The Scandalon

"[The Lord] shall be a sanctuary; but [unto the houses of Israel] a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence..." Isaiah 8:14

"We Preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness..." I Corinthians 1:23

There is a truly diabolic element to the relevancy movements of modern Christendom. This element is a tendency to make Jesus more amiable to people, more lovable, huggable, and full of ooey, gooey goodness. Jesus' message is whittled down to some shallow notion of love and peace (as opposed to sacrificial love and Him being our peace). Jesus' identity is watered down to the ultimate Goodman who taught us how to be goodmen if we really, really try. Even Jesus' race is changed to meet personal racial (and perhaps racist) standards. What we typically get (and subsequently believe in and worship) is the Jesus of happiness, safe ventures, and fat bank accounts.

I'd rather believe in and worship the "scandalon."

"Scandalon" is the Greek word for "stone of stumbling" or "stumblingblock." Isaiah (perhaps the greatest OT prophet) and Paul (perhaps the greatest NT apostle) saw long ago that the long-awaited Messiah would be an issue of scandal. Somehow, the anointed one's person and mission would be a bump on the road of every one's life, the bump you do not see, the one that sends you sprawling head over heels to be either broken so that he can heal you, or crushed into nothingness (Psalm 51:17 & Luke 20:17, 18). Belief in such a Messiah would not be a safe venture; it would be scandalous.

If you do not believe me, then go and preach the message Jesus actually said and lived. Tell people that He came to send a sword, not peace, and turn families against each other. Tell them He brashly insulted the religious leaders when they were in the wrong. Tell them He used a flail to completely obliterate a place of commerce and trade. Tell them He is God incarnate and man deified. Tell them He cares very little about sins, but cares a great deal about Sin. Tell them He is the Creator of the universe, come down to let His creation overpower and kill Him. Tell them He boldly declared that His way was small and that only a few would find it. Tell them He cared nothing about the rich young ruler's bank account, stock portfolio, bass boat, or charities, and cared everything about what the ruler was willing to sacrifice. Tell them He was acquainted with grief, and has sanctified suffering to be a vehicle of God's grace. Tell them he contributed not one useful thing to society: not one dollar, not one building, not one mission, not one industry. Tell them He did not come to help our lives, but to overhaul our life with His. Tell them He resurrected from the dead and lead captivity captive. Tell them of a love "as strong as the death...as cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame," (Song of Songs 8:6b)

Scandalous! Preach any of the above and you may not be invited to a "purpose-driven" church, but you will have remained faithful to your Lord and His name. May we always love and be one with the scandal of believing.

"He will be the truth and will offend them one and all

A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes the fall

Many will be broken so that He can make them whole.

And many will be crushed and lose their own souls."

-Michael Card, from the song "Scandalon"

A Lutheran's thoughts on "Practical Agnosticism"

Pastor Alms gives a good post on what John Eldridge would call "practical agnosticism" (although I like the ring of "functional empiricists"). One of the most unfortunate fallouts of modernism on the church is our increased natural instinct to believe everything is material. We have lost the Great Story in a flurry of materialism and consumerism. We have sacrificed the transcendent for the here and now. We have abandoned the sacramental for good stock portfolios. Shame on us all.

The Great Story

"The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house..." Isaiah 7:17

I completely understand what Switchfoot meant when they sang, "Last week saw me living for nothing but deadlines, with my deadbeat sky..." As finals roar closer and closer, the heat is on, whether you be an honor student or not. I must admit, the last few weeks I fell prey to the fear and stress of trying to get everything done with seemingly no time and no plan. God pulled me out of that pit, and I'd like to share how.

Never lose sight of this fact: our circumstances are engineered by God for our good (Romans 8:28). It is one of the easiest things to forget as a Christian. The noise of the enemy can easily distract us into believing that life is merely "material," i.e., only about the world. The enemy creates noise within our circumstances (what about this? or that? or that thing? or what about that? or what will you do about that?), which gets our focus on our circumstances (and off of the God Who engineered them), and we begin to think, "What am I going to do!?" Immediately we are on the wrong track and we give in to panic, try desperately to take control of the situation, and fall into confusion, frustration, and despair.

