Elite?

Recently quarterback Eli Manning of the New York Giants declared himself an “elite” quarterback in the NFL.  Whether you agree with his self-assessment or not or even care, it brought me to this question.  What makes an elite Christian?    How do you know if you are one or not?   Would it be worth the effort to be one if you thought you could?  Does performance matter in the Kingdom of God? 

We know for example that the Disciples cared about such things for how else can you explain the jostling for position when James and John’s mother asked Jesus if her sons could sit on Jesus’ right and left when he came into the Kingdom.  Jesus did not completely distance Himself from such an effort when He told them that whoever would be first in the Kingdom must first be last.  Rewards are certainly said to be handed out at the end based on performance.    We are told to go after treasures in heaven which cannot be corrupted by moth or rust.

So what makes an “elite” Christian?  The most obvious answers would include:  skillful and determined gospel sharing, sacrificial generosity, fervency in prayer, warm and neighborly disposition, faithful and loyal service to the church and a hunger for deep extensive and Bible study.  Or course, nothing on this list should be denigrated but it is not the formula the Lord offers for elite Christianity.  Micah 6: 8 gives three benchmarks for radical loyalty to God.   Here goes…  Act justly.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly with your God. 

If we take just the middle directive,” love mercy”, we are entering elite territory.   What is real mercy except mercy toward those who disrespect you…mercy toward those who treat you badly…mercy toward those who are incompetent, lazy or slow-witted?  Who hasn’t lashed out at her husband for poor decision-making, bitterly castigated (at least in the dark recesses of the mind) a co-worker for making one’s job more difficult, taken umbrage at a driver who recklessly endangers everyone on the road, been disgusted with a store manager who stupidly won’t consider a logical request.  Mercy is not for the timid.  Mercy, when full-blown is marked by allowances for bad behavior, the decided disregard of a callous snub, the generous and almost happy granting of pardon to those who hurt us terribly.  Merciful people see the best in others even in the worst of circumstances, forgive before being asked and assume that if given the same circumstances and background one would act even more barbarically than the terrible person making one’s life miserable. 

Mercy stubbornly, doggedly, tenaciously sees more in others than they may see in themselves.   It is the assent to the great generosity of Christ Himself to endow every creature in our path with the bedrock substance of God amply distributed throughout his or her entire being.    No one can look at another person with the full realization that that person is made in the image of God and utterly reject that one and still hope to have any semblance of God’s love coursing through the veins.  It is mercy that refuses to give the best of oneself to the worst of another and not count it joy to be included in God’s circle of friends.

The Atheist Question

There is a crucial question that must be asked, even by those who do not consider themselves great thinkers.  It is more pertinent than any other philisophical debate...perhaps even the mother of all discussion points.  Fundamental to every activity and priority we make much of is this one question.  Before we can even debate who God is, what He is like and whether or not He exists, we have another, more basic question.  Which is eternal, God or matter/energy?  The further we descend into the tiniest parts, the closer we come to this one question.  Everything flows from something.  Regardless of how big or small it may be, the parts are from something always.  There is not an instance of somethingness emerging from nothingness...there is always a building block of some sort.  The point is, something must have always existed...whether it be God or matter/energy.  Existance does not spring from nonexistance.  So there you have it.  Either God created matter or matter formed God and one must have always been...or else neither could be.  The pagan Greeks started with matter, the polytheistic Egyptians did too, Buddhism waffles on the question.  Christianity says God is the start of all and He alone is eternal.  If God is the eternal, then everything of life revolves around Him and His life.  If matter is eternal, then nothing matters for all that is has the spin of randomness to it that cannot be stopped.  Love, hate, creativity and friendship are just concotions of a chemical soup that has no purpose.  But if God is eternal, then love and hate and right and wrong and care and concern all mean something and have purpose.  You ask the question.  Not which came first but rather which has always been.  Matter/Energy or God.  One must start with a capital letter!

Prayer Failures

How do you assess the value of a ministry?  Is there an instrument calibrating success, a plus minus chart that can accurately determine the worth of a Christian effort?  How do we know if we should keep doing some work or give up on it?  Is there a way of knowing we should persevere in an effort or "cut bait".  Rarely am I as often facing the moment of decision of giving up or not on it with prayer as any other Christian activity I attempt.  I have read every book I can find on prayer, attempted nearly every prayer strategy I have come accross, groaned through prayer, agonized through prayer, wept through prayer and fought tenaciously to concentrate while praying but have developed into nothing more than a rank amateur at it.  Prayer may not be my biggest failure in ministry but it certainly is my most frustrated endeavor.  In many ways, the more I pray, the worse I get.  And yet I haven't quit and don't believe I should.  I have never really understood why God does not periodically wrap me in a cloud of ecstasy as I pray, doesn't impress me with some jaw dropping revelation, doesn't mark my prayers every once in a while with miraculous "Godsends".  I must lead the most boring humdrum prayer life extant and yet I keep going at it.  I am not quite sure why I expect so much more in prayer than I get.  I have certainly heard the testimonies and read the accounts of wondrously enraptured praying but I also recognize that I will never hit a baseball in a major league game, run a marathon, stand on the moon or sing solos in packed stadiums and most likely will never be caught up into the seventh heaven as I pray.  I may be exhibiting a complete lack of faith here but my experience has shown me this mostly.  My praying is not very good...not ever.   I pray, not so that I will get but so that my Savior will get...get my time, get my devoted effort, get my best try, get me.  I can make little of my gains in prayer but I have done it...and done it again...and done it again.  That I believe counts for something!  If counting even matters when speaking of the one who has thrown up so many stars in the heavens we have no way of know how many are actually out there.  To just think that the one who placed the proton at the center of the atom insists I pray despite my meager, inadequate strivings is enough to push me after it again and let the "results" be what they are without my standard of determining what it may be.

