Psalm 27 and Saving Light in Our Souls' Dark Nights

    

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Of David.

 

“The Lord is my light and my salvation— 

whom shall I fear? 

The Lord is the stronghold of my life— 

of whom shall I be afraid? 

When the wicked advance against me 

to devour me, 

it is my enemies and my foes 

who will stumble and fall. 

Though an army besiege me, 

my heart will not fear; 

though war break out against me, 

even then I will be confident.

Psalm 27:1-3 NIV

 

In Psalm 27, God through David has given us a prayer-song for when we are afraid of the dark—whatever kind of dark, whether literal darkness or emotional and spiritual darkness. In this Psalm, David seeks shelter in God’s personal presence with confidence borne out of His past rescues. In the first post, we considered the themes and structure of the Psalm as a whole. In this post, we’re dwelling on the first section of three verses.

 

In this first section (27:1-3), David describes his experience of God’s saving defense. The Psalm begins with a pair of parallel couplets: David says something true of God, then asks a rhetorical question brimming with confidence. And he does this twice.

 

He has known the Lord as his light, his salvation, his stronghold, and his defense.

 

Light at night gives us guidance and security. City girls like me are rather insulated against real darkness, apart from a blackout during a storm, but we might think of a flashlight when there is no power or a nightlight in a dark bedroom for comfort and vision. Or perhaps we think of the comforting familiarity of the lights given by God to mark the days and seasons, the constellations and moonlight that guided and kept David company during the long nights with his flocks.

 

Without light at night, we so easily lose our way. In college, I had to drive down a dark, two-lane country road to go to an evening Bible study. Looking for an unlit gate and driveway in the absence of streetlights or even house lights visible from the highway always gave me anxiety. The void of a dark world beyond the small puddle of light from my headlamps felt ominous and insecure. I wanted brighter, better light to lead me to my destination. Continuing the theme, we might think of the pillar of God’s glory-fire which led and also guarded the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings for 40 years:

 

“The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people.”

Exodus 13:21-22 CSB

 

That light showed God’s people God’s way and provided a visible reminder of the security of God’s presence. God also displayed His presence in a bright shekinah glory cloud descending on Solomon’s temple at its dedication:

 

“When the priests came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the Lord’s temple, and because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple.”

1 Kings 8:10-11 CSB

 

In these two examples, the presence of God manifests as light, glorious light. In the new Jerusalem to come, the apostle John foresaw:

 

“The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never close by day because it will never be night there.”

Revelation 21:23-25 CSB

 

The Lord is not only David’s light: He is also his salvation. Salvation, in its simplest sense, means rescue. In Hebrew, it could also be translated “room to breathe” (Thomas Nelson Study Bible, note on Psalm 3:8). “Light” and “salvation” in combination convey the single concept of “saving light.” The most intense darkness I remember was the darkness outside our tent on a camping trip early in our marriage. My mini Maglite flashlight could not budge the weighed blanket of darkness pressing in on me. Darkness like that feels alive and threatening, even predatory. Every noise is freighted with awful possibility and unseen dangers.  In that darkness, a trusted person bearing a stronger light would have felt like rescue and security.  (The related names Joshua and Jesus mean “Yahweh saves,” or in the simplest sense, “Savior.”) It is possible that the salvation in this verse has a near-term meaning of God’s miraculous rescue from human enemies and physical danger, of which David knew plenty; at the same time, it is possible that the shadow of the cross marks this verse with the spiritual sense of rescue from sin and death in the person of the Savior, Jesus Christ. In any case, David celebrates God as his Rescuer, even though in the moment he is surrounded by enemies who want to eat him alive (verse 2).

 

The word “stronghold”  or “refuge” conveys the image of a fortress or castle. Tolkien fans may think of Helm’s Deep; or in a more modern image, one might imagine a nuclear bunker deep beneath the earth or a panic room. This fortress is such a sure and well-defended one that the wicked advancing against David will themselves be defeated. David has confidence because God is his impenetrable fortress, a castle no enemy can breach without His permission.

