Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God  (Matthew 5:8). 

The Greek word makarios, used repeatedly in the string of beatitudes, literally means happy. Happy are the pure in heart. But so often, when we think pure, we think prudish, stuffy, or pristine. At worst, we think holier-than-thou and inaccessible; at best, we think naive. 

But those who are holy-in-Christ are far from those things. They pure in heart are usually the most sore in heart. They are holy because they wholly know their desperate need. They are pure because their deep knowledge of their deep impurity has led them to the pure One. They see God because they see their sin. And seeing their sin, they see and savor the One who saved them from their sin. 

We are declared pure by imputation. But we become pure by Spirit-led conviction. The more convicted we are of our sin, the more convinced we are that we need for a Savior. The more convinced we are of the love of God for us, the more we are convicted to strive solely after him. 

When my middle-school boys say that someone’s basketball shot is pure, they mean that it seems to flow effortlessly. But what seems so natural to NBA players has been habitually practiced and hourly-honed. While we come by purity simply by way of a Savior, we do not come by it cheaply. A purity so expensively-purchased is meant to be intentionally-practiced. 

Purity comes by way of practice. Singular focus comes by way of straining and striving. Paul, writing to his protege Timothy, who is already pure in Christ, commands him to strive toward purity and righteousness. Before Paul commands Timothy to live as a man of God (imperative; do), he reminds him that he is already a man of God (indicative; done).

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things…to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 6:11-14). 

Note the active commands Paul recommends to one already commended by God: flee, pursue, fight, take hold, keep. This means that the pure in heart sorely moan and groan. The pure are pierced by sin and boxed by their efforts at becoming the pure ones they already are in Christ. They struggle with the hazardous waste they find in their hearts. But their pollution leads them to the pure One. Coming by such a costly purity by Christ alone, they are humble and accessible. 

The Pure in Heart

The pure in heart
Sorely moan.
Stabbed and sutured,
They’re Savior-sewn. 

The pure in heart
Are not pristine.
Polluted and purchased,
They’re Christ-clean.

The pure in heart
Are not starched.
Bent and broken,
They’re heaven-arched,

The pure in heart
Sorely groan.
Strained and stretched,
They’re God-grown. 

Oh, that we might be pure in heart in this Savior-sewn, Christ-clean, heaven-arched, and God-grown way. 

An alabaster jar worth a year of wages. A woman lavish in her love. Practical disciples who call this waste. An intimate betrayer who wastes his friendship with the Christ for 30 pieces of silver. A man willing to waste his life for the unlovely.

The theme of waste is woven into the 26th chapter of Matthew’s gospel.

Hearing this chapter read this morning by my oldest son, the juxtaposition of the beautiful waste of love from the alabaster jar and the treacherous waste of Judas struck me deeply.

Jesus came to her defense when the disciples indignantly asked, “Why this waste?”

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the word, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Matthew 26:10-13.

As he defended this brave women, I cannot help but imagine Jesus thinking of the crowds who would call His life a waste. Just as He came to the defense of the wonderfully wasteful woman, the Father would come to His defense as the crowds mocked His wonderful waste on the Cross.

The Wasteful Ones
Reflections on Matthew 26

They say of her, “Wasted perfume,”
As she breaks her precious jar.
They’ll say of me, “Wasted life,”
As blood flows my body they mar.

“There are better ways to invest,”
They say as perfume begins to rush.
“There was so much He could’ve done,”
They’ll say as fluids from me gush.

They say, ”With great needs on earth,
Why does she squander all on one?”
They’ll say, “Our hopes of a new reign
Now with you have come undone.”

I say of her, “You let her be,
Let her lavish her oils on me.
She does a beautiful thing,
Her memory for years will ring.”

He’ll say, “Forgive them.
Pour your love down from that tree.
This is most beautiful deed, my son.”
I’ll cry, “ Totelistai. It is done.”

 Nothing offered to Christ is ever wasted. It is treasured and touted by Christ Himself.

May we find, fill, and break our own alabaster jars.

I cannot say we are those with a penchant for excellent mascots. As one whose college mascot was “The Blue Hose” who married a “Purple Paladin,” it should not surprise me that my children’s youth sports teams have featured such mascots as the “The Pink Fluffy Unicorns,” “The Green Ninja Lizards,” and “The Camo Sharks.”

