In my short life, I had to learn rather quickly not only that the women in my life are into details, but also that they want me to be into the details about them!  When I first started going out with young women, I quickly realized that I had to start observing what color my date’s eyes were, what she was wearing, whether she was warm or cold, how she was feeling emotionally, and what would make her happy.  What’s more, if I were to continue to see her, I’d have to begin to notice and remember all sorts of details about her personal history, her family, her hopes and dreams: to learn everything possible about her.  Noticing all these details and others like them not only communicates to a young lady how I feel, but they also actually help me get to know her better and to deepen our relationship.  And when I really do care, far from being a burden, it becomes a joy, pleasure, and passion to get to know her by plunging into the minutia of her life.

While this connection between knowing someone and learning about someone makes sense in our human relationships, we often fail to approach our relationship with God in a similar way.  Yet as Christians who have a personal relationship with the God of the universe, we definitely need to!  When we cultivate a loving relationship with the God who loved us first, we have to get to know the details of who he is and what he is like.  This is made possible because he reveals himself through the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, teaching we usually call “Doctrine.”

This word, however, often gives some honest folk real heartburn.  Though not everyone articulates it this way, I’ve often heard Christians say something like, “I don’t want to learn about God, I want to have a relationship with him!  Learning doctrines and teachings about God and his laws and his character will only distract me from pursuing an intimate relationship with him.”

But imagine if I said this same thing to a young lady (which, for the record, I have not!): “Babe, I want to have a relationship with you, so I really don’t want to know anything about you.  The details of who you are, what you are like, what you desire, and what you expect from me are unimportant and useless for me as I get to know you.  They may even distract us from actually having a genuine relationship.  Please, be quiet, and let’s just smooch!”  Somehow, I think that this would be my last conversation with her ever, and, what’s more, I would probably emerge from the encounter with significant bodily injury.  After all, when we love someone, the relationship and the learning go hand in hand (or in this case, fist to jaw).

This dynamic of relationship and knowing the details is exactly what the Apostle Paul urges in Ephesians 3:18-19, as he prays that the believers in Ephesus “being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  Paul understands that not only are we personally to know the love of Christ, to love him in return, and to be filled with his love for others, but that in order to do these things we are also to comprehend this love which surpasses knowledge, to examine and inspect it with our minds and hearts, to know its measurements and its details, and in this way to be rooted and grounded in that love.  For this reason, Paul and the other writers of the New Testament spend so much of their letters teaching doctrine to the churches, because they know that without it Christians might be uprooted from this love and groundless in their faith.  While doctrine without a relationship with God is spiritual death, it is equally impossible to have a long-term relationship with God without receiving and understanding Christian doctrine.

The Apostle Paul also makes it clear in this passage that these doctrines and teachings about God and about Christ are not merely private opinions, but public proclamations.  It is only together “with all the saints” that we are able to comprehend the love of God in Christ, to articulate it accurately, and to proclaim it with the kind of spiritual power that raised Christ from the dead (1:19-20; 3:20).  That is why we here at Resurrection are up front and public about our doctrine: we believe, teach, preach, and share our Christian doctrine as a community without picking and choosing what we will and will not accept.  We live the Christian life in the Spirit together, we have a relationship with God in Christ together, and we believe the teachings of the Bible and the Church together.  As we confess the Creeds as a congregation or covenant together to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles because they faithfully communicate the teaching of Scripture, we are actually following through on what Paul has prayed for our church and all Christians everywhere.

So where does this leave you?  Do you have a desire to get to know God in all of his glorious details like you would someone else that you love?  As we begin our summer sermon series on Christian doctrine, I passionately encourage you to spend time getting to know the God who made you, who saved you, and who will bring you to glory by diving into the details of his doctrine and by finding ways to put it into practice in your life.  It’s a fantastic way to show God how much you love him, and to come to love him more!

This is an article which kicked off the Summer 2010 sermon series at Resurrection on the Doctrines of the Faith. It was initially published in the June edition of The Resurrection Times.

