Chip Winter 11/14/22 Chip Winter 11/14/22

Again, with words...

Again, I have found something in social media that I’d like to share. It’s attributed to Carl Sagan, but I cannot find the appropriate citation. Regardless, I truly appreciate the sentiment.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time…”

This is especially true of the Scriptures. Written ages ago by those no longer with us, they are the product of the God Who loves and cares for us. They bind us to Him by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and through Him to one another and all the faithful of all time. Is it truly any wonder that the apostle John refers to Christ Jesus as “the Word”?

2 Timothy 3: 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Chip Winter 11/2/22 Chip Winter 11/2/22

What our words reveal

“Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk, your mind is on parade.”

Samuel Johnson

The coarsening of discourse (angry rhetoric, snarkyness, profanity, etc.), or what might cause my Texan relatives to ask, “are you bein’ ugly?”, lamentably reflects the mindset of this age. But instead of throwing up our hands or sinking to the level of “giving as good as we’re getting,” our Lord encourage us through St. Paul to” 5 Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Colossians 4:5-6).

This is certainly with a proclamation of the Gospel in mind. But I’d have to think it should guide all of our speaking, so that eventually we will have the standing before others to share the message of Christ Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended for the forgiveness of all. That is the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-11) which should always be on parade.

Chip Winter 10/19/22 Chip Winter 10/19/22

To gain the better perspective - God's perspective

“There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace by better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false image of myself.” C. S. Lewis, 30 December, 1952 (from an unwritten chapter on Iconoclasm).

When in the Ten Commandments we are discouraged from making images we are prohibited from making graven images, i.e. idols. But what is a false image of God other than making Him into an image of something we can manipulate, a God of our own choosing and making? What is a false image of our neighbor other than something we can justifiably (at least in our own minds) either inordinately adore or abhor? What is a false image of ourselves other than what I have just said about the neighbor?

II Chronicles 16:11

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!

Where do we find this better image of God, this presence of the Almighty? We find the better image which He Himself provides for us In His Word and in His House. In that Word we also find the better image of our neighbor, whom God would redeem to Himself. There, too, we find the better, more accurate image of ourselves: sinners deeply in need of God’s forgiveness – sinners deeply loved and forgiven by God for the sake of Christ Jesus.