 

Where does this confidence come from? Surrounded by enemies, threatened by the wicked, war declared against him, even so David is confident in victory. David can take courage despite overwhelming foes and difficulties because, as strong and powerful as they are, his God is even mightier. 

 

This confidence does not imply that trusting God means health, wealth, and prosperity. Nor does it guarantee every battle will go our way or no hurt come to us. It does, however, mean that for the child of God, all things weave together for our good and God’s glory. It means God is with us and for us in all things. It means that, when the last page of our life is written, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well (Julian of Norwich).

 

As a whole, David testifies that God is his light in the darkness, his comforting Guide, his Rescuer, his secure fortress, his unconquerable defense. This first section of Psalm 27 starts and ends with David’s declaration of trust: even if an entire army has him surrounded and declares war, his heart will not fear but will instead be confident. So strong is his experience of God’s protection.

 

An echo of David’s confidence sounds a millennium later at the end of Romans 8:

 

“What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Romans 8:31-37 CSB

 

What about you? Can you remember a time in your life when the Lord showed Himself to be your light and your salvation? Have you experienced God’s rescue from enemies who were too strong for you? If so, spend some time remembering and perhaps journaling God’s work in your past as a way to encourage trust in Him now. If not, I encourage you to borrow courage from the experiences of people in the Bible and Christian history: people like Joseph and Joshua, David and Elijah, Daniel and Peter and Paul; people like Corrie ten Boom, Darlene Deibler Rose, John Newton, John Bunyan, Jane Grey, Ridley and Latimer, and Charles Spurgeon.

 

Are you overwhelmed and outnumbered by enemies and battles today? Are you besieged by trials and squeezed by difficulties? Does it feel like human helpers have failed and comforts fled, leaving you alone and scared in the dark? If so, my heart is with yours. Your troubles do not mean God’s absence. He will never leave or abandon you. The battles you’ve lost and sins you’ve committed do not mean you have lost the war or forfeited God’s love. In the darkness, I encourage you to dwell on the greatness and power of God more than you contemplate the strength of your enemies and the size of your challenges. In the darkness, the stars seem brighter. Look for the light in the darkness; ask for His light. Look for the promises of God. Look at His faithfulness over the millennia of human history. Hope against hope that He will be for you what He has been for others.

 

The God who has rescued, led, defended, and comforted in the dark nights and desperate battles of others still does so today. We can trust Him with our souls’ three o’clocks.

 

Lord, in our darkness shine Your light.

In our tribulations, be our Rescuer.

When we are under attack from enemies without and fears within, be our strong refuge, our safe place.

All our hope and confidence are in You. We believe; help our unbelief, in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

An Introduction to Psalm 27: A Prayer for Three O’Clock in the Morning

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This is the first installment of a series on Psalm 27. Here are four photos from Saturday’s annular eclipse and one of Venus, the Morning Star, in the east just before the dawn.

Have you ever been afraid of the dark? As a child, were you afraid of monsters under the bed or ghouls in the closet? Or perhaps you are not afraid of the absence of light but of the dark night of the soul, the three-o’clock bleakness of spirit?

 

You may know the author Lucy Maud Montgomery from her character Anne Shirley. In another series, her character Emily Starr experienced these “white nights,” as she called them, at times of loss and momentous decisions. Here is one typical description:

 

“Woke up at three and couldn't even cry. Tears seemed as foolish as laughter—or ambition. I was quite bankrupt in hope and belief. And then I got up in the chilly grey dawn and began a new story. Don't let a three-o'clock-at-night feeling fog your soul."

 

"Unfortunately there's a three o'clock every night," said Teddy. "At that ungodly hour I am always convinced that if you want things too much you're not likely ever to get them” (L. M. Montgomery, Emily’s Quest).

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald used the same metaphor years later in The Crack-Up:

 

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

 

Or perhaps you have said with the late Rich Mullins, “When I wake up in the night and feel the dark/It’s so hot inside my soul, I swear there must be blisters on my heart” (“Hold Me Jesus,” from A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band).

