The Fullness of Time

Christmas Day of 2011 finds me with some moments to reflect upon the events of the past year, events which have brought hardship and, indeed, death to my family, events which have also brought new life.  For purposes of such reflection, I have taken a seat in a guest bedroom of my wife’s parent’s house, my position allowing me to gaze out at the winter branches of the woods behind their North Georgia home.  An intermittent rain spits from a grey sky, forming droplets, which cling temporarily to the bare branches before completing their journey to the cold, adhesive Georgia clay.  There is, in this scenery, a beauty best enjoyed from indoors, and it is evident from the sounds elsewhere in the house that the other family members who have gathered for the holiday have contented themselves with indoor pursuits.

This pilgrimage to my in-law’s home has become a Christmas tradition in the twenty years my wife and I have been married.  To be precise, I believe 18 of our 21 married Christmases have been spent with them.  Though the city and state of my in-laws’ residence has changed and though the cast of characters who gather in their home has evolved, the fun of spending Christmas in a big house surrounded by the smell of food, the laughter of games, and the thump of excited little feet on the stairs is a Christmas tradition that continues to call us back year after year.  So it is that this view of the bare winter branches upon North Georgia hillsides is familiar to me.  It is a part of who I am, and the life I have led, the familiar curse of Interstate 75, followed by the blessing of family.

Note Card: Now They Break Down the Carved Work

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  My father never heard of Occupy Wall Street, but he offered some commentary on their ilk.]

May, 2004
I suppose that, if a mob could be easily persuaded to ask the crucifixion of Messiah, we should hardly be surprised that this populace should burn down the city that our forefathers built with their own blood.  A man was famous according as he had lifted up his axe against the thick trees; but now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers.  Thus vision and industry, hopes and dreams, faithfulness and affections, truth and liberty are vilely thrown away.

Note Card: The Other Son of the Father

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  This note card contained some interesting thoughts, but it needed some editing for clarity.  What follows, therefore, are my father's thoughts, edited by me.  (Also, note that my father's references to "Ron" are to Ronald Hoffman, pastor of Circle Community Church.)]

October 26, 2007
What were the chances, when Jesus stood before Pilate, that Pilate would have in his custody a man whose name (Barabbas) means "son of a father"?  This was no coincidence, a wicked man crossing paths with him who is altogether righteous.  I remember mentioning this to a few people whose response was, "Humph."  Obviously, to them, the Son of the Father crossing paths with the son of the father was an observation of little value.  So I kept it to myself from then on.  But I noticed it again when Ron mentioned it in one of his sermons.  I will concede to Ron. 

Note Card: Crossing Jordan

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

April 20, 2000
Why did John baptize in Jordan, specifically?  Why did Elisha say that Naaman should dip himself in Jordan?  What was there about that muddy stream?  

 It pictures Christ, who humbled himself to come down for a while, first to be a Galilean (600 feet below sea level), tabernacling among us, and then descending to the lower parts.  (The lowest part of the earth, [is] the Dead Sea, 1300 feet below sea level, from which the only exit is straight up in vapor form.)

Note Card: Life Giving Seed

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

December 12, 1994
Luke 8:5:  We hear of the birds eating the seed, but skip over the fact that it was also trodden down... Also tending to be overlooked , eclipsed, is the fact that, in this parable, the one common item is the Word.  The reception varies greatly, but it is the Word of God that never varies.  Here we have the seed, and the seed has life within itself, capable of producing reproductions of itself.  It is not, as some think their concepts of it that matter.  It is not the boiled down principles that produce life.  It is not that the person receiving it imparts to it a living character upon obeying it.  Itself is life giving.  Nobody denies that the depth or warmth of reception makes a difference, but that simply confesses that people have varying degrees of preparation for whatever reason.  The Word of God is alive!  Itself!  It will produce the life of God in any receptive heart.

