Author: Cherry Finamore

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Those Dead Old Men (And Women)!

Dear Sister,

I’ll admit it. I don’t know as much as I’d like to know about them nor have I read as much as could be desired from the actual Puritans.  Oh yes, I’ve read lots about them. I’ve read books and posts and articles summarizing various authors and their writings—and I pray right along with them some of their beautiful and insightful prayers. And each quarter a little booklet arrives at our home with various excerpts from the likes of Thomas Watson, John Flavel, or Isaac Ambrose.  I haven’t actually read a lot of John Owen, though two of his well-known books arrived recently from my favorite used-book seller.  Nor have I read much from Richard Sibbes, Stephen Charnock, Anne Hutchinson, or Increase Mather. But John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”, child’s version for my kids and adult’s version for myself, has been part of my reading repertoire. And who is not familiar with Jonathan Edwards’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” from our high school literature textbooks?

And yet, I love them. I love these Puritans from the 16th through 18th centuries, originating in England and then to America, because of what I know about them and what I have read. I love them for their desire to purify the Church of England from vestiges of “popery”. I love them for their depth of knowledge of—and hatred for—sin, for their desire to live pure and holy lives, for their precise articulation of doctrinal truths, for their love of Christ and His majesty, for their love of Jesus’s love and mercy,  for their biblical worship, for the Confessions they magnificently produced…

The more the growth in Christ, the greater impatience is experienced in the slow sanctification process. Change me now, God. Yet, in saner moments, there is much gratitude He does not often use a scalpel and go for the jugular with my sin, but in tender-kindness and mercy and lovely patience He usually wields His gentler instruments of discipline for the conforming of my heart to the image of the Savior. The Puritan’s prayers have been invaluable in getting to the heart of my heart in these matters of impurity, pride, filthiness, and idolatry. As I read, my soul resonates with the words of these  “dead old men”, as some refer to them, men who understood their sin, their frailties, the “odious rooms” of their hearts. In this understanding, they clung to God’s great love and mercy, without which, they and we would be lost forever.

Get a flavor for their prayers in this sample from Valley of Vision:

“Of all hypocrites, Grant that I may
not be an evangelical hypocrite,
Who sins more safely because
grace abounds,
Who tells his lusts that Christ’s
blood cleanses them,
Who reasons that God cannot cast
him into hell, for he is saved…
My will is without power of decision
or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and
full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
so I forget easily the lessons
learned, and Thy truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet
carries home the water of grace.”

https://banneroftruth.org/us/devotional-series/the-valley-of-vision-devotional/

The Puritans get a bad rap at times—especially from the world. Goody two-shoes. Victorian. No fun. Even unsuspecting Christians buy into the caricature. It’s true. They had much to say about sin and were called Puritans for a reason. They were about purifying the Church and keeping their lives unspotted from the world, but the reason they had much to say about our fallen nature and acts of rebellion against God is because they understood the majesty and holiness and beauty of Christ. They knew that sin and purity must not, cannot exist together. Their failures were never sugar-coated. They fell on their faces in contrition and repentance and worship in the face of the Holy. When they saw their hard and darkened hearts, by the mercy of God, when they understood His unmeasured forgiveness in Christ’s payment for sin, they could do no other but worship. And so, sin was mortified and Majesty was lifted high.  ‘Theology gave way to doxology’, I read recently.

I heard a lecture not long ago about Jonathan Edwards. His most famous sermon, mentioned earlier, is a frightening picture of God’s wrath against sinners. “The bow of God’s wrath is bent and the arrow is ready to be flung”, the teacher quoted. God’s anger is the reputation of this sermon, but I was reminded, as I listened, that “Christ has flung the door of His mercy wide open and stands in the way, crying unto poor sinners, ‘Come in. Come home.’ “ The problem and punishment defined. The remedy revealed. Edwards was not all about God’s anger. The lecturer revealed that his favorite words were joy, pleasure, happiness, and happified-yes, happified, the state of the soul when knowing the loveliness of the Savior.  So much for being a kill-joy.