Graduation

Jenny,

I have thought a lot about your question regarding the value of a graduation and although I know it is long past being relevant, I have my view of it.  Certainly a few  pretend (mostly school administrators) that a graduation is a ceremony of a class, it really is a celebration of an every one person graduation.  No one comes to see a graduating class; everyone is there because of one person…or two one persons…or even three.  We come because we are thrilled to have one person in our life…one person who is in a crowd of a bunch of other one persons.   You do not graduate so much as make my life better.  Sure you get a diploma because you passed a bunch of classes and maybe you are better than nearly everyone else at studying  but the real truth is that each graduate is to someone watching, the best person crossing the stage.  A graduation ceremony is a snapshot of love; a still of how it is to be excessively glad you have a brilliant ray of light streaking across your horizon.  No one comes to watch a graduation, we all come to see a graduate and we cheer, not because you passed a silly little geometry exam; we cheer because you have made our life better and that is a real reason to scream and blow air horns and take pictures and sit on metal benches with the sun bearing down on us.  A graduation ceremony certainly is an artifact of days when kids grew up illiterate because they were too poor, too isolated, too busy.  We still remember that it is a glorious thing to learn and have dreams and try at building a life.  We also remember that it is most wonderful to stand and be seen,  be loved and wanted.  That is why we came to your graduation Jenny.  That is why we watch you with interest.  You are someone worth loving and being proud to know.  Keep graduating and you never become a better person…the first spark of life God put in you made you as good as you will ever need to be…at least for those of us who want to watch you graduate!

Where are the honest atheists?

Just some random thoughts on atheism--

If atheism is true, then how did life spontaneously generate?  There is absolutely no evidence that this ever happens.  There is though plenty of evidence that life spontaneously degenerates...

Can it be proven God does not exist?  If so, then forget about it all...but if not, why live as if it is impossible?

If we are just random molecules bouncing around without purpose or meaning...then why do atheists take themselves and others so seriously?  Random is as random does...

If atheists really knew what they were talking about, wouldn't they have figured out in a sensible and logical way, why, without any God behind them, the Apostles died willingly for a resurrection they all witnessed (or didn't)?

How many rocks have atheists found bridging the gap between life and lifelessness?  Where are they?

Where did love originate in a godless universe...or hate for that matter?

How does an atheist deal with the near universal acceptance of a god as an evolutionary process? 

If atheists were all so smart, wouldn't they be better people?  And this is not a slam...it is just a real observation from actual experience...

"Saintified"

Philippians 1: 1 Continued

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

One of the most frequently used terms for the born again believer found in scripture is the term “saint”.  Forty-five times the term “saint” is found in the NT compared to 27 times the term “believers” is used and three times we find the term “Christian”.  The Greek word translated saint is a very picturesque name for Christ’s children.  It means separated out ones, sacred ones, ones devoted to God.  It does not carry with it the commonly held view that it describes super Christians who have either been martyred or lived lives far above the common crowd of believers.  Hagios, translated saint describes the reorientation that occurs in the one who has been born again.  The saint has been called out by God; she belongs to God and is God’s own possession, set apart for God’s plans and purposes.  There are two qualities of the saint as found in the definition of the term.  First, it reminds us that the saint is one who has been separated out from the unbelieving world. She is boundaried:  walled off by her commitment to Christ and God’s call upon her life.  As Peter puts it, she is a stranger or refugee in a world not her home.  The saint cannot fit in, not comfortably for the Holy Spirit of God dwells in her and is permanently conforming her values and interests to that of God’s.  She will not remain comfortable with the sinful, unbelieving actions of the world nor with sinful unbelieving actions of herself.  To borrow a phrase from common vernacular, she will not be able to live with herself if her lifestyle is not conforming to the changes God has brought to her heart.

The second quality of the saint is that she has been separated unto the Lord.  It is no accident that the Saints are called “saints in Christ Jesus”.  The word translated saint comes from the same root word as the term translated holy.  The Sabbath is called “holy” because it is not ours it belongs to God.  The tithe is called holy-10% of each person’s income is not his own, it belongs to God.  The temple of the Old Testament was called holy because it was a structure built to honor God alone.  The city of Jerusalem was called holy because it was to be a city on a hill whose people were the Lord’s.  The ground where Moses stood as he heard the voice of God was declared holy by God because it was His place of intervention with man.  The saint is one who is holy because he belongs to Christ.  He is a saint not because his righteousness gives him special status but he is a saint because he is the possession of God.  That the saint is in Christ defines him.  As a bird is in the air, we are in Christ.  As a fish is in the sea, we are in Christ.  As the stars are in the sky, we are in Christ.  For the saint, Christ is her place of existence, her source of life.  She cannot be separated from Christ and continue on in any way.  It is at best disastrous, at worst deadly for the saint not to abide in Christ.  Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches.  If a man abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.”

And The Time Is...

How much worth can you assign to ten minutes of prayer?  What is the cost/profit margin for five minutes of prayer?  Is there a down side to two minutes of prayer?   What if you were to pray for a minute?  Could you see a risk in praying a minute?  At what point do you cross into the debit side of the ledger when you begin praying?  At the dinner table, thirty seconds of praying becomes an eternity and cause for under the breath cursing.  Forty-five seconds may be a stretch as you lie in bed moments before falling asleep.  Fifty seconds of praying could make you an extremist for church gatherings.   Are a nod and a wink at God enough to make good on your commitment to follow Him?

