Eulogy for My Dearly Loved Mother

 My eulogy at the funeral of my dearly loved mom, Betty Jo Tolliver -- May 21, 2025

These days Facebook and social media are used in all kinds of ways – many of them kind of weird, and many not too helpful.  But every now and then people do use them for good reasons and in encouraging, edifying kinds of ways.  

I was reminded of that very poignantly when I started to read people’s comments about my dear Mom on my post that told of her passing.  The posts and comments described her as kind and sweet and funny and reminded me of my mom and her life during her much happier days.   

I think I appreciated that all the more because I, along with my sister, Karen, have, these last several weeks and months, and even during the last few years, watched as Mom suffered more and more and grew more and more unhappy.   

It was the unhappiness that came with some difficult complications after her colon cancer surgery many years ago, and the unhappiness of realizing that some things she longed for in this life were probably just never going to happen.

And then there was the deep, deep sadness of losing her dearly loved husband, Paul who left this world, it seemed to us, way too soon.

Then before too long there was the unhappiness that came with her gradually deepening dementia accompanied by news of stage 4 breast cancer.  

There was the sadness that went with her lifelong, quiet struggle with bouts of depression.  And then in recent weeks she would, sorry to say, consider it a real cause for unhappiness to leave her much loved home, and her times surveying the neighborhood from her front porch, and make the move to assisted living near Becky and me in Lansing.

It was very hard to try to make her happy in those days, and to have to watch, instead, as she descended day by day deeper into sadness and into the confused dismay cruelly comes with dementia.  There were still some bright and more contented moments, but there were fewer and fewer of them.

So as I said, once she had passed – and how that happened, and happened so quickly is not the story to tell today – but again, once I had posted on Facebook that she had died, I was caught off guard by how encouraged and heartened I was  to see the comments about my beautiful, kind and well-loved mother, along with the shared remembrances of much better times when she had been so much more happy and hopeful….

So many of those times were times spent with family – she loved to connect occasionally with relatives from Bethel and Georgetown.  (Her mother was one of 13 children!)   

…But even more she loved to be with her children – Karen, Gary and me – and her grandchildren, and she had a special place in her heart for her great-grandchildren.  

She was so proud of her grandsons, loved spending time with them, and prayed and hoped so deeply that they would be able to live happy lives.

And then there were all the happy, good and meaningful times with her beloved husband, Paul.  Lots of times they’d be golfing together, often with their good friends, Sandy and Gary.  

Or maybe it would be at special events like the annual Corn Festival, helping out a bit in making the delicious apple butter with the Tolliver clan – a time when she could team up with Paul in a cornhole competition or catch up on news of friends and family with Ruth and Velma.  And mom always loved  a good parade.

Mom and Paul would take all kinds of day trips, or watch one of the grandson’s little league games, or the school and sporting events of Natalie and Michelle.    

They’d do puzzles, play cards, or croquet or ping pong. Or maybe it would be dominoes with Kim and Art – a match that would sometimes end with Art so magnanimously reminding my mom that’ ‘there’s no shame in losing to a superior player.’   (But seriously for a moment, Kim and Art have continued to be so kind and thoughtful to mom, right to the end. )  

Mom and Paul enjoyed vacations together -- sometimes to Florida, or to the practice rounds at the Masters, or one time out west, with Mom’s father, Joe.

In addition to all this, a lot of my mother’s happiness throughout the happier days came from good times with very good friends.  And in saying that my mind turns right away to her life-long friend, Mary Sue Kamphaus.  

The two became friends in kindergarten and remained really more like sisters year after year, decade after decade, even after Mom moved up to Wilmington years ago.  

They delighted in one another – their interactions and conversations were some of the best things that ever happened in my mother’s life, and she missed her so much when Mary Sue passed just a couple years ago.

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I can’t mention every friend, of course, even though Mom enjoyed them all so much.  But I have to mention one more in particular, and that is her dear and special friend, Jane.  

I’m pretty sure they met when they both worked as waitresses at the L&K restaurant – and from then on they would share so many special times together, a unique friendship with a uniquely shared sense of humor that only special friends can enjoy.  

Betty Jo and Jane were there for each other through good times and bad, one supporting the other when they each needed it most.  

And Jane continued to be that kind of friend to Mom to the very end, trying to help lift her spirits, getting her out of the house when Mom’s opportunities were few, and encouraging her to make the hard choices that she needed to make as she made the move to Lansing.  Friends like that are rare and precious.

But today I also want to express our family’s deep gratitude to my mother’s amazing neighbors.  

Jean, Lloyd and Jane were extraordinarily kind and helpful to my mother, being available to assist and encourage however needed, day after day after day, in all kinds of ways – from keeping her yard in great shape when she could no longer do it herself, to the many trips to the grocery, or the doctor, or the drug store.  

They kept a watchful eye over her, helping her feel safe even once she was widowed and living alone

And there was much more, like taking her for rides that included a crucial stop at Dairy Farmers for an ice cream soda.  

Or taking time for leisurely chats on Mom’s front porch….  And especially generous, Christ-imitating actions,  like being ready when needed to guide her down the steps to their basement when tornadoes might be getting too close.  

These dear neighbors were also my mom’s dear friends, and they were the key reason that she was able to stay in her home as long as she did, and I can never thank them enough.

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But then, as I said, these last few months have been hard and unhappy ones for my mom, and therefore hard days for those of us who loved her and wanted the best for her even once her dementia stole her good judgment and cruelly confused her memory, so that we could not just go along with what she wanted.

During this very difficult time, my sister’s interactions with her – the phone calls where Mom would move back and forth from irrational anger to agitation and despair – with Karen patiently listening and seeking to console (even while experiencing health challenges of her own).  

Those talks would be about the only thing that could calm Mom’s heart, so that she could end the call by telling Karen, “I love you.”

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And as I tried my best to do for Mom whatever needed to be done, I was helped all along the way by some extraordinary friends from Lansing and from the church where I’m privileged to be one of the pastors.  

So many brothers and sisters were praying, and there were at least a dozen of these real-world saints who acted in extraordinarily generous and helpful ways, doing whatever needed to be done to help my mother, and in doing so, being such an enormous help to me.  

