Look Up

Dear Kate,

Last night in my dream I met J. I. Packer and he told me he had blood shooting out of his ass for three straight days before the Lord would finally receive him.

Some context.

Last night I went to bed early, because my son took the car and said would come home late.  I needed to break my night's rest into two halves, first out of necessity, second into a blur of salvaging what's left, my son's homecoming the intermezzo of a rustic chivalry.

Life itself, though, goes the other way, the first half a blur to us, the second carrying out necessary routines to keep on keeping on, doing everything to stop the bloodletting of life.  That's one way to see it, at least.

Once the way for me, but not any more.

Packer once observed, "If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all."

Do you understand?  It is a genuine question, not one for you to feel defensive about.  What's there to defend anyway, if our "outlook on life" is one of being the children of God?

Packer again, "When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God (...) We do not spend much time, alone or together, in dwelling on the wonder of the fact that God and sinners have communion at all; no, we just take that for granted, and give our minds to other matters. Thus we make it plain that communion with God is a small thing to us."

We could never speak human if we don't speak to God.  A very Puritan thought, too plain-spoken, short-spoken, maybe even misspoken for this age, the age of patricide.  There is this popular new movie called "Don't Look Up," which I am not going to watch; though I find the title tragicomic.

It was bad last night, the two halves added up to nothing wholesome.  Something new at work I will take on today.  It's time to look up.

Yours, Alex