“The story of Jesus tells us that our root problem is not just failing in our obedience to God (not being good enough) but in relying on our obedience (being really, really good) to save us.  Therefore, the gospel is a ‘third way’–  neither religion nor irreligion. The religious person may say, “I am doing the right things that God commands” and the irreligious person may say, “I decide what is right and wrong for myself.” But both ways reject Jesus as Savior (though they may revere Him as ‘Example’ or ‘Helper’). Both ways are strategies for self-salvation– both actually keep control of their own lives.”

Tim Keller, The Prodigal God

I loved this book, immediately listened to it twice in a row. I can’t recommend it enough. Very challenging, full of truth.

::.:: Audio Version ::.::

“If you do not enter into the mystery of godliness and allow God to be in you the origin of His own image, you will seek to be godly by submitting yourself to external rules and regulations imposed on you by the particular Christian society you have chosen…you will in this way perpetuate the pagan habit of practicing religion in the energy of the flesh, and in the very pursuit of righteousness commit idolatry in honoring ‘Christianity’ more than Christ!”

Ian Thomas

Read that again? And again?

HT: Rebecca Reynolds

I stoled this quotation from Justin Taylor who stoled it from some other dude. It’s Martin Luthur on the value of literature to prepare the way for good Theology –though not necessarily the way you think. I call it very true.

It sort of has some of the same themes from this post I did at the Rabbit Room about the spiritual value of imaginative literature. Me and Luther, you know…the um, er….top sources for this sort of thing. Ahem.

“I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.”

Luther

Note: This is a repost from a few years ago.

The setting for the story of our life is changing. We’re moving. It’s not the biggest, most daring move. We’re not traveling 8,000 miles to live in Africa (as my parents did with us when I was a kid). We’re moving about 100 feet. We are buying and moving into our neighbor’s house. (Insert coveting jokes here.)

Boring?

I hope not. The small story of our family moving is about more than more space, more than moving up the hill into a little bigger house. It’s about a dream, a vision, a story our lives are telling.

Overstating it?

We’re moving because we believe the setting of the new house will allow us to thrive in our passions. We believe it will help us be and do who we are and what we are called to.

Space, the final frontier. We did not need more space. We have said, “we need more space,” and have heard others say it many times. It’s sort of true, but not really. We have more space than most people in the world and in history have had. (A good measure, I think. Especially to gauge thankfulness.) We could have made it work.

We want more space. Why?

I want to set my beautiful wife up to succeed in everything she’s called to. I believe that’s part of my job (and one I’m slowly learning to do better, I hope, by grace). Gina has some hard jobs. These are jobs she loves, feels called to, and wants to do. Jobs like cooking every day to feed five…er, six, people. Jobs like teaching the kids about birds, sums, sentences, and czars. Jobs like sewing and writing, leading and loving. The new place enables her to more easily achieve success in her work. This is the leading reason for the move, in my view. But there are others.

We want to have people over. Hospitality has been on our hearts for a long time and we want to have a space that makes that possible/easier. The place we’re moving to is not huge, by any means. But the way it’s laid out allows for a lot more room to have people in our home.

The fact that there’s more opportunity for easier hospitality figures into our plans for our children. We plan to have a lot of “home games” with their friends. We want our kid’s friends of all ages to want to come to our place and to have room to operate and have a good great time. This house gives us more of that.

The place has a small hut that I plan to use for writing. A Writer’s Hut, which Chris Yokel –outstripping all competitors– has perfectly named “The Forge.” It’s kind of a dream-come-true. (Of course, it needs some work. Much like the novel I can’t wait to return to writing when things settle a bit.)

I could go on, but you get it.

We think this place will serve to aid us in our various vocations. And that’s the point of writing a little about this.

The setting changes, the story proceeds. I could go on about our situation in particular, but I mainly just want to connect the move (an ordinary thing) with our calling and our story.

I want our decisions, under God, to connect our family to the story we’re in, both in the common themes, and the plot lines particular to us.

So, here’s to the wild, wonderful adventure of moving next door!

What’s happening in your life? What is God doing to advance the plot of your story?