I will say more to you in the days ahead, and I hope I’ll have opportunities to be at least half as good a friend to you, as you have most definitely been to me.

But my greatest friend and helper through all of this has been my wife, Becky.  The way she has loved and patiently cared for my mom, especially in times when it was considered unwise for me to connect with Mom, has made me appreciate and love her all the more.

But now, to finish, I want to speak as a Christian believer.  

I have said rather a lot today about Mom’s unhappiness at the end of her life.  But now I need to correct myself.  I should have said, ‘the end of her EARTHLY life’.   

Because, for the Christian – and my Mom’s faith in Christ was simple, but real – the end of life in this world is simply not the end.   In fact, it’s barely the beginning.

The Bible says that, because Christ was raised from death, those united by faith to Him will also be raised and welcomed to be with Him in His glorious kingdom forever.

Since this is a eulogy, and Pastor Hinman is bringing the sermon, I will cut to the chase and say, because of Jesus Christ and His atoning death and victorious resurrection, every soul who trusts in Him is going to end up perfectly and irreversibly happy!

And this new, and enduring and irreversible happiness begins in Heaven – ‘to be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord’ and ‘in his presence is fulness of joy’.   

Every now and then this past week since she died, a wave of grief can swamp me out of nowhere – and at just those times I try to remind myself of what the Word of God promises and what the saving Grace of God guarantees, and that’s this:  that my mom, who while on this earth often had a very hard time being happy, is now finally and forever, fully and gloriously happy all the time.

Her mind is clear, her eyes are bright again with intelligence and wit, her laughter is free and full, her body is whole and it is now, all the time, every day, ‘well with her soul.’   

Now, even she who was so addicted to worrying about what evils might lie ahead, has been finally cured of her addiction because, for the Redeemed in glory, there are no more evils ahead – ever.  

Rev. 21:1- 5...

Then I, John, saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, …

2 And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among men, he will dwell with them. 

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

So it makes me very, very glad, today, even through tears, to think of my mom being perfectly and permanently happy fully included and welcome home in the midst of all the rest of the redeemed, reunited with her beloved Paul, and with so many believing family and friends.   

And there’s no one and no thing that can ever again sabotage or spoil her joy.

I don’t know exactly what her ‘mansion in glory’ looks like – but I do know a few things:  it has a nice wide front porch adorned with beautiful flowers with a bird bath at one end and a metal pink flamingo from Lowe’s at the other….and there’s not a leashless dog in sight!

And to be honest, when I was thinking of all this the other night – thinking about how the great and gracious Lord Jesus could take an often troubled and worried and agitated person like my Mom, and bring her to a place and perfect her into a person who is now forever glad, it struck me very deeply:   what a wonderful Savior He must be.  What a glorious Savior He is!

(Love you, Mom!)

Repentance -- Unconditional Turning to God

 “The whole proclamation of Jesus…is a proclamation of unconditional turning to God, of unconditional turning from all that is against God, not merely that which is downright evil, but that which in a given case makes total turning to God impossible…. [cp. the rich young ruler]

“It is addressed to all without distinction and presented with unmitigated severity in order to indicate the only way of salvation there is.

“Repentance calls  for total surrender, total commitment to the will of God….  It embraces the whole walk of the new man who is claimed by the divine lordship.  It carries with it the founding of a new personal relation of man to God….  It awakens joyous obedience for a life according to God’s will.”

-- "Repentance" (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament)

What Is Repentance?

 "Repentance" (metanoia), acc. to the “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament” (Kittel):

“[Repentance is a] radical conversion, a transformation of nature, a definitive turning from evil, a resolute turning to God in total obedience (Mk.1:15; Mt.4:17; 18:3)….  This conversion is once for all.  There can be no going back, only advance in responsible movement along the way now taken.  It affects the whole man, first and basically the center of personal life, then logically his conduct at all times and in all situation, his thoughts, words and acts (Mt. 12:33ff. par; 23:26; Mk.7:15 par.).

“The whole proclamation of Jesus…is a proclamation of unconditional turning to God, of unconditional turning from all that is against God, not merely that which is downright evil, but that which in a given case makes total turning to God impossible….

“It is addressed to all without distinction and presented with unmitigated severity in order to indicate the only way of salvation there is.

“Repentance calls for total surrender, total commitment to the will of God….  It embraces the whole walk of the new man who is claimed by the divine lordship.  It carries with it the founding of a new personal relation of man to God….  It awakens joyous obedience for a life according to God’s will.”

"Amazing Grace" (full version)

 "Amazing Grace" (extended version)

John Newton’s Full Poem

(from which we get the hymn, "Amazing Grace")

In evil long I took delight,

unawed by shame or fear;

Till a new object met my sight,

and stopped my wild career:

I saw One hanging on a tree

in agonies and blood;

Who fixed His languid eyes on me

as near His cross I stood.

Sure, never till my latest breath

can I forget that look;

It seemed to charge me with His death,

though not a word He spoke.

My conscience felt and owned the guilt,

and plunged me in despair;

I saw my sins His blood had shed,

and helped to nail Him there.

Alas, I knew not what I did,

but all my tears were vain;

Where could my trembling soul be hid,

for I, the Lord, had slain!

A second look He gave that said,

"I freely all forgive!"

"This blood is for thy ransom paid,

I died that thou mayest live!"

Amazing grace,

how sweet the sound,

that saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost, but now am found,

was blind, but now I see.

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

and grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

the hour I first believed!

Thro' many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come:

'Tis grace hath bro't me safe thus far,

and grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,

His Word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,

as long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

and mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess within the veil,

a life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

the sun forbear to shine;

But God Who called me here below

shall be forever mine.

-- John Newton

Is Herod a Part of Your Version of the Christmas Story?

 Is Herod a Part of Your Christmas Story?

Matthew 2:3  "When King Herod heard this [about the birth of Jesus] he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him...."

