Advent Project Devotional: "Law and Fire"

I'm honored to have a devotional up at The Advent Project today, writing about the Lord's first coming, and his second:

Judgment is a terrible prospect to us—and it should be, for we are desperately wicked—and yet, over and over again in scripture, we find the people of the Lord begging for judgment. Rise up, oh judge of the earth . . . The people of the Lord ache at the injustice in the world, and they know their Lord, the righteous Lord, is the only one who can set it right again.

Please head over to Biola University's CCA website to read the rest. The devotional over there includes, along with my words, a sonnet by Malcolm Guite, the scripture for the day, a beautiful painting by Julio Reyes, music by Paul Robert Wilbur, and the traditional O Antiphon prayer for the day.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

P.S. The fact that we're into the days of the O Antiphons means that Christmas is getting very close indeed!

Halloween: Remember That You Are Mortal

I will be glad to get to this weekend. I will be glad not to have to explain the skeletons in the grocery store to my four-year-old anymore.

Does Albertsons’ really think I want to have to explain corpses to preschoolers every week?

On the upside, I think I understand the urge to celebrate Halloween better than I have before, due to Bess’ persistent “why?”’s, as in: “why do they hang up pretend dead bodies next to the eggs and cheese?”

My answer, which surprised me, is, “Because they’re scared of death, and this makes them feel better about it.”

True, I think.

Surely the other great motive is our love of indulgence. Most people would tell you that Halloween is a day about candy. And, well, as an American myself, I understand the urge to stuff my face. (As a Christian, I am fighting it, but I do very much understand.)

But surely, if it were just about candy, we wouldn’t need all the ghastlies and ghoulies. Why do my neighbors, otherwise very nice people, feel the urge to hang horrors from their porches? Why are they happy to decorate with foulness that makes me avert my eyes in disgust?

I think it must be an attempt at inoculation. Maybe seeing all the fake gore can help comfort you into believing that real gore doesn’t exist. If you expose yourself over and over to corpses made of paper and plastic, maybe that becomes to you what a dead body is, and you can ignore the future dead body you’re currently inhabiting.

I think, as a Christian, my dislike of all this fake death is actually a sign of a healthy understanding of real death. In my experience, people who deal with real death are much healthier, happier and heartier than those who feel the need to boogeyman themselves to – hmm – death.

Two things: first, when I see a skeleton, all dressed up in a tattered cape, arms raised in a frightening gesture, I think, “what a sad thing to do to the remains of someone who used to be your friend, your family member, your neighbor.” That isn’t how we ought to treat dead bodies, you know? Dead bodies are the earthly remains of people. Costuming skeletons seems to me, firstly, disrespectful. I think all of these skeletons hanging around this time of year show a forgetfulness of what skeletons actually are. Not ghoulies, not ghosties, but just plain, honest, human remains. (And you too will be one one day. Perhaps soon.)

Secondly, the skeleton is just part of the person. The soul lives on, and, for the redeemed, will be reunited with a new body, one that never will decompose till all that remains is the bones. We respect human remains, because they are what used to be our neighbors. But we don’t regard them with fear, because they are not our neighbors anymore. They are not some odd, haunted object. The part of them that was human, well, what’s to fear about our brothers? The part of them that’s not human – because the animating spirit is gone – well, what’s to fear about an inanimate object? But, either way, they ought not to be hung out for the purposes of being nervously laughed at.

So, I find it distasteful, I think, because I view death differently than a lot of my neighbors. Sure, I’m scared of it, I think everybody is. I’ve never died before, and new experiences are always scary. I (sinfully) worry about those I will leave behind. I'm scared of how much it will hurt. But I know what’s waiting at the other side, I know Who is waiting, and though I fear Him in a way I fear no one else, I know Him in a way I know no one else, and trust Him in a way no one else deserves to be trusted.