In light of such a streak, it would not seem strange to select the Bereans from the Bible as a mascot for our muddled times. The courage, curiosity, and Scriptural anchoring of these Jewish brothers and sisters have much to speak to us today. Like us, they lived in a time of great upheaval to what they had always believed and been taught. Their spirit of openness to hear from the apostolic band of brothers was balanced by an honest questioning and sifting what they heard through the sieve of Scripture.

For us today, reasoning, idea-mixing, and intellectual dialogue are no longer isolated to a few central locations like the city gate or the synagogue. In fact, there are hundreds of would-be prophets and politicians (both trained and untrained) who offer their opinions and worldview to us at the scroll of a finger. Credible, non-credible, and even incredible sources vie for our attention and our allegiance. Popular voices use their platforms as megaphones, making it hard to turn down the noise. As such, the Bereans who held both the tension between being open-minded and gullible prove an example for us today.

As was his custom upon entering a new area, the Apostle Paul went to the synagogues where he would reason and open the Scriptures, “explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17:3). After being sent away from Thessalonica for his own safety, Paul and Silas came to Berea and headed directly to the synagogue. The audience they found there left an impression on them.

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men” (Acts 17:11–12).

They were eager, but not too easily swayed. They were curious, but cautious, wanting to search the Scriptures to see for themselves. They were not afraid to reason and reckon before they received what they heard. Their opinions, desires, and long-held customs were not their compass points, the Scriptures were.

After all, what Paul and Silas were sharing with them forced them to have to let go of long-held and long-cherished beliefs and customs. Yet, they did not refuse to listen, entrenching themselves in the bunker of their beliefs. They had open ears but rightly-skeptical hearts. However, when the truths they were hearing aligned with the Scriptures, they were willing to shift accordingly. In a polemical culture where assimilation and fortification are two poles, we have much to learn from the posture of the Bereans. Thus my vote to make them our mascot for a muddled time. If Stanford’s mascot is a tree and Syracuse boasts a giant orange man, biblical Bereans do not seem so strange a selection.

The Bereans

You were meant to conquer,
Yet let a cross conquer you.
You were to upend Rome,
Yet Pilate upended you.

You were to restore our city,
Yet You died outside its gate.
You were to usher in a kingdom,
Yet You were ushered out in hate.

I’ve seen the Scriptures all my life
They’ve been my utmost concern.
But hints of the Suffering Savior
Shout as each page I now turn.

The living logos has leveled
A lifetime of cultural learning.
The Holy Spirit stirs my soul,
For a better king I’m yearning.

I love the model the Bereans left us. I love how the Spirit saw fit to inspire Luke to include their example in the book of Acts. For those who say the Scriptures are not relevant to our time, the Bereans say otherwise. Oh, that we would be more like them, that we would raise children more like them. Oh, that we would be more committed to the searching the Scriptures for what God is saying than using them scaffold what we want to them to say.

In a nation historically known for its restlessness and in an age where productivity and action are highly valued, stillness seems like an antique. In such a culture and with hearts that tend towards restlessness until they find their rest in Christ, it is easy to confuse motion with meaning and stillness with stasis.

Recently, a friend sent a short devotional sound bite from John Piper where he talked about the wind blowing dead leaves. While they are often whipped into motion, they are not alive. Their movement is not intentional, but incidental. I hated to admit how much of my life was marked by mostly meaningless motion.

The ability to move and to act are gifts from God given to us as those created in His image. However, sometimes motion and activity can be a distraction from deeper living. According to French philosopher Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity’s problem stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” While shaded with some hyperbole, this statement addresses our tendency to use busyness and motion as shields from facing the deeper problems of our human existence.

In his book Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness mentions two poles towards which the hearts and minds of unbelievers can be pulled: the dilemma pole and the diversion pole. Because God’s word is truth, the unbelief of a human does not change reality. Thus, those living in unbelief have two options. The first option is towards despair, because if they are consistent with their belief that there is not god and therefore no meaning, life becomes a dilemma. Humans are reduced to chance accumulation of cells and proteins with no greater purpose. The other (much more common) option is towards distraction and diversion. On this pole, people realize that God’s reality is likely true but don’t want to have to bow their knees to Him. As such, they keep themselves busy, distracted, and entertained to avoid the deeper realities they want to avoid.