FYI: Gina took all these pictures. I steal things from her site a lot.The first pic is of what will soon be our “old house.” The last one is the mailbox my brother Will painted for me. It was a swell gift. The funny thing is (concerning the name on it) this was well before I, or anyone else, used “S.D. Smith” to refer to me, myself, and/or I. I remember thinking it was funny at the time. Now, literally tens of people know me by that name.

Note: This was originally posted at The Rabbit Room. Also, FYI FWIW: This is my 700th post here.

It’s a dangerous thing to be alive, where temptations to think we’re better than others are everywhere. Temptations to believe we deserve more, ubiquitous. Sinful pride is part of our awful inheritance, even when we’re depressed.

Sometimes I think it’s all about me, that even my failures are more important than they really are, or ever could be. It’s the smoking gun of pretended sovereignty, of usurpation. I sigh, denied.

And my sighs are the song of selfishness thwarted. Sighs pour forth from the fancy mouths of make believe monarchs, kings detecting treason in every ordinary frustration. Everyone is out to get the selfish man, because everything is about him.

I sigh because I’m a thirty-four year old man and crying in public is bad P.R.

If I sigh, a defeated, surrendering soul, I am blessed.

If I sigh, a frustrated king, an idolater whose god just did nothing again, I am a moaning idiot. I am slapping back at the gift-hand of my Father.

Who am I? Good question.

It’s the only question and only the right answer will serve.

Because from that answer I know my story and the danger then is in forgetting. We are skydivers all, but there is such a thing as a parachute. Remember?

Sighs are so often the evidence of my forgetting. They are the heaving woes of wounded idols. They are the crying out for water now, bread now, a return to the slavery of Egypt now.

But, though I am often a forgetter, I am never forgotten.

That makes me happy.

Don’t forget to remember who you are and remember not to forget it. And never never ever ever be redundant.

Speaking of redundancy: When my brothers and I were kids, my Dad had one instruction when he dropped us off anywhere. He would always say “Don’t forget whose boys you are.”

A good word.

Whose child are you? The answer to that question, for those in Christ by grace, is a sigh of relief.

Be relieved. Be happy. Sigh not so.

Images from Alan Jacobs, The Gospel of Trees

“The essence of other religions is advice. Christianity is essentially news.”

Tim Keller

I’m not a big U2 fan. My wife is, and I have no negative feelings toward them, but I sometimes get the reactive attitude related to them. Everyone worships them and it’s been so trendy for so long and sometimes I react to that. Didn’t root for Michael Jordan. Never saw The Passion Of The Christ, etc. I’m totally inconsistent on that, but there it is. So…

I had a bunch of friends in Nashville who went to see U2 recently and it was kind of like the second coming to many of them. But their enthusiasm was pretty catching. Afterwards, Thomas McKenzie linked to a story many of the concert-goers were referencing on Twitter.

You have probably heard Bono talk about Grace and how it’s better than Karma. (If not, read it here.)

Well, he displayed it here. I love this kind of thing.

He invited a fan onto the stage at the close of the show, a blind guy who wanted to play a song for his wife. Bono sang along and the band joined in. Watch it below. Aside from just being cool, this was a little picture of grace to me. Some one, undeserving really,  being welcomed into something much bigger than himself, experiencing an incredible, story of a lifetime, moment. Remind you of anything?

“If you want a loving God, you have to have an angry God.”

Tim Keller

A great memory from my last birthday was getting the chance to listen to and ask questions of my Dad for a few hours. I got to hear, in more detail than ever, the story of his life in the Army. From his enlistment (he volunteered during Vietnam, wasn’t drafted) as a Private, to his honorable discharge a few years later as a Lieutenant. I had to drag many of the facts out of him, because he is more reluctant than most men to talk about himself. But after some persistent inquiry, he would tell it to me straight.

There are several scenes that fascinate me, tales of danger and distress (told always in my father’s subdued, under-glamorized way). There are lots of things I’d love to share. But I’ll get to a particular theme of the over-all story.