Thus saith the Lord:

"See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live forever." (Deuteronomy 32:39, 40)

"For I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not evil, to give you an expected end." (Jeremiah 29:11)

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)

Never, never, never, never, never, never, NEVER lose sight of the FACT that life is about the Great Story, i.e., the presence of God in our lives and how He draws us closer to His presence. That is the purpose that we are called to, that is for our good, the purpose that Jesus prayed for: "[That] they may be one, [Father,] even as we are one: I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one..." (John 17:22b, 23a). All circumstances are engineered by God to bring us closer into oneness with God through Christ.

Be mindful of your thoughts: the enemy will always point you to things; God will always point you to Himself, and that is when our "bit" comes in. God engineers the circumstances, but we choose how we go through them. Either we will submit to the sovereignty of God and be drawn closer into oneness with Him; or we will faithlessly try to control our circumstances (as though we had anything to do with them), turning away from God towards sinking sand, towards despair, towards death. The beauty of it all (much to the chagrin of the enemy) is that even if you choose the faithless route, God remains faithful (II Timothy 2:13): He will continue to engineer circumstances (even through our failures) so that we can again have the chance to surrender and be drawn closer into oneness with God.

Do not let the enemy deceive you into believing that your faithless choice has somehow stalled God. Human error is not accounted for. The enemy wants you hung up in the past; God rolls right along to the next circumstances, to the next chance. Every circumstance, no matter what its origins look like to us, are engineered by God to draw us to Him. This is the Great Story, and life is found only when we live in the reality of that story.

"I'm so sorry I've been so down.

I started thinking things could never turn around.

I began to believe that all we are is material.

It's nonsensical." -Switchfoot

Immanuel

"Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14

God was known by many names, and therefore many things, to His people. This is something we must not forget: God's names mean Things. They were revelations of His character. For example: "Yahweh" means "I AM that I AM," i.e., God exist because of Himself. Nothing has formed Him, made Him, and nothing sustains Him except himself. It is the ultimate statement of being. (see also Acts 17:24-25)
"That [men] should seek the Lord...though He be not far from every one of us." (Acts 17:27) This is a part of God that we must not miss: Immanuel--God is with us, ever present, right by our side. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us..." (John 1:14a) The word "dwelt" in the Greek literally means "to tabernacle." The tabernacle (and later the Temple) was where God's presence was represented. Now through Christ He has tabernacled by mingling with the dust, and thus has sanctified it and made it holy, so that now those who are of the dust may be made sanctified and holy by Him, for by Him God can "tabernacle" within our dust (I Corinthians 6:19).

Immanuel is not just a Christmas carol. It is a word of meaning, and meaning has power. It carries with it a truth that we can fling right into the face of the enemy: "I hear your lies; now hear the truth: God's presence is forever with me through Christ, and if He is with me, then you cannot stand or say anything against me."

God's names are revelations of His character. Do not let those revelations be nothing but words. Hold to them as actualities.

Some thoughts on a School Shooting

In the year of our Lord, April the sixteen, 2007, a gunmen killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University, marking the worst school massacre in American history.

Now all we have to do is sit and wait for the usually flurry of news ads asking: whose fault is it? Was is video games? Music? Books? Movies? Bad diet? Bad philosophies? Bad education? Bad social life? Bad economic life?

Maybe a girl dumped the gunman? Just last month, some girl at the University of Memphis drove off the top of the five story parking garage after her boyfriend dumped her (amazingly, she was not killed). Or maybe the gunman had the "Columbine Syndrome," i.e., too many bullies. Maybe we should start an anti-bully campaign.

