The doctor said I might need a little candy if I get a dry mouth from all these pills.), I texted my friend Terry. Terry’s only son got married the day Teddy departed. Terry said she’s swimming in a swirling sea of feelings now that all her family has gone home. A strange “gel of emotions,” she texted me, “emptiness, fullness, exhaustion and extreme joy all in one.”

So teach us to number our days.

It’s been 48 hours since the stings. The meds- 4 pills carefully laid out at breakfast- 2 at dinner- are halfway gone. Gabe’s not so free-wheeling anymore. His mile bike ride to see his dog-friend Kate and his five-minute walk to feed Cookie the cat need more forethought. I need a Epipen and a fanny pack, he says, just to be safe. I feel how I felt that time Gabe got infected– vulnerable and exposed.

So teach us to number our days.

Did I happen to mention that last week was my Psalm 90 week?  That it just so happened that every single day last week there was meditating on and praying over the “Prayer of Moses, the man of God”?  I learned that many think Moses prayed teach us to number our days in between watching dozens or hundreds of Israelites die in the wilderness each day. 

Here’s part of that Prayer of Moses (Psalm 90:10-13):

The years of our life are seventy,
    or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger,
    and your wrath according to the fear of you?

So teach us to number our days
  that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Return, O Lord! How long?
    Have pity on your servants!

God had mercy on me today.  

Gabe said that, in a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor Sunday night. If I would have got to the hospital 30 minutes later, I might have died.

You’re right, Gabe, he did. We don’t know what would have happened if we had waited.
But I don’t think the bee stings and Teddy and Terry’s post-wedding text were all coincidence. I think God was answering my prayer about numbering days.

Sunday’s Takeaways

Maybe He wanted to drive these home, before we fly away.

1. Be wise. Live each day as if it could be your last.

Which is why we ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live…and do this or that’” (James 4:13, 15). Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says, Wisdom is the ability to look at all of life from God’s perspective, to see life from God’s point of view.

Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is, David wrote. 

How do we gain wisdom? By numbering our days! By seeing how fleeting our lives on earth are  in the light of eternity. So do we? Are we: Storing up treasures in heaven? Investing our time, talents, treasures in God’s Kingdom? Using well our fleeting days before we fly away?

2. Fear not. God’s got this. Our frail children of dust lives, I mean.

Jesus said: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground” — that  means die — “apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of much more value than the sparrows” (Matthew 10:29–31).

My mouth, on autopilot, starting singing this Sunday while I waited. They’re from that hymn, O Worship The King, the verse about feeble as frail,

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
in Thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.

3. Fear not. God’s got this. Even the date of our death, I mean.

God’s mercies are firm to the end, But have you wondered, like my Gabe did on Monday, “Does God decide when we die?”

John Piper answered that this way:

[I]f the time for the death of a tiny bird in a remote forest is of a concern to God and determined by God, how much more will our days be numbered and determined by God with great care and wisdom. In fact, the psalmist says to God, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16). Which means, the days that God has allotted for me and you are already written in a book. They are decided.

Piper concludes,

God is God. He governs the world, and that includes the time for our conception in the womb and the time for our death. His children don’t want to have it any other way, do we? God is always better than blind fate. ..What else would we want than for God to determine when we are born and when we die?

Days Numbered, And In Good Hands

Our days are numbered. Only God knows when we will die. So it makes sense that the One who alone can teach us to number them is the only One who already has them counted.

Priest and missionary Henry Martyn said, You are immortal until God’s purpose for you is complete.

So you and me- and all God’s children, Gabe- we are in the best of hands.

And if that’s not invigorating truth and good news on those fragile, frail-feeling days, I don’t know what is.

My times are in your hands.

Psalm 31:15

Postscript:

Life is hard, but God is good.

All Things Work Together For Good, How Gears Turn & Romans 8:28

Posted on by abigail

There are good things and there are bad things and good things are not bad things. But those who love God have a staggering promise: that all things- good things and bad things- work together for their good. That’s Romans 8:28.

 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 

We know this verse and many of us know it by heart. It’s on shower curtains and calendars and notecards. But when you really stop and consider it, Romans 8:28 is baffling.

To some ears, it might even sound like divine hocus-pocus.

Is Romans 8:28 Spiritual Hocus-Pocus?

Romans 8:28 almost sounds like the work of a fairy godmother.

As if God waves his silver wand over the bad things in a believer’s life, things like cancer and conflict and infertility and injury and accidents and temptation and pain, and then- bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!- the lowly pumpkin suddenly becomes a golden coach that whisks the suffering saint straight to the palace and prince.

Like hocus-pocus magic. As if to disguise the reality of the badness, because we know good is good and bad is bad and good and bad are quite often opposites. And yet Romans 8:28 boldly states: All things work together for good to those who love God. And of course, all things means good things and bad things.