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The Christian life is built on a handful of great and powerful mysteries. These aren’t average mysteries, like the mystery of what women do when they head to the ladies room together, or the obsessed kind of perplexity thatthe last six years of the TV series Lost have brought on for so many.  Rather, they’re the kind of mysteries that grab hold of you when you least expect it, that bid you drink and, though they satisfy, make you thirst for more.  They’re the kind of mysteries that impart life, evoke wisdom, create joy, and enable holiness: mysteries worth dying for and worth living for.

So, it’s no wonder that the First and Greatest Mystery for those seeking to live the Christian life is the incomprehensible Mystery of the one God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The biblical doctrine of the Trinity (though the word itself is never used in Holy Scripture) is the foundation of our Christian life because everything in our lives begins with God and who he is, not with us .

In fact, the value of living the Christian life depends entirely on the fact that we have a relationship with the one, real, living God who incomprehensibly exists in and as Three Persons who are each completely and wholly God, intimately loving and inhabiting each other, bound up together in a dance of total self-outpouring. Nothing that we do or say or believe as Christians makes any sense or has any meaning unless the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are together one God. Sinclair Ferguson illustrates this well when he says, “I’ve often reflected on the rather obvious thought that when his disciples were about to have the world collapse in on them, our Lord spent so much time in the Upper Room speaking to them about the mystery of the Trinity. If anything could underline the necessity of Trinitarianism for practical Christianity, that must surely be it!”

So, St. Augustine is right. It is dangerous to mess up how we believe about the mystery of the Trinity because we risk worshiping an idol if we err in our belief.  To understand the Trinity, the search is laborious because it is a mystery that can never be unravelled and whose limit can never be found. But it is advantageous also because as we plum this mystery of the Trinity we get to know all about God our Savior and about his mission in this world and in our lives in a way that transforms and transfigures our lives by grace forever.

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, Mary 26, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on Trinity Sunday.

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Every story emerges from a beginning.  In one of the most common bedtime scenes ever, the insistent plea “Daddy, tell us a story!” prompts a beginning, breaking into the thoughtful, brooding silence of the night with four simple words, “Once upon a time …”  In one expression, a father gestures to his children that everything is beginning: Get snuggled up and get ready to become lost in the wonder of the world, characters, and the plot which I am about to create and unfold for your wonder, delight, and bedazzlement.

Now, God is the Master Storyteller.  Not a Storyteller of mere fiction, mind you, but a Storyteller of the Truth.  This Author weaves his own narration of events so powerfully and with such truth that it not only describes our world but actually brings the universe along with us into being!  Before anything existed, God began relating, decreeing, singing our story with infinite creative beauty, intrigue, passion, complexity, and wonder, as only God could.  We all are characters in the Story of this Great Author, a Story called his Creation, brought into existence for the glory of our Artist and Creator!

But this Storyteller is unique: he actually wants to be known by his Story!  This Author audaciously writes himself into the Narrative that he tells, he enters the plot and setting to become a character, so that the others can find him, know him, and, in the process, become larger than life.  Beyond our wildest imaginations, he is the Protagonist of his own Story, right in the middle of all the action; in fact, not a single strophe of this Work makes a lick of sense without him (he is, in no sense, a Deus ex machina).  He has done this all in the hope that his characters would find him and know him.

So, this Storyteller who so desperately wants his characters to know him, must tell them his Story, the Story that they are living, beginning at the beginning.  Or, maybe I should say, “In the beginning.”  This is, after all, how God begins it all .  Far more than our usual “Once upon a time ...” the expression “In the beginning ...” signals to us, his creatures, his characters, his helpless children, that his Story is beginning, and that it begins in the very beginning with him.  It is our cue to snuggle up close to him and get ready for the story of a lifetime: the greatest tragedy ever told, the greatest adventure ever told, the greatest romance ever told, the greatest comedy ever told, and the greatest fairytale ever told.  And, truth be told, we will not be disappointed.

It is, however, difficult for us to do justice to this Story and to our Storyteller, to tell it and live it in a world full of (to wax metaphorical) dime-novels and paperback airplane reading.  To tell and live it rightly then, let us begin where Godhimself began, in his Creation of the universe, and marvel as his Story unfolds and envelops us with its heady and intoxicating power.