Whatever the magazines and newsreels will blather on about over this tragedy, they are basically asking one fundamental question: what breaks inside someone so that they are capable of doing such things? Unfortunately, such a question will lead us only to subterfuge. It is not the right question, because it assumes that someone is whole and then something breaks them. The truth is far more shocking: a man does not break; a man is already broken, broken since birth. The answer to how can a human being maliciously kill 32 other human beings is simple: Sin.

No, not sins (i.e., lie, cheating, stealing, etc.), but Sin, capital "S," the fundamental disposition that plagues all humanity. "Mankind's problem," says Oswald Chambers, "is not wrong doing but wrong being." There is something in us humans that is broken already; we are born broken. We spend or lives running from the brokenness (and hence comes obsessive hobbies and vices), are else we give in to the brokenness, and 32 people and their families lie broken in our wake (for brokenness creates after its own kind).

Switchfoot sings, "Maybe we've been living with our eyes half open, maybe we're bent and broken," "We've been blowin' up, we're the issue, it's our condition. We've been blowin' up, we're the issue, a detonation. We've been blowin' up, we're the issue, we're ammunition, we're ammunition. We are the fuse and the ammunition," "I am broken, I am bitter, I'm the problem..."

How many tragedies must happen, how many lives must be lost, how many hearts must be sacrificed on the altar of ignorance and apathy before the church wakes up and realizes no amount of education, diet, exercises, social status, money, opportunities, philosophies, or religions can fix the brokenness within. How long will the church continue to be fixated on sins and not realize the reality of Sin.

Here is the message the church must say on the reality of Sin: Christ changed that reality, changed it on the Cross, changed it with the reality of Redemption. Now Sin is not how it has to be. Its power is lost, replaced by the power of Redemption. The cliche is true: the answer to all of life's problems is still the Cross of Christ. On the Cross, Christ bore all the brokenness of the world and did away with it. We no longer have to live incomplete and shattered. We can be made whole. It is too late for the 32 plus 1; the brokenness swallowed the 1 and took the 32 with it. Sin can still kill if you let it, and Jesus does still save, if you let Him.

Forgiveness and Deliverance

Comments on Dr. N.T. Wright's The Lord & His Prayer:
The shallowness of our initial conceptions of the two phrases "Forgive us our sins" and "Deliver us from evil" is amazing. Forgiveness of sins and deliverance from evil are whittled down to request for “by-gones” of our daily failures and inconsistencies. Never in our wildest dreams do we see them as words of power. We imagine a poor, helpless know nothing, stumbling and staggering before a rather impatient father, and weakly requesting forgiveness and deliverance. Never have we considered that this image is backwards, that the inverse is true. When faced with sins and/or evil, we are to walk boldly as the children of God up to the devil, stare him and hell square in the eye, and declare with triumph the forgiveness of sins and the deliverance of evil. These two phrases are more than petitions; they are declarations.
The forgiveness of sin and deliverance from evil is only possible if the world is being renewed and evil has been overthrown. Forgiveness and deliverance are mere pipedreams if sin and evil still have a stranglehold over the world. To petition for forgiveness and deliverance is at the same time to declare that now the Kingdom of God has come, and that “now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31b) Our cries of mercy are paradoxically cries of victory: “Through the triumph of the Cross of Christ, Father, we pray for the forgiveness of our sins, and for the deliverance from evil.”
“Jellyfish” Christendom is caused when we act like we are living in defeat. “Oh, sin and evil still vex me. I suppose I must ask for forgiveness.” Goodness, we are the people of the Kingdom of God! People of the great triumph! We are the people who are to claim and live the truth that forgiveness and deliverance are no longer hopes—they are actualities.

