The beloved of the LORD dwells in safety.
The High God surrounds him all day long, and dwells between his shoulders.

Deut. 33:12 ESV¹

Dear Friends in Christ,

   Greetings in our gracious Lord’s name, Jesus. In the midst of increasing darkness in our world, one in which the name (along with all that is holy) is more and more banned from the public arena, may the sacred name grow more luminous and precious to us every day. May the light of it be reflected from our very faces! There is salvation in no other, and what a privilege it is to minister wholeness of spirit, soul, and body in that name, which is “above all names.” May the Father strengthen us beyond all knowing in the doing of it: that is our prayer.

   We rejoice to announce the upcoming October PCM in Holland. Last December we were shocked to find that Wheaton College’s Edman Chapel would be undergoing reconstruction at the time of our PCM school, and of course we had no recourse but to cancel it. Many of you wrote in, deeply disappointed (a few despairing and angry as well!), but as we earnestly sought the mind of the Lord on this late-breaking matter, we knew that He had this change of plans well in hand. At this season of my life, we as a team earnestly pray over whether or not to go forward with a PCM each year, as aging and health issues limit my strength. In the light of the sense that it was not yet time to “retire” PCM, we were open to the gracious invitation we immediately received from Martin Tensen and The Netherlands. There many nations and tongues will come together, and we beg your intercessions for that great gathering (see Holland PCM announcement on left menu for more on this). Who knows! We may yet do more European schools! Our next scheduled Wheaton PCM is June 21-26, 2009. As long as the Lord leads and enables us, we will in great joy continue.

John Fawcett

   We are writing you with tears yet very close to the surface, having just sustained the loss of a very dear friend and long-time colleague. After a long battle with cancer, John Fawcett entered glory on May 27. None who attended the 2007 PCM will forget John’s witness and worship ministry, his courage and his faith. Throughout his long ordeal, one with great pain and suffering, he never lost his keen interest in all people around him, as well as in learning even more and more about this world and life the Lord has vouchsafed us. I’ve never seen a greater instance of this in a person in the throes of death. For example, one week after his physicians had told him and Margie that he had a week to live, I looked out my window and saw John struggling to walk (at this point he could hardly talk either) up to my front door. In utter amazement, tears, and joy, I opened the door, and for an hour we talked and prayed. John had come to bid me goodbye. Margie knew what he wanted to say to me, and when he struggled to get the words out, she helped him. It was a most precious time. John, at 46 years of age, died two weeks later, leaving a dearly loved wife, Margie, and two children, five-year-old Charlotte and two-year-old Josiah.

   Fr. Michael Carney, an Orthodox priest, wrote me shortly before John’s death, assuring us of his prayers for John, along with this memorial.

   We are thankful to Doug Carrington for compiling the list and sources of the Wheaton 2007 PCM music. It is available on our Wheaton PCM website: www.PCMSchool.com.

Truth

“Truth is always about something,
but reality is that about which truth is.”

C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock

“A wise man is one who savors all things as they really are.”

Bernard of Clairvaux

   What we are seeing in our American populace and most especially in our young people—depression, suicides, and other desperate behavior (whether in Ivy League schools, community colleges, or wherever they are in the workforce or coming up in our grade schools)—is a result of loss of meaning, therefore of essential being. I believe that it is exactly as Thomas Aquinas says: “All that is real, is true” (quoted by Josef Pieper, Living the Truth, p. 13). Further quoting Aquinas, “All existing things, namely, all real objects outside the soul, possess something intrinsic that allows us to call them true” (p. 29). When Aquinas speaks of “all existing things,” he is talking about being. He explains, “In created things there is truth on two levels: in the things themselves, and in the perceiving mind” (p. 29). Further the things are true because of their essential reality of being. “Truth resides in the things and in the perceiving mind. The truth in the things, though, can also be called their being, according to the individual substance” (p. 29). “We cannot perceive a thing to be without perceiving it to be true” (p. 29). As Augustine later states it, “Whatever is true has as much truth as it has being” (pp. 13, 29).

   Truth (Veritas) is so beautiful. Apart from it, all meaning, even being itself, is lost. To be unable to glimpse truth, to verbalize it, to see its fullness in all creation, to hope for its fullness in our eternal life, is to know emptiness. We in the West are largely empty today, and our political, social, educational, and ecclesiastical systems all reflect this emptiness to a truly alarming degree. I say alarming because our national liberties (those having to do with our Christian witness) are seriously weakened, and some of them have quite faded away. We face barriers to speaking the name of Jesus. As Thomas Sowell writes, “As a result of 'evolving standards' and 'nuanced' judicial decisions, we no longer have clear-cut rights. We have a ticket to a crapshoot in a courtroom. That ticket is worth a lot more to those with slick lawyers than to ordinary citizens” (Federalist Patriot, No. 05-33, August 7, 2005).

   None say it better than Isaiah: “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey” (59:14-15 ESV).

   Ultimately, Jesus is the Truth. As He Himself said, in this astounding statement, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also” (John 14:6-7 ESV, variant reading in italics). This is the ultimate reality. When we come to Jesus, the Truth, then the meaning of all things begins to be restored.

We recommend to you two books written by Kelly Monroe Kullberg: Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians and Finding God Beyond Harvard: The Quest for Veritas.

If you love truth, yearn and fervently pray to hear it once again spoken in the public square, you will cherish these books and give thanks for these humble servants of Christ who are ministering in our great universities. I recommend that Finding God at Harvard be read first, for it makes the reading of Kelly’s autobiographical “quest for veritas” all the more poignant.

As Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and author of God’s Universe, writes about Finding God Beyond Harvard, “Kelly Monroe’s kaleidoscopic quest for veritas is a colorful, poetic narrative filled with heartache and joy--riveting and unexpectedly poignant.” This comment describes as well the compilation of spiritual journeys Kelly gathered in the first book.

Beyond that, however, is the value of these books in showing the need for the church to find its voice, as it were, and learn better how to pass on the great heritage of the faith as revealed in Holy Writ. Kullberg’s writings contain a superb example of successful evangelism in our day, and that in our desperately needy universities, those whose educational offerings are largely stripped of meaning.

Faith

The following is taken from F. B. Meyer’s Our Daily Walk, June 25 entry:

Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  Eph. 3:17 ESV

Faith is our power of appropriation….Faith is our reception of the spiritual….It is a drawing on the Eternal for the deficiencies of our earthly pilgrimage. Probably when we look back on our present life, we shall find that our deficiencies were permitted, and even assigned, that we might be driven to avail ourselves of the fullness of the Lord Jesus (John 1:16; Eph. 3:19)…. Don’t face your difficulties alone, but meet them in the fellowship of your Saviour. Have faith, i.e., reckon upon God. Let the Lord Christ dwell in your heart, and He will be responsible for all, as you reckon on Him for all.

Prayer--O Lord, I open my nature, and since my capacity is small, I pray that by love and faith, by patience and suffering, Thou wilt enlarge my heart, that it may be filled with all the fullness of God. Amen.

Under the Mercy,

Leanne Payne

¹Scripture verses are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version unless otherwise noted. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.