Feast or Famine

In the parable of the Great Banquet, the Lord explains how it really is with God's Kingdom.  Someone said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."  Christ's response was chilling.  He told a story about a certain man who hosted a great feast.   However most of his invited guests did not bother coming.  Because there was still so much food and space, he ordered that his servant go out and invite anyone he saw to the banquet but just a few came.  Not wanting all his good food to go to waste, he told his servant to go far and wide and get all he could to come and feast with him.  Now here is the surprising point Jesus was making.   None of those who were invited but didn't bother coming will get a taste of His banquet.  As the story progresses, the recurring theme is that the vast majority of those invited to the great feast never bother coming and have ridiculous excuses for not making it.  Do we realize the implication?  Not many people will be taken into the Lord's great banquet because they don't want to come!  Is it possible that our view of success is much different than our Lord's view?   Do we expect that all sorts of people, multitudes and multitudes will fall in love with Jesus and make their home with Him and thus we will be successful in our Christian duty?  God's view is that the servant will give out the invitation to life with Christ and the servant will do it again and again, giving out countless invitations but all the while just a few will join in God's Kingdom and be a part of His family.   Our expectation is misplaced.  God never promises that the masses will be Christian, that there is to be an avalanche of enthusiasm for God's Kingdom.  He insists the opposite and makes it clear this is what He means.  Broad is the way that leads to destruction and many enter into its tumult.  But narrow is the way leading to life and very few take that route.  The Christian should be "scared to death" that those close to her will "burn their bridge" to God and be cast outside the Gates of God's New Jerusalem.   It ought to terrorize us that "good people" will weep great tears of horror when they find out what their rejection of Jesus Christ has done!  We mustn't be so foolish as five of the virgins in Jesus' parable who did not think it mattered what they did about the invitation to join Christ in His hall of mercy and grace.  The door, when slammed shut, will make a most dreadful sound for those outside.

"'Sir', the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'  Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.  I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"    Luke 14: 22-23 NIV

Indwelling Love

The closer we look at the true morality of our heart, the less confident we become of ever having a family resemblance to Jesus.  Our actual affections should sicken us if we care much about being holy.  If we have come to the conclusion that we are spineless and lack integrity between what we confess about Christianity and what we are, then something supernatural can begin within us.  God is not waiting breathlessly to see if we can make something good of ourselves; the opposite is actually the case.  He is watching for our tipping point when we become available for Him to rework.  At the point of our hopelessness, we may open ourselves to the intervention of Holy Spirit and His marvelous transforming power.  Jesus Christ did not tell us that we were to love our neighbors as ourselves because He thought we could ever do it.  We can barely love our children in some approximation of it, love our best friends as best friends, but our love of the neighbor who takes our legs out from under us somehow is not going to be adored with the affection God wants for him.  We can only hope that Jesus Christ will do our loving for us; that He will assert His will and power in our actions.  The cross dangling from our mirror or hidden within our heart is not a reminder of distant God keeping an eye on us.  It is the statement that Christ in us is the hope of glory and that He is violently at times working His way out of us and into our world.  Let us not try to love through Him but rather let Him love through us.  The purity we seek is not some gilded try on our part but rather bloody holiness brought in by the presence of the Lord Jesus Himself.  True loving of your neighbor as yourself happens only if you give Christ room to do that loving, if you make yourself available to Him to bless those who hate you and cherish the enemies God died to save.  Nothing is more sure than the ability Christ has to make you full of love;  your faith in Him will do the trick. 