Some words from Oswald Chambers

From Shade of His Hand:

"All through the Bible the difference between God's order and God's permissive will is brought out. God's permissive will is the things that are now, whether they are right or wrong. If you are looking for justice, you will come to the conclusion that God is the devil; and if the providential order of things today were God's order, then that conclusion would be right. But if the order of things today is God's permissive will, that is quite another matter. God's order is no sin, no Satan, no wrong, no suffering, no pain, no death, no sickness, and no limitation. God's providential will is every one of these things--sin, sickness, death, the devil, you and me, and things as they are. God's permissive will is the haphazard things that are on just now in which we have to fight and make character, or else be damned. We may kick and yell and say God is unjust, but we are all 'in the soup'...

"In personal life and in national life God's order is reached through pain, and never in any other way...

"We have to get hold of God's order in the midst of His permissive will. God is bring many 'sons' to glory. A son is one who has been through the fight and stood the test and come out sterlingly worthy. The Bible attitude to things is absolutely robust; there is not the tinest whine about it; there is no possibility of lying like a limp jellyfish on God's providence. It is never allowed for a second. There is always a sting and a kick all through the Bible."

Personal reflections:

We are made to be conduits of God's order. We are not to look for it, but be it by the power of God. Of course, it will involve pain; but that is because the way things are will always fight against the way things should be. That, however, is the beauty of it all. God's love is brought by sacrifice (John 15:13), so that even if the way things are unleashes pain and death, it is ironically allowing the order of God to be released.

Spiritual Tenacity

"Thus saith the Lord God, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass...[and] if ye will not believe [this], surely ye shall not be established." Isaiah 7:7, 9b

The life of the child of God is to be marked by a constant presence of spiritual "grit," to be a conduit of what Chambers called "spiritual tenacity." Spiritual tenacity is one of the sides on the coin of faith. The first side is spiritual trust, i.e., banking all on God and His character. The second side is spiritual tenacity, i.e., a stubborn persistence of banking your all on God and His character when everything around you says that God is untrustworthy. If spiritual trust is step one, spiritual tenacity is steps 2 through whenever. Many of us have spiritual trust; few have spiritual tenacity.

This is a problem with modern Christendom (one of many). We all see faith as spiritual trust, but we leave out the part about spiritual tenacity. We will gladly trust God and believe Him in the high moment when His presence has touched us; but what about in the demon-possessed valley, where "a horror of darkness" falls upon us, and the slow humdrum pounding of this world wears us down? This is why modern Christians are so useless. They are in it for the high moments and not the long haul, and faith is meant for both: it takes us to the high moments and keeps that moment alive when we go down to the depths.

Spiritual tenacity is a necessary part of faith because we live inside time while God lives outside of it (see II Peter 3:8). God sees past, present and future as one whole; His purposes are already complete from His perspective. We, however, are bound (for now) to the temporal; we see events as they come. God's purposes can seem far off, or even nonexistent, which is why we need our spiritual trust augmented with spiritual tenacity, a stubborn refusal to believe that God will not come through in the end. The enemy loves to hit us here. They love to slowly chip away at us with the horrid thought that somehow, someway, God will not come through in the end. When that thought takes hold, and we have no spiritual tenacity, then panic replaces trust and we try to grasp and control our circumstances; but in doing so we let go of God, let go of life, and therefore unleash death. Spiritual tenacity would keep us from making such mistakes.

Spiritual trust is believing; spiritual tenacity is a continuous believing, a stubborn faith, the only stubborn trait we should possess. This is how we are "established," how we abide, how we weather and do not wither. "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." Our faith in God needs to have the trust to bank on Him and the tenacity to keep going when everything seems to make that trust look ill placed. The spiritually trusting and tenacious life, the life of faith, the life focused and fixed on God, can never be worn down. It is unconquerable, for it is the life of God manifested in a person (Romans 8:37), it is, in effect, the seeing of things from God's untemporal perspective: "I don't care what so-and-so says or does, or what this or that circumstance seems, I know that God will come through."