 Every one of us has a pain threshold at which we have prayed too long and with too much passion.  Few of us would consider ourselves “Prayer warriors” and yet few Christians think they aren’t doing a pretty good job following Jesus.  Most of the Psalms are prayers that were set to music.  In them we find the most profound human misery and heights of theocentric joy.   What if we took a week and prayed a Psalm each morning and evening, using them as a starting point for adding our own concerns?  Would it hurt too much to stay in the arms of Jesus a bit longer this one week?  Could we bear to give God an additional minute each day and stretch out our joy and peace?  Do we have time for a miracle this week?

Questions

A pauper once asked a blind man what he wanted most and he answered, "I want to be poor.  What do you want most?"  The pauper replied, "I want to see."  Which of the two came closest to the Kingdom?  If the blind man could see, would he be as happy as the pauper who lost his eyes?  Who hears better, the deaf or the lonely?  What makes the wicked sinner a better man than the bitter saint?  Can you walk with the righteous if you are on the wrong path?  Are the days ahead more like what what we leave behind or what is at this moment?

A woman sat beside a well waiting for a drink while another milked her cow and filled her cup.  Who made the right choice?  Two farmers sowed seed but only one harvested.  Who lived the better life?  A dollar falls at your feet.  Should you take it?  Is it better to build sand castles or fortresses?  Can you see if you don't know what you are trying to find?

If the pull of the Spirit tugs at your heart, would you know it?  If lion lies down with the lamb, who would you lie beside?  Is grace the end of the matter for you or would you wait for something more?

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Unity In The Church

Philippians1: 1

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

As Paul wrote to the church, he spoke of them collectively with the inclusive term “all”.  In fact, 8 times in the letter, Paul speaks to the church in phrases like “all of you” and “all the saints”.  No other book of Paul uses the term “all” to describe the church even half as often.  Paul is making a subtle call in this letter for unity in the Philippian church.  Every member he is saying is bound together under Christ.  Both the members who are splintering the church with their wrangling as well as the affirming and warmhearted ones are included in the greeting.  All are one in Christ and part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  Ephesians 4:4, 5 makes this clear when Paul wrote that in Christ, we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  We may have differing views of election (“or the election”), opposing views of which color carpet should be in the sanctuary, different ethnic backgrounds and speak a variety of languages but we are one in Christ.  The Holy Spirit infuses each Saint with eternal life and brings all into the family of God.  Therefore, as part of one family Paul can call for two arguing Christians in the Philippian church to “agree” with each other in the Lord.  Fellow saints he says must do everything possible to help bring them together.  The question is “Why?”  I think there are several reasons for this call for unity.  First, the gospel of God’s grace is not effectively shared if division splits the church.  When the focus of attention is on who wins or who loses in church conflicts, almost no one has the time or energy to share their faith with unbelievers.  Second, division in the church eventually leaks out to the unbelieving community, bringing disrepute to the great grace of God.  Third, division in the church keeps the church from being a sanctuary of peace for wounded and broken Christians who need the love only the church possesses.  Fourth, division in the church makes closeness to God tenuous and His wisdom difficult to attain.  How can we say we love God if we hate our brother?  Jesus said that if anyone has anything against us, we are to go to the brother and try to reconcile with him before we bring our gift to the altar.  Sixth, division in the church prevents the effective blending and merging of the gifts of the Spirit.  Paul compares the church to a body.  One is the eye, another a hand.  If the hand is not associating with the eye or angered by the eye, the hand misses out on all that the eye can provide for its benefit and comfort.  Division in the church is often disastrous, both for the community surrounding the church, which desperately needs Jesus, and for the church itself, which can’t afford the loss of God’s presence or the disruption of the gifts of the Spirit.

Servanthood revisited

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:  Philippians 1: 1 NIV

Let us be specific about what it means to be slave of Christ.  It means that when He says to put your future in His hands, you cling to Him for help.  It means that when you are in class and a classmate tells you she doesn’t believe in God, you tell her how Jesus changed your life.  It means that at work, you don’t take anything from the company that doesn’t belong to you.  It means that you refuse to hold grudges against anyone.  It means that you tell the truth and do not gossip or tear down the reputation of another.  It means that you read the scriptures and pray just as Jesus does. It means that you give one tenth of your income back to God through the local church.  It means that you ask God daily, no, moment-by-moment to guide you.  It means that your life belongs to Jesus and you will not be ashamed to tell anyone that you love Him.  It has been said that the highest honor any of us can attain is to be called, not a leader in the church, not a success story on Wall Street or at Harvard, not the founder of a great movement; the greatest honor we can ever attain is to be called the slave of Jesus.  One day, as Jesus recounts for us how we have lived our lives, our hearts will pound with joy, our legs will tremble and our hands will shake if at the conclusion He says, well done my precious slave.  I told the account in a youth Bible study recently of how Abraham slave of God, was commanded to sacrifice his son of the promise on the altar.  Only when God stopped his hand from striking his son with the knife by calling out to him, did Abraham cease the downward drive of his hand.  Forever, Abraham is known as a man who walked by faith, who refused to allow his personal feelings get in the way of obedience to the God who loved him and gave His own life for him.  And I too, you too, if we walk as a true slave of Christ, can forever be known as one Who Jesus, the Savior of our life calls a man or woman with whom He is well pleased.

The Slave of Christ

Chapter 1 Continued



1: 1
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV


The slave of Christ is not a mere religious follower of a great teacher. He accepts the call to die if need be to please his master. Paul put it this way, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain”. Solomon, as he reflected on a lifetime lived for material gain, prestige and serving the master of self could only mutter, "Meaningless! Meaningless!… Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV) Eventually, the life lived as anything but a slave to Christ becomes meaningless. Every accomplishment becomes a wash, all toys gathered are left behind and what remains is to face the God of the universe and give an account for your life.