But how can this be? How can things working in opposite directions-things like health and disease, kindness and mistreatment, birth and miscarriage, reconciliation and separation, comfort and distress- both be working, pointing, moving for our good? 

If good points right and bad points left, how can they both be leading to our good? 

I don’t know about you, but visuals help me understand. And I need a metaphor to grasp this hard thing. My little pea-size mind needs an image to help make sense of such a staggering promise.

But it’s not a silver wand. It’s a watch.

Watch The Wheels Turn.

In “Working for our Good,” Martyn Lloyd-Jones offers another image. It’s at the end of his sermon, but it hit me so hard I played and rewound and transcribed for an hour so I could describe this unbaffling image. Here it is:

Take your watch and open it. What do you see? You see wheels turning in opposite directions. You see one wheel moving in an anti-clockwise direction attached to another wheel going in a clockwise direction.

And you… look at this machinery and say “This is mad. This is quite ridiculous. Here are wheels working in opposite directions. The man who made that watch must have been a madman.”

 Of course he wasn’t. This is how he’d arranged this watch to work and move the hands around. Because all these different wheels are ultimately controlled by a main spring.

There’s a purpose at the back of it all. At the back of the main spring is the watchmaker who made the watch and wound it up… One gear is turning this way and one turning that way, but they’re all working together to move the main wheel and tell the time.  All these things that seem to be in contradiction are working together to the same end. It’s like that.

See the Gears Spin with a Spiritual Eye.

You look at life and say at first, “What’s happening? I can see that certain things are good for me, but look at all these other things. These are all against me.” 

“Think again,” he says, “Think again. Think of the One who’s planned it all. Don’t jump to conclusions. Look for an ultimate purpose. Look for an ultimate end. And if you do so with a spiritual eye as you should you will soon begin to see that God knows what he’s doing.”

Yes look at it again with spiritual eyes and will come to the conclusion that all things- everything- yes everything- that’s happening too you is working together. God’s made it like that. He wound it up. He keeps it going. The watchmaker is working it all together for our good.. 

Could there possibly be a more comforting and reassuring truth than that? Could there be a more heartening promise?

 

Don’t Slap It On.

I could stop here. After the watchmaker is working it all together for our good.

But I know Romans 8:28 is so encouraging we might be tempted to apply it quick and loose to others in pain. At our best we do so because it’s we’ve felt it’s immense comfort and we want to comfort others with the help we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:4). There may well be a time to share Romans 8:28.

At our worst we apply the verse like a slap job. It’s a take-this-pill-and-get-over-it. It’s saying, “It’s all for the best,” at a funeral for a child. It might mean, “Hurry up and heal, so I don’t have to see you hurt.”

Besides that, it might come off as if we’re saying that bad things are good. They’re not. In the context of Romans 8, Paul had just finished talking about trials and suffering and all creation groaning (see Romans 8:17-27).

Paul was not calling black white or dark light and neither should we. To do so would be “false spirituality and a crass insensitivity.” 

Because evil does enter our homes. Things invade our lives that are just plain bad. We’re not to be glib and slap on Romans 8:28 like we slap a band-aid on a crying four year-old’s knee, to quiet him and send him away.

Our freshly wounded friends need our presence and hugs and listening ears. A slapped-on Romans 8:28 won’t heal their hurt.

Fools rush in. Wisdom can sit and wait when words won’t come.

But Hold On Tight.

But we, reading this now- we need grasp the watch and the gears- and hold on tight to the image when things go “anti-clockwise.” Because bad things will come to us. Things will go anti-clockwise.

That’s why we need to latch on to ALL THINGS. Because Romans 8:28 tells us that no meaningless trial comes to us. It affirms that no suffering- no bad thing- is wasted. Romans 8:28 teaches us that there is no experience ever in the Christian’s life that will not be worked for good.

Most of all, we know- not think or hope, but know- that in his providence God uses every single seemingly isolated event, to bring about his purpose- that we be conformed to the image of Christ and finally brought to glory.

Finally, in a Romans 8:28 sermon of his own, Pastor Geoff Thomas quotes one Daniel Howland,

All the events that take place in the world carry on the same work—the glory of the Father and the salvation of his children. Every ill­ness that may seize you, every loss you may meet with, every reproach you may endure, every shame that may color your faces, every sorrow in your hearts, every pain in your flesh, every ache in your bones, is for your good.

Oh, Christians, see what a harvest of blessings ripens from this text! The Lord is at work; all creation is at work; men and angels, friends and foes, all are busy, working together for good.

Oh, dear Lord Jesus, what have you seen in us that you should order things so wondrously for us, and make all things- all things – to work together for our good?”

The Lord is at work. Clockwise or anti-clockwise the wheels turn for His purpose.

Rest assured, the watchmaker turns all things for our good.

 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 

Romans 8:28-29