Out of Egypt:

Buses welcome (break is over)

Shoney's signs are everywhere. Like the Draper Valley Pentecostal Holiness Church, the Eastern Orthodox icon of Christ with the words beneath "Peace Be Still" (beautiful), and the signs about Sabbath laws (which I didn't see this time, though) they're an unavoidable part of the I-81 experience. And as Matt Brown said, their official motto must be "Buses welcome," since that's what all their signs say. A little travel game for you would be to see if you can find one that doesn't.

So I'm back at Covenant again. I'm going now, finally, to bed. A good deal of theological thought and study has gone on in the past few days. Apart from my reading of St. Athanasius, which was like fire and lightning once again, it's been somewhat dispiriting.

Once again I see our divisions and my own tendency to justify myself, both intellectually and otherwise. It seems the more I think about how Christ's work alone is the ground of our righteousness before God, the more I seek to establish a righteousness of my own apart from Him. When will I find the self-forgetfulness in pursuit of Christ - the "hiddenness of the blessed life" - of which Bonhoeffer speaks in The Cost of Discipleship.

I know that, despite all else, I am awake. Love, a motive though not a law, compels me. Because of this Satan attacks. When I am not awake to my need for Christ, the Devil has no reason to test it.

But his desire for me is so strong. I must ask, then, what is it that he thinks he could accomplish through me? My thought has been molded by my Maker; even in my deepest doubt, I go back into His grooves. I couldn't imagine life as a "virtuous pagan," without hearing and speaking the Word of the Gospel. And so I can say to the Devil, depart: you have no part in me; your scheme for me, for yourself, is futile; Christ has full atonement made and you are damned to death by your own will. I will not be damned with you. I will not proclaim your word, for it is empty.

So it is, in my struggles with self-justification, in my struggles with doubt, in my despair at Christians' division, I can find peace. Apart from Christ, there is no one else to which I could go to find a greater surety. "You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68). Even if I were to make my bed in Hell, God is there (Psalm 139:8).

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in theway everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).