Tag: Limitations

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

On Not Wandering Like a Verbal Amoeba

God made limits for increased glory. The size of the canvas frames the image and shows off how much the artist can fit in a small space (for example, have you seen the pencil-tip sculptor? It is more impressive how much he can do with so little to work with). A poetic convention restricts the impression or feeling to a form rather than letting it meander like a verbal amoeba. And the glory of man includes not running 60 mph, not flying without mechanical aid, and not working without sleeping.

Many limits we take for granted, that’s how we’ve always known life on earth. But we ought to give thanks for only 24 hours a day—though we’re tempted to complain when we have a lot to do, we ought to give thanks for not having eyes in the back of our heads—do we really want to see that, and we ought to give thanks for only having two hands. These are gifts, chosen for us by our Father.

There are other personal limits for which we should be thankful, certainly not bitter or envious. These are also unchosen by us, but chosen by God specifically for us. You don’t get to be 7’ tall, you don’t get to make a billion dollars an hour, and half of you don’t get to avoid the way it is with women. Are you humble enough to delight in your constraints?

Some limits are universal for the glory of mankind, some are for the glory of kinds of men, and then some limits get changed for a particular man. New lines are drawn by aging, an accident, a diagnosis, a relative’s diagnosis, a financial gift, a job loss, et cetera. I’m talking about the things that God gives you now that maybe you didn’t have yesterday. The page turned and God is writing for your glory in a new genre, and run-on sentences aren’t allowed like they were yesterday.

If it is from God, then what is the grace to you in it? Are you ready for Him, not to change the rules per se, but to change your restrictions per diem? Are you ready to give thanks for the personally chosen limits? Or are you fighting the limited givens of glory?

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

A Long Drive

In our categories for sin, when we weigh which are the heavier matters, we often put discontent in the chaff pile. “Awww, shucks.” Discontent doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, maybe because we’ve gotten used to living with a low-level of it always idling in the background.

But discontent is a gateway into a minefield of destruction. To want, and be mad not to have, is a hunger that starts wars.

Discontent amplifies unthankfulness that dishonors the God of giving. Discontent inflates bitter envy that sabotages relationships. Discontent leads to worldliness that leads us away from God. Discontent promotes the worst of all, idolatry, where we search for a new god who will give us what we want or, even more likely, tempt us to think we should be gods.

The serpent’s lie advertised a new and improved Eve. “Eat now and you’ll be like God!” When every intention of man was evil before the flood, those intentions involved the evil of every man continually thinking of himself as more important than others. That thinking led many to seek to be something more than man and pursued immortality through marriages to the “sons of God.”

Do you not like who you are? Do you not want what you have or do you want what you don’t have? Do you appreciate your limitations? If not, then you are imitating the gods of men. You have come to believe that God is not good, that He is not giving, that He is only in it for Himself. That means discontent has driven you a long way from the truth.

Categories
Lord's Day Liturgy

An Act of Life

To riff off Chesterton, a man cannot draw a triangle with four sides no matter how resourceful a geometry teacher. A man cannot sketch a giraffe with a short neck no matter how creative his imagination. A man cannot write iambic pentameter with six feet and only four stressed syllables no matter how free a poet he fancies himself.

[I]t is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. (Orthodoxy)

More than art, life itself is limitations. A man cannot build his savings account by spending more than he makes no matter how much he increases his income. A man cannot procreate with another man no matter how official the State seal on his marriage license is. A man cannot define life however he wants. True liberty always exists within given boundaries given by God.

A sane man, a free man, will not claim he is a woman, a dog, or a result of millions of protoplasmic spasms. These are impossible. They are lies. And they imprison liberty.

When a man defines everything, he defies the truth, starting with the fact that he is not allowed to sit in the seat of the Ultimate Determiner of Definitions. When he attempts autonomy he becomes the greatest slave. God told Adam that in the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would die. As soon as Adam took the prerogative for himself to define what was right and wrong he lost his life.

This is why confessing our sins is an act of life. We hear and accept and act on God’s defined limits. We have sinned, but when we agree and submit to His law then we know the truth and the truth, with all its glorious limits, sets us free.