fungle jungle

Life Verses Versus

2012-02-15T05:48:00.000-06:00

Our friend, the lovely Sal from our old stompin' grounds down in Texas, is Catholic. She said that Catholics aren't supposed to have "life verses", but if she did, this would be hers: So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty (Luke 17:10).

That is a good verse — like there are bad ones, though some are ugly — and it seems very much in keeping with Sal's humility and her love of the Good. What we should gain from this statement by Jesus is that our best efforts, especially our best human efforts, are really not giving anything to God. Our Father does not keep us around, bless us or reward us because we are "profitable" (the KJV uses the phrase "unprofitable servants"). I could say there are a lot of preachers and ministers who need to recognize the truth of that passage in Luke 17, and that would be true, but perhaps I should just say, "Oh, me." The first rule of humility is not to believe your own press releases. None of us are "all that".

Back when I was teaching a lot, my wife suggested Isaiah 50:4 as my "ministry" verse: The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

To sustain the weary with a word is indeed a noble pursuit. I'm not sure it is strictly legal for somebody else, even the better half, to give you your life verse, but it did seem to resonant at the time. There are so many of us that get embattled and hemmed in and worn down. We need somebody to say the right thing and encourage us to keep going and keep fighting. It reminds me of the old song "Radar Love" — "I feel the comfort comin' in from above." That's what the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, does. As the Firefly theme says, "They can't take the sky from me." No matter what kind of walls and fortresses and bars the devil has thrown up to imprison and isolate us, he can't seal us off from heaven. The Comforter takes that timely word that somebody delivers, and He brings it to us from above making it a message that will comfort and sustain us, a little bit of light shining down on our darkness.

While I do not reject Isaiah 50:4, I have always had a little trouble embracing it as something specific to me. A life verse, except it be another clever religious game of the evangelicals, must be what we fall back upon as indicative of our destiny as an individual. This is not to say that others cannot recognize the truth we see in it, but it will not have the same sharpness for them as it does for us — unless it has been so given to them as well.

Now here is a passage that I have fallen back upon and stood upon and taught many times:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. — 2 Corinthians 4:7-11

And specifically, the middle two verses, 8 and 9: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. This is strong medicine. Who can read this and not see that life is so much more than the sometimes pitiable existence of mortal clay? Who can help being inspired by the thought that getting knocked down is not the end? How often we find ourselves struggling to explain the inexplicable. We are perplexed, yet somehow God steps in to lift us from despair. We may not understand the trial, but we will not surrender to hopelessness.

I could do worse, and perhaps I have. Many years ago I memorized the New American Standard Version of Romans chapter 12. It is probably my favorite single chapter in the entire Bible. There is simply nothing in it that does not hit me. The very last verse, the 21st, is one that I quote with great frequency: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Though it is only a few words, the meaning for me is both broad and deep. Yet, like the keen leading edge of a wedge, it opens me up rather than me opening it.

The battle I have with evil begins in my our heart. Here is the first place that good must conquer evil. Self must be driven from the throne as the usurper that it is. Once my soul is ruled by good, I must still battle evil. I cannot, though, use the weapons of evil to confront or defeat it. I can never resort to evil in order to win. Nevertheless, I cannot surrender or submit to wickedness or unrighteousness. To overcome evil with evil is — what do you think? — evil. To passively submit to evil, to stand aside for it and allow it to rule is evil. No, the only path that is permitted to me is to go face-to-face against evil with good and to conquer it, first by being good then by doing good.

Even when my best efforts at overcoming evil appear to fail, I cannot give up my resistance. I may be afflicted in every way, but I will not be conquered. I will certainly be confused but I will not be without hope. I can know that even in death, I am not destroyed. In spite of shackles and pits, light will shine down from above to comfort and sustain me when I am most weary. Finally, when I have done all to stand, when evil has been resisted to the utmost, and I have overcome, and I am delivered in life, or by death, may I have sense enough to bow and say, "It is all grace. I have only done my duty."