Note Card: It Is His Story

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

Date Unknown
History is a story, a living story being told by the Creator.  It is a story of wretchedness interrupted by scenes of deliverance, rebellion chased away by the failure of wrong, the resolution of dissonances, a certain prevailing of the Creator as He proceeds across the stage to relentless victory over evil, gathering a train of hopeless, hapless, helpless whose hearts are thrilled to find Him whom their souls so long had sought.

But it is more than a story.  It is a play, not merely words assembled to offer for entertainment, but an opportunity offered to disappointed little people who could make no sense otherwise.  The Actor Himself comes upon the scene, taking the lead part, yet behind the scenes, obscure, yet evident to those who are distressed, in debt, disenchanted, giving them hope to stand against their odds.  The faces change from scene to scene, yet they are the same from age to age in which the Actor brings them surely along to a determined destination.

The Hard Fought Battle

A friend forwarded me the following words from Chapter 9 of A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God.  Those who knew Stan Julin will recognize him as one of the few who gained some measure of victory in the battle described below.  Those who knew him well knew that the victory was not attained without a hard fight:

The hearts fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honour from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest…Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humour and learns to say, ‘Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.

Note Card: Nobody Has Yet Studied History

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  People think that, in the resurrection, this life will seem only a distant, faded, and irrelevant memory.  Below, my dad offers his own unique opinion on this topic.  As with many things, time will tell who was right, the consensus or my father.]


March, 2000
I'll tell you one thing:  Nobody has ever yet studied history as it will be studied after the resurrection.  It will be fascinating to uncover the cover-ups, blow away the smoke screens, uncover the evidence, clear the innocent, vindicate the righteous, call the witnesses (who were there, after all), continue the archaeology with vigor, be able to know the Bible better than ever, and re-rewrite history.  And how many millions of personal stories are there to be told?

Note Card: The Pharisee's Struggle

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

February 13, 2006
It strikes me, sitting here in Chick-fil-A, that what Paul says in Galatians is the very same reasoning that Paul agonized over after he was saved and slugging away as he rearranged his mind in Arabia to accept and make room for salvation by grace rather than by works.  Since men must understand this, God provided the issues to be laid out for us by Paul, who received it from Jesus directly.  We benefit from Paul's struggle and from the inspiration by the Holy Spirit, resulting in ink through the pen to the page.

Note Card: That, Sir, Is Good Enough For Me

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  Some of my father's note cards amaze me with the number of references he makes to scriptures from all over the Bible.  This one seems to take the prize.  I think I found and linked all or most of them.]


May 17, 2006
If God does things now in part, in the form of a story, to creatures of dust and of fragile frame, with promise of greater later, swearing Himself as security, written with pen in a book, infusing the words with the power of His own Spirit, then what shall be the times when His words come to pass?

Note Card: The Morning Star

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  The following note card, is remarkable, not for its phrasing, but for the depth of thought necessary to find this connection between Revelation 22:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5.]


June 27, 2000
The Greek word for morning (in bright and morning star) is ὀρθρινός, which means also and perhaps usually, early.  For those who think the time will be afar, He will come sooner than expected.  For those who look for [Him] with hope and expectancy, He will surely come without delay.  For those who dispair, the star visibly shows the beginning of a clear day, a welcome signal.  Those who see the brightness, know that His strong and faithful purposes have never slackened.  Those who see Him bright and early, know that He has important things to do.  Those in the night may realize that the star is there for someone else to see.  Those asleep do not know whether there is a star there for someone to see.  Those asleep do not know whether there is a star and do not care, for they have no hope, no sight but distorted dreams, nothing important to do and no good reason to do it, for to them there is no night, no day, no time, no opportunity; those that sleep, sleep in the night and are drunken in the night.  Peace and safety...all things continue as they were.

But we, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should catch us as a thief.  You are all children of light and children of day; let us watch, etc.

