Crying Out in the Darkness

“Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done...”

If you are like me, you can echo the words of that cheerful song most of the days of your life, and you can list blessing after blessing given to you by our gracious God. As Ethan the Ezrahite says in Psalm 89, “The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.” Every breath I take, every beat of my heart, every wonder of nature I behold, is a good gift from my heavenly Father. And the greatest gift of all is the gift of forgiveness and eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ who gave His life for me on the cross!

But, likewise, if you are like me, there are days of sadness, fear, doubt, and discouragement--times when our heavenly Father seems to be far away, seems to have turned his back on me, even seems to be afflicting me with severe punishment! This is the kind of experience that Heman the Ezrahite is writing about in Psalm 88.

Someone has said that this is the only Psalm in our Bible that doesn’t contain words of praise, joy or thanksgiving. Apparently, Heman the Ezrahite was referring to a time in his life that was so dark and dreadful, all the blessings and benefits of knowing God seemed blotted out. What kind of trouble could account for this?

Perhaps it was a time of terrible sickness: an illness that threatened his life. He refers several times to being near the grave. Of being like one who is without strength. If you have ever been sick with a severe fever or bedridden with a wasting disease, then you know what it’s like, perhaps, to lose any hope of recovery: you cry out in your soul for God to deliver you. Or, you might even imagine that you are so close to death that not even He could help you. We must remember that God “knows our frame, he remembers that we are but dust.” The Lord created us and he knows that when we are weak and sick and played out physically, those are the times we find it hard to trust him and go on “counting our blessings.”

Maybe the darkness and trouble Heman refers to has to do with his relationships. There are times in all our lives when the people around us are difficult to deal with. People are fallible, sinful, unreliable, often careless. They make us promises and fail to keep them. They claim to be our friends but then betray or abandon us. They are greedy and ambitious, so they tend to manipulate or attack those who stand in their way. Heman complains to the Lord that He has taken away his closest friends and made him repulsive to them. Heman understands that God is in control of all things, even the relationships in his life that have gone wrong and become hurtful.

Do you and I cry out to the Lord when people in our lives let us down? Do we give God the credit He deserves for the friends and loved ones we treasure and rely on? We must remember that God declared “It is not good for man to be alone.” He created us to desire and to need companionship. And that is one important reason God became a man--the Lord Jesus Christ--to be our closest companion, even when all other friends and loved ones fail and abandon us.

It is clear that Heman the Ezrahite felt himself to be in real, immediate danger. Time and again in his Psalm he mentions being close to death, pleading with God on the basis of soon facing his own grave and the oblivion death represented to him. He even says that the closeness of death has plagued him even from his youth. There may have been an episode in his boyhood days in which the death of a parent or a friend affected Heman deeply and permanently. It became a scar on his heart and in his mind that tortured him throughout his life. Indeed, the Bible speaks of death as a great enemy--a terrifying force to be reckoned with as long as we live in this sinful world. Once again, Heman lays the complaint at the feet of God, telling the Lord “Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me.”

I sincerely doubt that Heman is referring to God’s wrath against his own sin. Nowhere in the psalm does he mention his own need for repentance because of some wrongdoing. I rather believe he’s referring to the fiery intensity of the trials he is going through, seemingly an angry outpouring of punishment that could only be coming from the hand of his Creator. Does a God of perfect love really cause fiery affliction to fall upon his children, so that they begin to despair and lose hope? If we are honest and read the scriptures faithfully, we will see that the answer is often “yes.”

Joseph faced afflictions and trials at the hands of his own brothers, as well as those who owned him as a slave in Egypt, and he spent years in prison unjustly, before God cause him to be raised to the office where he could save his own people. Later, God caused his people the Israelites to be oppressed as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, before He brought them out in the Exodus and made them a nation.

Finally, the ultimate affliction God dealt out was upon His own beloved Son, in whom He was “well pleased.” One of the lessons we must learn again and again is that God has a good purpose in everything He does and everything He allows in our lives. The suffering and death of Jesus was the most terrible and unjust thing that ever took place on earth. And yet it was part of God’s perfect plan to atone for the sins of His beloved people.