“Christ is the peace of the righteous, the trouble of the wicked.” (P. Quesnel)

I think it's worth being reminded that you can’t tell ‘the Christmas story’ faithfully without including the story of Herod, and the diabolical role he played in the events surrounding the birth of the “Christ [=King] child.”  Herod reminds that in many ways the story of the human race is the story of the contest and conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15).  And so, Cain rose up and slew Abel.  It is the war between ‘flesh’ and Spirit, between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light.  Herod is what we would all be, were it not for the restraining effects of God’s grace and truth.

The ‘Herodian impulse’ is one of envy, paranoia, resentment and rage, deceit, dishonest, manipulation, maneuvering and the unspeakable murder of innocent children (because one of them was the Rival [Rightful] King).

Herod, of course, was a monster – his ‘sin nature’ was acted out in the extreme.   But the ultimate truth is, every one of us has ‘Herod’ living inside us, and unless we resist and repent, enabled by God’s redeeming grace, every one of us goes deeper into the sinful self-centeredness and hatefulness that makes us more and more monstrous ourselves – less and less loving, and kind, less and less compassionate and caring, and more and more troublesome and toxic to those around us.

We want to be the center of things – we want to reign and rule – in our family relations, in the place where we work, and even in the churches where we ‘worship’ and ‘serve.’

And make no mistake – we are faced with the choice that Herod faced – will we bow the knee to the true and rightful King?   Will repent?  Will we turn from the sinful, self-centeredness that expresses itself in our own envy, resentment, manipulating and, yes, ‘murders’ (see Matt. 5:21-22; 1 John 3:12, 14-15).

In fact, when you trace of the Story through the New Testament, the murderous assaults of the Herods continued throughout the rest of the ‘story of Jesus’, didn’t they?  (Ask John the Baptist.)   It was a Herod who teamed up with Pilate to finally accomplish what his grandfather failed to do.  The murder that mis-fired so  tragically in Bethlehem succeeded brutally just outside of Jerusalem.

Herod was the Serpent’s Agent for carrying out the crushing of the heel of the seed of the Woman – and so on Golgotha it looked like the Herods of the world will win out after all….

…But three days later it didn’t look like that at all anymore.  Jesus accomplished the ultimate defeat  of Satan, our Adversary and Accuser, by His substitutionary work on the cross that crushed the Serpent’s head, dealing him the fatal blow (see Col. 3:13-15)

But one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith is that, while the Lord Jesus did indeed mete out what would be the mortal blow against the Evil One, His victory will not be finally manifested until He comes again.  In fact, the apostle John, even on this side of the Cross, says the whole world (still) lies under the power of the Wicked One (1 John 5:19).

And so we find the conflict between the kingdoms playing out in the Book of Acts.  Yet another Herod arrests and murders James the brother of John.  He also arrests Peter, but an angel of the Lord miraculously delivers Peter from jail.  And in fact, not much later, after a prideful, God-defying speech, “…an angel of the Lord struck [Herod] down, and he was eaten with worms and died.”  Wow.   And what does Luke write next?  “But the word of God continued to increase and spread.”  (Acts 12:23-24).

And so this irreconcilable war continues and will continue until the end of the Age.  “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and will go from bad to worse….” (2 Tim. 3:12-13).

But our “blessed hope is the appearing in glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13), at the end of the age when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.   And He shall reign forever and ever.  Hallelujah! (Rev. 11:15).  (By the way the action described in the favorite Christmas carol, “Joy to the World”, is actually about his SECOND Coming of Christ.

But the Bible makes it unmistakably clear that the return of Jesus Christ to reign and to rule begins with the awesome/aweful work of final Judgment, when everyone who lived out their allegiance to Christ, the rightful King, in love, kindness, compassion, honesty, righteousness will receive their reward and commendation, entering into the endless joys of the kingdom of God….

…But this will also be the time when every Herod gets what’s coming to him.  For everyone who was self-seeking and self-serving, following the way of evil, there will be wrath and anger, trouble and distress (Rom. 2:8-9).  And the judgment will be specific – repayment for specific acts of sinning.  In fact the Lord Jesus himself said, “I tell you that people will have to give account on the day of judgment for every useless word they have spoken [or typed, or posted, or tweeted, etc.]”  (Matt. 12:36).   The Lord will be the avenger on that day for every person abused, even when the abusive person thought they had gotten away with it (cp. 1 Thess. 4:6; 2 Tim. 4:14).  Ironically, even warnings like this will make a Herod even madder and meaner, but that will only mean a sterner recompense on the say Christ comes to judge.

So, strange as it may seem, we really do need to included Herod in our telling of the Christmas story, for that is the way to include the essential reality of our sin and evil, guilt and slavery to sin (which the classic Christmas carols include as well).   Only those who are honest about the darkness are going to pay attention to talk of a kingdom of light.  The urgent message, summons and invitation of the full Story of Christ includes the call to sincere repentance and faith, so that we may be “transferred from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the Son [the Father] loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”  (Col. 1:13-14).

Real repentance includes turning from all our Herod-like tendencies and twistedness  and entering into the life of the Spirit of Christ – the real and rightful King who will rule the world in truth and grace and make the nations prove [by experience] the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love!

Spurgeon on True Conversion (That Jesus Should Be King Over You)

 'Note the business on hand—it is that Jesus should be King over you. ...Jesus must be King or He cannot be your Savior. Thousands of people are quite willing to be saved by Christ, but when it comes to the first step, namely, that Jesus must be accepted as Ruler, Lawgiver, Master, King, and Lord, then they start back and reject eternal life—

“Yet know (nor of the terms complain),
Where Jesus comes, He comes to reign;
To reign, and with no partial sway;
Thoughts must be slain that disobey.”

 'The whole question of your being saved or lost will turn on this—if Jesus is not your King, then the devil will remain enthroned in your heart and you will remain a lost soul. But if your heart will yield itself up to the supreme authority of King Jesus, then the work of salvation has already commenced and Jesus will take care to purge your nature of all His enemies until you shall be an empire in which He alone shall reign in holiness and peace. Jesus must be king! What do you say, sir, shall it be so? Do you hesitate about it? He must be your Lord and Master. His will must be your will. His commands must be law to you and His example must henceforth be the model of your life. Do you disagree or will you yield at once?...

