A Summer Letter

"The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet"
-Sonnet 94: line 9.

19 July 2020


Dear E & S:

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.  Your recent comments on the decaying of moral in our government and society is shared.  If we were to remember the "days of old", let us not reminiscence the good o' days, but on God's love and care for His people (Psalm 143:5-6).  Most important, let us not confuse the general grace of God bestowed to all of mankind, where "He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:44).  What God creates, He sustains.  

Be assured God sees and knows the heart of man, “those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20).  The time will come when He shall collect His people.  In the meantime, the chaff (unrepentant) grows along side the wheat (God's people), as the Lord teaches in Matthew 13:30. 

Taking after Lucifer, unredeemed souls in all walks of life are ever prideful and self-righteous.  As such, real or perceived obstacles and injustice are vented by symbolic gestures or actus reus. In these United States, history is episodically revised, altered. Landmarks and edifices of yore are destroyed. All hid behind the so-called "righteous indignation". Unlike the Revolutionary War or brutal conflicts among nations in archival palimpsest, nary life or limb is sacrificed from the epicurean comforts and security of conceited dissidents.  The disgruntled souls see the specks in the eye of others but not the log in their own eyes.  In the words of Lewis, “he had worked them with his brain but not with his blood.”

From time immemorial since the Fall, mankind has yet attested that war, pestilence, famine, girded in with climatic and geologic disasters, could be subjugated.  Rather, individuals and nations all went into a tail-spin when faced a major disaster.  More often than not, civil and economic foundations collapsed, lives loss, and hopes dashed.  Presently, it is the pandemic COVID-19 which concerns the nations.  This virus has become the “white whale” to the world’s Ahabs. It has to be subdued and conquered.  Otherwise, grandiose dreams such as colonizing the planet Mars are hampered.  Then when the "rude sea grew civil at song" once again, sand boxes are rebuilt beside newly emerged sand castles.  Still, the heraldry of self and nations is ever the same prideful strain, "I am the master of my fate.  I am the captain of my soul."  These words are the touchstone of civilizations; a succinct expression of pride.  Chided and forgotten was and is our Lord’s warning on the tower of Siloam disaster (Luke 13:4-5). 

The cussedness of man has its root of disobedience in the pride of our first parents, Adam and Eve.  The pathos of their sin and dire consequence of being cast out of Paradise is expressed thusly by Milton, 

“They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.”

Everything mankind does, it should be done for God’s eternal and undiminished glory (1 Cor. 10:31).  Created in His image, the Fall has resulted in mankind derogating from His glory.  After the Fall, first-born son Cain, eschewed God’s chastisement, killed his younger brother Abel.  Then Cain went east of Eden, away “from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 4:16), built a city, and named it after his offspring.  A pride which akin to the later Nubuchadezzar.  The proud emperor exclaimed, “for the glory of my majesty” (Daniel 4:30).  As “all pride is willing pride”, sin germinated.  It has now innately entwined in mankind. 

When step onto the stage of life, individuals and nations are sailing on the zeitgeist of the time, their “glory is like a circle in the water, which never cease the to enlarge itself”.  Indeed, it is glorious and exhilarating to have the spirit of the age sits in the shoulder of one’s sail. Nevertheless, when man exits life’s stage, the circle in the water “disperse to nought”.  

But by His mercy, God redeemed us, His people.  In our final breath on earth, we need not utter a conceited cavalier despair such as, “time’s winged chariots hurrying near; and yonder all before us lie, desert of vast eternity”.  God drew us from the pit of destruction. God set our feet on solid rock.  God adopted us as sons and daughters.  God’s adoption “is surely the apex of grace and privilege.” 

Our testimony of God’s grace is not complete until we offer up our song of thanksgiving to Him in public and in worship. Psalm 40 apropos our view on the pandemic.  It is not what we can do in view of COVID-19,  but what we must do to worship God in difficult circumstances.  As the Psalmist David says, 

“I was glad when they said to me,
Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Psalm 122:1 (ESV)
In sum, Psalm 40 underpins several points on worshiping God. The joy of corporate identity in public worship is not to be extinguished.  In church worship we are striding to appreciate its permanency (assailed but never prevailed), its diversity and unity (one Lord, one faith, one baptism), and its justice (wrongs are righted).  Finally, our prayers for and in the church ensures its accessibility so that God’s family may always journey to and gather together in the house of the Lord.  

Recently, as you might have learned from the news cast, the state of California further decreed that no singing with uncovered mouths is allowed inside the church.  So last Sunday, 19 July, we conducted our first worship service outdoors on church grounds.  Below is a picture taken at the 9 AM service that Sunday on the parking lot of the church.  We brought our chairs.  The pastor you can see in the photo; the organist and his portable keyboard are to his right. 

Finally, after this long and perhaps convoluted missive, I like to leave with you the second stanza of “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken". Written in 1779 and set to the music of Haydn in 1797.

“See the streams of living waters,
Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters
And all fear of want remove;
Who can faint while such a river ever flows
their thirst t’assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the giver,
never fails from age to age.”

Our Redeemer lives; and that “all [our] springs are in [Christ]” (cf. Psalm 87:7).

God's grace be with you. In my heart I forget you not.

As always,

L’