Day 53 - Saturday, April 06
Title: SECURE IN GOD’S LOVE
Scripture #1: Romans 8:28-39 (NKJV)
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Scripture #2: Hebrews 13:20-21 (NKJV)
Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Poetry & Poet: 
“The Shepherd Boy”
by John Bunyan

He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.

SECURE IN GOD’S LOVE

How should we negotiate our journey as we move beyond Easter? Resurrection is proclaimed fact but, for us, still a future hope. ‘Here little, and hereafter bliss,/ Is best from age to age’: John Bunyan’s Shepherd boy holds out the hope of eternal life in the hereafter. He sings his song, today’s poem, in the Valley of Humiliation, and is heard by Christiana, her four boys and her companion, Mercy. This is in Part II of The Pilgrim's Progress (1684), and the very place that, in Part I (1678), Christian fought a long battle with the monster, Apollyon. In Part II, the Valley of Humiliation is a beautiful, pastoral setting, filled with birdsong and meadows. This leads the party’s guide, Great-Heart, to pronounce that ‘This is a Valley that nobody walks in, but those that love a Pilgrim's Life.’ The prospect and foretaste of bliss here, even a little, is a blessing that must not, however, distract pilgrims from our journey. In Part I, after a deadly thrust of his sword, Christian finally vanquishes Apollyon, but not with a follow up coup de grace, the blow that puts an enemy out of their misery by violent death. Instead, his victory comes with a word of grace, the confidence of today’s Scripture:

‘Christian, perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that Apollyon spread forth his dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian for a season saw him no more.

As we arrive at the end of this Lenten devotional, with an early Easter, the rest of the year looms. We may know our present circumstances as peaceable meadows allowing us to contemplate our calling and equipping by God’s grace in the power of Jesus’ resurrection. Or we may be hard put to struggle through the combat of each day. Still, as Christians, in the light of the grace of God’s love toward us in the events of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, we are humbled, humiliated in the perfect way that upholds our place of dependence on our loving Creator and Savior.

As we look to the weeks to come, we are addressed by the Word of God proclaiming our joyful humiliation in the grace of salvation in Christ. By eternal grace, God in Christ has accomplished it all. Nothing we do or that is done to us by whomever can separate us from this love of God. Apollyon’s accusations to Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress speak truthfully of his carelessness and faithlessness in the journey. We know our weaknesses – mine are clear to me as I type. Praise God that Scripture attests to resurrection hope. This is why the shepherd boy can have his confidence in singing, it comes from the great Shepherd of the sheep.

John Bunyan knew about humiliation. For conscience’s sake, he was imprisoned under the Conventicle Acts of Elizabeth I, rearticulated by the Duke of Clarendon under Charles II. Today’s musical composition based on our Romans passage was commissioned especially for the funeral of Elizabeth II in the early days of the reign of her son, Charles III. The mighty, the privileged, the powerful are, in humanity, frail, humbled by death. The lowly, the poor, the strugglers are humbled by circumstance and impotence. In our frailty in the face of sin and our own mortality, and even the frailty of centuries old sacred architecture, we can take comfort in the sovereign work of God in love in Christ that we have walked through in the writings of the Apostle Paul this Lent.

In a strange mercy, the devastation of the Cathedral of Notre Dame exposes the glory of the cross to all. Ludovic Marin’s picture is framed to suggest, in a theological reading, the power of the cross. This empty tool of execution, in God’s design, becomes a beacon of light and heavenly wealth in gold. Not only has Jesus been lowered from the cross, in the dull, sculpted Pietà scene at its foot, but the whole wider setting has been blown open by the superabundant life secured by Jesus’s conquest of death. The power of resurrection explodes outwards from the all-conquering reality of the cross, ushering in daylight to previously cloistered space. That inert gray of the sculpture is the path he trod, of humiliation, to secure the eternal covenant by his blood shed. But Jesus’ full glorious, bright, presence is critically present in absence because he reigns on high, preparing the hereafter for his flock.

With the shepherd boy, let us not seek fullness here for our own profit, laying up treasures for ourselves, manufacturing in the process burdens for our pilgrimage. Rather, let us be rich in the good works that God has willed good for us to complete, free from anxiety about success or securing approval of man because of the covenant in Jesus’s blood.

In that way, we join the Alleluias of the choir, participating in the delightful pronouncement of their Amen!

Prayer
O God, Father of our risen Lord, Jesus,
Make us humble in valor.
Keep us constant, so that,
Come fire, come wind, come weather,
No discouragement shall make us once relent,
Our first avowed intent to be pilgrims.

We praise you, that, in the light of resurrection hope,
Neither hobgoblin, nor foul fiend, can daunt our spirit;
We know at the end we shall life inherit.
So fancies fly away! We'll not fear what others say;
We'll labor night and day in every good work,
to do your will, as you work in us,
what is well pleasing in your sight.

We have loved to hear our Lord spoken of. 
Wherever we see the print of his shoe in the earth,
there help us to to set our feet, too.
Make his name to us sweeter than all perfumes. 
May his voice be most sweet, and his countenance 
more desired than they that have most desired the light of the sun.
May we gather his Word for our food.

You have held me, and have kept me from my iniquities.
You have strengthened my steps in your way.
Lead me, lead us, forward into the enduring participation in new creation life here,
And in the promised and assured resurrection life hereafter.
Amen
   –––Prayer adapted from John Bunyan,
         The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II,
         Mr Valiant-for-truth’s poem and Mr Stand-fast’s
         farewell.

Dr. Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Theology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University

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