Fret Less Base

2012-02-13T10:58:00.001-06:00

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. — Psalms 37:8

Psalm 37 is one of my favorites, and this verse is one that is essential to commit to memory. Christians should not be worriers. While I am for prudence, forethought, and positive action, fretting is a hindrance to all of those good things. God's rule is for us to find out the best thing to do, do it, and leave the cares to Him. As Peter tells us, [Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. And Jesus Himself says, Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Worry is a sin in a very real sense. It is a rejection of God's command to entrust the future to Him. We do not know what tomorrow holds, as the song says, but we are able to rely upon the One who holds tomorrow. Not worrying does not mean we don't can green beans in the summer. It means we don't give needless thought to whether what we have canned will be enough. Trusting God does not mean that we waste what we have; it does mean that we do not concern ourselves with what we have or do not have and that we are always generous with our resources.

Let's consider another of Peter's admonitions: The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

I sincerely believe that a great upheaval is at hand in the world. I don't know that it is "the end of the world as we know it", which is likely what Peter meant — and what was indeed the case in his day — but the times are definitely a'changin'. Now is the perfect time to stop living in conformity to the world and abiding by its dictates. Now is the perfect time to seek the kingdom and righteousness, to simplify one's life and establish it on the firm foundation of obedience to the word of God. There will never be a better time to reassess our priorities, to decide what is important, to separate wheat from chaff.

For the first few years of our marriage, my wife and I moved a lot. Moving, especially given that our money was very limited, forced us to carefully consider everything we carried along with us. Every move was a chance to get rid of accumulations of junk that everybody tends to build up. As our moves grew less frequent, we accrued more to move. At this point, we have lived in the same spot for nearly nine years — our new record. Moving all this stuff is no longer an option. We would have to have an auction or something to trim it down to size if we had to go somewhere else. We should look on our current times as a move out of the material and into the spiritual. The more junk we set out at the curb, the less we will find ourselves worrying about.

Despite the trials and tribulations of life in 20th and 21st Century America, most of us have not had it too rough. We have been able to indulge in fretting because the neighbor has a nicer car or bigger television than we have, or because we have the better one and have to pay for it. We are now able to worry that our smart phone isn't smart enough, that our 4G connection is too slow, or that our iPad is too heavy.

Isn't there something to this? Is our society's very consumerism a function of its fretting? Does not our obsessive and compulsive consumption both arise from and deepen our worry, our discontentment, and our fear?

Materialism is the bitter root that bears the bitter fruit of worry. A spiritual person may become distraught over failures and cry for deliverance in holy fear, but it is our old fleshy nature that feels the unholy dread of loss related to our goods, our pride, or both.

Simple arithmetic says that the world cannot go on the way that it is. Western civilization is consuming and contracepting itself into oblivion. Debt will be its downfall. Our fretting over material wealth and things has led to our destruction. I do not think there is much we can do to correct the trajectory of nations. Voting may help. Praying will help.   Fretting makes it worse.

What we can reset is our own course as individuals, families, and faith communities.

Repent. Don't worry.

The Deep

2012-02-09T10:22:00.000-06:00

Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. — Luke 5:3-6

Simon engaged in an act of faith. It is clear from his response that he, the professional fisherman, was not about to believe that he was actually going to catch any fish. No, Simon was merely humoring a celebrity — for that is what this itinerant rabbi called Jesus was at this point. Jesus was an engaging teacher associated with some healings and, possibly, a prophet. But no one much considered Him to be the only-begotten Son of God. We have seen that His family was not supportive. His kinfolk in Nazareth had tried to kill Him. Despite His popularity, or notoriety, Jesus was creating enthusiasm and interest but not much devotion. Simon, Andrew, James, and John don't know it yet, but they are about to be in on the calling of Christ's first disciples.