"Thus saith the Lord God..." The word of God comes, faith is ignited afresh and your will is given the power to believe and keep on believing, i.e., be established. Trust and tenacity are this establishment; if you lack one, then you are not truly believing, and you will falter. There are too many (as Chambers calls them) "limp jellyfish" today. There is plenty of spiritual trust (how many times have we heard that God loves us and has only the best planned for us?), but no tenacity, no grit, no "spiritual pluck." The life of faith is not merely trusting God; it is tenaciously trusting God. If your faith has no tenacity, then it will sink beneath the winds and waves.

A Reply to Madam Johnson

In regards to Protestant Literature:
Why are most of the great Christian writers Catholic? That is the question for the age. Protestantism is catching up (like Frederick Buechner and Walter Wangerin), but what catching up they have to do! Here are a few points that my class with Master Jenkins pointed as possible reasons:

(1) Sanitation; evil is cleaned up so the book is more "Christian" (as though Christianity has no real understanding of or say in the reality of evil).

(2) Unrealism; good and evil is GROSSLY exaggerated. Even unsaved good guys seem "Christian" (no one curses, drinks, or smokes). Bad guys are just ridiculous (how many times will they try to fry the world by some over done plot about viral plagues, nuclear holocausts, or conspiracies by "them").

(3) Propaganda; "preaching to the choir," reinforcing the pet beliefs of the people.

(4) Big Business; if people will buy it and it mentions Jesus, Zondervan will sell it ("reaching into the pockets of the choir," as someone once said).

(5) Lightweight issues; this is tied into propaganda. There is no dealing with the depths of the human soul. Books are usually centered around typical Southern Baptist Convention issues like abortion, evolution, relativism, new age etc., and even then they only scratch the surface of those issues.

(6) Lack of defamiliarization; everything is contrived and cliche. There is no more mystery. There is no repackaging (not changing, but repackaging) of the truth so as to present it from a fresh perspective (Ex: The realism of Christ "being made sin" for us hit home for me when I read the climax of Endo's Silence because I had never seen it presented in such a way before).

(7) Driven by plot, not the characters; this is a basic literary critique. Pop fiction (which Protestant literature is primarily comprised of) is always driven by the plot (the domino effect, i.e., how one event leads to another). Good literature is never driven primarily by the plot, but by the characters and how they relate to and change within the plot.

Of course the real question is WHY has mainstream Protestant writing gone in this horrid direction. If I had to guess, I would say that the primary reason is the same reason why mainstream Christianity lost the fight for America during the 20th century: complacency gets rocked by a sudden paradigm shift that frightens the majority of Christians that leads them to a strict application of "in the world but not of it." An example of this is the modern Protestant Christian's aversion to academia (those cotton-pickin' eggheads will steer you away from GAWD!). Anything that is classified as "of the world" has to be steered clear of; and if it must be mentioned, it must be mentioned in the worst possible (yet somehow highly sanitized) light. If a character is a new age psychic, they are depraved beyond redemption. Any unsaved persons not affiliated with any of "them" (new agers, hippies, evolutionist, philosophers, even Catholics), is sanitized to unrealism because vices are associated with "them".
This is, of course, a reaction, which is why Christianity lost America (and the whole of the West): Modernism slowly chipped away at Christendom's security as top dog and the whole thing came tumbling down with the backlash of postmodernism. When modernity threatened and postmodernism kicked the door in, Christianity was most unChrist-like, i.e., it reacted instead of responded. We went on the defensive instead of the offensive. We confused sanitation with purity and shut out the world, leaving their conceptions of evil and grace to be shaped by whomever or whatever whilst we got our beliefs propped up over and over again by relevant pastors and pop culture Christendom. Shame on us all.
Somehow, Catholics (for the most part) apparently kept their heads throughout this period (maybe they responded instead of reacted; I don't recall a Catholic version of Jimmy Swagger). Too bad Protestantism was frightened by the winds and waves and choose to run back to the safety of the fishing boat.

