Ordained Is A Wonderful Word

Once the words are nestled in the places “ordained” for them—“ordained” is a wonderful word that points to the inexorable logic of syntactic structures—they are tied by ligatures of relationships to one another.

— Stanley Fish in How to Write A Sentence

“Ordained” is a wonderful word, too, for describing God’s relationship to what occurs in our world. It points to the logic behind what happens; it means there is a reason for every circumstance. If history was ordained, there was purpose in it. If the future is ordained, there will be meaning to it.

Some balk at using “ordained” for what God did in eternity in regards to creation and what happens in it, thinking it too strong a word. Some mistakenly suppose that if we say that God ordains something, he must be the immediate cause of it or the one who directly does the deed, but this is not so. When used for God’s relationship to an event in history, “ordained” simply means that he put it in his plan. Some ordained events he did himself, solely by his own hand, but others he knowingly permitted for good reason.

An ordained history is a history of ordained causes and effects, “tied like ligatures of relationships to one another,” tugging forward toward a planned completion. It’s the same for the future, because the future is only history yet to be. A God-ordained future gives sure hope, for it is a future that will finish as intended.

If the events of my life are ordained by God—and they are—then my life has meaning. Or to look at it from another direction, if the hardships in my life work to conform me to Christ’s image—and they do—then God has at least one reason for them. And if there is a reason, there is ordination.

“Ordained” is a wonderful word that points to the logic of the universe, including its history and its future. It’s a wonderful word that points to the purpose of my life. There is hope in “ordained.” It is promises fulfilled and plans accomplished, in the past, in the future, and in my life. And in sentences, too.

A Catechism for Girls and Boys

Part II: Questions about The Ten Commandments

39. Q. Who is your neighbor?
      A. All my fellow men are my neighbors.

(Click through to read scriptural proof.)

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Sunday's Hymn

Come Thou Fount

Come, Thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothèd then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

—Robert Robinson

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• O God, the Rock of Ages at Hiraeth
• I Sing the Mighty Power of God at threegirldad
• Now May He Who From the Dead at Fieldstone Cottage
• My Father Knows at The Happy Wonderer
• From Whence This Fear and Unbelief at Tried With Fire
• O Trinity of Blessed Light at Conjubilant with Song
• Lord’s Day 25, 2011 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Voices From the Past - June 19, 2011 at The Upward Call
• I Will Arise and Go to My Father at Daily On My Way to Heaven
• Unbelief: Parent of Every Gross Evil (Your weekly dose of Spurgeon) at Pyromaniacs

Have you posted a hymn (or sermon, sermon notes, prayer, etc.) today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by contacting me using the contact form linked above, and I’ll add your post to the list.