Simon Peter demonstrates that faith is not a matter of mental acquiescence. It is not a matter of reasoning or logic or anything we can grasp in the conscious mind. Fishing as these men did it was not a sport. It was a long-practiced and perfected craft. They fished at night when those denizens of the lake came into the shallows to feed. They did not put down their nets in deep water but used the net to sweep through the shoals catching the fish between the nets and the shore. Letting down a net in deep water was a waste of effort. All you got was a wet net.

We sometimes fail to give people of biblical times credit for any knowledge or what we think of as modern thought processes. For example, I can assure you that people in those days knew where babies came from. They may have told some fantastic stories, legends, and myths, but so do we.

Abraham and Sarah knew that ninety-year-old women do not get pregnant. The very idea was laughable to them. They may not have known all the cellular and molecular biology behind it, but they did breed and tend livestock. Like the saying goes, "We may be from the country, but we know how the cows come home." No one who has ever pulled a calf or assisted in lambing or foaling has any illusions about storks. They also butchered their own meat. Odds are Abraham knew a lot more about anatomy and which parts do what than the average urban-dwelling 21st Century Schizoid Man. So, too, in the days of Christ, no one believed in virgin births — not even Mary as evidenced by her stating of the obvious -- "I don't see how that's gonna happen" -- in response to the angelic announcement of her impending conception. Sexual knowledge did not begin with Dr. Freud or Dr. Ruth or Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

If there is a difference between us and people like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and the Apostles, it is that they were a little less willing to think that they already knew it all, that they somehow had access to all the secrets, that technology made them all geniuses. These days people who cannot make change from a dollar think they understand Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity because they have heard "E-equals-M-C-squared", or because they have watched "The Big Bang Theory" on television. Knowing how to use a smart phone does not make one smart.

As Hebrews 11:1 famously says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." When we read that chapter in the book of Hebrews, we are struck by how those heroes of faith consistently transcended the limitations of their human understanding in response to His word. God does not call us to stop thinking logically or reasoning or learning or acquiring material knowledge. He calls us to go beyond the shallow, conscious mind and plumb the depths. The "things not seen" refers not just to heaven but to all the treasures and resources of our life that lie below the surface. Like Simon, if we are going to transcend our current state, we are occasionally going to have to move out of what we know from experience, from what we are taught by the world.

Interestingly, this is not the only time this same group had this experience with Jesus. From John 21:1-7, we read:

After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”

I have heard people say that if they had lived in the days of Christ's Incarnation and seen Him raised from the dead, they would "have more faith". It does not work that way. Seeing is a function of faith. Certainly seeing the positive outcome of an act of faith can make us more willing, perhaps, to risk ourselves again. But an act of faith is an act of faith. There is just no getting around it. Without faith it is impossible to please God.

For three years, Peter and the rest had left their boats and followed Christ. They had seen Him do all the miracles. They were witnesses of His death, burial and resurrection. So Peter says, "Well, I reckon we need to go back to fishin', boys." I am no different. I have been transformed by the power of the Blood. But, after all, a man's got to live. Jesus reminds them and me and you that "once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia". It's not that we can't fish any more, it's that we will never fish quite the same way again. We will always be eying that deep water. And listening.

Bid the Mob Good Day

2012-02-08T11:10:00.000-06:00

When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away. — Luke 4:28-30

This is a rather intriguing passage that sounds more like a scene from a Chuck Norris movie than from the Gospel. There is no mention of arm-bars or round-house kicks so we are left to wonder exactly how it was that Jesus "passed" through the middle of a hostile crowd and walked off.

Keep in mind that this occurred in Nazareth, the boyhood home of Jesus. These were people who had known Him most of His life. His mother, brothers and sisters (or cousins if you are Catholic) still lived there.

