4 Years of Tentatio: Where then is Boasting? It is excluded.

This blog has had over two years of hiatus.  I don't know if it is going to come back, but I am still here... barely.  Life since 2009 has seen me greatly diminished.  Some where between the horrors and strain of doing my part in the war in Iraq and trying to pick up the pieces after I got back, I ran out of constructive things to say on here.

Life, this long road of tears, has really taken the starch out of my britches.  I have not made it this far unscathed by any means.  It became progressively clear that I needed to stop talking and start listening, reading, and praying.  It is in these moments, be they one day or over 1,500 days, that the reality of Christ becomes most potent.

What does a man have when so much of this dying world that he thought to be true is proven false, when so many temporal things fail him... and most especially when his own strength fails him?  What is left when much of his life passes away and the future plans that he had developed form himself have become so uncertain?

It is on this dark road that the life of a Christian, a sinner saved by grace and sustained by the gift of faith, snaps sharply into focus.  It is on the refuse heap of life that the theoretical dogmas and truths that the Holy Spirit has revealed to us are put into practice.

It is here where I have decreased and Christ has increased.  It is here, looking back over this long road, where this wretched sinner has run out of things in which boast... except for the surpassing love of Christ.

Thanks be to God that He has taken from me all of those things that I held to which are passing away.  Thanks be to God that He, in His insurmountable mercy, that he has left me with those things that I truly need:  His grace through faith, repentance and the forgiveness of sins, His church, Word and Sacrament, a wife that gives me continual support, the simple daily blessings which He pours out on me, and the strength He gives me to live out the vocations that He calls me to.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.  

Philippians 3: 8-11

8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.