And then we glimpse their view of the Lord Jesus Christ. These Puritans had much to say about His beauties and the necessity for studying Him. Listen to these words from John Flavel:

The study of Jesus Christ “is the most sweet and comfortable knowledge. What is it to be studying Jesus Christ but to be digging among all the veins and springs of comfort? And the deeper you dig, the more do these springs flow upon you. How are hearts ravished with the discoveries of Christ in the gospel! What ecstasies, meetings, transports do gracious souls meet there?…A believer could sit from morning to night to hear discourses of Christ: ‘His mouth is most sweet.’ “

For these reasons alone, apart from all the other treasures about to be encountered as their writings are delved into, I love them, for they, in an inimitable manner, articulate far better than I, the repinings as well as the longings of my own heart for “not only being chiseled, squared, or fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long, and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ forever.”

Perhaps your appetite has been whetted. Read the Puritans while you’re young or whatever your age and learn of Christ deeply. I’ve waited far too long.

Learning with you,

Cherry

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Starving or Feasting

Dear Sister,

Have you ever helplessly watched as someone starved to death?  For two weeks I stayed by his side and waited. And then he died and we buried him. He had wanted no heroics in those last days and so we simply watched and waited as the sweetest man in the world also waited quietly to see Jesus.

Physical starvation is not unlike spiritual starvation in certain ways. Though physical inability to take in nutrition is usually a medical issue, not a choice, it is similar to spiritual starvation in that life and energy are sapped, the body or soul shrivel, and life is seriously compromised.

Most of us love to eat, some live to eat. Eating is enjoyable. A lovely dinner laid out on a linen cloth accompanied by fresh flowers, good friends or family and conversation feed the body along with many of our senses. But even eating on the run benefits us without our even thinking much about it. We must have food, with or without all the bells and whistles, in order to survive.

Souls must be fed or they too shrivel and languish. Sometimes a meal will be luxurious, sometimes it will be ordinary, sometimes it will taste delicious, sometimes it will be bitter, but every spiritual meal or morsel is important for the health of our souls.

From where does this food come? From a plentiful garden of sorts. A garden with seeds sown from and by the hand of God, watered by His Spirit, brought to harvest in our souls by His means of grace. We resist these means to our great peril, to the endangerment of our souls. We must take and eat. Sometimes the meal is perfectly prepared and shared with others as we worship together on a Sunday morning…God’s Word in a sermon, our hearts and voices united in songs of praise, biblically informed prayers, the works of Christ portrayed in His supper and in the baptism of His children.

Sometimes the emotions are elevated with the food. At times we barely taste the sumptuous fare, our hearts heavy with burdens or sins.  But it is food, nonetheless, whether a sermon, the personal reading of God’s Word and prayers, the symbols, all vital to our souls’ well-being for correction, for discipline, for instruction in righteousness, for encouragement, so that we, as God’s children, as we feed on Christ, grow and mature and become thoroughly equipped to obey Jesus and become like Him.

We can gorge physically, hindering optimal health, but it is difficult to overeat in the things of God unless we fail to use His meat and resulting energy in the exercising of righteousness and love and good works. His food whets our appetite, not only for our own consumption and energy and outworking but for the feeding of others beyond ourselves.

Eat, dear Sister. Eat from His abundant banquet. When you’re hungry. When you think you’re not. The strange thing about His food is that the more one ingests the more it satisfies, simultaneously causing more and more hunger.

This is a food that is vital to consume whether or not we feel the pangs of hunger. Don’t neglect the things God deems beneficial to spiritual health, things which sometimes taste as sweet as honey, things which sometimes can be bitter in the swallowing but all things which nourish every cell of our spiritual selves.  Eat from His Word, pray, worship by yourself and with others, feed on Christ in the Lord’s Supper, be baptized, watch baptisms, fellowship with God’s people. When you feel like it. When you don’t feel like it. Your spirit will imperceptibly grow stronger, more mature, more robust, more like Jesus. You were made for this. And someday He will take us home where we will see the Bread of Life face-to-face, whole and safe and fully satisfied.