What had Jesus done to stir up so much animosity? He had declared His destiny. After reading from what we know as Isaiah 61, Jesus said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

The Bible can be studied as literature and as history. It can be discussed and examined as a basis for establishing a good and equitable and even a free society. God is not opposed to our using His book in ways that make the world a better and more beautiful place. At its highest level, though, the Bible is more than a record; it is a revelation. It is the means for unveiling the Divine to us and ultimately in us. Consequently, by the grace of God and the power of the Cross, we may become living epistles for those around us, which would be, we might think, wonderful. Except that a lot of people, even religious people, are rather offended by God if He is other than what they have come to understand Him as or what they want Him to be.

As long as religious people can make their god into an image or in some other way clearly define the boundaries of what this god might be or be allowed to do, they are perfectly content. The ones who attacked Jesus were accepting of a fully transcendent God, of One who Could Not Be Named. And that God is very real and very much Reality. Those good Jews were in no way common idolators. The immanent — you might even say, invasive God, present in the universe, in Christ was simply too much for them to comprehend. This manifestation of God's presence shattered their understanding. Instead of accepting the Unveiling, they attacked it.

Hostility toward the immanent God did not end with the Crucifixion. As Jesus told His disciples, "Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours." When we become earthen vessels filled with the Light, when we are truly invaders behind enemy lines and not collaborators, we, too, are likely to be attacked. There is no need to be taken by surprise if we find, on occasion, that "... a person's enemies will be those of his own household.". It happens. Our families, our friends, those who have supported us and assisted us in the past may turn away if not become outright antagonistic.

The answer to this kind of antagonism is not to kick the mother-in-law in the head (as temporarily satisfying as that might be from time to time) or put a submission hold on the next-door neighbor. It is, instead, to be so secure in our peace and our purpose and our confidence in Christ that the violence of the resistance has no hold on us. We, like Jesus, are well able to "pass through" the objections that would hem us in on the precipice. The world and even worldly religion will try to cast us down, but the mob and the press of public opinion or "consensus" can never control us or contain us. We may have to face rage and walk in the middle of it, but it is, ultimately, the hopeless, helpless rage of impotence.

The Man from Snowy River

Put the Load Right on Me

2012-02-06T23:58:00.001-06:00

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. — Galatians 6:2

To bear the burden of another is not merely to help someone out in need. That is a work of Christ as well, and pleasing to God. But look what it says, "and so fulfill the law of Christ". Certainly Christ's law is to love one another, but Christ's law is the law that governed Christ, that made Him our Substitute, the anti-type of the scapegoat that bore away the guilt of a nation and a people into the wilderness, into forgetfulness. Christ is the Burden-Bearer: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Jesus is our High Priest. Consider the ministry of Aaron, the high priest: And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders for remembrance. ... And in the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be on Aaron's heart, when he goes in before the LORD. Thus Aaron shall bear the judgment of the people of Israel on his heart before the LORD regularly.

As the high priest of Israel bore the nation upon his shoulders and over his heart, so Christ bears us. Yes, He carried our iniquity, but He also stands in for us in everything. Do we struggle with fear? Jesus will bear it. Were we abused, misused, mistreated? Jesus will bear it. Are we burdened with guilt and regret? The Lord will carry it.

He can carry all that we will give Him but only what we give Him. There is a price, of course. As we are freely forgiven, so we must freely forgive. As we have been given much, so of us much is required. As our burdens have been borne, so we are called to bear the burdens of others. First Peter tells us we are "... to be a holy priesthood ... a royal priesthood". In other words, we are to stand in for others, to bear the burdens of those around us, to carry the fears and the failures of those who will relinquish them to us.

Christ asks us to take His yoke and bear His burden, which is lighter and easier than our own. How can that be? It is hard to explain but easy to see. I pass my burden over to Jesus. He can bear it easier than I because it is mine and not His. Someone else passes his or her burden over to me. It was a horrible weight to that person, but in passing it to another, some of the subjective magnitude goes away. It is easily bearable for me no matter how personally and with what empathy I enter into it. I carry only the objective weight. The subjective is, more or less, lost in the surrendering.