 

Have you known that feeling? I suspect many, if not most, of us have in the last four years.

 

When you are afraid of the dark, whatever kind of dark it is, what do you want? For myself, I think I want two things: a light and a person, specifically someone bigger and stronger than me. A protector. A champion.

 

King David, ruler of Israel three millennia ago, would have been on friendly terms with the night and constellations from his youth as a shepherd. He had faced and bested the wild things that might seize the darkness to prowl and pounce on the sheep he kept. But I suspect there were many other nights alone with flock and stars, with perhaps a stone for his pillow and his harp for refreshment.

 

David, however, knew many, many spiritual and emotional dark nights. He faced attacks from enemies, betrayals from friends, consequences of his own lost spiritual battles, tragic sins among his children, and even a coup by his own beloved Absalom, Absalom, his son.

 

In Psalm 27, God through David has given us a prayer-song for when we are afraid of the dark. Whatever kind of dark. In these verses, David seeks shelter in God’s personal presence with confidence borne out of His past rescues. Like me, he seems to seek God’s light and His protection.

 

As I have prayerfully pondered this passage, I see five sections. The first four sections each begin with statements of David’s relationship with God and conclude with a declaration of trust. The final section consists of a single verse that captures David’s counsel to his own heart. In verses 1-3, David describes his experience of God’s saving defense; in verses 4-6, David describes his expectation of God’s sheltering presence; in verses 7-10, David pleads for God’s presence; and in verses 11-13, David pleads for God’s protection. Alternately, verses 1-6 describe David’s experience and expectation of God’s protection, and in verses 7-13 David pleads directly to God for His protective presence. In the concluding section, verse 14, David counsels his heart toward courage.

 

In the coming posts, we will seek to work through these verses one section at a time and conclude by asking and answering the question of what difference this makes in our own dark nights. For the moment, I will offer you this: the sun has not abandoned us at 3AM, and it has not failed when a solar eclipse blocks its light at midday. The sun still shines and radiates heat, even when we cannot see it. The difficulty is that something has come between us temporarily and hidden it from our view. Yet it always returns and always will until that great Day when we will no more need sun or moon, for the Lord our God will be our light in the eternal nightless city.

 

In the dark, faith waits in expectation of the light’s return. Faith holds fast to the hope that the light remains even when we cannot see it. Sometimes we grow weary of the waiting, and our faith and hope waver. In those seasons, this Psalm reminds me to remember the times the light previously shone out of darkness, both in my own life and in the lives of other people of faith, past and present. Remembering yesterday’s light sustains me in today’s darkness with hope light may return as soon as tomorrow.

 

Will we let God’s mysterious hiddenness drive us from Him or drive us to seek His face even more? Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary to inland China, said this:  “It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies—whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.” 

 

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” 

Your face, Lord, I will seek. 

Psalm 27:8

 

Before the next post in this series, I suggest that you take time, if possible, to read or listen to the whole of Psalm 27 at least once. As we go on, I will provide the Bible text in shorter segments to keep it before our minds for our reflections. With the final post, I intend to provide the option to download a PDF document of the whole series in one place.

 

Courage, dear hearts!

Sacrament of the Ordinary

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              Three riders rode silently through the silent, black night, even their eyes darkened except in the passing illuminations when the clouds exposed the moon.  When they heard the crunch of gravel beneath the horses’ hooves, they smiled to themselves, knowing that at last they had reached the dry riverbed which marked the last leg of their journey.

              Suddenly the horses started and reared, spooked by some invisible danger.  Before the riders could quiet them again, a Voice sliced through the darkness:  “Halt, riders.  Gather stones from this riverbed, and I assure you, when morning breaks you will be both sad and glad.”

              Stunned into silence, after a moment the riders shrugged and broke into nervous laughter.  “We’ve nothing to lose,” said their leader.  As one man in the pale moonlight, they stooped, and each chose a handful of stones to toss into a pocket.  Their horses calmed, they remounted and rode on until morning.