'...And here is the point, if Jesus is to reign, the old king must go down. It is of no use trying to have [Sin and Christ] on the throne at the same time. It is impossible to serve sin and to serve Christ. Favorite and constitutional sins must be relinquished. I know many persons who say that they are under concern of soul whose sincerity I more than question, because they continue in known sin and yet they complain that they cannot find peace. How can they?...

'...The main point, however, is to do it—really and at once make Christ Jesus your King. And to this end we must believe in Him or trust Him. It is this trusting Jesus Christ which is the essential point, for out of it grows the repentance which renounces every false way. When a man fully and honestly trusts Christ with his soul, he is enabled from that time forward to hate the sin which he once loved and so he wins the mastery over it. He finds a joy in submitting to the holy reign of Jesus because he has already trusted Him and believes that he is saved. But alas! many of you do not believe..."

-- from his sermon entitled, "Now Then Do It"

Adopted by God for Fellowship with Him

 James Stewart:

"Paul perceived that a Gospel which broke the bondage of legalism, and ended the tyrant sway of principalities and powers, and remitted sin's fearsome penalties, and brought up reinforcements for cowed and beaten human wills, and then stopped there, was no Gospel worthy of the name.  Great and marvelous achievements these all might be; but over and above them all, one thing was needful, one thing without which all the other glories of redemption must remain sterile and unavailing--the restoration of the lost fellowship with God.  Man wants more than the remission of his sins, more than an escape from inward accusations...more than a ransom from the wrath to come.  He wants to be right with God.  He wants to be back in the family again.  He wants, in a word, reconciliation.  Any Gospel that offers itself to a sinning, suffering world must stand and be tested here.  This is the real test.  It is, quite literally, the 'crucial' test:  for at the heart of it lies a cross." – "A Man in Christ"

J. I. Packer:

Paul teaches that the gift of justification (i.e., present acceptance by God as the world’s Judge) brings with it the status of sonship by adoption (i.e., permanent intimacy with God as one’s heavenly Father, Gal. 3:26; 4:4-7). In Paul’s world, adoption was ordinarily of young adult males of good character to become heirs and maintain the family name of the childless rich. Paul, however, proclaims God’s gracious adoption of persons of bad character to become “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17).

Justification is the basic blessing, on which adoption is founded; adoption is the crowning blessing, to which justification clears the way. Adopted status belongs to all who receive Christ (John 1:12). The adopted status of believers means that in and through Christ God loves them as he loves his only-begotten Son and will share with them all the glory that is Christ’s now (Rom. 8:17, 38-39). Here and now, believers are under God’s fatherly care and discipline (Matt. 6:26; Heb. 12:5-11) and are directed, especially by Jesus, to live their whole lives in light of the knowledge that God is their Father in heaven. They are to pray to him as such (Matt. 6:5-13), imitate him as such (Matt. 5:44-48; 6:12, 14-15; 18:21-35; Eph. 4:32-5:2), and trust him as such (Matt. 6:25-34), thus expressing the filial instinct that the Holy Spirit has implanted in them (Rom. 8:15-17; Gal. 4:6).

Adoption and regeneration accompany each other as two aspects of the salvation that Christ brings (John 1:12-13), but they are to be distinguished. Adoption is the bestowal of a relationship, while regeneration is the transformation of our moral nature. Yet the link is evident; God wants his children, whom he loves, to bear his character, and takes action accordingly.

—J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1993), 167-168.

God will make us into a dazzling, radiant creature

"The command 'Be ye perfect' is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.

"He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—

"He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.

"The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said."

 – C.S. Lewis  MERE CHRISTIANITY – BOOK IV – CHAPTER 9 (“COUNTING THE COST”)

Faith Credited as Righteousness

 “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Abram’s faith is simple and profound: he believed God’s promises, taking God at his word. And that faith, in God’s eyes, was credited as righteousness. This does not mean that Abram earned brownie points for deploying such a righteous faith.  

"Rather, the idea is that what God demands of his image-bearers, what he has always demanded, is righteousness—but in this sinful race what he accepts, crediting it as righteousness, is faith, faith that acknowledges our dependence upon God and takes God at his word. This faith of Abram is what makes him the 'father' of those who believe (Rom. 4; Gal.3)."

– D.A. Carson, “For the Love of God” devotional book

Complete Submission...Unqualified Allegiance

 "Any offer of the Gospel that does not make plain the need for complete submission and unqualified allegiance to Jesus Christ is not biblical." 

-- David Wells, "Turning to God"

John Murray on Faith

 "...faith in Christ is not a momentary and fleeting act of will.  Faith is an act of commitment to Christ and it results in permanent attachment to him.  It knows not divided allegiance.  

"It is total commitment in love and devotion because we discover in him that which demands our whole being.  

"Faith means Christ’s  absolute Lordship and it is significant that it is the title Lord that is employed and thrust into the foreground – ‘if  anyone does not love the Lord’….”  

-- John Murray, sermon on 1 Cor. 16:22:  “Love to Christ Indispensable”

"Soon I will see the lines on His face."

 "I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road walking toward me. Years ago he was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face." 

-- Donald Miller

"Preach Like Hell Lasts Forever" -- Sinclair Ferguson

Preach Like Hell Lasts Forever:  Why We Must Warn — Through Tears

Article by Sinclair Ferguson

Professor, Reformed Theological Seminary

Sometimes sitting beside a wall in our congregation’s building in Dundee, Scotland, I ask, in my imagination, if the wall could replay for me what it heard preached in past days. For here, one Sunday, probably in early 1843, the young minister, still in his twenties (and with but months left of his brief life) entered the pulpit having written these words in his journal the week before:

As I was walking in the fields, the thought came over me with almost overwhelming power, that every one of my flock must soon be in heaven or hell. Oh, how I wished that I had a tongue like thunder, that I might make all hear; or that I had a frame like iron, that I might visit every one, and say, “Escape for thy life!” Ah, sinners! You little know how I fear that you will lay the blame of your damnation at my door. (Memoirs and Remains of R. M. M ‘Cheyne, 1892, 148)

The same Robert Murray M’ Cheyne (our “founding pastor”; he died at the age of 29) met up with Andrew Bonar one Monday, and learning that his close friend had preached on the subject of hell, asked if he had preached it with tears.