Curve Balls

"Behold, the hour cometh...that ye shall be scattered." John 16:32

"After we have been perfectly related to God in sanctification, our faith has to be worked out in actualities."
-Oswald Chambers

The disciples had a severe case of "Israel Complex." No matter what they went through, how many miracles they saw, or how close they grew towards Jesus and God, they never seemed to get it right. There was always some element left unsettled, some part of them that was slanted fully towards self. They had no faith when the storm on the sea came, they could not cast out demons, they squabbled amongst themselves for superiority, and Jesus' words constantly disturbed them. Each time they learned their lesson, circumstances revealed a new flaw and they fell out again. Jesus, however, reveals to them an odd encouragement: he knows they will fall again. "Ye shall be scattered." It is inevitable; the circumstances that reveal their flaws are meant to be.
The way God chastises His children is what I call curve balls: a set of unexpected circumstances or unexpected elements in circumstances that hit you right where you were not looking and reveal a weak spot. They always reveal to you areas where you still need work. No matter how far we've come or how well we feel we know or trust, God will always send a curve ball that points out where you are off beat, where the rhythm of your will is not fully in tune with God's, where your faith is, as Chambers put it, "real, but not grounded." Curve balls are God's way of grounding our faith until it is unshakable.
We live only in the ideal (viz., God's blessings); we would much rather stay on the mountain top where God's presence and love are so real that faith almost seems unnecessary. It takes God's curve balls to ground our faith, to knock it off of the glorious heights down to the actualities and hum-drum of real life where faith is truly strengthened. The mountain tops add to your faith; the valleys are where it is strengthened, where God's hammer of affliction and mediocrity smashes away all dross and tin.
Curve balls are never a rebuke. Rebukes come when you have willfully submitted yourself to the slavery of death through sin. Curve balls are God's way of growing you up. Circumstances come, and you think you have all the angles worked out: "No matter what happens, Father, I will trust you." Then the one thing you were not counting on, your one blind spot, hits you upside the head, and the immediate reaction is to slide into despair: "Missed it again!" Never slide into despair. God's curve balls are not rebukes, they are the fires that harden the steel of your faith. Faith is never grounded, established, made unshakable unless it is confronted with a real crisis, and the crisis will always be something you did not intended or plan for. Thank God for the curve balls: they are signs of His presence and workings in your life.
"Spiritual grit is what we need," said Chambers, and it is true. The curve ball comes and we fall apart, thinking that we have "failed." There are no failures or successes in curve balls; only weathering or wilting. God, like the good Father He is, will make circumstances such that you will either fall away into despair and devilish self-pity; or grit your teeth, hang on, and bank fully on the character of God until your childish faith becomes "child-like," i.e., fully grounded on God and completely unshakable.

A Comment to Master Jenkins

In regards to exorcism:
I would dare say that all mental illnesses (save perhaps mental retardation) are demonic in nature. This is the problem with a world that denies anything beyond what the senses can...er, sense: there is always some kind of physical explanation--a chemical imbalance, a nutrient deficiency, something about their father or mother, and on and on (how many of us have gagged ourselves into swear oaths after reading another article about the "Scientist Search for the Soul"?).
Dr. Justin Barnard has said that we are all "Children of Mill," i.e., children of the modern machine. We've grown up in a world where the norm is to be anti- or atranscendent. Subsequently, even good Christians (hatched and dispatched with sound doctrine from plush pews) cannot help but fall into the trap of being what John Eldridge called "practical agnostics." I believe this afflicts pastors as well. A person's depression, failing marriage, or sin that easily besets them needs therapy and cliches, not the pleading of the blood and the authority of Jesus Christ. This is perhaps one reason why exorcism is no longer predominately around.
Other reasons for the loss of exorcism (and a healthy grasping about evil):

1. Hollywood has so dramatized to absurdity the practice of exorcism and the presence of the demonic that exorcism probably looks ridiculous, if not evil. Try to talk to a modern Christian about exorcism and they will probably shudder and say something about Linda Blair (p.s., pop Christian "exorcist" who hold healing meetings don't help either).
2. Also, some pastors may avoid exorcism because they don't want to be around anything "weird." We could throw the blame for this back at Hollywood, but "weird" stuff does happen at exorcisms. Perhaps pastors would rather avoid what could be an unnerving experience, but this is most unChristian: as Christians, vessels of the presence of God and wielders of the Word of Truth, we have no grounds to fear the Devil or the demonic. Any noise they make is subterfuge.