I believe that this is a lesson that Heman the Ezrahite had learned. For even in the darkness of the terrifying pit, the place of fierce affliction where darkness was his closest friend, Heman cried out to the right person. “O Lord (Jehovah, the covenant God of Israel, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ), the God who saves me, day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.” Yes, he complained and expressed his fear and grief and pain and loneliness. But he knew who to complain to and he knew where his only hope of salvation lay.

When I wake up and find myself in total darkness, one of the first things I probably do is to feel around for a light switch. Even though the God of our salvation may lead us into a dungeon of darkness for a time to teach us to trust in him alone, this God has assured us that His light “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

When you and I face our darkest days of affliction, it can be a comforting and reassuring thing that we know whom to cry out to. And He has promised that His light will conquer the darkness one day, forever.

Maytime Musings

It arrives...the merrie month of May. We find ourselves surrounded by sweet springtime and the greenery for which our frozen souls have been longing.

Even the most stay-at-home layabouts appear on the trails and the lawns and the verdant avenues where newly pupated insects begin to buzz. Buds adorn more than beer cans and leaves of bound paper give way to those burgeoning on branches of beeches, briers and bushes.

Life emerges from stasis to rub crusty eyes and once more reveal its Author’s genius. A drive through the countryside harbors no fear of impassible lanes or invisible ice, and friendly regiments of Sta-puft clouds stand at attention on a vermilion parade ground as their brilliant, blazing commander lazily swaggers by.

Threats of April’s forgetful frosts at last lie buried. Bulbs are in the showered ground, seedlings rescued from their hothouse dungeons. Hats on passersby provide decoration rather than defense from the elements.

And I...I want to move about in May. I want to breathe in the pollens and the mown grass and the cookout coal-smoke from neighbors' fires two blocks away. I want to get to know the unleashed animals who go about marking their turf, and the elderly gent on the corner who lost his missus last year. I want to taste snow-cones and hotdogs in their natural habitats again and forget that all this lovely life was ever swallowed by winter.

At long last the atmosphere feels perfect for a night at the drive-in and there’s a new blockbuster being cast on an open-air screen. Outside beckons with its wandering, wayward, wistful, wicked wiles. Possibilities scattered like Hansel’s crumbs, leading my senses out of a dark, lonely wood.

Children used to dance around a pole with streamers. Nowadays they hop about a hoop on the playground with a big orange ball. Or shuck off their spring jackets to hang on bars like monkeys. Pretty soon trucks full of treats will come around chiming their annoying jingles.

I imagine youngsters still get antsy in May...school days seem so much longer when sunshine smiles through the windows and the growl of lawnmowers leaks into their classrooms. I used to wander into daydreams of Roseland amusement park’s opening scant weeks away, and the reward of free rides earned by respectable report card grades. They called it the “Sunshine Special.”

But now that I’m knocking on seniority’s door and Roseland has been paved over by time, I ride the carousel of colors, odors, flavors and cadences created anew every sudden spring...

...by the arrival of merrie May.

The Good of Goodness

What makes it good to be good?
Whence does morality come?
Who says life must at all costs be preserved
Even though this one counts less than some?
What makes it bad to be bad?
Why not just serve “number one”?
When did self-centeredness score such a loss
And self-sacrifice hit a home-run?

What makes it good to be kind?
Nature devours all the weak!
Mercy and peace are unknown in the wild:
Only sharpness of tooth, claw and beak.
Power and swiftness are prime.
Prowess and ruthlessness reign.
How did we humans escape jungle law,
Far more “civilized” rules to sustain?

What makes a virtue so fair?
Even when vice offers thrills...
Even when I welcome temptation’s lure,
It’s tough virtue deep pleasure instills.
Why do such heroes inspire
When “giving in” would cost less?
What makes self-serving excuses seem vain
Every time good is put to the test?

Is good a matter of choice?
Did we all simply “count heads”?
Was it a sociological poll
Or a weaving of DNA threads?
Is good a meaningless mist?
Is moral outrage a joke?
Are peace and genocide equally just--
No more crucial than “Pepsi or Coke?”

Is good a practical truth?
Simply the best way to thrive?
Is then “pragmatic” the highest of heights?
Then, why should the weak be kept alive?
Or why make beautiful things?
Why waste our time on such frills?
Such window dressing serves no basic need--
Only practical stuff “pays the bills”!