To take His yoke upon us means to step into the work of substitution alongside our Lord. We cannot live in isolation — as appealing as that is to a lone wolf like me. He calls us to the communion of the saints, to drink from the same cup — the same cup as Jesus, but also the same cup as our brothers and sisters who are battered and tormented by the wars and tribulations of life.

I say often that we should be careful with whom we share our troubles, careful of the prayer partners we choose. You cannot ask just anyone to pray for you — it is foolish to do so. But there are those we can recognize as burden-bearers. We know them when we meet them. With those who are yoked to Christ, we may share our deepest sorrows. They can be counted on to carry away our load and free us from the burden — not that we might be unburdened but that we might be free to step in and lift up someone else.

Just look at how many who name the Name of Christ stumble and fall. It may have happened to us or not, but surely we can understand the temptations of another, even if only by proxy or likeness. When we see someone struggling, perhaps a prominent person, should we mock and ridicule them for their weakness, or should we seek to take up their burden? It may not be possible to contact them personally and offer to shoulder the load, but we can speak to the Father and ask Him to allow us to stand in in bearing that addiction, that pressure, that terror for the one who is brought low and fallen. It is our duty, our priestly duty, and it is not limited to those who are called to full-time ministry or to a particular vocation. All believers are called to this ministry, to be yoked together with Christ, the Burden-Bearer.

Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.
He said, "I will fix your rack, if you'll take Jack, my dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."
He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can."

The Band -- The Weight

Bible Translations

2012-02-06T11:42:00.000-06:00

There are lots of good English translations of the Bible. There are probably a few bad ones, as well. As long as the translators stick to the basics and don't inject cult prejudice or try to make everything gender-neutral or call God 'Mother', I am for any version a person likes to read. I could get by quite well with the King James. The language, though, has changed, and sometimes the impact of a powerful passage can get lost in the oddly archaic familiarity. This is something like what Lewis said in his foreword to the J.B. Philips paraphrase of the New Testament. A good translation can give us a fresh look at something we already know.

Take, for example, a very familiar verse, Luke 2:14, from the KJV, it reads: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Now look what the New International Version says, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favors rests".

The New King James Version translates it identically to the original King James, but the Holman Christian Standard Version says, "Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace on earth to people He favors."

The English Standard Version and the New American Standard both read similarly, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those [or, men] with whom he is pleased."

There is nothing in those differing versions to change who Christ is or why He came into the world or the overall revelation of God's goodness and mercy. The KJV and NKJV sound a little more "universal" in that they say "good will toward men" but that is really what the NIV says as well: "to men on whom his favor rests" means that God's favor or His "good will" rests upon humanity. The most literal reading of the passage is probably something like this — Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good pleasure. But the Greek construction apparently points to the good pleasure or good will as belonging to God rather than to humanity which seems to be the object.

I used to consider the KJV, the NASB, and the NIV as the versions to compare when teaching. Because of Strong's Concordance and various word studies such as Vine's, the KJV was indispensable back in the pre-internet days for in-depth study. The NASB was the most literal of the late 20th Century translations and the NIV was widely used and less clunky in reading than the NASB. With modern software readily available and the vast resources of the internet, we need not be limited to one or two translations and the books we can fit on our shelf.

New translations are coming along all the time. The Holman Christian Standard Version is, as you might suppose, a sort of proprietary translation and somewhat denominational in flavor. Though it reads well and I use it, it seems rather Southern Baptist to me, NTTAWWT, but I doubt that it will ever be as revered as the KJV or have the reach of the NIV. On the other hand, the English Standard Version does strike me as being potentially a "great" translation. I have it in the free Bible Time software I downloaded from sourceforge.net — which is one reason I use it. It saves me some typing. But it also strikes me as having at least a little bit of the flow and resonance of the King James for public reading and memorization.