Now here is the great honor hidden in the title, “the slave of Christ.” Moses, Joshua and David were all called the slaves of God. In an incredible prophecy describing the coming Messiah, in Isaiah 42: 1, the name give to Christ is “my slave”. The prophets Amos, Jeremiah, Ezra and Daniel were all called slaves of God. In 2nd Peter the apostle calls himself a slave of Jesus. James the brother of Jesus said he was a slave of Jesus. When we too become a slave of Christ, we enter into the great pavilion of heaven where every man and woman of faith was willing to live and even die serving Jesus.

Philippians 1: 1 Continued

Chapter 1


1: 1
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

Now we turn to the title Paul gives himself and Timothy. He declares that they are “servants of Christ Jesus”. The term translated “servant” is doulos, that literally means slave. The slave was the lowest rung on the social ladder in the 1st century world. The slave belonged to another. She had no rights. She could not go wherever she wished. She could not marry whomever she wanted. Her rights were determined by the values and wishes of her master. The slave was the property of her owner. Of all that Paul could say of himself, first and foremost he wanted the church to know that he and Timothy were slaves of Christ Jesus. He was the preeminent missionary of all time, the great writer of the scriptures, personally called by God to preach the gospel. Thousands had become Christians as a result of Paul’s courageous work. Yet, he makes no mention of any of his credentials except one. He was a slave of Christ.

Paul in Galatians 1: 10 describes what it means to be a servant of Christ: Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. (NIV) For Paul, to be a servant of Christ means that your concern is to bring joy to the face of Christ, craving the approval of Jesus. No matter what neighbors may say, relatives may argue, self-interests may encourage; it is the will and desire of Jesus that drives the plans and actions of the servant of Christ. The servant of Christ has one allegiance, and that is to Jesus, one purpose, and that is to please Jesus, one direction and that is the way of Jesus.

Some Thoughts With Christmas In The Wings

A shower of leaves fall as the cold wind snapping through the autumn air splatters about my office window.  A rust brown squirrel bounds along the fence and jumps up into the redwood tree staring across at me.  Christmas music bears in on me as I ponder the next move I will make in my head first plunge into trusting Jesus for everything.  I don’t really need any presents and my lifelong plan to be a successful something has dimmed even while I finish a book on why I need to be successful and why it is so crucial I gain favor in the quest for God’s consuming blessing.  Why is it so small, this urge to make it and make big?  Why do I miss the old days of wanting and needing and craving and pleading and missing and searching?  The good old days were ones of pursuit and action.  Today I pray and wait.  I trust God and it seems unnatural, sluggish, wasteful.  Have I lost my mind…or my soul?  What I am most comfortable embracing…frustration, worry and busyness are bywords for the pursuit of everything I wanted and hoped would be mine.  My heart could not contain my provocation at making good on my promise, my potential.  This is ebbing though as I bear in on Christ and He bears in on me.  I cannot stand the thought of wasting time sitting and praying when my mind is such an avalanche of activity and turmoil…but it is a day and it is time to wait…as success ebbs away.  I wonder what Mary thought as she succumbed to a God she barely knew and to a plan she never would have chosen, giving way to a failure she could not stop.   The virgin with a husband in waiting let loose her reputation and her portion with the secure and made God her home.   Elizabeth called her blessed.  I would too!

My Take On Philippians

I will begin posting from my commentary on Philippians.  Years ago I memorized the book and then began writing on it.  I hope this is a beneficial set of postings...

Chapter 1



1: 1



Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV






Paul starts the letter in a unique way, at least for him. He refers to both himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. Usually he speaks of himself as an apostle or in Philemon, “a prisoner of Christ”. Anyone else he includes in his greeting, he refers to separately as a “brother” with the exception of his two letters to the Thessalonians. It would seem that there are two reasons for the alteration in his normal pattern of greeting. First, with the Philippian church, he did not have to assert his apostolic authority. The church was well aware of his standing with God and they greatly respected him. He along with Silas, Timothy and Luke was the founder of the church; his courage and faith were well attested. The Christians in Philippi did not have strong Jewish roots that could have confounded their opinion of Paul. His teachings weren’t in dispute. He was clearly the leader of this dynamic church.






Second, Paul wished to give equal status to Timothy. Timothy was not the co-author of the letter just Paul wrote Philippians. Continually through Philippians, the writer says “I” not “we” in speaking to the church. Paul in including Timothy in the greeting wanted to express symbolically the unity in the body of Christ. Yes some are apostles, others evangelists, pastors, teachers; others have the gift of giving or hospitality but all are one in Christ. Members of the body may disagree but there is no room for division in the church. Christ alone is the head-not Paul, not Timothy, not the overseers or deacons. We must all seek the voice of Christ and follow Him together. He is our Word---not personal opinions or preferences.

My Tribute

A Friend died
   Years have passed
      The days of time linger
           Stands taken
              Hands shaken
                  Demands forsaken


a .
   or --
      a ( )
         no  ?


but rather !


Gardens shake
    Hearts quake
         Desires break


But still the Three Winds stake
      a claim
          none can make
               and fewer take


Life holds
   the Tomb folds


Love lives within the Bold


"Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus".  Philippians 3:12

Like or Love, Look or See, Be or Was

I am not quite sure when I realized I wasn’t good enough for something and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do it but that realization keeps popping up again and again now. I can’t run anymore. I can’t read small letters. I can’t dunk. I can’t make people like me. I can’t sing. Try and make me a good singer. You can’t do it. We can train all you want and you can’t make me a runner. I am never going to dunk again despite your best efforts. You can though like me. Despite my temper, despite my difficulty expressing myself, despite my negativity and despite my opinions that rile you, you can like me.