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, June 9, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of Creation.

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It’s a scene from C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that’s tough to forget. The White Witch (the usurper of the throne of Narnia and the enemy ofall that is right and good) comes before the lion Aslan (the rightful king of Narnia who does only good) and demands the death of Edmund, a snivelling boy who had betrayed his World War II era siblings. The witch makes her appeal based on a covenant made at the very beginning of time, what is called a “Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time.” If this covenant, the Deep Magic, written on the Table of Stone and engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the Sea, is violated, all Narnia will “be overturned and perish in fire and water.” Then Aslan does the thing that no one expects: he admits the truth of the Deep Magic and acknowledges her right to the blood of Edmund! To save Edmund, Aslan must spill his own blood in his place.

And then, after Witch has come by night and killed Aslan upon the Stone Table, anticipating certain victory over her enemies, Aslan comes back to life just as the daylight returns. He explains to the two girls who are the first witnesses of his return, that there was another covenant, a “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time,” of which the White Witch was ignorant! He says, “If she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time dawned, she would have read a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.” It is by fulfilling this covenant, the Deeper Magic, that Aslan satisfies the demands of the Deep Magic, saves the traitor, defeats death, conquers the Witch, and enthrones the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve over Narnia in their rightful place. Afterwards, the symbol of the Deep Magic, the Stone Table, lies cracked, overwhelmed by the Deeper Magic, and becomes the place where the weak came to find the help of Aslan their king.

Okay, so some of you might be wondering what this children’s classic has to do with the Bible and the Covenants between God and Man? Well, the truth is, that story is the story of the Bible and the Covenants between God and Man!  Lewis completely plagiarized the whole story arc from Almighty God. And if the story within The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has its power due to the Deep and the Deeper Magic which give it direction and beauty, how much more will the story of our salvation at the hand of our God have even more beauty and wonder when we dig into the details of his covenants with us?

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, June 23, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Covenants.

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A few weeks ago, you may have read in the Wednesday Edition that the Christian faith is centred around a handful of basic, crazy mysteries which, praise God, are true.   None is perhaps more mind-blowing than the mystery of the Incarnation, that is, the moment when God the Son took on a human nature like ours and united it with his divine nature forever.  It’s the most audacious of these mysteries, perhaps, because it connects the everyday lives that you and I live, lives that revolve around work, family, and play, to something as awesome and transcendent as God for whom and through whom the world was created.  God, who is utterly unlike you, became like you in every possible way except for sin without ceasing to be God.  This is the mystery of mysteries.

And so the Apostle John writes in John 1:14: “And the Word become Flesh and dwelt among us.”  As sinful people living sinful lives, we often have a very difficult time assimilating or even accepting the mystery of the Incarnation, and we usually try to get around in four basic ways:

First, sometimes we try to say that it wasn’t really God who became like us: it was an angel, a godlike emanation, or a superman.  But, if Jesus was not really God, then he is not your Savior, because only the God who made you can save you, only the one who put his Image in you can restore his Image.

Second, sometimes we try to say that it wasn’t really a man whom God became: he just manifested himself visually or pretended to be in a body or took a body but not a soul.  But if Jesus was not really Man, then you with your human nature have not been saved, since he does not and cannot save what he did not appropriate and become.

Third, sometimes we try to say that God didn’t really become anything, that he was two persons, one of them God and one of them man, who always seem to hang out together.  But if Jesus as a person did not really become man as a single person, then you as a person will never be saved, since the bridge between God and man has not been crossed and there is no salvation.

But lastly, and most frequently, sometimes we try to ignore that it matters.  We try to pretend that the Creator of the Universe becoming a human being like myself has no practical value.  But, if, as paradoxical and unimaginable as it seems, God the Son did in fact become a human being like you and me, how could this fact not radically change every bit of our lives?

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, July 7, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Incarnation.

