I’m back. I took a summer away resting up and trying to find some time to draw near to God. It was really refreshing, although it was also full of a lot of difficulty. Hopefully I’ll be posting more frequently again now that I’m back in town.

One of the most refreshing parts of my summer was a little book called “A Simple Way to Pray” by Martin Luther. He wrote it for his barber of many years when he asked Luther  how he ought to pray. I learned from this book the (obvious?) lesson that I can’t pray well from a cold start. I need to prepare my heart to pray well. Luther would begin by turning to the Gospels and reading a saying of our Lord or some other such passage to warm his heart to pray. When his heart was warmed to pray he would begin. I’ve found that preparing my heart before praying helps me pray much better.

Read Luther’s book. It’s only a letter actually, just a few pages long.

This one reads well online.

This one prints to a booklet if you print it doublesided.

This one is fullsize if the others are hard to read and you don’t mind waiting a moment for the download.

It has been a very long time since I last wrote. Life has been pretty busy, but I had such a great time in this game that I just wanted to post a note about it. It was a sort of online correspondence chess, 3 days per move. It really drew out the excitement. The game can be viewed online here.

He played a good game. He eventually blundered a bishop as he tried to win a pawn and a rook for a rook. I then forced the trade of both queens and he chose to trade the remaining rooks to lead us into the endgame with me a bishop and pawn ahead. I think the position was essentially won at that point. It dragged on for another 20 moves before he resigned. I came close to blundering it myself by moving to centralize my king in the endgame when I should have gone straight for his passed pawn. I caught the error in time to capture the passed pawn before it was too late.

I just stumbled upon this article from the UK’s Daily Mail from my buddy’s Facebook, and it’s really stunning. I almost wonder if it can be real. Apparently this old gentleman in Italy dug a massive complex of beautifully sculpted temples beneath his hillside home. The complex spans 300,000 cubic feet, or 20 times the volume of London’s Big Ben clocktower. The artistry of the complex is simply stunning. There is no other word for it. Apparently Italy is calling it the eighth wonder of the world.

I’ve been thinking about Mary & Martha lately. The lesson is basically a very practical example of how the gospel is lived. It is about how grace is applied practically in being and becoming who God wants us to be. It seems to me to parallel the passage about John laying his head on Jesus’ chest, the instruction to seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all ‘these things’ will be added to you, and the teaching about Jesus being the Vine in which we must abide.

We do a great deal of wondering about what God’s will is. Books are written in droves on the topic. What these passages teach me is that I do not become who God wants me to be by thinking about who He wants me to be and then trying to be that way.

Often as I worship, as I am enjoying God the most, or put another way, when I am abiding most richly in the Vine, I find that I am changed. The strange thing is that I am usually surprised by what I am changed to. God makes me into someone quite different than what I expected.

What this proves to me is that I never could have gotten there by thinking about who God wanted me to be and trying to be that way. I never would have thought of what God intended. I think the difference between trying to figure out who God wants us to be and then to be that way on the one hand and simply worshiping and seeing who we become on the other hand is the difference between leaning on our own understanding or else turning away from evil by fearing the Lord. Put another way it is the difference between law and grace, work and faith.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.