I struggle with my insecurities, struggle with my inner demons, struggle with my ugly attitude and sinful habits but one thing I never struggle with…being someone God made. Regardless of how badly I botch my opportunities and wreck my relationships, you can still like me and I can still like you. It is funny, this matter of being made in God’s image. Even the worst of us has something of Jesus about him and only the devil doesn’t like that. I was thinking today about how much I wanted to be in the mountains, around wildflowers and babbling brooks and trembling aspens with a squirrel or two chattering about me and a stellar jay calling to me in the distance. Instead I was around people…people who gossip, people who snap, people who pay no attention to what I have to say, people who don’t think much of my best effort.

Name one person who isn’t broken over something, who isn’t locked up about something, who isn’t afraid to cry about something. Your list would be pretty short. How can you not like being with someone just like you…someone who wants to be loved, someone who wants to be encouraged, someone who wants to have another shot at getting things right? It is pretty cool to watch a hummingbird flutter among the jasmine, emerald green flashing in the mid-morning sunlight but it isn’t the best. The best is holding hands with someone in the image of God, laughing with someone in the image of God, crying with someone in the image of God, listening with all you’ve got to someone in the image of God. Funny but I have never lost sleep over a rainbow trout and never dreamt about lazy raindrops but I have been caught by the whirlwind of distorted love and fractured likes. My kids can make me furious and my wife steamed but when it comes to love, a glacier can’t hold a candle to them. The image of God gets distorted, badly distorted at times, but it is the best we see here about us. If I held the sparkle of my son’s fear in my hand as tightly as God holds mine, I would be a happier and more contented man. Like even for a moment the meanest of us and you have found a keyhole peeping into the most holy place.

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

The Power of Pain

A friend of mine told me recently that he was talking with a researcher who was studying the effect of chronic back pain on the sufferers and discovered that over thirty percent of the patients dropped out of the longitudinal study prematurely do to death. They committed suicide. Ongoing pain shrivels your perspective. It gobbles up the cranial space devoted to thinking about sports teams, finances, dirty dishes and celebrity sightings. The housing market fades when a lower back spasms or a kidney stone passes. God and death have few rivals in the contemplative shadows where pain is roaring. The other day I saw a friend in terrible pain and she could barely acknowledge my casual greeting, let alone make much of it. I had broken into her pain and she could not make room for me.


My back is throwing a fit today and it forces me to listen. I can’t cry out to God for help…I just wait for Him. I have cried out before and found it was wasted effort. Listening for Him though does something, means something. Waiting for Him does even more. You learn a lot from those who suffer terribly. Job is one of the great teachers. He cried and cried and cried to God and battled his way with his friends until he had nothing left to him psychologically but death and God…and it was God who broke through. In the end it was the silence and the waiting that mattered to him most and made sense in pain. Trying to get at the cause of the pain, trying to scapegoat the pain, trying to slap away the pain and disregard its vigor only exacerbated the horror of pain’s continuance. God did break through and pain made Job ready to meet Him. Pain, of all the windows into heaven seems to open widest.

The saints who speak most clearly and profoundly of God are the ones who suffered most. Think of it. Jeremiah, Job, Paul, Jesus. My friend Duke. Pain makes love more than a seasoning, it makes it the meal. The most loving people I know suffer. They look you in the eye and care about you. They watch you to see that you are being honest about your hardship. They listen. They have time for you. I cannot judge with this but I know what I have seen. Love and kindness seem to be genetically linked to suffering. Friends come and go but it is the ones who have suffered who make the most of my own life and who celebrate with me when I have a little victory to share. The best counselors suffer. The best lovers too.

Zeros and the Great Beyond

I was once asked by one of my children what would happen if everyone in the world jumped at the same time? Would it crack the earth apart? Would it send our planet spinning off course? Certainly not. We are far too little, even all of us combined to pitch our earth one way or another. The insignificance of man in the swirl of the cosmos is a common philosophic thread running through the neo-ecocentric academic community. Man is less than a zero in the bigger scheme of things…if the bigger scheme of things means mother universe and Grandpa Darwin. It is funny that mankind either gets blamed for scorching the earth and wrecking the established order of eco-equilibrium or he is a shadow slipping about in the random bliss of the circle of life. He is not good though whatever may be said of him and his influence in the universe is either revolting or negligible for the philosopher duped into a Godless myopia.


Christianity is so different from the current philosophic view of man. Elijah was big enough to start a regional famine and then end it, Moses big enough to split a sea apart and Joshua big enough to stop the spin of the earth. Paul raised the dead. Adam infected the universe with sin and death. We may not be super nova large but people have been dramatically impacting universal outcomes since the beginning of time.

We are no small things when we pray. The entire universe is within our grasp both today and tomorrow. We can rework cultural systems, rebuild social structures and reboot generational links. Lions and Zebras and miniature plankton cannot change the course of history…at least not intentionally. We are, as people, artists of change. God hears us pray. He makes changes in what is happening in response to us. We are magnificent when it comes to altering the universe. We stop crimes. We put together marriages. We cure diseases. We halt floods. We heal wounds. God is with us and because of our prayers, He changes the way the universe is going.

Belief is not a theological proposition. It is a way of life. If you do not believe, you do not pray constantly for God to guide you, help you, rescue others, change the universe. God is with us and so we pray and God answers our prayers and makes it different. You became a Christian when you first believed God. So, why did you stop? Because God is bigger than the universe, there is not a bit of it we cannot reach and alter through Him. The only way you become a zero is if somehow you lost God and somehow He lost you. The philosophers may have lost God…but you haven’t. So pray. Change the world.