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At a young age growing up in Salt Lake City, I had a mini-revelation: Christians find their identity in a cross.  You see, my Christian friends wore crosses, but not my Mormon friends.  A Christian church has a cross on its steeple, but a Mormon ward house a mere spire.  The contrast was stark.  As I later learned, this was no accident: the cross not only separates Christians from Mormons and from every other religion and philosophy, but even from the present world itself.  Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 6:14: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  Obviously, Paul is not merely reflecting upon the symbol of the cross as an ornament, but upon the horrible, shameful, disgraceful death that our Lord Jesus Christ died on our behalf.  Indeed, the day Jesus died we died, our sin died, our guilt died, and our destiny bound to a world condemned to destruction died as well.

This means that when we come to Christ, our identity is grounded in the cross.  The most important thing about us is not our birthday, not our parentage, not our citizenship, not our appearance, not our career, not our spouse, not our bank account, not our house, nor our hobbies.  Rather, of first importance is that on the cross we have been condemned as sinners and yet declared saints in Christ.  Paul says in Romans 6:3-4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” We have been cut off and severed from this old creation which is dying off, to be buried with Christ in baptism.  And because we died in him, we have been raised together with him: with pardon for our sins and eternal life.

But although we have been cut off from the world in the Christ’s cross, in Christ’s Body we have been brought together!  The Church is a supernatural community of people who stand together transparently under the cross, a cross which declares us to be at once both sinners and saints.  After all, the sin which before kept us apart as human beings has been put to death; as Paul says in Ephesians 2:14-16, “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility … that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”  If we have been reconciled to God in the cross, what good reason could there possibly be for our sin to divide us from each other?

So who are you?  Where does your identity lie?  Are you at peace with the world, or have you made peace with God through the blood of Christ on the cross?  Make no mistake: to be found in Christ, and to belong in body and soul to the one who shed his blood for you, is the greatest identity you could have.

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, July 14, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Cross of Christ.

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I have often experienced the power of literature in my life. As a child I was not only gripped by such classic page-turners as The Runaway Bunny and Yurtle the Turtle, but I was gradually enchanted with heavier fare like that of The Chronicles of Narnia which could suck me in, inspire me, and turn my world upside down. Still, it wasn’t until high school that any work of literature would actually bring me to tears.

That book was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (charming title, Russian patronyms, and all).  The main character is a rascal named Raskolnikov who, by reason of the atheism and nihilism of which he has become convinced, commits a graphic murder in cold blood. In the course of the book, he meets a young girl named Sonia who has been forced by circumstances into prostitution but whose spirit and tenderness is kept alive by her abiding faith in Christ.  Raskolnikov, perplexed at seeing her simple hope survive all of her suffering and pain, is driven nearly to madness with the tantalizing prospect that there might be a God who raises the dead. Consumed with guilt and passion, he commands Sonia one night to read him the story of the raising of Lazarus, at which point the author Dostoevsky writes out verbatim an excerpt from the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel.

The sorrow of these two pitiful characters admirably reflects not only the sorrow of Martha and Mary but the sorrow of a world broken by sin, by guilt, by corruption, and by death itself, and placed in this dark setting the words of Jesus took on an impassioned lustre which brought me to sobs. The Lord says “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” not only to Martha, but to Sonia, to Raskolnikov, to you, and to all of us. The Man who said this actually wept at the tomb of Lazarus, not out of obligation, but because He more than anyone in the world understood the horribleness of death and the wretchedness of sin, and because He more than anyone in the world loved this man who had succumbed to the curse and sting and victory of death.  Yet this Man is the Resurrection. He is the Life. And He actually called Lazarus back from the clutches of death.

These words brought me to tears, and (to be perfectly honest) they still often bring me to tears. True, what He offers us is beyond our comprehension, but that does not mean that it is beyond our hope, beyond our longing, beyond our passion, or beyond our faith. He offers us Resurrection, and He is able not only to offer it but to give it, because He first has been raised from the dead.

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, July 21, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Resurrection.

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There are some songs that I just can’t not like, and Bob Dylan’s song “Saved” is one of them.  It is a pure and unadulterated hootenanny, a frenzied Wednesday-night-prayer-meeting-and-revival of a song (I think the piano player probably lost about four fingers while they were recording, and probably didn’t care).  It may not be Dylan’s most popular song, but it is just plain fun!