More romantic than the Romantics

I hope some will understand me when I say that Christianity has lost a lot of its "mysticism."
By "mysticism," I mean what Wordsworth meant when he wrote "Tintern Abbey" (a good poem to read). The sense of the mysterious, numinous presence of the Living God in our lives is lost to Contemporary Christendom. Everything done today (worship, preaching, church planting, etc.) is done only in the sphere of the here and now, i.e., the physical. Who cares about the voice of God calling to me through the hills, the sea, the laughter, the pain? And who cares about the change that answering such a call would mean in my life? I just want God to improve my stock-portfolio, send my kids to college, keep my heart rate up, and bless me with a bassboat; and of course make us all (how did Master Jenkins put it?) "well adjusted and amiable."
Dr. Callis (another great professor at Crichton College) and I were talking a few days ago, and both agreed that Christianity (in its truest sense) is "more Romantic than the Romantics," that Christianity has always believed there is something greater than us that calls us to itself from the rocks and rills and the daily humdrum of life, that that "something" is God, and that God and our response to His callings are more important than our stock portfolio...or a bassboat.
Perhaps Christians would grow more in Christ if they read Wordsworth...or actually read their Bibles.

The Great Physician

"Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed. Then [Isaiah] said, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate..." Isaiah 6:10, 11

When Isaiah cried that he was a man of "unclean lips," God immediately met his need (Is. 6:6, 7). Then when Isaiah cried that he was in the midst of people of unclean lips, God immediately...brings desolation? abandonment?
Why does God not come and heal? Is God cruel? No, it is because there are some things that do not need healing; they need removal. Scars need healing; a tumor needs to be removed.
We are seeing here the two sides to the Great Physician: "...I wound, and I heal..." (Deuteronomy 32:39). Sometimes God will gently soothe our wounds with the balm of Gilead. Other times He does the wounding; He cuts right through us so He can hack away at what's killing us. Whether He wounds or heals, however, it all works for our good.
There was a part of Israel that did not need healing, people that were the source of corruption and deadness; that part needed to be "wasted," "desolate," "removed," and "forsaken" (Is. 6:11, 12). We forget that a physician not only prescribes and administers medicine, but also performs surgery, which is a type of wounding. So it is the same with the Great Physician. Sometimes, God's healing comes in the wounding. Remember, the greatest healing came from the greatest wounding (Isaiah 53:5).
"But yet in [Israel] shall be a tenth, and it shall return...as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down: so the holy seed shall be the stump thereof." (Isaiah 6:13) Sometimes there must be a pruning of the branches; other times, the whole tree must be cut down so it can start over. In addition, even the pruning is not guaranteed to be pleasant: either it is done by the gentle hands of the gardener or by a storm that tears the dead branches loose. Likewise, sometimes the only true healing is the wounding that cuts out the deadness so what is alive can grow again.
As the Great Physician, God will heal your wounds and get the deadness out. Isaiah's lips needed only to be covered ("purge" in verse 7 means to "cover" or "atone"); the people needed the desolation that gets the deadness out. God has no qualms with getting His hands dirty, whether it be in regards to you or in regards to others.
"And He said, Go, and tell this people..." (Is. 6:9). God may want to use you to get the deadness out of others as well as use you to heal. When it comes to being used by God to wound, or if we are seeing someone being wounded by God, we must not become what Oswald Chambers called "amateur providences," i.e., we suddenly think we have a higher moral sense than God and we cry, "They shall not suffer!" They must if they are to be whole.
How many times have we stood in the way of God's healing for us (and others) because we refuse to partake in the wounding that brings the healing?