God Think

We have come to the end of the line or maybe the line has come to the end of us. Is the stuff of our lives that intoxicating that we think of Jesus just when the God tether ball wraps back around on us again? What great responsibilities do we have and what momentous activities engage our minds that thoughts of Jesus slip away from us so easily? We are what we talk about and we don’t talk very naturally about God. It is discombobulating for us to speak of Him in a normal, non-church conversation, our tongues clumsily trip over His name because he is not on our minds much.


The end is drawing near and all of us will either become completely wrapped up in God forever or we will boil in the stew of atheism—in either case, Jesus will be at the center of it and we don’t think much of Him. We may like Him, may even want to please Him but honestly we don’t think much of Him. We have perhaps grown weary of God being here…right here. God in a box is much more comfortable—God in Taiwan or hiding within the rainforest is even better. God with me, watching me, listening to me, monitoring my every move is disconcerting so I try not to think of Him. Like a shadow I can’t avoid until nightfall, God there is much too unsettling to bear. So I don’t bear…I think of something else.

Here is an idea. Take this day and think of Jesus again and again and do not quit on it. Say something about Jesus in a normal conversation. It may feel like belching at a formal dinner or wearing cut-offs to an opera but try it. God is there. He is within your mouth…buried in your brain and He loves you. Say it. Say Jesus in a regular chat with a friend. Make something of Him in your conversation even if it makes your nose twitch and your tongue pinch up against your teeth. Who knows? Maybe the most important part of all of life will improve your friend’s day and make him come alive. Maybe your God talk will clear your head and fill you with an unspeakable joy. Doesn't Jesus love you?  Don't you love Him?

Your mind is made for God thoughts because He is there. He is there in your head and the only way your thoughts come clean and alive is when you think of Jesus. Every other thought is a dingy, musty relic of a dying age—the age of Cain over Abel. Listen. God is there. He is there and He is crazy about you. Think about Him and regain your day. Regain your mind. 

Gratitude

I have started each day writing down a line of blessings. It has just been a three day discipline but already it feels like stretching out a bad back or flossing infected gums. I am not very good at it and it shows. My first day I could only write down two blessings; the second day I really improved and came up with three. One was pretty pitiful. I wrote that I was thankful that my car was repaired. Of course the repairs cost me one hundred dollars more than I expected and in the end, the mechanic listed two major problems my car has that because of its age and mileage are too expensive to fix. So, my repair gratitude was grudgingly added to make me sound thankful…or pretend I was thankful.

It cannot be simply a natural tendency to pessimism that makes gratitude such a strain. I just do not have the inherent talent to be thankful when I have a headache, the living room is full of clothes and toys and half the congregation is gone on Sunday. My gratitude list is far too short for someone living with Jesus and much too shallow for all I have been given. When I was in graduate school, my supervisor was providing an in-service on parent training. She talked about how difficult it is sometimes to compliment your children. She told of one parent, determined to say something good about her child blurting out, “I really like how your nose sits right in the middle of your face.” My prayers often have that same feel. “Thank you Lord for the air I breathe.” “Thank you Lord for the flu only lasting three days.” Thank you Lord that my car broke just forty-five minutes from the nearest mechanic.”

It is a stretch to be thankful but it is a stretch to cook dinner sometimes, a stretch to get up before dawn and a stretch to smile when your back aches but we do all these things anyway. The other day I was asked by one of the teens in our youth group whose idea it was to organize a hike up mission peak. Because I wasn’t sure if he was glad he went or angry he had to go, I hesitated before I answered. He did get to stand at the end on top of the world looking down on a billion city lights, look up at trillions of stars and breathe the fresh air of a cool breeze floating over the peak. I think I like life better when I think a bit more about the twinkling city lights than the sweat dripping off my brow. That alone may make gratitude worth the effort. I read recently of a beautiful young professional golfer who committed suicide. I do not know why she took her life but perhaps she missed the sparkling stars one too many times as she climbed the peak she was given. The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days there “will be terrible times…” He also said in the same letter, “I thank God…” The two can co-exist in one heart at the same time. Gratitude may be the most viable and definitive mode of expression limiting the progression of bitterness, pride and despair all in one fell swoop. Just one thankful comment can turn around a gloomy day…a cheap remedy that no elixir can match.

Sourpuss Faith

It seems like faith is mostly grim-faced determination. You gut out faith. Faith means you're not happy about something, you are tired of the same old struggles, grumpy about your difficulties. What if faith were happy, cheerful, more like eating Oreos and milk just before bed rather than carrot juice and a bowl of broccoli. It is funny in a tense and disconcerting way that Jesus' first public manifestation of faith was during a party. Laughter, feasting and pleasure filled the air as He made His faith mark. A collection of servants and friends scooped up 180 gallons of water in faith, blinked and had wine. If our faith was more like this, we would certainly be less tensed and angry. Faith and laughter seem to be Jesus' way of making faith a lifestyle. The other day I did something pretty immature. I prayed for my favorite baseball team, the Oakland A's to win. I know it is silly for a 53 year-old man with four kids to stoop to such theological lows but I wanted more laughter in my faith. Like salt on my chicken and sugar in my apple pie, it was tasty praying for the A's to win. They were behind and so I prayed for them. Imagine the goofy little smile that crept over my heart when I later logged on the Internet and found they won. Goofy faith is better than none at all. Better to have prayed for something silly and ridiculous than to keep faith balled up inside and have just grim faced determination and a stern solemnity that never walks on water.