              When they stopped to water their horses and swallow their meager breakfast, one of them remembered the stones.  He emptied his pocket and gasped in amazement.  Seeing him, the other two followed suit and stared in wonder.  The handfuls of river rocks they had gathered in the night had been transformed into rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and pearls.

              As the Voice had foretold, as morning broke they were both sad and glad:  glad they had obeyed the strange command, but weeping with sorrow that they had not filled pockets and saddlebags to overflowing with all they could carry.*

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              The unexceptional pebbles of our daily existence are the raw material Providence chooses for the altar on which to offer ourselves back to God as a living sacrifice.  It is not the poverty of our offering but the glory of His acceptance which transforms them into something beautiful and enduring.  Obedience in our ordinary duties becomes the outward and visible sign – the sacrament, if you will – of the inward and spiritual grace of His love abiding in those who obey.

              The consecrated heart discovers this transforming grace of God in every place and activity He assigns.  The commonest thing – from data entry to dishes to preparing lesson plans to changing diapers – takes on the very glory of heaven when done as unto the Lord. 

Some reading this may protest, “But I have POTS (or fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, Long COVID, autoimmune disease, MS) and all I can do is lie on the couch. I can’t even read or watch screens much right now. How am I supposed to work as unto the Lord? I can’t work at all.”

I have been there too. I am so thankful you are here. I recorded a reading of this post largely for you. From my experience of life and Scripture, I can say this: if my portion for the day is to rest a sick body, do physical therapy, swallow pills, and navigate all that is involved in accessing medical care, even that can be offered to the Lord as worship. If all I can do is receive care from others, alone in a dark room and largely deprived of sensory stimuli, I can offer my suffering to the Lord and trust Him to receive it. I can pray when able and offer my silence and listening to Him when unable. I can seek from the Lord a cheerful and grateful heart toward my helpers. I can lean all my weight on the everlasting arms of God and glorify Him by resting in His grace.

No matter the life circumstance, even in prison if it comes to that: as I keep the windows of my soul open toward Jerusalem all day long, inviting the wind of His Spirit to blow through me, the humblest duties become means to receive His grace.

              What is this sacramental life?  For one thing, it is more easily described than defined.  As a child, I had an African violet in my bedroom window.  I never lost my amazement that, no matter how I turned it in the morning, by the time I came home from school it had tilted itself toward the sunlight coming through the window.  When we returned to the United States from the mission field, I would laugh at my nine year-old dog Steinway.  After 3 years of separation under my parents’ care, he didn’t want to lose me again, I suppose, so he followed me around the house all day long.  Even when we were in the same room and I was in plain view, he followed me with his eyes.  The Ebony Dog who succeeded him would do the same thing. His whole being was oriented toward me. The sacramental life is like that:  practicing the discipline of fixing my eyes on Jesus, no matter what, until it becomes habit; continually adjusting my attitude and actions in the changing circumstances of life so that the direction of my gaze remains constant in the midst of it all.

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              Granted, this truth is easier to write than to live.  The world, both without and within the church, opposes it, the flesh shuns it, and the devil thwarts it.  Contemporary Christless society believes work is what we do to earn money in order to be able to spend the rest of our time doing as we please.  On the contrary, the Scriptures teach that it is in our work as well as our rest that we fulfill God’s design for us.  Adam was given the task of cultivating the garden in the day of his creation, not as punishment for eating the forbidden fruit.  It is only the toilsome frustration of work now which results from sin.  Even in the church, we tend to glorify “full-time Christian service” (which being interpreted is paid employment in gospel ministry) as somehow more holy than other vocations, but the Scriptures teach that we are to do all things to the glory of God (Col 3:17).  Was Jesus less holy and obedient to His Father in His first thirty years of submission to His parents, learning Joseph’s carpentry trade, and supporting his widowed mother and siblings as was His responsibility as the oldest son, than he was in His three years of public ministry?  Was the apostle Paul following Christ at a distance during the days he spent making tents so that he would not place a burden on the churches to support him?  Yet in our elevation of professional Christian ministry (especially missions) above all other careers, is this not what we imply?