The good of goodness is God.
His is the law in our hearts.
Yes we might doubt or deny it is so,
But the whole beats the sum of its parts.
For God’s own image was breathed
Into His first Garden pair...
And though that likeness is fallen and scarred,
That law’s echo and voice are still there.


MNA  5.17.15

Beauty's Renewal

I woke to find a world devoid of war
where no one bears a grudge or locks his door
or fears to wander naked in the wild
or trust an unknown neighbor with his child:
a world where threat and peril walk no more.

I opened eyes to gaze upon a garden
where none still knows the need to plead for pardon
or beg for alms or seek a healing balm
or find a sage her tortured mind to calm:
a place of grace and peace beyond the Jordan.

I rose to walk in wonder down the strand
now free from heaven’s curse on life or land
where oceans churn with only gentle tides
and nature with its lords no more collides:
a paradise unstained on every hand.

I left my dreams behind to enter bliss
where death and wrong my Prince will all dismiss
and offer there with riven hands and feet
the prize which here is only bittersweet:
the sleeping Beauty’s pledged, awakening Kiss.


MNA 4.26.2015

Challenged and Cheered

Paul writes in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” No sooner does the apostle explain this, than he proceeds to paint a very painful picture of the human race. A race of people doomed to experience the wrath of God for their sins.

The point that Paul is making is that the gospel of God--the “good news” regarding Jesus, God’s only Son--can only be seen as good news as it is proclaimed against a backdrop of a fallen world. This is a world that is rendered fallen by a rebellious, treasonous, disobedient human family, of which each of us is a guilty member.

This bad news about people marks out the irreconcilable “no-man’s land” that separates so-called liberal Christianity from what may rightly be called evangelical Christianity. Full-orbed biblical faith in Jesus Christ is based on truth which insists on a radical antithesis.

When I use the label “liberal” here, I am referring to those who believe in unifying humanity under a banner of fallacious hopes and wishful thinking. These well-intentioned folks want to see peace and healing for a hurting and divided mankind...but they believe they can be attained by basically human, non-miraculous methods.

This became clearer to me recently as I pondered the apparent aims of some spiritually minded poets. These writers urge us to look within ourselves to discover the common ground and universal desires that can unite us all. They imply (or preach openly) that if flawed, mistaken, dissatisfied men and women would rally together under a banner of brotherhood, or a love of nature, or a desire for self-preservation, then...all would be well. After all, we are all “in the same boat together,” and together we are sufficiently equipped to get things right in the end.

Only a casual glance through the pages of Scripture will show that this view falls far short of the plight of mankind as the Bible describes it. Rather than facing a self-perfecting building project that merely requires a beefed-up quantity of concerted effort, humanity is, in reality, in the middle of a to-the-death cosmic combat of God-sized proportions! Our Creator is extremely mad...because people are extremely bad. And eternity in either a real Heaven, or a real Hell, hangs in the balance.

This biblical picture presents too sharp an antithesis to the liberal mind. In order to avoid such a God-vs-Man confrontation, one must do one’s best to equalize the two sides in the conflict. The liberal must either inflate man’s goodness and perfectibility, or deflate God’s nature as powerful and holy sovereign. Or both. Making man more god-like than the Bible paints him, or making God more man-like, is the key.

A favorite tool of such theological makeovers is modern textual criticism: taking the plain language of Scripture concerning God, His nature, His demands, His action, judgments and decrees, and re-interpreting it to render it more manageable on a purely human level. To a large degree, the biblical God has died the death of a thousand re-interpretations. Liberal theologians have taken God’s wrath, laws, miraculous powers and sovereign providence--even His plan to save sinners, and have reduced them to symbolic signposts that humans can use on their own journey toward self-perfection.

Those divine qualities, no longer seen as simple and factual, have been ripped from their spatial and historical context and boiled down into Aesop-like moralisms. In the modern theologian’s mind, there’s no genuine conflict--there’s only a moralistic stew where all of man’s good intentions (including his assumptions about God) are simmering together on the fire until we all wake up to the fact that we’re really all the same. All is One. There is no real antithesis to worry about.