And I know He beat death. Hanging out skeletons seems to me to be a weak option when I can contemplate the cross instead. Here is where death met its death. Here is where the horror of the grave was really confronted. Here is where Hell was harrowed. Here is my memento mori. Here is the vision of terror, and the One who was more Terrifying than the final terror, that I wish to hold before my eyes, now and always.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

twinfancy

If you hadn't guessed from my lack of posts, this twinfancy thing is kicking my butt. I've decided to call this period of my life "Santification Bootcamp" because that sounds better than "In Which Jessica Gets Not One Minute To Call Her Own And Hopes That By Submitting To It All She'll Become More Like Christ, That Is, Sometimes, When She Actually Remembers That She's Supposed To Be Becoming Like Christ."

And no, I did not even make it through typing that first paragraph without interruption. I don't do anything these days without interruption. Talk about learning not to call your time your own.

I remember a passage in Lewis (probably from Screwtape) in which he points out that if our Lord were actually physically present with us all day, telling us to do our daily duties, we would do it with alacrity, and if he gave us just one half hour at the end of the day and told us "do what you like with it", then we would be jaw-droppingly grateful for his generosity.

The trick is doing our daily duty with such joy and attentiveness even when we cannot see him. I am so working on this. Because He is still here.

So, in the meantime, here are a few links (mostly read while nursing the twins) that have got me thinking this week:

From Amy's Humble Musings, a post on Getting Real.

And from that weightiness, I give you something mostly amusing: A Dress A Day on Why Skirts Are Better Than Pants.

And this post, from Anthony Esolen, asking "Where Have All the B Movies Gone?" has me thinking about my favorite version of the B Movie, the Regency romance. I love that genre, and it is so very much a genre, with rules, with predictability, with the hero, the heroine, the villian, the happy ending. But there is something good about hearing the same story told over and over again in different clothes. It's not high art, but it's worthy nonetheless, I think. I want to publish a few myself, someday.

So, dear readers, what's your version of the B Movie? What's the medium in which you could hear the same old story told a hundred times? Pop romance ballads? Paperback Westerns? Pulp radio dramas?

May your day be filled with God's grace.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

p.s. I hope it goes without saying, but when I mention my beloved Regencies, I'm talking about those in the classic Georgette Heyer style, and not the more recent p/rn-in-Jane-Austen-costumes style.

p.p.s. No, I didn't put the babies down on their tummies for a nap. They rolled over into those positions all by themselves. :)

He has borne our griefs

Today I read something online that depressed me utterly. Scared me, depressed me, horrified me. Nevermind what, because I've no wish to depress, horrify or scare anyone else, and everyone runs across such things sooner or later anyway. But I was sunk in a slough of "oh God, why did you give me children when they have to share world-space with men such as these?" I'm sure you know that awful feeling you get when you're faced with evil too utterly bleak to bear contemplation.

I told my husband what I was feeling, and why, and after supper he went over to his computer, and next thing I know, I hear a sure, steady voice booming across our kitchen, reading St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

"Thank you," I mouthed to him. He nodded and gave me a smile, and we kept clearing the dishes.

Scripture helps. Scripture to music helps even more. After a bit of time listening to Paul's heartening words (Paul is heartening even when he is chastizing), we put on Handel's Messiah.

And I sat, and I listened to the choir sing that Christ has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. "Surely. SURELY. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." And I suddenly had a picture of Christ, strong and sure, his back broad enough to hold the depressing horror I had read about, broad enough to carry it. He suddenly seemed bigger than all the world in my eyes, and more good than I had beheld him before. Surely, surely. And not only was his back broad enough to bear that horror, but he was good enough to overcome it. It shrank and was swallowed up in the strength of his goodness. It could not stand before him, the One who faced it on the cross, who died, who harrowed hell and who rose again, triumphant, Lord of heaven and earth.

That is what he suffered when he hung on the cross, that is the guilt he bore when the Father turned his face from him. "The scum of the earth" is more than a catchphrase. It is what he allowed to cling to him, that he might destroy it forever. "And with his stripes we are healed." My current nightmare and more, all nightmares, he faced and suffered, that they might not have eternal power over his children, over those the Father gave to his care.

Surely, surely. And I love him, because he first loved me. And this is the love wherewith he has loved me. That he would stand between all of us and the powers of hell. And not just stand, but overcome. That is the might and majesty of our Lord, Jesus the Christ. Amen and amen.

peace to you, the peace of Christ to you,
-Jessica