              Our own flesh, the self-life, plays right into this idea.  After all, it’s far more glamorous to write a book for the Christian bestseller list than to write a letter to a shut-in cut off from other Christian fellowship, or a note to tuck in a child’s lunchbox.  It’s much more gratifying to the ego to cook a meal for a roomful of grateful, hungry people at the local homeless shelter than for a kitchen of grumbling teenagers who seem only to complain.  It may be more motivating to build a house for Habitat for Humanity than to keep up with the home repairs on a honey-do list.  It’s often easier to travel half a world away to preach Christ to those you will never see again than it is faithfully to live out the gospel and speak when God opens doors among your usual acquaintances, who may make life uncomfortable for you if they don’t agree. 

The rewards for public ministry are also public; we have our compensation in the applause of the watching crowd.  The rewards for a life lived in quiet obedience carried out before the face of God are primarily between the soul and her Lord, although such a life cannot help but bear fruit in the character and outward life as well, as we become what we behold (2 Cor. 3:18).  Does that make them less precious?  Hardly.  What can be sweeter than going about my day in the constant companionship of my Best-Beloved?  Jesus promised exactly that treasure to those who abide in Him by keeping His commandments:  “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him. . . .  Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.  If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.  These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (John 14:23; 15:9-11, NASB1995).

              Finally, the devil is all too happy to support this notion of work as something that keeps us from doing “real ministry” and drains the joy from life.  If believed, this idea may produce a sloppily done or entirely neglected duty, all for the sake of “ministry.”  On the other hand, as Lazarus’ sister Martha illustrates, we may be easily distracted by work as an end in itself so that we miss God’s still, small voice speaking to us through it.  The thorns which choked the growth of the seed in the parable of the soils, after all, are the cares and worries of the world.   Either error, forsaking duty for ministry or losing sight of God in the busyness of work, comes from the enemy and distorts the truth.

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              “But how can I expect to hear a still, small voice in a carpool of noisy pre-schoolers shouting?” or perhaps “. . . when the only beauty in my work is the fake ivy peeking over from the next cubicle?”  I never said it was easy, but I assure you: insofar as you gather the pebbles of the ordinary and offer them to God, you will be both sad and glad.  More importantly than my lone opinion, the testimony of the Christians of the past assures you of the same truth.

              Brother Lawrence wrote of it as the “practice of the presence of God” in his book by that name.  Though a monk, his duties differed little from those of the average housewife (excepting the carpool of screaming kids).  He learned the art of constant conversation with God even as he scrubbed pots and worked in the garden, and it transformed his attitude and relationships.  This can begin simply, with a hymnal over the sink, a recording of sacred music or Scripture playing in the car, prayer reminders where one will see them often, or Scripture memory cards next to the computer for those inevitable delays while the program opens or document saves.  Whatever reminds us to look back to Jesus when we lose our focus will help us on this journey.

              Martin Luther wrote, “The works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they be, do not differ in one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks, but that all the works are measured before God by faith alone. . . .  Indeed, the menial housework of a manservant or maidservant is often more acceptable to God than all the fastings and other works of a monk or priest, because the monk or priest lacks faith” (quoted in Os Guinness, The Call, 34).

