Shaking in coffee-infused, nervous delight, I am ecstatic! For the cough, cough low price of $88.91/m for the next 19 months, I'll be paying off: Logos 7 Reformed Gold library accompanied by its Full Feature Set set along with the list below. It is a WHOLE LOTTA BOOKS! Sure, I won't read them all, but their interoperability is the kicker:

• Wayne Grudem – Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine
• John Piper – A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer
• John Piper – Desiring God
• RC Sproul – Chosen by God
• RC Sproul – Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
• RC Sproul – Everyone's a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology
• RC Sproul – The Holiness of God

Introducing those books and connecting it to "What we hunger for most, we worship" from Piper's A Hunger For God, is a segue to my next project: a fast that I have found the peace, the faith, and the reasons to pursue. It does not come out of place of piety—ANYBODY can quit eating, there is no gold star involved; you do it every night until break-fast! In fact, I implore you to do it beyond the morning. No, if there is anything good that I do, it all points to God; I am a wretch on my own—there are strong parallels to my life (and likely yours as well) with Cash's cover of Hurt. Who have I not hurt? What sins have I not committed?

God's choice of me was not based on merit. I do not deserve grace. I deserve Hell. But God...chose me for life. How can I not worship him? "My heart belongs to you." I have no theological issues with the Problem of Evil, but how does God reconcile his goodness with saving people? THAT's the question...and just a few minutes spent in the comments section of most Internet posts and you'll find that we, reeking of sin, have NO clue about grace. Yet, it is simple how He reconciles it, not that I will ever understand it:

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

As indeed he says in Hosea,"Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.'"

Romans 9:21-25, ESV

He is risen!

Disregarded by the secularist, today marks a day of joy for the believer. For all the hub drub that is Christmas, Christ's resurrection from the dead holds greater significance, for without it, Jesus would have been just another baby born 2000 years ago; without the resurrection, everything he taught would have been a bramble of lies and ultimately worthless. And for those fools who followed him, the Bible would have been meaningless. Without his death, burial, and resurrection, I would lead a truly pathetic life of nihilism.

But glory be to God that he arose. It ignited a movement that continues to this day, one that I have been chosen to follow for I have been born of Spirit.

So what do I do with this knowledge? Do I coast through life, or am I compelled to do something different? Matthew 25:14-30

There is a tendency to allow the world's pressures to drag us from seeing eternity. Then there are pursuits that cunningly shift our time from God. How easier it might appear to just dig a hole in the ground to place our salvation! There forever remains on this side of the grave, a tension between the sin nature and our redeemed identities. However, we want to advance God's majesty; our heart's longing dives into the hope of being "faithful over a few things" so that he "will put (us) in charge of many things." It is not an escape, it is a full-on engagement and responsibility. How we wish to share in our God's joy!

So it is today, a day full of joy and celebration. Because he is risen, I am alive!

In times past, rarely have I envisioned last night's supper or that wretched Friday, the most pivotal day of all human history. I was cognizant that the day my Savior would rise from the grave would come on this Sunday those many years ago, but I never wore its dusty sandals. It was merely like the facts and figures of a historical date, recited in muted lines within a musty tome—far from a visceral experience.

This year, I reflect on what happened that Friday some 1,984 years ago; we mocked as we tortured to death my beloved Jesus. It was not the modern-day, antiseptic viewing room with the lull of lethal injection. No, we belittled Jesus as we blackened his body with a furious physical assault of fists and whips. We took his clothes as we ridiculed him. We laughed as we grossly coronated him, embedding thorns into his scalp. As he dragged the lumber of his vicious fate through a winding path in Jerusalem, we jeered in the liquefying meting of our perverse pleasures of all-time past and all-time future. We sneered as we drove spikes through his wrists and feet. While we danced in the raucous crowd's victory chants, he hung on that most cruel woodworking. Yet, he was full of love, full of grace. He died today, all those years ago. But, that was not the end of the story...

As the years fly by me, I am increasingly introspective as to how all the pieces fit together. We place far too great of an importance on trivial things—endless discourse on the inconsequential: work...politics...sports...entertainment? These and more have their place in our lives, but why are they not in a far more mitigated role? They ought be subjugated to the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Philippians 3:8-11

But, we don't do that, do we? We labor through mental calculations and pour emotional salve into shooting stars across the night sky. Handpicked for adoption for nothing I ever did, I will bask for all of eternity in the goodness of God. In the meantime, I choose to be consumed by what the godless select as significant and foolishly find their identity—how does that make any sense? May this not be! I've got bigger fish to fry than the minnows of partisan politics and cheap chatter.