...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.   Ephesians 3:18-19 NIV

Absolute Focus

The brevity of a day is just the space God needs to make a planet spin, a sun explode and a soul find refuge.  Perhaps the great oddity of our Lord is that he cares about a moment in time.  Eternal and without end or beginning and yet He contemplates the second and each second with the same attention.  For us as we grow older, the days and years become a wash; a repetitive splash of wave after wave.  But God takes the moments seriously, both past and coming with  equal affection and consideration.  The instant you find your doll in the back of the car and exult, the Lord celebrates mightily with you too.  And when your baby is found dead in your womb, the Lord weeps then just as mournfully as if He had only lived that day and seen just that one sorrow.  The Lord God lives out with you the surprising joys and the devastating losses at the time it happens and He is not looking forward to the end of the saga or backwards to before it began.  He is looking with you at the same thing you are and He sees it with clarity and attention.  Your fever burns now and God is with you in it fully engaged and your all night study session is not lost on Him either even as you fight to stay awake.  You slice your finger and God flinches with you; take your fury out on your son and he weeps in the night too.  Argue with your wife and the Lord is centering in on every part of the fight, take your kids to the zoo and He is having the time of His life with you there.  It is nothing for the Lord to be riveted by what you do and say and hear and think, but it is not inconsequential to Him either.  He bores in on your life as if it were the only one contained within the universe and does not turn His back upon it even for an instant.  You may disregard the depth of your existence but God has never done so.  It is a tangle of distracted complexity to you but simple and all consuming to Him.  The Lord sees you!

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise...  Psalm 139:1-2 NIV

Noticed

The Kingdom of God is not about you or I getting a footing with God through some skill or talent we possess.  We are not here to make something of ourselves; not here to show ourselves off but to exalt Jesus Christ crucified.  This is no small task as it requires all of our effort.  Our soul is so bent by sin that we cannot naturally give Jesus Christ center stage and few ever really try to make a go of it.  But the disciple will; the one who has latched onto Christ and loves Him dearly will.  Take the resurrected Lord into your mind and let Him rule over your will.  You will know that Christ is not yet ruling over your abilities and talents if it matters that critics come after you or your friends or family hardly notice your "good works".  It is your opportunity to watch the Lord Jesus work His way through your disposition each time you see your effort go unnoticed and unrecognized.  Sometimes you choose this, sometimes it chooses you but either way, let out a quiet sigh and be thankful God has let you be a bit more hidden in Christ.  For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3: 3

Spacemen and Zombies

Our four-year old son drew a picture for me yesterday. It had four circles in a vertical row on one side and next to them were two much bigger circles in a vertical row beside them. The two circles on the right had smiley faces on them and the four circles on the left were blank. For all those Freudians, here is my son’s explanation of his drawing. The four circles on the left were him and his siblings. The two on the right were me and my wife. We were smiling because we had just punished his older brothers and the children had nothing for faces because they were sad.


What do you do when you hear that? I was stunned for a moment. I glanced across the page and there he had drawn four hearts with the initials of him and his siblings in them and below two bigger hearts labeled “mom” and “dad”. So on this spontaneously sketched page was illustrated the terrible tension in every home…happiness and trouble, discipline and pleasure, separation and joining.

How can you smile when failing grades are brought home or towels are casually tossed about the room or rapid fire insults are swirling around the dinner table? Who grins contentedly when one child smashes another’s sword or milk is left dripping off the table for mom or dad to clean? It is an impossible task being a parent and yet somehow we do it. Sometimes I come home from work and immediately start hunting for the bomb shelter. My kids have one. Most people call it the bathroom.

Recently the four-year old hit one of his younger friends at church and we took away his dessert and made him have water for dinner. Brutal I know…but it had to be done. If our children were interviewed by reporters for the National Enquirer, imagine how the stories would read. “Parent traps son in torture chamber! Sends him to his room.” “Father humiliates son! Takes away his Xbox for the week.” “Mother berates daughter about grades! Makes her do her homework!” Parents can’t win. Kids probably feel the same way. I know I did. I still do.

