They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!" - Revelation 6.16

C. S. Lewis dismisses Isaiah's vision of the Peaceable Kingdom as "eastern hyperbole" because, he complains, lying down by the lion "would be rather impertinent of the lamb." Even a vegan lion, Lewis explains, would continue to be "awful," though it had ceased to be "dangerous."

John answers Lewis' objection when he presents the churches with a wrathful lamb and smuggles in overtones of both Isaiah 2, with its images of judgement, and Isaiah 65, where the coming of God's perfect kingdom reconciles former foes. "People will flee to the caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth" (Isa 2.19). "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox" (Isa 65.25). In Revelation, God accomplishes this miracle, not just by making the predator less predatory, but by making the lamb more fearsome. John has invited us to rejoice in a Lamb that stands slain (Rev 5.6), but he now reminds us that it is this very Lamb who has unleashed upon the earth the seven-sealed scroll of God's fierce wrath.

In this day, when popular theology posits a Christ whose love differs little from the cuddly patience of a child's stuffed toy, one does well to remember that before Isaiah envisions the Peaceable Kingdom, he posts a roster of those included and those excluded (Isa 65.8-16), and that before John sees the sixth seal broken, the fifth seal separates the souls of the martyrs in Heaven from the earth-dwellers who face domination, war, famine, and death (Rev 6.1-11). 

It is not eastern hyperbole but prophetic poetry which manages to see that love without wrath is indulgence, and softness without fear mere sentiment. For whosoever will, the Lamb stands slain to appease his own righteous wrath; for whosoever won't, that same wrath awaits. Mary had a little Lamb; his fleece is as white as the robes of the martyrs, but his wrath is as black as goat's hair and as red as blood shed in unrighteous anger. The Lamb, or the Lamb: Take your pick.

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become a transgressor of the law.

- James 2.10

On Friday, November 9, Michael Rogers of Melbourne, Australia, was a hero. A week later, he was a criminal.

After suspected terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three patrons at a local shopping mall, and as he held off three police officers with his blade, Rogers, who is homeless, rammed the suspect repeatedly with a shopping cart. His quick thinking allowed the cops to apprehend the perpetrator without further violence. The internet fell in love, with admirers opening a Go Fund Me campaign and raising over eighty grand to benefit the newly-minted celebrity.

Then law enforcement took a dekko at the grainy cell phone footage and discovered that Rogers had a number of outstanding charges for theft and B&E. He turned himself in on Friday, November 16, one week after his much-publicized heroics.

Seems ironic. The whole thing reminded me of that slab of dialogue in Disney's "Black Pearl," where Captain Jack Sparrow rescues Elizabeth Swan only to face arrest and hanging as a pirate. As Admiral Norrington explains, "One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness." To which Captain Jack quips, sotto voce, "Though it seems enough to condemn him."

James makes the same point regarding any effort at works salvation: no amount of good-deeding expunges the stain of original sin. As D. L. Moody once observed, if you hang a man from the roof by a chain of ten links and one breaks, he falls, despite a ninety-percent success rate!

But James does not leave us at the mercy - or mercilessness - of our spotty track record. Instead, he points us to "the law of liberty," which he also dubs "the royal law," "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Christ, who kept the whole law without fail, sacrificed his perfection in place of our failure and by that act offers us redemption. 

The National Homeless Fund says it will hold the money for Rogers in hopes that he can settle his issues and start a new life. One prays for such an outcome. But his story serves as an example to all of us that our only hope for eternal life lies, not in acts of heroism, but in the mercy shown us by the sacrifice of Christ.

But as one was felling a log, his ax head fell into the water; he cried out, "Alas, master! It was borrowed." - 2 Kings 6.5

In his novel The Marquis of Lossie, George MacDonald describes the spiritual state of an artist: 

 "He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers; but of late it had grown a more formal and    gradually a rarer thing. One reason for this was that it had never come into his head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest in whether he painted well or ill. If a man's earnest calling, to which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is altogether disassociated in his mind from his religion, it is not altogether wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die."

A borrowed hatchet blade might have seemed too small a thing to bring to the prophet who had parted the Jordan, but it was, at that moment, the biggest thing in this young man's world. Iron was a new technology, and thus expensive: Imagine accidentally flinging a friend's new smart phone into the local swimming pool! The hapless construction worker does not weigh the worth of his request in the balances of Elisha's greater prophetic calling; he bleats out a heart-felt cry for help with what most touches his life at that moment.