Until then, eat heartily and often.

Cherry

“My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness…”
Psalm 63:5a

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Resurrection Musings

Dear Sister,

Someday we will all be given a disease, some diagnosis, even just old age, accident, or another circumstance which will take our lives…unless Jesus returns first. Our family was given a reprieve recently from the last enemy when my younger brother survived a heart attack, a resurrection of sorts.

The true believer in Christ, the one who has received Christ alone through faith alone through grace alone—that person will not die forever. In reality, no one will die forever, but the Christian will be raised to life everlasting. The unbeliever will be raised as well, but will be thrown into the fires of hell and eternal torment, banished forever from the presence of God.

Easter is here. A commemoration of the already and the not yet. His resurrection past. Ours to come.

Let’s look back.

On the first day of the week after that last Passover supper on Thursday, Peter tried to remember all the events leading up to what he was hearing now from Mary and the other women.  He remembered well that night when he was humbled, when the Master had removed His outer garment, wrapped a towel around His waist, knelt and washed Peter’s dirty feet as if the Lord were a common servant. If only he, Peter, had thought of doing it first.

That was the night Judas Iscariot had left the supper early, after his feet were washed…The night Jesus had talked about bread being His body and wine representing His blood. It did not make sense. A new covenant ratified by Jesus’ blood?

Fresh in Peter’s mind was his sleepiness in the Garden when he and his close friends could not keep their eyes open from exhaustion, physical and emotional. Jesus had gently chided him for not being able to stay awake with Him for even one hour, warning that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. He had promptly fallen asleep again until Jesus jarred him awake, warning that soldiers and Jewish leaders were coming to take the Lord by force. Judas Iscariot—Judas, their friend and companion for three years, had betrayed the Master. How could this be?

Quickly came his own denials of the One he loved, the One he had formerly declared to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, thoughts which now crushed his soul. For the rest of his life he would remember Jesus’ eyes looking at him when that rooster crowed in the dawning light of Friday. Was it love or sorrow or pity or “I told you you would deny me” when their gaze met? It was enough to make him flee that courtyard and warming-fire to break down and weep bitterly in true shame and sorrow and repentance.

The mock trials and the frenzied chants of the mob screaming, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”, from the same people who had just a week before welcomed Him into town waving palm branches as if He were a king, were etched as a nightmare in his soul. The memory would probably haunt him forever, even after he would come to understand the reason for these things, things Jesus had told him many times, but his hard and stubborn heart would not, could not receive.

His Lord was executed on that macabre method of capital punishment devised by the Romans, the rugged cross of torture. Why? What had Jesus done to deserve this? Peter felt the deep oppression of the three hour darkness in the afternoon of the day and doubtless heard how Jesus had taken His last breath. Dead. Dead. Dead. And now, this Sunday morning, Mary was trying to tell him, on orders from an angel, that the Master’s body, wrapped in cloths and laid tenderly in the grave of a rich man, was gone. The dazzling angelic messenger declared Jesus was risen and to go tell Peter.  This seemed an idle tale, but he had to see for himself, so he ran with John, to the burial site. His friend was younger and quicker and was already peering into the cave, the stone having been rolled away just as Mary had asserted, when Peter, panting from his exertion, arrived and burst into the tomb to see what he would see. Grave clothes, but no body.  Anyone stealing a dead man surely would not have unwrapped the body from the burial cloths. Where was He?

The Scriptures tell us Peter departed, marveling to himself at what had happened. He had not understood the Old Testament Scriptures nor Jesus’ teachings about the necessity of the resurrection.  Perhaps the eyes of his understanding were gradually being enlightened.

