Tag Archives: Joy Davidman

Music, Religion

Bach’s latest hit, and discipleship

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At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

 Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” (Luke 10:21-24, NASB 1995)

The music at the top is one of the recently discovered pieces that are thought to have been composed by Johan Sebastian Bach, whom I once heard Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman describe as “the second greatest Lutheran in history.” I guess there’s some dispute about authorship, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Bach’s whole ouvre could have been forged by Mendelssohn, and how would I know?

My devotions this morning were on the passage printed at the top of this text. What struck me was how different this speech is from a lot of what the Lord says about discipleship. (Or at least how I perceive what He says.) I tend to go the same way as Jordan Peterson, who is a legalist and is always discussing it in a cautionary way. “Have you really thought about what that means, ‘taking up your cross’?” Peterson asks. “It means suffering. It means dying. Are we really prepared to do that?”

Which is fair enough; He’s quoting the Lord Himself.

But Christ is in an entirely different mode in this passage. He’s looking at these guys He’s chosen – guys He’s chosen for suffering and ostracism and death – and He’s telling them how lucky they are. He’s given (and is giving) them something that outweighs all that suffering and death to such a degree that they’re not even worth considering.

I certainly believe we should talk about – even stress – the cost of discipleship.

But I’m pretty sure I under-stress the joy of the knowledge of Christ. Which is not surprising, considering my personality.

But I need to work on it.

Authors, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Joy,’ by Abigail Santamaria

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J. R. R. Tolkien never warmed to Joy Davidman, the woman his friend C. S. Lewis fell in love with and married. Looking at it from his point of view, it’s not hard to see why.

For decades, he’d watched “Jack” Lewis live almost a slavish life, working long hours as an instructor at Oxford, then going home to wait hand and foot on a selfish, small-minded old woman, Mrs. Moore, whom he’d promised a friend, her son, he’d take care of in case of his death in World War I.

But now, in the late 1950s, Jack’s indenture was over. The old woman had died. Tolkien had improved the situation by calling in personal favors to get Jack offered the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, a position that would give him three times the salary, and half the work, of his old job at Oxford. Tolkien was confident that with all this new freedom, the pent-up energy of all those years of servitude would gush forth in a flood of scholarship and creativity. Jack would finally get the recognition he truly deserved.

Instead, like an earthquake, Joy Davidman happened. She brought with her complicated domestic troubles, financial woes, two nice but active young boys, and a hint of scandal. Then, to cap it all, she brought cancer, the disease that had already scarred Jack as a young boy, when he lost his beloved mother. Continue reading ‘Joy,’ by Abigail Santamaria →