These two comments model for us the necessity that is laid on those who preach the gospel (and give us all a vital reason to pray for them).

Preaching Both Heaven and Hell

There can be no doubt that the overarching and undergirding theme of M’Cheyne’s ministry was the sheer wonder of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for lost sinners. But in his teens, he realized that the gospel only produces a full sense of that wonder when we have learned why it is so necessary and are conscious of the terrible realities from which Christ came to save us. A sense of the awful nature of hell and the ineffable wonder of the love of Jesus go hand in hand in the gospel message — in the preaching of it, and in the preacher himself.

By nature, we resist the stretching of mind and emotions that this involves. Preachers tend to be emotionally “wired” to one or the other emphasis — strong and bold in preaching hell but weaker in exalting the love of Christ, or favoring the love of Christ but diluting it by minimizing the reality of the hell. And sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that true biblical balance is found “somewhere in the middle.” In Scripture, however, the true balance is found by the stretching of our understanding and affections in both directions.

On the one hand — like the slow-thinking medieval pupil Boso, a millennium later — we need to hear the echo of the words of his monk-master, Anselm: “You have not yet considered the greatness of the weight of sin.” But on the other hand, we should never make the mistake of under-contemplating Anselm’s main theme: Cur Deus Homo — who it was, how it was, and why it was, that the Son of God entered the darkness of the womb of the virgin Mary and died for us in the darkness of the cross of Calvary.

Preaching from the Judgment Seat

How are we to nurture this “balance” in the ministry of the word? First and foremost, we need to hear our Lord and his apostles addressing us in the Scriptures.

We must contemplate the fact that we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10), and in that light see the wonder of the reconciliation and new creation that are ours in him (2 Corinthians 5:17–21). This is what produces in us “the fear of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:11) that will open our mouths with gracious boldness to “persuade” our hearers (2 Corinthians 5:11), to appeal to them to “be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20), and to show them why and how this wonder has been made possible by Christ becoming sin for us (22 Corinthians 5:21).

Contemplating the judgment seat of Christ sobers our hearts. Then we discover, with John Owen, that the sermons that go with most power from us will be those that have come with most power to us. There is no substitute for visiting the scene of the Last Assize and meditating on the judgment that will take place there. It will assess the reality of our lives (“according to truth,” Romans 2:2) in a way that is righteous (Romans 2:5), individual (Romans 2:6), altogether without favouritism (Romans 2:11), and permanent (Romans 2:12).

Death Without Death

Then, further meditation on the implications of our Lord’s teaching (and the apostles’ outworking of it according to Matthew 28:19–20) will engage us in yet deeper soul-diagnosis and consequent surgery. We will find ourselves mentally and emotionally undeceived. For the result of judgement for those who have not believed is set before us in stark, emotion-laden descriptions.

The unbeliever will experience separation from God — being sent “outside” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:29) and “away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). It is a fire that burns eternally (Matt. 25:42; Jude 7) that is also an “outer darkness” (Matthew 8:12), where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 22:13). It involves dissolution (“destruction,” Matthew 7:13; 10:28; Romans 9:22; Philippians 3:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:2). Dante caught the despair of this in The Divine Comedy in the words he has inscribed over the entrance to hell: “All hope abandon ye who enter here.” Perhaps most sobering of all, it is everlasting (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9).

No wonder the Puritan Thomas Brooks cried out,

Oh, but this word 'eternity, eternity, eternity'; this word 'everlasting, everlasting, everlasting'; this word 'forever, forever, forever', will even break the hearts of the damned in ten thousand pieces! Oh, that word 'never', said a poor despairing creature on his death-bed, breaks my heart. . . . Impenitent sinners in hell shall have end without end, death without death, night without day, mourning without mirth, sorrow without solace, and bondage without liberty. The damned shall live as long in hell as God himself shall live in heaven. (Works of Thomas Brooks, 5:130)

Emotionally Intolerable

Some readers will recall how, from around 1988 into the early 1990s, the late John R.W. Stott was “jumped on” when his long-held openness to annihilationism became more public knowledge. With respect to everlasting punishment, he wrote, “Emotionally, I find the concept intolerable” (Evangelical Essentials, 314).

Even if we do not share his exegesis and the theology to which it gave rise, should we not share his emotions? For the biblical doctrine of hell strips us emotionally bare. Is it perhaps true that the reason for the metallic nature of some preaching on hell has lain precisely here: we have not felt its sheer unbearableness. Can the sense of edge, or coldness, or the compassionless, even angry-voiced way we preach on it be an indication not of our sense of its reality, but rather that its truth has never broken our hearts? Has listening to such preaching been accompanied in your case, as in mine, by the painful thought that we ourselves may also sound like that?

“Emotionally . . . intolerable”? This is not necessarily unbelief. Indeed, if we have not ourselves felt this, would we not too have been asleep on the outskirts of the Garden of Gethsemane? For the New Testament gives us some indication that the one of whom Luther wrote, “No man feared death like this man,” found the hell he faced there “emotionally intolerable.”

‘My God, My God’

The Evangelists’ descriptions suggest what Luther says about Christ. Luke tells us that it was after and not before the angel strengthened him that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling on the ground” (Luke 22:43–44).

Perhaps even more telling is the raw language used by Mark: Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled” and “very sorrowful” (Mark 14:33–34). The verb translated “to be . . . troubled” (adēmonein) is used in the New Testament only here (and the parallel passage in Matthew 26:37) and in Philippians 2:26. As J.B. Lightfoot (a scholar not given to flights of exegetical fancy) notes, it “describes the confused, restless, half-distracted state, which is produced by physical derangement, or by mental distress, as grief, shame, disappointment” (Philippians, 123).

Jesus prayed that the cup his Father was giving him might be removed. His prayer was heard — his prayers were always heard (John 11:42) — but it was refused. For there was no other way (a truth that needs to be pressed firmly on the minds, consciences, and wills of all those who believe they can find another way of salvation, when God the Father could “find” only one).

