“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
-   Andrew Wyeth

Ah, ‘tis then I love to wander,
Wander idly and alone,
Listening to the solemn music
Of sweet nature’s undertone;
Wrapt in thoughts I cannot utter,
Dreams my tongue cannot express,
Dreams that match the autumn’s sadness
In their longing tenderness.”
-  Mortimer Crane Brown, Autumn Dreams

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

- Robert Frost, My November Guest

“The leaves are falling, falling as from way off,
as though far gardens withered in the skies;
they are falling with denying gestures.
And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
from all the stars down into loneliness.
We all are falling. This hand falls.
And look at others: it is in them all.
And yet there is one who holds this falling
endlessly gently in his hands.”
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Autumn

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

— Jude 24-25

I was supposed to go to on my very first camping trip this weekend - to Sequoia National Park. The anticipation of clean air, fall foliage, and sleeping in tents with good friends was invigorating enough to get me through weeks of monotony. As the trip grew closer, though, I realized that the timing was off: The drive to Sequoia is 5 hours, I can’t leave work early on Friday and I have to be in Malibu on Sunday afternoon for my cousin’s wedding - only allowing for 24 hours of camping bliss. The conclusion was simple: my date with Sequoia would have to be postponed. So, in honor of the all of the manifestations of FALL that I’ll be missing while in LA, I give you the words of Spurgeon as he sheds some God-beams on one of the most common benedictions in all of Scripture:

In some sense the path to heaven is very safe, but in other respects there is no road so dangerous. It is beset with difficulties. One false step (and how easy it is to take that if grace be absent), and down we go. What a slippery path is that which some of us have to tread! How many times have we to exclaim with the Psalmist, “My feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped.” If we were strong, sure-footed mountaineers, this would not matter so much; but in ourselves, how weak we are! In the best roads we soon falter, in the smoothest paths we quickly stumble. These feeble knees of ours can scarcely support our tottering weight. A straw may throw us, and a pebble can wound us; we are mere children tremblingly taking our first steps in the walk of faith, our heavenly Father holds us by the arms or we should soon be down. Oh, if we are kept from falling, how must we bless the patient power which watches over us day by day! Think, how prone we are to sin, how apt to choose danger, how strong our tendency to cast ourselves down, and these reflections will make us sing more sweetly than we have ever done, “Glory be to him, who is able to keep us from falling.” We have many foes who try to push us down. The road is rough and we are weak, but in addition to this, enemies lurk in ambush, who rush out when we least expect them, and labour to trip us up, or hurl us down the nearest precipice. Only an Almighty arm can preserve us from these unseen foes, who are seeking to destroy us. Such an arm is engaged for our defence. He is faithful that hath promised, and he is able to keep us from falling, so that with a deep sense of our utter weakness, we may cherish a firm belief in our perfect safety, and say, with joyful confidence,

“Against me earth and hell combine,
But on my side is power divine;
Jesus is all, and he is mine!”

As a consolation for missing Sequoia, I will instead be planning for and dreaming of Italy. I leave for my 10 day adventure on the 16th! More to come…

“Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?”
— Job 7:12

In the words of Spurgeon…

This was a strange question for Job to ask of the Lord. He felt himself
to be too insignificant to be so strictly watched and chastened, and he
hoped that he was not so unruly as to need to be so restrained. The
enquiry was natural from one surrounded with such insupportable
miseries, but after all, it is capable of a very humbling answer. It is
true man is not the sea, but he is even more troublesome and unruly.
The sea obediently respects its boundary, and though it be but a belt
of sand, it does not overleap the limit. Mighty as it is, it hears the
divine hitherto, and when most raging with tempest it respects the
word; but self-willed man defies heaven and oppresses earth, neither is
there any end to this rebellious rage. The sea, obedient to the moon,
ebbs and flows with ceaseless regularity, and thus renders an active as
well as a passive obedience; but man, restless beyond his sphere,
sleeps within the lines of duty, indolent where he should be active. He
will neither come nor go at the divine command, but sullenly prefers to
do what he should not, and to leave undone that which is required of
him. Every drop in the ocean, every beaded bubble, and every yeasty
foam-flake, every shell and pebble, feel the power of law, and yield or
move at once. O that our nature were but one thousandth part as much
conformed to the will of God! We call the sea fickle and false, but how
constant it is! Since our fathers’ days, and the old time before them,
the sea is where it was, beating on the same cliffs to the same tune;
we know where to find it, it forsakes not its bed, and changes not in
its ceaseless boom; but where is man-vain, fickle man? Can the wise man
guess by what folly he will next be seduced from his obedience? We need
more watching than the billowy sea, and are far more rebellious. Lord,
rule us for thine own glory. Amen.

After four unbelievable years of seeing miraculous work through this church, I sense a new season of maturity and courage dawning. God, as always, is on the move.

As we spoke about last weekend, we have been planted in the middle of one of the most mind-boggling towns on the globe. Within arms-reach, we meet people from all socio-economic, cultural, faith, and racial backgrounds. We see abject poverty and opulent wealth on the same block.

And yet we are called here. By God’s unshakable will, we are called here. My family and I are honored beyond words to be summoned. We beg of you to pray for us as we get warmed up for the race ahead. I am spending vital hours meeting, planning, praying, studying, seeking. I trust that God will continue to inject vision-as He has already begun doing over the last several months-into the hearts and minds of the staff, elders and me. Seriously, pray.
A word from the Word as we step in and step up…

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

II Peter 1:5-7 (NASB)

Anxious to worship with all of you this Sunday.

- Joseph King Barkley Lead Pastor, Ecclesia

“Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.”

— Ephesians 1:11

Our belief in God’s wisdom supposes and necessitates that he has a settled purpose and plan in the work of salvation. What would creation have been without his design? Is there a fish in the sea, or a fowl in the air, which was left to chance for its formation? Nay, in every bone, joint, and muscle, sinew, gland, and blood-vessel, you mark the presence of a God working everything according to the design of infinite wisdom. And shall God be present in creation, ruling over all, and not in grace? Shall the new creation have the fickle genius of free will to preside over it when divine counsel rules the old creation? Look at Providence! Who knoweth not that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father? Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. God weighs the mountains of our grief in scales, and the hills of our tribulation in balances.

And shall there be a God in providence and not in grace? Shall the shell be ordained by wisdom and the kernel be left to blind chance? No; he knows the end from the beginning. He sees in its appointed place, not merely the corner-stone which he has laid in fair colours, in the blood of his dear Son, but he beholds in their ordained position each of the chosen stones taken out of the quarry of nature, and polished by his grace; he sees the whole from corner to cornice, from base to roof, from foundation to pinnacle.

He hath in his mind a clear knowledge of every stone which shall be laid in its prepared space, and how vast the edifice shall be, and when the top-stone shall be brought forth with shoutings of “Grace! Grace! unto it.” At the last it shall be clearly seen that in every chosen vessel of mercy, Jehovah did as he willed with his own; and that in every part of the work of grace he accomplished his purpose, and glorified his own name.