The result is of more than immediate economic impact. Elisha reveals the power of a God who reverses nature's expected order: iron floats; what naturally sinks to the bottom suddenly surges to the surface. The God who creates the world cares about a contractor's balance sheet. This prefigures Jesus, who revealed a God who puts the last first and cares when a sparrow dies. 

Christians often sensor our prayers because logic sneers that God has better things to do. As a result, our prayers wither and die by degrees. As Dallas Willard notes, "Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about 'good things,' that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God's love."

So pray about what touches you; God will find a means of greater revelation in responding to that small request, and your soul will grow larger so that it may be touched by greater things.

We will drink no wine, for our ancestor Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded us, 

"You shall never drink wine, neither you nor your children."

- Jeremiah 35.6

When Bear Bryant led his second-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide into the 1979 Sugar Bowl against the top-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions, fans and sports writers immediately noticed that something was missing: the Bear's signature checked fedora. The legendary football coach had sported that distinctive headgear throughout his career, but on this day he appeared bare-headed on the sidelines.

Asked about the sartorial alteration, Bryant replied, "My mama always told me to take off my hat indoors."

That forty-fifth edition of the famous bowl game took place in the New Orleans Superdome back when roofed football venues were still something of a novelty. Despite everything he had riding on the contest, and despite the notable superstition of coaches about changing a winning routine, the Bear put deference to his mother above all other considerations. (Must've worked: The Tide defeated Joe Paterno's outfit in a hard-fought 14-7 battle and Bryant notched his fifth national title.)

When the prophet Jeremiah, acting on God's instructions, invited the Rechabites to belly up to the bar, they cited a similar precedent: Family tradition forbade them from tippling. The Rechabites weren't anybody special. Though they could claim distant kinship to Moses by marriage, they were a small outfit who scraped a living on the nomadic fringe of Israelite life. In unfamiliar circumstances, surrounded by the elite of society and with the Babylonian marauders stalking their ancestral stomping grounds, they could have been forgiven for taking a belt, perhaps out of fear or politeness or the simple notion that in times like these, Cary Nation herself might need a stiff drink. But they held fast: We don't do that in our family.

Jeremiah suddenly switches roles and goes from barkeep to prophet, using the Rechabites as his sermon illustration. They heeded the dusty mandate of a dead great-grandfather while Israel spurned the commandments of the living God. Jeremiah carefully calibrates the contrast: The text makes seven references to the "ancestors" of these gypsies, and contains seven statements by the Lord regarding obedience. ("Obey" and "listen" are the same words in Hebrew.)

Final note: "obey" translates the Hebrew word sh'ma that begins the ancient Israelite creed in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone." For God, "hearing" is not a mere auditory phenomenon but an active response. Hearing may start with the ears, but it always ends with the heart and the hands.

To this day, I won't walk through a door ahead of a woman, because that's what my mother taught me and I am far more afraid of her than of the fiercest feminist who ever burned a bra. I sometimes wonder if I fear God to the same extent.

When the seconds tick off the clock, with the game on the line, how faithful are we to the living law of our living God?

Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

- Hebrews 12.1

Game three of the 2018 World Series took longer to play than the entire 1936 Series. In the bottom of the eighteenth, after seven hours and twenty minutes, Dodgers slugger Max Muncy parked the 561st pitch of the night over the left-field fence for a walk-off homer that nudged the final score to 3-2. It was 3:30 in the morning. Red Sox reliever Nathan Eovaldi threw a record-breaking ninety-seven pitches over seven innings. At one point, the Dodgers clubhouse chef sent a round of peanut butter and banana sandwiches to the dugout to fortify the weary players.

Baseball, unlike football or basketball, has no clock and no ties. The game lasts until somebody wins. 

The author of Hebrews calls on Christians to exercise an extra-inning faith. Let us run with perseverance. The Christian life is not a sprint but a marathon, a lifelong slog with a moving finish line. It is less about speed than about steadiness; staying focused counts for more than being fancy; it is a contest where the most important ability is durability.

Despite all the doomsday box scores configured by an endless line of debunked latter-day prophets, the Church really doesn't know where she stands. Is this the ninth inning? The third? The eighteenth? The next crack of the bat may be the clarion call that heralds Our Lord's return, or just one more steady swing. 

So run today's race today; play well the inning you face. Feast on the fortified food of the faith then grab your glove and go out there again. . .and again. . .and again. Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.