I have heard different people malign different translations. I have heard people claim that the King James Version is perfect — it is not. Translators generally do the best they can to accurately convey the truth of the Greek and Hebrew texts that are available. The important thing is to find a Bible you like and read it regularly. In the end, it doesn't matter if you use a paraphrase or learn to read the original Greek because .... the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:26, ESV)

Just Got Paid Today

2012-02-03T11:34:00.000-06:00

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. — Colossians 3:23-24

No matter what we do for a living, or just for living, it is the Lord's work. Most people we know, maybe even ourselves, need a change in perspective. Whether a person is CEO or janitor, teacher, union boss, guard or governor, housewife or construction worker, he or she is able to do that job to please the Lord. A person can be engaged in things that run generally counter to God's will and the rightness of that work has to be considered in a larger context — an assassin, for example. Surely a hooker might want to look for a more legitimate and honest line of work, and the same for a professional politician — but I repeat myself.

Aside from the immoral, anything we do can be done as for God. Paul addressed his words initially to slaves in the Roman Empire who might be assigned demeaning tasks by cruel masters. It did not matter. The Christian can turn an unjust demand into an opportunity to serve the Lord.

Most of us these days are not faced with deep moral dilemmas on the job. Our questions run more along the lines of whether or not our work is meaningful and significant. Are doctors or EMTs or police officers more important than restaurant servers or factory workers? Should we value teachers above farmers or truckdrivers? In purely economic terms, supply and demand may should determine monetary compensation. But how much we are paid has nothing to do with whether or not our work is significant. A mother who stays home and raises her children is unquestionably worth more than the quarterback of a professional football team. Only a handful of individuals can achieve on the football field, and because there are thousands willing to surrender large amounts of money to watch those activities, the players are well-paid. With enough love and a little help from the Lord, anyone can become a reasonably good parent, despite the immense difficulty of it. Good parents may be known only to their children, and their reward in monetary terms may be non-existent, but they are great in the kingdom of heaven.

Right now close to a fifth of the working population have no job at all or they have taken work that is "beneath" them. Some will say they will do whatever they have to do to take care of their families. Whatever their belief system, such people are not far from the kingdom. God is not asking us to always love what we do, necessarily; He asks us to love why we do it, to change the focus of our day-to-day work from making a living to living for Him. It doesn't matter what the name is on the hat or who signs the paycheck; it doesn't matter if we drive a truck or fly a rocket to Mars; we work for the Master.

Is Egypt Ruined?

2012-02-02T11:27:00.000-06:00

Then Pharaoh's servants said to him, How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined? — Exodus 10:7

When things have been a certain way for a long time, we conclude that things are supposed to be that way — good or bad — and that any deviation is some sort of anomaly. Most living Americans have enjoyed, relatively speaking, liberty, peace, and prosperity all our lives. We have trouble imagining the poverty in which most of the world lives, the desperation faced quite often by a majority of humanity throughout history.

Though even "poor" Americans still enjoy more comfort and ease than any except the wealthiest individuals of the past, we are approaching a horizon beyond which we cannot see. Some trust in technology and look for the Singularity. Some trust in demographics and think that America will be shattered. Some trust in finance and believe that the creation of a one-world currency will bring a new day. Some trust in governments and look for a great global hegemony.

I make no claim to know what will happen in the future except that we will all come to the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" and be united in the New Man. Antichrists and beasts and false prophets will rise and will fall. The people of God will be oppressed and suffer, and Egypt will be ruined. Or, they will be free and prosper and be at peace, and Egypt along with them.

What is Egypt? It is the archetype of the world system. Sometimes it works with the Body of Christ more or less consistently and experiences enlightenment and positive development. The West has known this in fits and spurts for the last 500 years or so. It has been especially true in America for the last couple of hundred years. I do not know if we are facing simply a minor setback in this relationship or an extended period of opposition to God's people. I am pretty sure, though, that no one can envision how ugly things can get unless you have seen some place like Sarajevo or Somalia or Rwanda. When Christ is removed from or actively opposed by the system on a large scale, darkness and destruction are the inevitable results.