Families are the crucibles in which all joy is squashed and all contentment is obliterated and yet we still get married at staggering rates and we continue to have children. Why? It is nice to have someone to pray with as you drop off for the night and no one can hold you like your husband or your wife. The other day Ben and I were holding hands as we walked together after dinner. He was wearing his space man costume and I pointed up at a planet and told him I thought it was Mars. He agreed and asked me a deep philosophical question. “Do astronauts really pee in their spacesuits? “ Perhaps it’s not so bad being a parent…

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” Isaiah 55: 6

Birthdays And Dreamscapes

Tomorrow is Hannah's birthday. When she was born, I thought she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. Of course it wasn't like I was an obstetrician or pediatrician so my sample size wasn't in the thousands but she was as perfect a baby as was possible. Nineteen years later Hannah has cleared the way to become a vocational missionary and it seems as though she is the obvious and desired compliment to what can come of years of praying, loving, training and encouraging. It is true that you can become a mechanic or cab driver and have God's heart but few mechanics and cab drivers sought Jesus when they turned to those vocations but almost no one becomes a Christian missionary without an earnest pursual of Jesus. Which brings me to Hannah. All of us should have our birthdays celebrated; certainly someone should be remembering us somewhere and it would be great if we all were mentioned in blogs but with Hannah, I think of everything I once dreamed would be my point as pastor and see it wrapped up in this niece of mine I do this pastor life because I am certain God called me to it but what drives me in it is the thought that from the womb a child can be carried through the church into something noble, something that truly makes our parts of the world more lovely. Can we say it? More Christian. Hannah is kind and generous and bright and certainly godly but she is more than that. She is one light shining who has been lit by a forgotten class...the praying faithful. Hannah's name is Hebrew and not so surpisingly means prayer...or more specifically mercy prayer. Whatever God does with you Hannah, you are set apart but not moved apart. You are within this big family that dreams even bigger things for you than you are capable. No need to try to make anyone proud of you because we all love you more than that and besides missions isn't your goal, it is your being. Follow your calling Hannah but wherever your mission field is, it will always be within your home! Happy Birthday Hannah!

A Church Without Borders

When I first went to Moscow to teach ministerial students I was completely caught off guard by how thoroughly I could fall in love with a ministry I never dreamed I would ever do. I don't know if it was discovering I had some important experiences that I could pass on to a group of men and women with a dream of serving Christ in a lifetime of ministry or if it was meeting little Olya at the children's home I visited but whatever it was, I was thoroughly devoted. That first trip had some pretty funny moments like when I went into a store and found myself trailed by about three different staff with nothing better to do but watch the American and make sure he didn't steal anything. One time I was walking across the street and one of my students yanked me back to the curb because he knew none of the cars turning right would stop for me as I went across the street. My attempts at figuring out how to navigate the metro system were a total wreck. Everything about Russia was a mystery to me yet my students and the kids at the children's home were dear as family. I came back wanting to adopt Olya without any clue how it could be done and so it was that Russia became home. Over the years I have pondered much the divisions between us, particularly in Christian circles. Why is it that we are bound and determined to have young churches and old churches and White churches and Black churches and Chinese churches and Korean churches and African churches and traditional churches and contemporary churches and Spanish churches and non-alien immersion churches and churches for redheads and churches for tall people and churches for King James only readers? When did we decide we cannot really read the Bible together and sing songs to God as one if we don't look alike or have the same accent? Maybe it was when we discovered that the earth isn't really flat and you can't just push people away to the edge of the world hoping they will fall off if they aren't part of your clan. A round world leads to people of different skin tones and accents eventually coming alongside you if you travel far enough. Martin Luther King's dream is far-fetched. We still have a world that thinks churches are made for separated skin tones and cultures. But if the world thinks that way, should the Kingdom of God see it as so? Barack Obama and his candidacy has at least forced us to rethink this whole issue of difference. We are different but which differences bend our resolve to live together in community? Which ones lead to mistrust and a devil's slide into emotional cutoff? Olya remains the most beautiful Russian girl I know but not because she is Russian...it is because she is family...and it all happened the moment as a little girl she grabbed my hand and led me on a tour of the children's home...without a single intelligible word spoken between us but one...love. Churches without borders would be a beautiful thing!