Russell A. Cardwell Online

I have not been able to sleep for the past two nights because of this toothache. The whole roof of my mouth hurts, and now it has spread to my throat. Here it is just a few days before the Chrysalis weekend, and I already have more to do than I can manage. This is so typical of Satan’s tricks. Sometimes I just have to laugh at his attacks. It’s as if he doesn’t even bother to try coming up with something new. It’s always the same old stuff over and over again. There’s no subtlety to it at all.

I keep thinking about C. S. Lewis’s depiction of Satan in Perelandra. Contrary to popular conception, he said, Satan is no gentleman. Nor is he the somber tragic figure from Paradise Lost. Satan picks up reason and intelligence like a soldier picks up a weapon. Bayonets or bombs are tools a soldier uses, and are of no interest to him beyond their utilitarian purpose in helping him accomplish his ends. Similarly Satan uses reason and intelligence as part of his arsenal when he needs them, but they are not part of his nature. When you focus on Satan himself, and not on the tools he has picked up, what you see is more like “a monkey or a very nasty child.”

Deep within, Lewis said, there is “nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness.”

So a part of me looks with scorn on the childishness and monotony of his attacks. And a part of me is thankful that I am not dealing with some grand and subtle design. But another part of me is disgusted and somewhat chilled at the thought that something so petty and childish as giving me a toothache before and important event could be so damned effective.

I’m glad that God knows what I need. He knows my thoughts even as I am thinking them. He knows my feelings better than I know them myself. Anytime I turn my thoughts toward God, no matter what time, night or day, God is already thinking about me. And long ago, he prepared for this day. Satan was defeated once and for all when those nails pierced my Savior’s flesh. Is that awesome or what?

I hate to admit it, but it reminds me of an old Willie Nelson song. Remember “Always on My Mind“? Well, when it comes to God, it really is the truth: You are always on God’s mind.

• God’s Palms

The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

—Herman Melville

• Only You
• The Arms of God

Alan Christopher, in this month’s Indeed (Walk Thru the Bible magazine), has some remarks that relate to this entry, Six Principles for Godly Choices, I posted a couple of weeks ago. After quoting 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23, both of which read, “All things are lawful, but not all things are possible,” he says:

In the first case, [6:12] he [Paul] followed up that statement with the standard of not being mastered by anything. In the second, [10:23] he followed up with the standard of making sure all things are edifying. The point, in Paul’s letters, is never on whether anything is legal; it’s on whether it’s good. Does it fit with God’s character or the world’s? Does it build up or tear down? Does it lead to freedom or captivity? When deciding what’s good, law isn’t the determining factor. Eternal worth is.

The two standards he mentions correlate with the first five of the principles. The standard of “not being mastered by anything” correlates with Principle 1: The Principle of Self-Control, and Principle 2: The Principle of Bondage. The standard of “making sure all things are edifying” correlates with Principle 3: The Principle of Edification, Principle 4: the Principle of Love, and Principle 5: The Principle of Example.

His general point, that in all of Paul’s letters the issue is not whether a thing is legal, but whether it is good, correlates with Principle 6: The Principle of Faith.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Guess that’s why he makes the big bux, and I write blog entries.

• A Global Ministry
• Six Principles for Godly Choices
• Obeying God or Disobeying God
• The New Christian Music
• Cogent confabulation | Semiologic

I was just thinking of a conversation I had 2 or 3 years ago with a friend who said, “I’m completely self-sufficient. I can do everything for myself.”

I remarked, “You can’t bury yourself.” She laughed. It was a bitter kind of wisecrack. It diffused the mood.

I didn’t think she was prepared to hear the meaning hidden behind the humor. This was a person so thickly shielded that she couldn’t even feel her own pain. I know what that is like: I wore a shell like that for a long time. It is hard to take off.

Even after you have taken it off, it is hard to keep it from growing back.

People may be unfaithful and unjust, but you cannot live a fulfilling life without them. I think it was Andrew Marvell that wrote:

The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Not only can you not bury yourself, you can’t live inside your casket.

• No related posts

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!

—Viktor E. Frankl

• You Can’t Bury Yourself
• No Rules
• Blessed?
• God’s Time
• Sanctum To-Go

I have found that some books are better if I read them with my eyes closed. I will wake up after having read 3 or 4 pages, thinking, “Wow! This book is getting good all of a sudden! I want to read that again.” Then when I start searching for what I just read, I find it was not in the book after all. It’s just the same old boring stuff that put me to sleep in the first place. If only I could remember the stuff I read in my dream, I’d have a sure best-seller.

• Reading
• No Body But Ours
• One Hundred Pianos
• Kingdom Builders Wanted
• Contents