              Elisabeth Leseur, a housewife in upper-class French society in the late nineteenth century, began to follow Christ as the rather unexpected consequence of her husband’s attempts to persuade her to abandon the trappings of her childhood religion and join him in militant atheism.  When the Lord opened her eyes to the folly of the arguments before her, He drew her into a personal relationship with Himself for the first time, as her previous religion had been merely formal with no sincerity.  How did she respond to this turn of events?  She began her own self-study program of the New Testament and the lives of Christians from history and sought to live out the life and love of Christ with her husband and the friends her social station required her to entertain.  She lived out 1 Peter 3, despite continual ridicule from family and friends and increasingly poor health, which prevented her from leaving her home at all in the last years of her life.  She sought to conduct her life in keeping with resolutions such as the following:

To go more and more to souls, approaching them with respect and delicacy, touching them with love.  To try always to understand everything and everyone.  Not to argue; to work instead through contact and example; dissipate prejudice, to reveal God and make Him felt without speaking of him; to strengthen one’s intelligence, to enlarge one’s soul. . . ; to love without tiring, in spite of disappointment and indifference. . . .  To learn from the Heart of Jesus the secret of love for souls and deep knowledge of them:  how to touch their hurts without making them smart and to dress their wounds without reopening them; . . . to disclose Truth in its entirety and yet make it known according to the degree of light that each soul can bear (Robin Maas, “A Marriage Saved in Heaven:  Elisabeth Leseur’s Life of Love,”  https://catholicladylive.blogspot.com/2011/02/marriage-saved-in-heaven.html).

Her life motto became, “Every soul that uplifts itself uplifts the world.”  After her death, the crowds of people touched by her charitable works and correspondence, reading her journal, and her life itself became the means of her husband’s conversion.  He later entered vocational Christian ministry and labored to keep her memory alive and honored.

              The more well-known Christian teacher Oswald Chambers writes frequently of the “drudgery of discipleship” in his devotional classic My Utmost for His Highest.  For example, in the September 11 entry, he notes, “The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God’s power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way.  Can I use a towel as He did?  Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of.  It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.”  Again, in the October 21 entry, he writes, “We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.  It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not.  We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.”  No, nor in five lifetimes, it sometime seems.

              Finally, Evelyn Underhill, the twentieth-century English writer on mysticism and the spiritual life, summarizes these truths.  She writes, “A spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the center, where we are anchored in God:  a life soaked through and through by a sense of God’s reality and claim and self-given to the great movement of God’s will.”  Furthermore, “Some people appear to think that the ‘spiritual life’ is a peculiar condition mainly supported by cream ices and corrected by powders.  But the solid norm of the spiritual life should be like that of the natural life:  a matter of porridge, bread and butter, and a cut off the joint.  The extremes of joy, discipline, vision, are not in our hands, but in the Hand of God.  The demand for temperance of soul, for an acknowledgment of the sacred character of the normal, is based on that fact – the central Christian fact – of the humble entrance of God into our common human life.  The supernatural can and does seek and find us, in and through our daily normal experience:  the invisible in the visible” (The Soul’s Delight, 11 and 45).

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              The invisible in the visible, the pearl latent in the grain of sand, the diamond in the lump of coal, God’s grace conveyed to the human heart in the ordinary duties at hand in each day. . .  Anything done for the glory of God, in dependence on His Spirit, in obedience to the commands of Christ, may be lifted to our Lord as a sacrifice of praise. To quote Lilias Trotter, "Meeting His wishes is all that matters."

               May He strengthen us to learn the discipline of offering each moment and task in faith to Him, to be transformed by His glory into the means for His grace to take fuller possession of our hearts through the sacrament of the ordinary.

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* My version of a story John Baldwin told my church youth group in the summer of 1990 (although some details have no doubt altered in my memory); I have found the story used as illustration various places but not succeeded in tracing the source. If you know, please let me know so I can attribute it correctly.

 

The Ebony Dog: A Love Story

Today is the 5th anniversary of losing my Ebony Dog. Missing him, I sorted through my blog posts about him. They tell the story pretty well.🐾

If you only read one, I suggest this one:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html

In rough chronological order, here are all:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2016/07/june-2016-eight-years-ago-today-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/sermon-on-sofa-from-archives.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/05/long-and-short-of-it-ebonys-corner.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/04/eucharisteo-and-what-cat-left.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2013/02/ugos-and-broken-cisterns.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2012/04/what-love.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/12/dirty-truth.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/i-wait-for-you-from-archives-ebonys.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/velcro-dog.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html