Jesus prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). It is not an exaggeration, surely, to say that Jesus found his being made sin, tasting death, undergoing divine wrath and experiencing hell in his own separation from God to be “emotionally intolerable.” It undid him in the presence of his Father and the holy angels, and eventually wrung from his soul — by that time tasting “the darkness outside” — these impenetrable words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Backdrop and Framework

“But,” you may say, “this is just the gospel.” Exactly! At the heart of the gospel lie heaven and hell. It is the gospel of the One who tasted hell to bring us to heaven. Any lesser emphases make for a lesser gospel. But this gospel is the gospel of “God’s kindness” which is “meant to lead to repentance” (Romans 2:4 — how striking this statement is precisely because it is embedded in an entire chapter on divine judgment and its consequences!).

But this is also the gospel of the preacher (like Paul) whose mind and emotions are stretched. On the one hand, he sheds tears of grief over the consequences of the greatness of the weight of sin in his hearers’ hearts and the destiny to which that will condemn them; and on the other hand, he feels tears of joy at the greatness of the salvation which he offers to sinners in Jesus Christ.

In the nature of the case, hell and heaven are not the explicit themes of every sermon. But if they are not in the foreground, they should always be the backcloth to our preparation, and the framework within which we view our hearers whenever we are preaching.

So, I need to go to my Bible in the presence of God and meditate until this dawns on my mind, my affections, my will, and then emerges on my lips and my preaching. Only then, even if the words “heaven” and “hell” are not mentioned when I preach, it will become clear to my hearers that the ministry of God’s word is of eternal significance for them — and also for me.

The Most Important Task on Earth

By way of conclusion, two comments made to me about preaching come to mind.

The first, some words of William Still of Aberdeen in Scotland. I cannot forget what I felt when he told me, still a young student, “I never preach now without believing that something will happen that will last for all eternity.” That is the faith of the psalmist and of the apostle: “‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe and so we also speak . . . all for your sake” (2 Corinthians 4:13–15). Who would not want to exercise such a ministry?

Second, some words of a friend, a scientist through whose devoted research people certain otherwise to die within a few weeks were enabled to enjoy prolonged life. Having watched a moving documentary on the result of her work, I said to her how gratifying it must be to see her life’s work making such an amazing impact. She responded very simply, “Sinclair, what I do isn’t really all that important.” And then, with a slight movement of her professorial finger, added, “But what you do. That is really important.”

Words worth weighing. For we are charged with the most important task on earth: pointing men, women, young people, boys and girls to the only Way, to the One who alone can enable them to escape from the City of Destruction and arrive at the Celestial City.

--Sinclair Ferguson is a Ligonier teaching fellow and Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary.

The Race God's Providence Has Marked Out for Me

 “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” – Elisabeth Elliot  

I’ve seen this quote a number of times before, but its applications hit me more forcefully recently as I’ve been teaching about (and therefore reflecting on) the fruit of the Spirit and the similar list of virtues described in a passage like Colossian 3:12-15.   

It struck me that much of the time, and virtually unconsciously, I let myself off the hook because I think that there are things about my circumstances that somehow excuse my not practicing and displaying these Christ-like virtues.  It amounts to me saying, “IF ONLY my circumstances, situations, relationships, opportunities, (etc.) were different THEN I would lead a life marked by these virtues.

But that’s crazy, and exceedingly unbiblical – because the doctrine/reality of divine providence teaches me that the situations, circumstances, relationships, opportunities (etc.) that I’m in are there by His design.  They are the race marked out for me.

So the truth is that it is precisely in the ‘set of circumstances’ that I’m in that God has ordained that I can best learn to go deeper in the obeying, trusting, rejoicing and serving with the attitudes of compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience and humility that He is determined to develop in me, and to do so, day by day, moment by moment, right where He has placed me.

All this corresponds with what Spurgeon said, very much along the same lines:  “Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there.”

J.I. Packer on the Old Gospel versus the New...

"...[The most serious problems in Christianity today all arise from] our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realising it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty....

The 'new gospel' conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church. Why? We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this isn’t primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be “helpful” to man—to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction—and too little concerned to glorify God. 

The old gospel was “helpful,” too—more so, indeed, than is the new—but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its center of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel, the center of reference is man. 

This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and his ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.

The new gospel conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church.

 From this change of interest has sprung a change of content, for the new gospel has in effect reformulated the biblical message in the supposed interests of “helpfulness.” Accordingly, the themes of man’s natural inability to believe, of God’s free election being the ultimate cause of salvation, and of Christ dying specifically for his sheep, are not preached. These doctrines, it would be said, are not “helpful”; they would drive sinners to despair, by suggesting to them that it is not in their own power to be saved through Christ. (The possibility that such despair might be salutary is not considered; it is taken for granted that it cannot be, because it is so shattering to our self-esteem.) 

However this may be...the result of these omissions is that part of the biblical gospel is now preached as if it were the whole of that gospel; and a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Thus, we appeal to men as if they all had the ability to receive Christ at any time; we speak of his redeeming work as if he had done no more by dying than make it possible for us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God’s love as if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence “at the door of our hearts” for us to let them in. It is undeniable that this is how we preach; perhaps this is what we really believe.

But it needs to be said with emphasis that this set of twisted half-truths is something other than the biblical gospel. The Bible is against us when we preach in this way; and the fact that such preaching has become almost standard practice among us only shows how urgent it is that we should review this matter. To recover the old, authentic, biblical gospel, and to bring our preaching and practice back into line with it, is perhaps our most pressing present need...."

-- J.I. Packer, from his Introductory Essay to John Owen's "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ"

The Holy Spirit as Controlling Agent

 "The Holy Spirit is the controlling and directing agent in every regenerate person." -- John Murray (comm. on Romans 8:13-14)

"All does not yet gleam in glory, but...."

 "This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified." -- Martin Luther

Resisting the Devil

 When the Devil brings up your past, remind him of his future. (Rev. 20:10)

Christ Is For You, Against Your Sin

 "There is comfort concerning such infirmities, in that your very sins move him to pity more than to anger. . . . For he suffers with us under our infirmities, and by infirmities are meant sins, as well as other miseries. . . . 