When I, as a Christian poet, seek to reflect my faith in beautiful verses, the resultant lines cannot avoid the antithetical. To me, the truth of the biblical faith is just that: truth. And the truth forces one to make distinctions. The universe is not all “A”...it is also “non-A.” The reason that humanity is divided is that we’ve sinned against our Maker. The existence of evil in our world and in ourselves makes this perfectly plain, even if it wasn’t for the biblical testimony.

Furthermore, now that our Maker has provided a way to be saved from the punishment our sins have earned--Jesus--we turn our noses up at that gracious way, and go on devising our own ways--including the self-perfectionist path of the liberal.

The call of God from time immemorial has always been, “Repent”--to turn from non-A, and return back to A. This was the antithetical call of the judges and prophets of the Old Testament, the call of the Christ, as well as His forerunner and emissaries in the New Testament. To repent is to surrender before the challenge of God that stands against the proud, false hopes of those who imagine salvation is within their own grasp.

The Christian antithesis is that only the perfect work and atoning death of the divine, historical Jesus can provide a saving record of righteousness for sinners in the courtroom of a holy God. Every other path of salvation is “non-A.”

The liberal thinker may ask: “Are things really that desperate? Is the message of Jesus really so stark, judgmental and exclusive? Isn’t there room to flex, to leave our doors open a crack for sincere Buddhists or Jews or Hindus or Muslims? Can’t we all get along on a platform of good intentions?”

To those with such hopes I would simply point to the manger...the cross...the empty tomb...and ask the question: “Why?” If our good intentions were always good enough, who, then, really needs a Savior? Jesus said He came to earth “not to bring peace...but a sword.” He became the most challenging, antithetical figure who ever lived. But in love, He gave His life “as a ransom for many, to bring us to God.” And He claimed to be God’s only Way. His sole, unique Savior for the lost. That’s His challenge.

Only those who surrender before the challenge of Christ’s gospel, can truly be cheered by it.

Mark Aikins
April 12, 2015

New Beginnings?

January marks the beginning of a new year...yet it feels like the continuation of a bitter, cold season.

New relationships can be enticing and fun...until you start being haunted by memories of old ones and the baggage you still carry.

Favorite TV shows promise premiere episodes that resolve the cliff-hangers from last season...

It seems like every new beginning sneaks in a remnant of the past.

Everything new is old again...or is that vice versa?

The Preacher from Ecclesiastes looked and looked in vain for “something new under the sun.”

Every new day is a repeat of the day before: sun rising and hurrying to the place where it sets,
long shadows shortening...then lengthening the opposite way, blossoms opening and closing again.

Looking forward to the new, rewards one with the assurance that one may look back on recollections of the old.

Time’s passage makes newness a fleeting spark that never burns.

New Year’s resolutions may be well-intentioned...but how many last into February?

Wedding bells ring every June...divorce court gavels hammer just as often.

Birthdays arrive, hailed and unhailed, reminders of a primal cry...and the approaching last gasp.

New stars in the heavens are truly exploding novae, heralding the death of faraway planets.

Bored teenagers hunger for novelty...then they fall in love with dead film stars, and their fashions.

Old people come to fear novelty...then, in their dotage, see old friends as newcomers.

Witness Protection Programs promise a new beginning: protection from the past, of course.

True newness must be a spiritual thing...for under the sun, ain’t no such thing!


MNA 4/9/2015

What Is the Matter

Dying things and dying people,
Passing seasons, passing years,
Ebbing tides and ebbing powers,
Falling empires, falling tears...

Leaving friends and leaving dwellings,
Flagging hopes and flagging joys,
Caving buildings, caving virtues,
Hopeless ventures, hopeless ploys...

I have often felt abandoned,
Left behind by life’s advance--
Relegated to the quagmire
Of a cosmos run by chance...

You are not alone in searching
For the hidden face of God
As you peer into the blackness
Of the soul and sky and sod...

Death of morning, death of meaning,
Death of fruit and flow’r and seed,
Death of wishing or desiring,
Death of all-consuming need...

Could it be I could not face it,
Nor could you, while drawing breath,
Face what truly, finally matters,
Were it not for death--sweet death?


MNA 3/12/15