Yet, it is its words that are remarkable; honestly, they have depth that even many old gospel songs don’t have. It’s all there: what we’re saved from (our being lost and dead in sin), how we’re saved (the power of Christ’s blood to save us), the result of salvation (the change that salvation brings through faith in him), and the purpose of salvation (the sheer contagious gratitude that we ought to have as a result)! The guy who wrote these lyrics really got what salvation is about, and put it to song in a truly powerful way. But the fact that it was Dylan that wrote them is just about as remarkable as the words themselves.

The Bob Dylan of the 1960s probably would have been the last person in the world to write or sing these lyrics with any sincerity (after all, he introduced the Beatles to mind-bending drugs), and people usually don’t believe me when I tell them that he authored one of the choruses in our Songs of Praise book at church. After the 1980s, Dylan remained, at best, an unconventional believer in God, but the guy who penned these words got it. He got the sheer enormity of salvation in Jesus Christ, and he got the spontaneous joy and enthusiasm that ought to flow from all the benefits that Christ purchased for us on the cross.

But while Dylan was enthusiastic about his salvation, he comes nowhere close to being as enthusiastic about it as God is. Paul writes to Timothy that God our Savior “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4). God’s great passion, whether you believe it or not, is your salvation. He is the Good Shepherd who seeks you, the lost sheep, and brings you home rejoicing. He is the watching Father who welcomes you, his prodigal son, back into his open arms with cries of joy andflowing tears.

You may not feel quite as vocal about your salvation as Dylan, but if youhave been saved as he was, you have much to be thankful for. Numbered among the Redeemed, the cry of our souls is to be “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:10). Is this your cry, your passion? Do you need to rekindle your grateful enthusiasm for God’s saving work in your life? I ask you to take some time this week to meditate on the height, the depth, the width, and the breadth of God’s saving love for you!

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, July 28, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of Salvation.

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In my junior year of college, after years of always attending the same kind of church, I developed a craving to experience the whole breadth of the Church. So, I bravely decided to go and visit churches of various stripes and colors. Like a connoisseur, I sampled church after church: Lutheran, Roman, Coptic, Methodist, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, even Anglican. This was very eye-opening for me, and I soon drew two crucial conclusions about the Church.

First, the Church, no matter where she may be found, is different. As I observed the Church in her variety, it became clear that Christ’s Kingdom is simply not of this world. Her message transcends human culture, her worship human tradition, her love human decency, and her community human society. Jesus prayed to his Father, “I gave them your word, and the world hated them, for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one,” (John 17:14-15).  By sending the Spirit of holiness uniquely upon his Church, Christ set her apart from every other institution, community, and polity in this world. When all these pass away, his Church will remain intact forever.

But second, the Church, no matter how flawed she may be, is essential. As I neglected my own congregation to visit others, I felt my own spiritual health decline. My local church was far from perfect, but she was my local church, my communion of saints. In the midst of those broken, forgiven sinners, I actually met with Christ on Sunday and throughout the week, and when I drifted from them I drifted from him. As the Scriptures put it, speaking of the local church coming to worship, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near,” (Hebrews 10:24-25). The Church, imperfect, broken, and sinful, is the Body and Bride of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. To share in the Spirit and to be united with Christ, you must be a living member of a local church.

Being in a church can be hard. Churches so often annoy, inconvenience, and even badly wound us. But, despite her flaws, the Church is where God has chosen to set his love on us and to make his dwelling place forever. It’s where we need to be. Don’t miss out on the amazing joy to be found in her midst!

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, August 4, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Church.

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I’ve always been amused at the fun things that we can get ourselves into, regardless of whether they are safe or not. Up there on the list is (drum roll, please) inhaling helium. I know we all say that it’s bad for you (lungs are not, after all, designed to absorb and process helium for the benefit of your body), but it always tickles me to no end listening to the pathetic squealing of someone speak who is exhaling a lungful of the stuff. Leaves me in stitches every time.

