this is the moment

Faith is a force, one so powerful that it cannot tolerate anything next to it.
How weak in faith we are: we are constantly letting things outside of God take up space in us!
Adrienne von Speyr
from Lumina and New Lumina

(a meme sent by a friend)

This meme pretty much sums up our collective year thus far…
as in 2020 probably won’t be the year you’ll want to invest in that special case of wine
to save for a momentous occasion on down the road.

The way things are going, there may be no more momentous occasions and
there may be no more roads…just saying.

So yeah, 2020…NOT, a very good year.

My husband and I basically quit watching the news almost two weeks ago.
It had gotten to such a depressing point.
Leaving us feeling helpless, frustrated, and downright mad.

Our leadership is abysmal—plain and simple.

They’ve not been able to handle a pandemic and Lord knows they
are not handling this cultural civil war worth a flip.

Arrogance, infighting, ignorance, hatred…you name it.

I do believe the President is truly trying to cull the madness but
the opposition, along with some of his own party, are making all things
impossible.

I feel like a person who’s been cut adrift in a raft,
drifting helplessly out to sea.

I imagine I am not alone.

I could write on and on about Antifa or Black Lives Matters, both
Marxist organizations bent on violence as an end means at any cost.

I could write about a society that wants handouts rather than hands up.

I could write about the never-ending demands for abortions and the deaths
of babies aborted who actually live– those so-called late-term abortions
that are gone awry.

I could write about a sexually confused swarth of society that
no longer believes in biology.

I could write about the lunacy over the “defund the police” movement…
as that is plain idiocy run amuck.

I could write about the destruction of monuments, statues, buildings,
churches, synagogues all because of a white European legacy…
all of which is simply stupid.

I could wirte about the capitulation by Church leadership
bending to the whims of a progressive culture that takes
no prisoners.
You either get on board or you get destroyed.

I could write about a culture that will strike you dead for
disagreeing with their rabid ideals.

I could write about being woke…or is that arrogantly ignorant?

I could write about violence, hatred, anger and zero civility.

I could write about the emotionalism found in a younger generation who
feels compelled to kneel against a flag and anthem of which is simply
misguided and historically ignorant.

I could write about a pandemic that has crippled a global economy
while leaving those in the know scratching their heads.

But I won’t.

I won’t belabor what the sane amongst us already know.

About 7 years ago, when our son was engaged to be married, I decided,
as the mother of the groom, I needed to get myself into some kind of
presentable shape.

My husband had bought me an elliptical machine for Valentines…a truly heart-healthy
gift…and so I decided I needed to get serious about using it.

I would spend between 30 to 60 minutes daily pushing, pulling and trucking
myself to nowhere all in the confines of our basement.
Sweating like a pig in the process.

After about two weeks I could actually feel a difference in my legs and ‘behind’.
A good difference.
My shorts fit better.
That was then…no so right now but I digress.

When I’d “workout”, I played music to help me push through the pain and strain.
One of the peppier songs was ‘Can’t Hold Us’ by Macklemore.

I didn’t really know all the lyrics…if I had, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it
but the beat was great when one was pumping one’s arms while practically running uphill
via a machine.

I still recall one part of the song that still resonates in my head…

Can we go back?
This is the moment
Tonight is the night, we’ll fight ’til it’s over
So we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us
Like the ceiling can’t hold us

And so yes—
“This is indeed the moment”

All week long I’ve waxed and waned about the notion of discovering one’s true calling.
I’ve written about the differences between a vocation versus a job.
I’ve written about the curse of the repetition of history.
I’ve written about a world gone simply mad.
I’ve written about being lost while longing to be found.

But the one thing I do know, and know most clearly, it that
this is the time for those who call themselves Christians to stand up and stand firm.

You have not been called to be timid.

Those who waffle will fall.
Those who prefer appeasment will be dismayed.
Those who yield to the world will be damned.

It is the one thing that I know more clearly than anything else.

God has called us to be resolute.
This is our Spiritual call to arms.

Accepting a rewritten version of God’s word is unacceptable for a follower of Christ.
Condoning death as a viable and convenient option rather than choosing life is a sin.
Marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman, end of sentence.
Denying Christ before the vile and violent mob, kneeling before the world might
spare your earthly life but it will not find you seated by Christ’s right hand.

Enough is now enough.
God has given us a voice.
It’s time we use it.

They can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul.