While Guinness is speaking specifically about those who do not believe in God, I find his words convicting for my own heart. It is far easier to stay busy with activity than to sit and meet with the Lord, bow my will before Him, and walk in humble obedience to Him.

In his poem “Reflections in a Forest,” W.H. Auden addresses a similar meaningless motion that marks humanity.

Turn all tree-signals into speech
And what comes out is a command:
“Keep running if you want to reach
The point of knowing where you stand…”

Our race would not have gotten far,
Had we not learned to bluff if out
And look more certain than we are
Of what our motion is about;

So many of us are bluffing. I know I often am. And I do know what our lives are supposed to be about: living for the Lord’s glory, knowing Him, and making Him known. Sometimes it is just easier to move than to be still.

But stillness with and for the Savior is not stasis. Like water building up behind a dam, collecting potential energy for the time when it is to be released to do intentional work, stillness for the purpose of intimacy with the Lord is power.

When Moses found himself in a situation as a leader that seemed to require immediate and intense action and activity, his utter dependence upon the Lord led him to command the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today…The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent (Ex. 14:13–14).

Stillness that is birthed out of trust and belief in the Savior is never stasis. Rather, it leads to intentional activity. Before we can step into meaningful activity and intentional work, we are invited to remember that God is the ground from which all of our work comes and the One to whom all our work is directed.

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress (Psalm 46:10–11).

May we not confuse motion with meaning or stillness with stasis. May we sit before our God long enough to remember the purpose and power behind all our activity.

When both nature and nurture agree on something, what is a soul to do? Both personality tests and the test of time agree that one of my greatest strengths is responsibility. While this sounds respectable and often comes in handy, hyper-responsibility can easily get out-of-hand, especially in ministry settings.

While the world medals the necks and trophies the shelves of responsible people, sometimes habitual sin can be strengthened underneath the shining surface. I see this in my self. I watch it in my son who is so similar to me that it scares me.

Responsibility, in its right place, can lead to lives marked by order, effort, and excellence; however, over-grown hyper-responsibility can lead to lives marked by anxiety and paralyzation or crippled by the need for control .

I am not championing an abdication of personal responsibility. I am reminding those who tend to hyper-responsibility to abdicate the stolen seat that belongs to the Lord Himself.

In his poem” The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats begins with the following powerful lines:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer:
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.“

Those who struggle with hyper-responsibility have two options: to limit their world to small spheres they erroneously feel they can control or to find a better center for their lives.

Responsible people are usually only able to rest in the presence of one more responsible and capable than themselves. Sometimes, those can be hard to come by in human form; however, there is One who is rightfully responsible for all of life (Acts 17: 24-27). He upholds the ever-expanding universe with His word (Hebrews 1:3). He categorizes and corrals the stars (Isaiah 40:26). He is the sustaining center of all things and in Him all life holds together (Colossians 1:16-19).

If He does these things, He can handle my schedule and my syllabus. He can handle their report cards and their college application processes. He who manages myriad microorganisms and macro-economies can manage my heart and my home.

I’m not a tattoo girl, but if I were, I would get these truths inked on my arms. I need to be reminded of them daily, as my soul slinks back toward the center without my even realizing it. Weekly, I have to sit down and re-size my circles of concern and responsibility. Insidiously, things that are concerns sneak into my circle of responsibility, leaving me weighted down, at best, and paralyzed, at worst. They slowly sap the joy and peace Christ purchased for me at the cross. They steal my focus from what the Lord has actually called me to do by demanding that I am responsible for things that are not mine to carry.

Sitting long in the presence of the Lord, I am able to own what is mine and release what is not. In fact, over the years, I have learned to add another layer to my processing: ours. As one who tends to have two speeds (all or nothing), and two categories (yours or mine), the Lord is adding ours. For even in the few things that are my responsibility, I am working together with Him (Colossians 1:28-29). He is my yoke-fellow, the One who longs to be invited into the tasks at hand, the One who directs and energizes the tasks at hand (Matthew 11:28-30).

The Nexus

“The Nazarene is the nexus;
In Christ the center holds,”
When self seeks to steer,
The Holy Spirit gently scolds.

The ever-expanding universe
He upholds with a word,
Yet you steal the center?
How asinine and absurd!

Let Him be the Lord He is.
He alone does all things well.
“He is center; I am spoke,”
May both life and lip tell.