Now, reflecting on this “reprehensible practice”, it’s amazing how similar people sound when they’re “on helium”: the low density of the gas raises the pitch of everyone’s voice in the same way. More than the size of your vocal chords or the presence of an Adam’s apple, the main factor in how a person sounds is the substance that is being breathed in and out.

Interestingly, the same thing goes for the Spirit which filled Christ and which fills you as a Christian. As the catechism above explains so well, Jesus is called “Christ” because he was anointed with the Holy Spirit, and you and I are called “Christians” because we have been anointed with the same Holy Spirit and linked up to Christ as a result. We breathe what he breathes, we are filled with the power that filled him, and we serve God just as Jesus served God.

True, Jesus accomplished some unique, once-for-all deeds as our Prophet, Priest, and King: he was born of a Virgin, endured the wrath of God, and conquered death, to name a few. However, as God anoints us with his Spirit in power and gives us our mission (and if you are a Christian, he most certainly does exactly that), our lives begin to look like Christ’s, and God calls us to serve him in ways that look a lot like how Jesus served God. Just as two people sucking helium off the tap sound ridiculously alike, so when we trust in Christ and receive his Spirit, we begin bearing an uncanny resemblance to our Lord.

This means that, if you are a Christian, you have been anointed with the Holy Spirit and are called to serve God in every sphere of life as a prophet, priest, and king like Christ. As prophets, we submit to the Word of God, and we proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ to those around us. As priests, we offer up to God a living sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving by serving him with our whole lives. And as kings, we make war on sin and evil in our lives and in the world, and we look forward to the day when we will reign with Christ forever.

Do you belong to Christ? Do you breathe with him the same Spirit that he does? And are you joining with him in the joy of his ministry to our Father?

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, August 25, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of Vocation and Ministry.

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Fairy tales: they’re too good to be true, right? Sure, when we were children the grown ups would come and tell us stories in whispers and wonder which would dazzle and amaze the great imaginations of our tiny persons. In these stories, paupers won the hands of princesses, giants could be defeated by fools with beans, animals spoke, spells were cast, and no matter how dark the night the day was far brighter and eternal: they all lived happily ever after. Fairy tales held out hope that things are not as they seem, that something more awaited not only us but our whole world when just the right moment might come.

But then we got hit with a hard dose of “reality.” Our dreams don’t come true. Our families don’t stay together. Our friends do betray us. Our true love doesn’t appear. Our future isn’t “happily ever after.” Thus well before the age of ten, reality splashes a bucket of water on our face and we realize that not only do we not believe in fairies, (and what is more tragic) we don’t believe in fairy tales. We come to accept this world and its hard logic, indisputable facts, cold scrutiny, and damaged futures with a steely resignation that would make Prometheus himself proud to be our father. In the end, accepting cruel destiny we die to true living and we truly live to die. We’re just being realistic, right?

Yet the longing never goes away: it never should. Things are not as they seem: there is a fantastic, incredible story at work in our world which cannot beseen through the eyes and which promises that the End will be greater than the Beginning. Fairy tales direct us to the Most True Story, a story so unbelievably too good to be true that it is in fact true. This Story in no way skirts trouble: there are villains as well as heroes, there is woe as well as weal, there are battles, losses, and swindles. But in the End, good triumphs just as we hoped it would in the Beginning. It is after all more like a fairy tale than a lesser story.

Months ago as we began this sermon series on Christian Doctrine, we began telling this fantastic story of the Living God, the Tale to end all tales, with the hushed tones of “Once upon a time.” Now, as we hasten this coming Sunday to the conclusion of our story, we must take pains to make sure that we get the ending right. The story which tells of our Creation and our Re-Creation by the Most High God, of the Incarnation, Death, and Glory of the God-Man Jesus Christ, of our Salvation and Consummation in the Spirit of Holiness, must have a fitting End. Because the End of this story is our beginning of the Next, which if you can believe it, will be even better than this one!

This short article was published in the Resurrection Times: Wednesday Edition, September 1, 2010. Its purpose was to whet the whistle of its readers for the up-coming sermon on the Doctrine of the Last Things.

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