In the past several decades, the Church has been dragged through unthinkable circumstances because of those whose spiritual leadership ended in scandal and courtroom drama and even prison time. It’s been devastating to hear lurid details of once-revered leaders as the news goes viral over the internet! These failures serve as a strong wake-up call for us all to press in all the more urgently to the great love and safety found in Jesus!
It’s true, we are weak and fragile beings with egos that invite us to live in the la la land of denial. If successful, those egos bring to the fore all that we’ve been warned, by Scripture, to avoid. Deception leads to greater and greater distances from the One who called us, the One who loves us with a Love like no other, the One who grieves over our absence, the One whose invitation to return home never expires (Luke 15). His name is Jesus. He has become our Salvation. Hallelujah, what a Savior!
About this One who is our Salvation; his coming, his prophetic portrayals, his person, his name, his glory, his mission, are all kept for us in Scripture, reassuring us of his veracity with historical proofs from a great many sources, not least of which are, the 2000-year-rich treasury of lives impacted and an ever-expanding church bearing his name. Poetry and hymnody are two more enduring testimonials clearly pointing to our Salvation, the man, Jesus. Here, from the original Latin of Bernard of Clairvaux in 1150 AD to its English translation by Edward Caswall in 1846 and finally put to the music of John B. Dykes in 1866 is this intimate hymn of praise. Even the King James English can’t dull its impact:
Jesus, the very thought of Thee with sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see and in Thy presence rest.
No voice can sing, no heart can frame, nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest name, O Savior of mankind.
O hope of every contrite heart, O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind Thou art! How good to those who seek!
But what to those who find? Ah, this no tongue or pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is, none but His loved ones know.
I haven’t read (couldn’t) the Latin, but it seems Bernard knew the raptures of a heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus and was expressing his overwhelming love for Him. It was Jesus himself who gave this as the first and most important commandment: ‘The most important of all the commandments is this: The Lord Yahweh, our God, is one! You are to love the Lord Yahweh, your God, with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, with every thought that is within you, and with all your strength.’ Mark 12:30, TPT. The ‘every’ and ‘all’ here sound like 24/7 attention to be called to love and worship. Looking forward to seeing you fellow worshipers tomorrow, 10 AM, 4 PM, FR. PD
Don graduated from Regent University in 1988 and moved to France for seven years, coming back to the US briefly to marry Sue in 1990. The work in France included working in a Christian School and helping plant a church before returning in 1995. He’s been pastor of Peninsula Vineyard since 1999. He enjoys counseling, especially married couples, traveling back to France (with Sue), reading, doing Sudoku puzzles and sleuthing out good, dark chocolate. Don serves as the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church Peninsula, in Newport News, Virginia.