What?

Last night I had a Christian song playing as Benjamin and I got ready to read a book together in bed when I switched the ipod to a smooth Miles Davis tune. Abruptly he jumped up and ordered, "I want to hear music about Jesus. Switch it back." Of course, being the good Christian man I was and the affable father, I responded, "No!" And that was that. We went back to the preschool book about stars and dad remained dad and son remained son. As I lie in bed, staring up to the ceiling while Ben snored softly nearby, I pondered my fatherhood, my priesthood and my life in the hood.

How much Christianity is too much? Why do I so often feel this great urge to take a break from 'religion"? What strange urges well up within me that make me cringe when told what to do, when to do it and how it must be done? Why do I hate it when my dentist tells me to floss and my doctor tells me I need to get a prostate exam and my son tells me I need to switch back to a song about Jesus. Am I that hardheaded that even the simple things that are right make me want to bail and the worst little corners of my head feel like home?

The other day I went back to reading through the Bible. I had given up this yearly tradition of mine in 2010 so I could work on memorizing the book of James. Both good and worthy of Christian discipline but one brought pride in accomplishment and the other had become a "task" demanded. It was as simple as that. I did not want to do what I should do...didn't want to be "told". I battle against the "do its" of life like a little Rocky Balboa fighting off Apollo Creed. Sometimes I feel like I am defending my very soul when I run through a yellow light rather than cautiously stopping and giving up on my rush to beat out a few seconds of drive time. Turn back to the Christian song and give up on Miles? What? Lordship is nothing if it is not submission to a "do it" you despise in the broken corners of your sin cringled brain. Oh, to love the "God of all grace". Lordship beyond "what?"

Running on Empty

For the second time in seven months my laptop has been stolen out of my car. The thief stole the quarters out of my ashtray, the cokes and waterbottles out of my cooler and my son's basketball. He even took the quarters out of my son's wallet lying on the floorboard. For five minutes, the laptop sat in my car in the church parking lot. It was 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday and absolutely no one was around...or so I thought. Why does Satan have to put so much thought into getting my laptops...not sure what his gripe is with me. This is the second laptop I have had stolen at our church. Another laptop was taken from my car while I was leading a Bible study...of course my car was stolen along with it. So why does Satan care so much about my laptops? Has he targetted them as a major force of power against his kingdom? Is he that interested in getting my sermons from me or those cell group Bible studies? Did he decide I was such a powerful warrior with the Dell laptop in hand that he had to break me free of my RAM and my Disc drive? Three thieves...three laptops...one master stategist fighting for his kingdom. I know it all sounds a bit melodramatic but are we really fighting against thieves and bad neighborhoods or powers and principlities in high places? I recently preached on Satan and his power in this world and so I shouldn't be surprised when he or his compatriots knock on my door but I am never really prepared for his blows. They are always so sudden, so maddeningly abrupt. You can never really prepare for them because they fit so perfectly into the commonalities of daily life and yet they are tazers that hit from your blindside...and they do hurt. Today a friend asked me to pray for her as she tried to make her jogging comeback. It felt good to return to reality. This is not our home and never will be. We live with the three realities crashing together. God is here, satan is here and my laptop just disappeared. It is a world of hide and seek...but it isn't a child's game.

The End of the Beginning

Today I was reading the history of the Baptist church where I was raised, baptized and ordained to preach. No pastor in its fifty years of existence served there as long as I have served Warm Springs Church and in almost forty years, no one has served as pastor at Warm Springs Church as long as I have served. Between two churches and ninety years of existence, I am the longest tenured pastor. Out of the thirty pastors who have served between the two churches, not one lasted more than eleven years. I have plodded farther than them all…

If term limits were enacted in either congregation, I would be long gone. My dog did not live as long as I have served Warm Springs Church, Haley’s Comet may have passed twice since I started, police officers retire quicker than my years of service, roads don’t last as long as I have, cell phones, blogs and chatting on line with babes all came after I began and Starbucks Coffee was nicknamed two bucks at my start.

Recently I have dramatically altered my approach to preaching after all these years and if the truth be known, I have probably reinvented my preaching three or four times since I came to Warm Springs Church. Perhaps I am the only one who has caught on to how revolutionary those changes have been…just like I might be the only one who has noticed the monumental shifts in gel applications I have made since I first began to retro 1957. But it doesn’t matter. I have changed and can see the difference.

Preaching is a lot like cutting hair. You snip and snap and buzz and blow and snip and snip again and regardless of how artistically you clip, you still are only as good as those who look at the new doo and like it or don’t. No one asks how many snips it took to get your hair cut, how tight the razor setting, how many cross parts you had attacked by the scissors. It is either a good haircut or a bad one and that is it. A sermon is either good or bad and there it goes.

That is why so many pastors are both exhilarated by the drama of preaching and repulsed by the adrenalin drop it elicits. Spend all week looking for the perfect story, the most crucial points, the stirring inspirational comments that produce the grand “ah hah” and it all comes down fizz of whether or not Mary Jones looked at her watch as you preached. Something happens between Monday and Sunday that is dreadfully corrupting. You want to matter. Because you want to matter, you suspend Mary Jones from your ceiling as you prepare and let the pit of your stomach rotate at the turn of her smile.

It shouldn’t matter what Mary Jones thinks of your sermon…but then it shouldn’t matter what you think of Billy Bob’s new haircut. Yet try as we will to turn it all over to God and His perfect grace, we still tumble off the side of the steps and land in the muck of thumbs up or thumbs down. Give me ten pastors who preach with only an audience of One in mind and I will give you 9.8 who have already resigned. You cannot exist without thinking about what others think of you and you cannot continue without switching out your gel application every so often.