"Christ takes part with you [=takes your side], and is so far from being provoked against you, as all his anger is turned upon your sin to ruin it; yes, his pity is increased the more towards you, even as the heart of a father is to a child that has some loathsome disease, or as one is to a member of his body that has leprosy, he hates not the member, for it is his flesh, but the disease, and that provokes him to pity the part affected the more. 

"What shall not make for us [=be turned for our advantage and welfare] when our sins, that are both against Christ and us, shall be turned as motives to him to pity us the more?"

-- Dane C. Ortlund, "Gentle and Lowly"

"Under His Wings You Will Find Refuge...."

"Can God Be Trusted?"
By Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.


"He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge." (Ps. 91:4, NRSV)

Many adults can recall a certain childhood feeling that has now pretty much faded away. Unhappily, one of the things that fades away is a childlike feeling of security in the nest. It's a sense that you are loved, protected, and perfectly safe. It's a sense, above all, that somebody else is in charge. In properly functioning homes, children often have this feeling. Adults do not, and they miss it.

Years ago, on the old Candid Camera television program, a very large and dangerous-looking truck driver--a man of about 50--was asked in an interview what age he would be if he could be any age he wanted. There was a silence for a while as the trucker contemplated the question. What was he thinking? Was he hankering for age 65 and retirement so he could trade his Kenworth four-and-a-quarter semi down to a John Deere riding lawn mower? Or was he yearning for age 18 and the chance to go back and take some turn he had missed?

Finally he turned to the interviewer and said that if it was up to him he'd like to be three. Three? Why three? the interviewer wanted to know. "Well," said the trucker, "when you're three you don't have any responsibilities."

When I first heard the interview I thought this man was trying to be cute. I now think he said something wistful. What he knew was that when you are a child, and if your family is running the right way, your burdens are usually small. You can go to bed without worrying about ice backup under your shingles. You don't wonder if the tingling in your leg might be a symptom of some exotic nerve disease. You don't wrestle half the night with a tax deduction you claimed, wondering whether a federal investigator might find it a little too creative. No, you squirm deliciously in your bed, drowsily aware of the murmur of adult conversations elsewhere in the house. You hover wonderfully at the edge of slumber. Then you let go and fall away.

You dare to do this not only because you fully expect that in the morning you shall be resurrected. You also dare to do it because you are sleeping under your parents' wings. If parents take proper care of you, you can give yourself up to sleep, secure in the knowledge that somebody else is in charge; somebody big and strong and experienced. As far as children know, parents stay up all night, checking doors and windows, adjusting temperature controls, fearlessly driving away marauders. They never go off duty. If a shadow falls over the house, or demons begin to stir, or a storm rises, parents will handle it. That's one reason children sleep so well. Their nest is sheltered and feathered.


I think children might be alarmed to discover how much adults crave this same sense of security. Adults need to be sheltered, warmed, embraced. Some of us have been betrayed. Some of us have grown old and are not happy about it.

People get betrayed, or they get old or sick. Some are deeply disappointed that their lives have not turned out as they had hoped. Others have been staggered by a report that has just come back from a pathology lab. Still others are unspeakably ignored by people they treasure. Some are simply high-tension human beings, strung tight as piano wire.

To all such folk, the psalmist speaks a word of comfort. It is one of the great themes of the Scriptures: God is our shelter. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.

The image here is that of an eagle, or maybe a hen; in any case, it's a picture of a bird that senses danger and then protectively spreads its wings over its young. An expert on birds once told me that this move is very common. A bird senses the approach of a predator, or the threat of something falling from above, and instinctively spreads out its wings like a canopy. Then the fledglings scuttle underneath for shelter. The move is so deeply instinctive that an adult bird will spread those wings even when no fledglings are around!

And the psalmist--who has almost surely seen this lovely thing happen--the psalmist thinks of God. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. The point is that God is our shelter when the winds begin to howl; under God's providence we are defended, protected, perfectly safe--someone else is in charge--someone big, strong, and experienced, who never goes off duty.

In one of his books, John Timmer, my former pastor, tells of his experience as a boy in the Netherlands at the start of World War II. German troops had invaded Holland a few days before, but nobody knew just what to expect. Then, on the second Sunday of May 1940, as the Timmer family was sitting around the dinner table in their home in Harlem, suddenly they heard the eerie whining of an air-raid siren and then the droning of German bombers.

Of course, all of them were scared out of their minds. "Let's go stand in the hallway," John's father said. "They say it's the safest place in the house." In the hall, John's father said, "Why don't we pray? There's nothing else we can do."

John says he has long ago forgotten the exact wording of his father's prayer--all except for one phrase. Somewhere in that prayer to God to protect his family from Hitler's Luftwaffe, Mr. Timmer said, "O God, in the shadow of your wings we take refuge."

God spreads his wings over us. Here is a picture that all the Jewish and Christian generations have cherished, in part because it invites us to recover our childhood feeling of security in the nest. Or, to discover it for the first time if we have had a terrorized childhood. It's a picture that offers sublime comfort, and only a pretty numb Christian would fail to be touched by it.

Still, a disturbing question pricks us. How true is the picture of a sheltering God? How secure are we in the nest? I wonder whether in 1940, on the second Sunday of May, some other Dutch family begged God to spread his wings over their house. I wonder if the bombs of the German air force pierced those wings and blew that house and its people to rubble.

You read Psalm 91 and you begin to wonder. It offers such comprehensive coverage. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. . . . You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

Really? I need not fear any of these things? I can sleep in a dangerous neighborhood with my windows open? I shall not fear the terror of the night? My child's temperature soars and his white blood count plummets: I shall not fear the pestilence that stalks in darkness? I can plunge into my work at an AIDS clinic: I shall not fear the destruction that wastes at midday? Really? Is there a level of faith that can honestly say such things even after all allowance has been made for poetic exaggeration?

In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas L. Friedman writes of his years in the Middle East. One of the terrors of life in Beirut during the civil war there was the prospect of dying a random death. Long-distance sniping and shelling made it hard to tell where bullets or shells might land, and the people who launched them often didn't care. You never knew whether the car you walked past might explode into a fireball, stripping trees of their leaves so that in the terrible silence that followed, scores of leaves would come fluttering down in a soft shower on top of the dead and the maimed.