Note Card: Slightly Used and Greatly Reduced In Price

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

[Blog Author's Note:  In the note card that follows, my father contemplates the nature of his existence before Christ.  From other notes on the same card, it is evident that, in writing this, he was planning his thoughts for an upcoming Rescue Mission sermon.]

I could tell about various people who helped me as a youth:  

• Mr. Thomas, the hardware store owner, 
• Mrs. Blake who saw me when a thief (though she did not see me seeing her, so that I was able to cover my tracks), 
• Roger, the junk man, and Vernon, his brother, (I was sneaky both in thievery and in lying, skilled at deceit and selfishness.), 
• Mrs. Barnett, who successfully engaged me to learn English better, 
• Mrs. Champnany [Blog Author's Note:  "Champnany" is my best guess at my father's handwriting.] , whose grapes I stole and which left me with a discomforted conscience,
• An unknown man who rebuked me for arrogance and who must have thought of himself as failing in rebuke (But he was successful; I remember his words half a century later.),
• Numerous people who had to endure me but were a help simply because they were a long-term and collective soundboard, eventually magnifying my vibrations to my own conscience-in-retrospect, 
• My mother, who caught me in my deceit and chastened me sore, 
• Larry, who caught me stealing strawberries.  

How did I survive to being a man without getting beat up?  

Note Card: Pass the Salt, Please

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

March, 1995
We need to be ready to think that which is true, to open our eyes and clarify our thoughts....We memorize certain verses.  We study certain subjects.  We are influenced by certain books.  We are bent in a certain direction by too few minds - the pastor.  We stay in the New Testament.  (You know, the generic, collective, safety-in-numbers "we".)  But the more we focus on a few things, the more we are bound by those things. 

These Things Struck a Chord Within Me Too

The thoughts shared below are a continuation of my June entry:  These Things Struck a Chord Within Me.

“He always thought the best of me.  Maybe it was by the grace of God that he always thought so highly of me, but it always seemed like he thought that I was the man that he wanted to be, where in fact, the opposite was true, that I always wanted to be the man that he was.”  My brother, Ethan, spoke those words in eulogy of our father, and they struck a chord within me, for though I had never put such thoughts to words, I too had been amazed at my dad’s high opinion of me.  To be sure, I had surpassed him in many ways, as by standing upon a father’s shoulders, almost any son will surpass a father who cares for him.  Yet dad always seemed to have a certain transcendent greatness about him, latent in the grain of his construction, powerfully obvious to those who knew him, invisible to the world at large.  It felt odd, therefore, that he seemed to look up to me.  He even, on one occasion, told me that I was his mentor.

He seemed thrilled that I would take time from my busy schedule to be with him, beaming at my arrival, basking in my presence.  “Dad,” I felt like saying, “you know I’m not the President of the United States, don’t you?”  On one occasion, at some point after it became apparent that he was experiencing memory problems, I asked him to accompany Caleb and me to an air-show in a neighboring town.  The invitation was extended a few weeks before the show, and I expected him to accept and then forget all about it until I re-asked him closer to the day of the event.  Instead, he called me every few days, each time very excited about the invitation and very worried that, perhaps by forgetfulness, he had already missed the date.
 

Note Card: The Books and the Book

Written on a 4x6 note card by Stan Julin.

January 13, 2001
At the Great White Throne, the appeals will be to books, not computer discs, for the records will be written. ...not videos, for they are deceptive as TV is deceptive, and besides, the scripture specifies books.  ...not witnesses, for they lie, twist, and withhold information...not earthly books, for anything can be and has been published.  But records are being kept in heaven of what earthlings do, what they say, what they think, why they do these things, what are their intentions.  Things written as they are happening are accepted as evidence in courts of law.  ...written by beings who do not sin, who observe what is done, said and thought here, whose duty it is to record exactly what happened.  Nothing is said about how many books there are, what their titles are, where they are kept.  One thing is certain:  All history - all of history - is recorded in those books.