Scripture does not tell us all of Peter’s feelings, but with some visualizing and human affinity, we can imagine some of the “if only-s” and “what if-s” going on in his heart. The worst was, no doubt, the fresh memory of those three denials after his flourish of bravado boasting he would never deny the Lord, he would follow Him wherever—

As Jesus is wont to do with His brothers and sisters, He was not finished with blustery Peter. The risen Lord, in His mercy and love and tenderness, appeared to His passionate and fickle friend before appearing to the rest of the disciples. We are not privy to the conversation, but it seems that Peter would have been reassured of the Savior’s love for him—that the relationship was intact. How I would have wanted to see the living Savior’s eyes as He met Peter along the way. What did Jesus say? What did the soul-battered fisherman do? We surely know he did not bitterly weep this time. Perhaps there were tears of great joy.

Peter saw the Lord several more times before that final scene when he craned his neck as long as possible, watching as a cloud swallowed Jesus from his sight. This time he was not desolate. He was not in despair. The Lord was alive forevermore and on a sandy beach over breakfast had given Peter his marching orders to feed Christ’s sheep. The promised Helper would come to fill him with power and boldness instead of fear and weakness.

The next time we see the once vacillating, denying, and fearful Peter, the one who had met the risen Christ in a priceless, face-to-face encounter, we hear him, before a crowd, lifting up his voice with confidence and understanding:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know—-this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it…” (Acts 2:22-24)

If Peter were here now he would tell us that because Jesus lives, the grave will not be able to hold us either. Oh, wait, he does speak:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:3-5)

Amen and amen.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Rejoicing with you,

Cherry

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Creation Glory

Dear Sister,

Sitting on the beach in the late afternoon with the foamy  water lapping at my feet, looking at the vast swathe of sea and sky, listening to the cries of gulls, watching baby crabs dig their holes, schools of teeny fishes darting this way and that, the bodies of lifeless jellyfish lying on the sand, my mind tends to wander and be astounded at the bigness and limitlessness of the universe. That ball of fire we call sun begins its apparent disappearing act this side of the globe, yet still lighting that other sphere we call moon, causing the great sweep of dark, rippling water beneath to shimmer and glisten in the night. The sheer creativity involved in this place we live, this tiny speck of seemingly never-ending pulsing of life and silence of death can overwhelm. If I think too long and hard it renders me feeling insignificant.

My daughter who has special needs is a creator. She designs and draws and paints and writes. She does these things with paper and pencils, brushes and tempera paint. Those things we bought at a store. The store’s buyer purchased them through a distributor who obtained them through a manufacturer, who procured raw materials from other distributors, and on and on. What is common amongst all these players, including my daughter, is the fact that everything made was made from something else. Nothing was made out of nothing.

We cannot fathom the creation of something out of nothing. Our brains cannot process such musings. Scientists have forever tried to explain the origin of our universe, some attributing it to a self-existent, never-created God, but most have tried (with widespread public success) to accommodate creation to human reasoning which often ends sounding quite foolish and unreasonable.

The Scriptures tell us that God, without beginning or ending, created our intricate, spectacular, staggering universe with all its particulars, seen and unseen, known and unknown out of nothing. Listen to a few TED talks, watch Animal Planet, National Geographic and be amazed at our world conceived and spoken into being by our almighty God. Look up in the night sky and ponder the vastness of the universe beyond imagination. Sit with me on the beach and envision the unseen creatures roaming the inky depths of the ocean. Contemplate the immobilizing power of the hurricane, the flood, the earthquake. Reflect on molecules and cells, DNA, proteins, electrons and all those things my mind fails to grasp.