No one kept score. Police would even lose track of the names of the dead. "Death in Beirut had no echo," says Friedman.

I shall not fear the grenade that flies by day. Could a believer say this in Beirut?

Let us face the truth. Faith in the sheltering wings of God does not remove physical danger or the need for precaution against it. We cannot ignore Beirut tourist advisories, or feed wild animals on our camping trips, or jump a hot motorcycle over a row of parked cars and trust God to keep us safe. We cannot smoke cigarettes like the Marlboro man and then claim the promises of Psalm 91 as our protection against lung cancer. A person who did these things would be a foolish believer and a foolish reader of Psalm 91.

You may recall that in Matthew's gospel Satan quotes this psalm to Jesus in the temptation at the pinnacle of the temple. "Throw yourself down," says Satan. After all, it says right in Psalm 91 that "God will give his angels charge over you." And Jesus replies that it is not right to put God to the test. God's protection is good only for certain events, and restrictions may apply. Jesus was teaching us that we cannot act like a fool and then count on God to bail us out. God may do it--and some of us can recall times when we acted like fools and God bailed us out. But we may not count on it.


But, of course, some believers get hurt, terribly hurt, by no folly of their own. Suppose a drunk driver smashes into your family car. Suppose an I-beam falls on you in a storm. What if you make the mistake of visiting a great city during tourist-hunting season?

Or suppose you are a devout middle-aged Christian woman who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One June you start to feel sick. So you visit your primary-care physician, who sends you for tests, and then a visit to a specialist, and then more tests. Finally you go back to your own physician, and she says, "Ma'am, I'm sorry to say that you had better get your affairs in order." She says more, far more, about treatments and research and making you as comfortable as possible--on and on with all kinds of stuff that is well-meant. But you have grown deaf. All you can think is that you are 46 years old and you are going to die before your parents do and before your children get married.

Whatever happened to the wings of God? Can you get brain cancer under those wings? Get molested by a family member? Get knifed by some emotionless teenager in a subway in New York? Can you find, suddenly one summer, that your own 17-year-old has become a stranger and that everything in your family seems to be cascading out of control?

Where are those wings?

What troubles us is not so much the sheer fact that believers suffer along with everybody else. C. S. Lewis once pondered this. If the children of God were always saved from floods like believing Noah and his family; if every time somebody pointed a gun at a Christian, the gun just turned to salami; if we really had a money-back guarantee against hatred, disease, and the acts of terrorists, then of course we wouldn't have to worry about church growth. Our churches would fill with people attracted to the faith for secondary reasons. These are people who want an insurance agent, not a church. For security they want Colin Powell, not God. We already have people becoming Christians because they want to get rich or get happy. What would happen to people's integrity if becoming a believer really did give you blanket protection against poverty, accident, and the wages of sin?

No, it's not the fact that we have to take our share of the world's suffering that surprises us. After all, our experience and the rest of Scripture have taught us to expect hardship. What worries us is that Psalm 91 tells us not to worry. It says "a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you." This is advertising that sounds too good to be true. In fact, the psalmist says, "Because you have made the Lord your refuge . . . no evil shall befall you." And the statement troubles us. What about Paul? What about Stephen? What about our Lord himself? He wanted to gather the citizens of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chicks. What some of those citizens did was to take him outside of town one day and nail his wings to some two-by-fours.

So what is going on in Psalm 91? How are its extravagant promises God's Word to us?

What Psalm 91 does is express one--one of the loveliest, one of the most treasured--but just one of the moods of faith. It's a mood of exuberant confidence in the sheltering providence of God. Probably the psalmist has been protected by God in some dangerous incident, and he is celebrating.

On other days, and in other moods--in other and darker seasons of his life--this same psalmist might have called to God out of despair and a sense of abandonment. Remember that when our Lord was crucified, when our Lord shouted at our God, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--when Jesus shouted this in astonishment, and with maybe even a note of accusation, remember that he was quoting another psalm (22). Despair or astonishment at what can happen to us under God's providence--that too is natural and biblical.

Psalm 91 gives us only part of the picture and only one of the moods of faith. With a kind of quiet amazement, the psalmist bears witness that under the wings of God good things happen to bad people. You need another psalm or two to fill in the picture, to cry out that under those same wings bad things sometimes happen to good people.

Psalm 91 says no evil shall befall us. When we have cashed out some of the poetry and then added in the witness of the rest of Scripture, what we get, I believe, is the conclusion that no final evil shall befall us. We know that we can believe God with all our heart and yet have our heart broken by the loss of a child or the treachery of a spouse or the menace of a fatal disease. We know this is true--everyone in the church knows it. And yet, generation after generation of bruised saints have known something else and spoken of it. In the mystery of faith, we find a hand on us in the darkness, a voice that calls our name, and the sheer certainty that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God--not for this life and not for the life to come. We may be scarred and shaken, but, as Lewis Smedes says in one of his luminous sermons, we come to know that it's all right, even when everything is all wrong.

We are like fledglings who scuttle under the wings of their parent. The forces of evil beat on those wings with everything they have. The pitchforks of the Evil One, falling tree limbs in the storm, merciless rain and hail--everything beats on those wings. When it is finished, when evil has done its worst, those wings are all bloodied and busted and hanging at wrong angles. And, to tell you the truth, in all the commotion we too get roughed up quite a lot.

But we are all right, because those wings have never folded. They are spread out to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And when the feathers quit flying, we peep out and discover that we have been in the only place that was not leveled. Yes, we have been bumped and bruised and hurt. Sometimes badly hurt. But the other choice was to be dead--the other choice was to break out of the embrace of God. If we had not stayed under those wings we could never have felt the body shudders and heard the groans of the one who loved us so much that those wings stayed out there no matter what came whistling in. This is the one who protects us from final evil, now and in the life to come--the life in which, at last, it is safe for God to fold his wings.

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge. It's not a simple truth, but it is the truth. And we ought to believe it with everything that is in us.