Dad enlisted and went to basic training. Sometime in the first months of his training, he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He was offered an appointment to West Point. While Dad underplayed this detail, barely mentioning it as he moved on, this was a real honor for an enlisted man. This would not only advance his career, pay, and prestige, but would actually have kept him out of the war. But he had volunteered during wartime. He wanted to be a combat veteran.

He also wanted to get married. He was engaged to my mother and at West Point you could not be married. That was a deal-breaker. He declined.

I dug out of him that it astonished his superiors and baffled (and perhaps infuriated) some veterans in our family. He went instead to Officer Candidate School. He would go on to become an officer, go to war, and become a distinguished soldier. In Vietnam he served as a platoon leader in Delta company and later the XO (and briefly the acting Company Commander). He never lost a man though, before he arrived and after he left, this was not the case for those who commanded his platoon. His command was a rare interval of grace. He was considered unusually competent and lucky/blessed.

His men called him “Luke, ” short for “Cool Hand Luke,” because of his easy calm in the middle of danger. When one of his men pointed his gun at the Sergeant and it was reported to Lt. “Luke” Smith, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. The kid was scared, he thought, so he walked up to the young soldier and held out his hands, silently demanding his gun. The soldier gave the gun up and Dad gave it to the Sergeant and they carried on in the field, the rebellious soldier marching through the jungle with no weapon for a week. He never had any problems from that soldier again. The errant soldier could have been seriously punished, his record spoiled and his path marked. But Dad, though a believer in total depravity, has always been eager to see people at their best, to believe they will come around if given a chance. He has, it must be admitted, been wrong on that score many times. But his errors are usually on the side of grace.

When his tour was nearing its end, he was offered an opportunity to become a Captain and have a job stateside if he would reenlist for only one year. Once again, there was an opportunity to increase his pay, prestige, and enhance his career. Again, he declined.

There were lots of reasons. He had accomplished what he wanted to. He wanted to be a combat veteran in the Army, then he wanted to be home. They offered him a post in Kentucky, but it was not quite close enough to home. He wanted to go hunting, go to West Virginia football games, get a job, and teach Sunday School. He wanted to be a regular guy again.

He came home with a resume made for leadership. High School class president, captain of the football team, distinguished officer in wartime (having led hundreds of men in battle). He applied at the nickel plant and was offered a job in management. He had no desire to manage people. He’d done that. He wanted to not be in charge. He literally would rather be the guy sweeping the floors. He declined again, would not be a manager. He got the job he wanted.

He wouldn’t avoid leadership for long, and would be drafted into leadership again and again in life, as he always had been. He has never been one to seek it out, but it has always found him and thrust him forward.

But among the many things I took away from this opportunity to listen to my father, this theme was clear. He declined a lot of opportunity. He chose things that seemed less important, were less lucrative, and led to a quieter life (in a sense).

His life has been characterized by a genuine preference for reluctance, followed by simple confidence and high performance. In school, in football, in basic training and Officer Candidate School, in Vietnam, it was the same story. At the nickel plant he was a very reluctant president of the union (where he was told he was “just way too honest to be effective”) for a short period. He led as a missionary pastor in Africa, coming to a wounded church and being a bright spot in between two tragic failures. He started a Zulu church, taught and trained men. He is a pastor now. He’s been a good man, a good husband and father.

His life has not been wasted. God, for his own glory, has used Dad in –I say this with careful thought– thousands and thousands of lives for good. He has been and continues to be a herald of the Good News of Jesus, is a quiet teacher full of grace.

He still loves simple things like gardening, yard work, West Virginia sports, studying, reading, and spending time with his family (including 20 grand kids). He still sweeps.

I guess my conclusion is simple. Many people, by many standards, would probably see my Dad as a kind of failure, as a person who failed to achieve all that could be achieved. He did not, in one sense, grab life by the horns. He never earned a college degree (though he was and is certainly smart enough to teach in college –and actually has). He’s not the poster child for the American Dream of achievement.

But he’s the best man I know. He’s been an exemplary father and has served people of all colors and language on several continents. He is a beautiful man.

How many High Achiever stories have you read with the tragic footnote that the person lost their kids and ruined their families? Too many.

I’ll take my Dad. I’ll take him, receive him, for what he is and has been: a gift from a far better Father.