I am certain that if I add a few more years to this specific ministry, I will become a bit more comfortable with the tension within my sideways glances between the two mirrors…as I shift between the expression on Jesus’ face and that on the collective who enters into my preaching. Perhaps I will even glance over at Jesus a bit more as I go along. However I resolve this bumbling stumble toward the finish line, I will doggedly pursue a determination. Each Sunday will be an energized attempt to make good on my promise to give it my best to honor my calling. However, regardless of how much gel I use or don’t, I am still dependent on the one who cut my hair to make it right.

We See What We Want to See!

I am more often than not a glass is half empty guy who refuses to quit. Just the other day I read once again Einstein’s famous determination that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but thinking the results will change. The writer was using the quote to denigrate pastors who try the same tired strategies of church growth but with each mounting failure refuse to acknowledge the zaniness of their methods. Of course this was a successful and popular pastor who was passing along his success story to the rest of us who were clearly “insane”.

The use of the quote to burst my glass is half full bubble was infuriating not so much because the author might be so wrong in his assessment of me and my vocational myopia but rather because of his use of a deist’s philosophical musings to prod me to follow him along in his “God kissed” autobahn to success. I find it disturbing to put it mildly the assumption that every “successful” ministry is right and every “unsuccessful” one inherently flawed.

The trend for the Christian community to migrate toward large churches notwithstanding, is it reasonable to assume that every blooming branch bears good fruit? Is it just as fair to determine that every dried branch is a dead one? Take two extreme examples as a point of contemplation. Was Solomon a good fruit branch? If so, what makes us so certain he was? We could quickly point to his magnificent proverbs, his monumental expansion of Israel’s prominence upon the world stage, his brilliant observations and his gigantic building projects and justifiably call him a good branch….and yet…

The second example is Jeremiah who failed miserably at every turn. He never married, never parented successfully a single child, could not turn more than a few miserable souls around, was a pitiful orator, never put two positive words together in any sentence, had the most contentious relationship with God one could imagine and perhaps did not have a single day in his life that was even partly happy. Year after year he made the same predictable, pedantic prophetic mutterings and may have won a convert with his methods…maybe one. Insanity…

Is prayer insane if you never clearly hear God speak to you? Is faith insane if you miss out on life’s big bonuses? Is love insane if you are turned away? Is integrity insane if you are never believed? Is life insane if you die in the end? Is the glass half full if you haven’t yet gotten your drought from it? Is the world insane if success is the measure of every branch’s worth? I may wish I could be Solomon but honestly I would rather shoot hoops with Jeremiah. Is that insane?

Hitch-hiking Through My Brain

Twenty five years married and it is just a moment in a flash...Looking at the wedding book and pondering how antiquated even my glasses were, let alone the hair and body type and it seems like some couple from another planet made its way into our album. Taking a walk through my past sermons, old CDs and 70s voting habits and I seriously wonder if my brain blew up somewhere along the way. It is amazing to think that I was so mediocre in so many parts of my life...I may still be but at least I work more at mediocrity. I care about what I think, how I decide and what I do even for moments. The books I read must possess me and the movies I watch must have heart and hope...I cannot tolerate any more the empty entertainment I casually embraced and whether good or bad, I mark time much more. Can marriage mean more than this...to learn to love and stop the fool's gold panning that accompanies whispy relationships? Twenty-seven and I knew but now I ponder as I watch my family slip into know realizing that soon enough they will watch and listen once again. Get it right is the mantra of my moments now but even if I fail I will be thankful for the twenty-five years Mary Jo has given me to develop love and experiment with love and restart love again and again. I wonder what my hairstyle today will look like to my grandchildren tomorrow...Once again I will be a nerd I am sure but only nerds celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. Generally, only nerds have grandchildren and only nerds make a dent in the love deprivation facing our know satiated world. A new life? No, but a contained one, built upon the patience of Christ and the assurance of God to build what seems so mediocre into a real life only fellow nerds can celebrate and love.

I Quit...or Did I?

I am not sure why it is so tough to give up some things: cokes, nail biting, fear of failure, poisonous comments, critical self-righteous thoughts, phony posturing, confidence in JaMarcus Russell, coffee that costs too much, wistful reminiscing of what never came to pass, McDoubles, sweat pants... Yesterday I thought about how easy it is to say "stop" and how ridiculously hard it is to do it. Even the ugliest of habits cling to me like duct tape. I was thoroughly depressed by the attendance at our church despite the fact that I knew I had worked my hardest all week, did the best I could to prepare and used long stretches of time to pray for the sermon, made sacrifices that cost me and my family for the benefit of the church and enthusiastically entered Sunday with high hopes. And yet the afternoon froze into an amalgamation of doubts, frustrations and streams of bitter consciousness. I wondered why I still get upset by how things spin in life, why this habit of being impacted by circumstances weekly floors me. I recently read that in reverse order the following are what Americans say they cannot live without: 5. Haircuts/coloring 4. Discount stores for purchasing accessories 3. Cable/Satellite TV 2. Cell Phones 1. Internet So here I am on the Internet wondering aloud why I do not give up on those things that pain me most. Colossians 3: 7 inspires me that there are habits I have killed and for that I am grateful...You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived This week I will give up satellite TV...next week I will quit coloring my hair...Then I will stop texting friends on my cell phone...but after that...some habits are just hard to kill. Maybe nail biting will go...but I doubt it. Last night I looked out at the moon, full and lovely in its festive march across the sky and thanked God for a habit that hasn't yet quit...a light that shines in the darkness!