It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles. Luke 24:10, New King James Version
To say that my blog could be termed The Gospel According to the West Wing wouldn't be much of an exaggeration. After Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional, and maybe Tim Keller's twin devotionals Songs of Jesus on the Psalms and God's Wisdom For Navigating Life especially focused on Proverbs, the secular political show is surely what You most often draw from, Lord Jesus, to grant me illustrations.
I'm uncertain whether my button-up style more finds expression there, or whether the show itself has actually deepened those preferences in me. So long as the show reinforces Gospel principles in spite of its creator's theology, so much the good.
When Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman deflects the media attention a new staffer has tried to direct toward him, explaining the team ethos of the West Wing because the president is the one with his name on the ballot, there is a lot of the biblical submission to leadership and analgesic for the ego there. Again, when a member of the intelligence community says that unlike the West Wing staff they don't get to take a bow on the Sunday morning talk show for their successes, that resonates with me because it resonates with You.
Because of the possibilities of over-learning when Your Word for which I was created and re-created converge with a show that speaks my language and the language of the culture, there is a particular grace in counter-balancing passages. Luke 24:10 is one of those. Even as You would relieve Your saints of that insistence on taking a bow for what is after all Your work as the One on the timeless ballot, just then You call individuals out to take a bow.
Compared to the elemental revolution of the Resurrection, what does it matter who the individuals were who first told of it, except that it matters to You? Compared to the capacity to bring life from death which is Yours and Yours alone, what does it matter that a few individuals got to give their faint echo to that sovereign audacity, except that it matters to You?
And this mattering to You is in character, not an awkward anomaly of magnanimous the in the particular glare of the Resurrection's victory. You, Lord Jesus, said of the lady who anointed Your feet that her story would be told wherever Yours was. Through to the end, Lord, Revelation reveals that You see fit that the names of Your apostles will adorn the gates of the New Jerusalem. You are so sure of Who You are, and Your glory is so vast, that You delight to share some of its reflection with deemed individuals.
Well would we remember with Spurgeon in Morning and Evening that the saints are Your heritage and that You are in the midst of them. When we sense Your work in and through us, as I did yesterday more emphatically than in a long while, we can say so. We had better say so, or we don't stand a chance against depression's lurking gray wolves when Your glory through us is less obvious.
You use Your own by name and in specific instances, Lord, and You delight in it. When we declare Your glory at the power of Your Resurrection, Heaven's host, so much more splendid, powerful, and consistent, paused to take note.
With Morning and Evening again, Lord, we pause to resound to Spurgeon's rhetorical question, "Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity, as the lives of any of the saints who have gone before?"
Make our hearts leap, Holy Spirit, when we note Your particular work in a spouse, in a child, in a student over whom You have, by grace, granted us particular influence. Give us the words and the timing, Lord, to say so without over-fearing the inflation of the ego. Even Pres. Bartlett on The West Wing was sure enough of himself to distinguish the individuals who work for him for a job well done on his behalf.
In the night, Lord, when the gloom so often lingers, give us to banish it by listing off the likes of the ladies in Luke 24:10, those specific people we have been given the grace to know as faithful. Make it so, Lord. Make it so.
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