Beyond all these magnificent and sometimes unnerving results of omnipotence, there remains a quiet and unfathomable creation the physicists, the biologists, the chemists, the astronomers cannot see with their microscopes and telescopes. Almighty and fearful God of this universe, condescending to His creation, choosing a people for Himself created in His image for His own possession, brings to life within us a new heart, a heart after His own heart. Looking at our own darkness before Christ possessed us only to create in us new fleshy hearts responsive to His Spirit, we are the most amazing of all His creations. This incredible world will burn up, but the new creation He made in His people will never be consumed. We will live forever and ever and ever—in His presence—to His praise and glory—in a new heaven and earth of His own creation.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

Be still, dear Sister. Think about these things.  Be overwhelmed. Be humbled. Know that our God, He is God.

Worshipping Him with you,

Cherry

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Where Is God When It Hurts?

Dear Sister,

I have a dear friend who recently gave birth to a precious little boy who is not perfect in the world’s eyes. In the last couple months this Mama and Daddy have spent day after day after day in a hospital with their son while their other children keenly feel their absence at home, though well- cared for by other family and church members. Their little guy has already undergone three surgeries and his myriad of doctors anticipate multiple others. Exhaustion, frustration, fear, concern, worry, being overwhelmed are probably their new normal.

It is understandable that the natural mind would ask how a loving God could possibly exist considering all the evil and sadness in our world. This past week seventeen lives were snuffed out in a school shooting. Every day babies are massacred through abortion, husbands leave wives and their little ones, loved ones die of dread diseases, we ourselves are diagnosed with the unthinkable. And if there is a God, the claims of His goodness and compassion are severely overrated—as well as the claims of His omnipotence. After all, if these attributes were true, would He not put a stop to these hardships, sorrows, and sufferings? Where is justice?

Do we, as true Christians, ever have such thoughts, no matter how fleeting? We are familiar with the attributes of God. Some we seem to love more than others. We cherish His love and faithfulness when they bring our desired outcome. When they don’t conform to our image of them because they result in difficulty and discomfort, we tend to grumble and question God’s wisdom, His justice, and His heart.

Compassion is one of His attributes. But where is compassion when troubles overwhelm, suffocate, and sap every ounce of energy?  Maybe our thoughts turn this way because we think of compassion in merely human terms, failing to understand this quality from God’s perspective. In our humanity we think of compassion as feeling deeply for someone, putting our arms around them, even trying to remove the source of their suffering because we hurt for them. We want to make it all better.

A book in my possession lists many of God’s attributes and defines His compassion in this way: “God cares for His children and acts on their behalf.” That sounds wonderful. And if He is also omnipotent in that working on my behalf He will remove the source of my discomfort, won’t He? But this is where our thinking can get skewed.

Working on our behalf does not mean making everything better in the here and now. The promise is that He will make all things right when we see Him face-to-face. His care on our behalf in this life is to comfort in the sorrow, to shelter us under His wings,  to be sure, but to use the trial to make us more like Jesus, thus bringing glory to Him. Removal of difficulties is not His goal.

According to Scripture, Jesus is the God of all comfort and compassion as we walk this unknown and often tedious and rocky pilgrimage. He walked it before us thousands of years ago in His incarnation. He strode dusty streets, felt the pain and anguish and exhaustion of the sick, the anxious, the grieving, and the downtrodden. He was tempted to sin just as we are, but through it all He honored and obeyed the Father, never yielding to His flesh.  He suffered, bled, and died in our place, taking the filth of our sin upon Himself. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” old Isaiah prophesied. And John told us that “Jesus wept.” But, He rose again following that excruciating death, having endured the fullness of His Father’s wrath,  promising that His children would never experience that judgment but would rise again in like manner, with all their tears wiped away, being glorified forever and ever. Perfect justice mixed with sweet mercy. Our sins on Him. His righteousness in us. That wonderful exchange.

May we be reminded of these precious truths when our minds tend to deceive us into thinking this present suffering is all there is—that it will suffocate and render us incapacitated. Our compassionate God has great purpose in our suffering, purifying us for our heavenly homeland where all will be made right. If He never let us suffer we would never learn to trust Him or be like Him.  This is true compassion. This is how He cares for us and works on our behalf.

Clinging to the Savior with you,

Cherry