Cry aloud; do not hold back;
lift up your voice like a trumpet;
declare to my people their transgression,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Isaiah 58:1

fed up with measured responses

A ‘measured’ response?
I’m fed up of ‘measured’ responses to major sins.
David Roberston

(Farm Security Administration / United States Office of War Information / Migant mother
by Dorothea Lange / 1936)

Fed up.
This one well-recognized photograph by Dorothea Lange became the face, the poster child
if you will, of the plight of most Americans during the height of the Great Depression
and The Dust Bowl.

It is an image of a tired woman who is past fed up…who is now devoid and resigned to the
measured response offered by a Government who, in her small corner of the world,
has let her and her children down.

Ms. Lange later explained after the photograph was published:
“I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet.
I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her,
but I do remember she asked me no questions.
I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction.
I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two.
She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields,
and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.
There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her,
and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.
There was a sort of equality about it.
(Wikipedia)

This particular photograph was obviously taken at a time when color film was the
exception and not the norm.
I strongly believe that the black and white photograph speaks more profoundly to the
desperate depths and hopelessness of this particular time of America’s situation
during the dark and heavy days of the 1930’s than that of a photograph that could have
been taken in color.

All of the sensory overloads, the eye-popping, eye-catching pizzaz is pared down to
the obvious harsh reality of black and white.

Nothing in between.
Nothing hidden.
Nothing left to cover up the ugly.
There are no ifs or ands…
Just what is…

Plain.
Simple.
Hard.
Desperate.
Resigned.
Hopeless.

That same sense of importance of the simple, of the bold black and white versus the
distracting and color, came barrelling to mind when reading David Roberston’s response to the
Chruch of Scotland’s take on Transgenderism, homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

His is the observation of one church denomination’s take on the culture wars and the church’s
own politically correct “Christian” response cloaked in naivete and falsehoods.

The Chruch of Scotland is no different from most of our current Christian body
denominations and their seemingly awkward desire to “play nice” with a culture that
blatantly flaunts its disdain for Christianity and the very Word of God.

David Roberston is fed up…
I too am fed up.

Fed up by measured responses to blatant sin.

Why aren’t more Christians fed up?

Sin is sin…the acceptance of such by a culture desperately trying to rewrite the narrative
is unacceptable…

So why then are so many members of the Christian body, our Churches, accepting the
measured responses to sin.

A ‘measured’ response?
I’m fed up of ‘measured’ responses to major sins.
Thank God that Elijah didn’t offer a ‘measured response’ to the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel;
or that Paul avoided a ‘measured response’ to the foolish Galatians;
and that Jesus wasn’t ‘measured’ and ‘Christlike’ when he told the Pharisees in public that
they were like whitewashed tombs, twice dead!

Note our Lord’s lack of measure when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple with a whip!
Or his rudeness when he said that the lukewarmness of the Laodiceans made him sick.
One can only suspect that CFS (Covenant Fellowship Scotland) would have been appalled at Paul’s lack of measure in suggesting to Timothy that the Judaising circumcisers should go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
David Roberston

Apostasy?
Is that not too strong a word?
I’m currently reading John Owens Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Gospel
(in volume 7 of his works).
It is a stunning and apposite work for my own denomination and for the Church of Scotland.
I think there is a danger of apostasy in the Free Church,
as there is in any other church – but I thought the following was particularly appropriate –

“Men are apt to please themselves,
to approve of their own state and condition,
wherein they have framed unto themselves rest and satisfaction.
Churches content themselves with their outward order and administrations,
especially when accompanied with secular advantages,
and contend fiercely that all is well, and the gospel sufficiently complied withal,
whilst their outward constitution is preserved and their laws of order kept inviolate.”
(John Owen – Works vol.7 p.53).

Covenant Fellowship Scotland also intends to provide leadership.
Many orthodox people in the Church of Scotland are shocked and dismayed
by the trajectory which the Church has been on for several years.
Many are losing heart, looking for leadership and feel powerless.
We have frequently been asked, ‘Is no-one doing anything?’
It is imperative that Covenant Fellowship Scotland offers people a rallying point
for dissent now, as well as leadership for the future.”

The Lion has Whimpered

I’ve heard a great deal recently from folks who just think total acceptance is the
the path of least resistance.
The turning of the blind eye to any and all while burying heads in the sands of
ignorance and compliance.

The give and take that is more give…taken… and soon to be gone.

“Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet;
declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.
Isaiah 58:1