When a nation turns to worshiping idols, making servants into masters, and attributing god-like powers to men, it will be ruined. Egypt, Rome, the French Revolution, the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, to mention a few, have seen the consequences. Will 21st Century America join the list? Or has it already? We have our idols to be sure. Science and technology have turned from serving us to dictating how we are live. Too many of us bow down before men and governments. There are those among us who are enriched and honored for mocking God, and sin is celebrated. America will not be saved by Washington or Hollywood, unions or Wall Street. Perhaps it will not be saved at all.

For by now I could have put out My hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you My power, so that My name may be proclaimed in all the earth (Exodus 9:15-16).

But if there is to be a revival and renewal in this nation, or any nation, it will happen because the people of God recognize who they are. We have been delivered from bondage. Christ has set us free, and we are no more slaves. The puny restraints of the world cannot hold us any more than the fetters of the Philistines could hold the unshorn Samson. We will arise and serve the Lord, and Egypt can make its choice.

The Fringe

2012-01-26T15:22:00.000-06:00

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well. — Mark 6:53-56

Not too long before this in Mark's narrative, we are told of Jesus returning to His hometown of Nazareth where the people where "offended" by His teaching and authority causing Christ to utter the proverb, "A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household." Because the Nazarenes refused to believe, Jesus could do no great works among them, though He did lay hands on and heal a few sick folks. Now the people of Gennesaret were unlikely to be better people than Jesus' kinfolks in Nazareth. Yet here Christ was sought out, honored, and believed. As a result, many were delivered and made whole.

It is natural for us to think that God takes care of the good people, and the devil takes the bad. But, as Jesus pointed out, there is none good but God. I have met some saintly people, some people who seemed to have transcended all the temptations of the material world, but they are invariably those who have been touched by the Divine. It is His grace in the life of the broken that brings them to wholeness. He makes the unrighteous righteous. After all, it is not the healthy who need a physician but the sick, and the Great Physician can make the sickest well, "...even the one who could not keep himself alive" (Psalm 22:29).

I am all too aware of my own faults and failures. Despite doing my best for many years now to follow Christ, I find that I am hardly what I should be. There remains in me much that is sick. I have a choice. I can continue to try to fix it by my own efforts, or I can do as the people of Gennesaret did. I can run to Christ. I can lay my troubled soul down in the marketplace, out there for everyone to see, and I can beg Jesus to just pass by so that I might touch the fringe of His flowing grace.

It's pretty humiliating. I should have overcome this a long time ago. I should not be in this state. But I am. I can continue to limp along, crippled and tormented, hiding my sickness from the world, maintaining the illusion that all is well. Or I can admit that I am broken despite all my knowledge and strength and ability. Perhaps I will even need some help to get where I need to be. We are often like the paralytic who was carried to Christ by his four friends who, unable to get through the press of the crowd, climbed up on the roof to lower their friend down to Jesus. It is a good thing there were four of them, for one or two could not have gotten the man lifted up to the roof, nor effectively lowered him into the room where Jesus sat. That is even more destructive to our pride, to be dependent on the support and prayers of others to get to where we can come in contact with Jesus.

When we are willing to limp or crawl or be carried by our brothers and sisters out into the open, we will be made whole, not because we are deserving, not because we are good, not because we are special, but because we are there — because Jesus sees our faith or the faith of our friends. His grace flows to us to make us righteous, to fix the broken parts of our lives, to bind up our wounds, to deliver us from bondage.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. — Titus 3:4-7

More Than We Bargained For

2012-01-23T11:37:00.000-06:00

In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. ... He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet ... He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him ... — Psalm 18:6-11

Like most everyone else, I have had a few close calls in life, a few times when only inches or milliseconds separated me from a sudden, messy death. Other times I may have missed a mortal blow and been completely unaware. The first time I recall hearing Tom T. Hall was on a record called "Salute to a Switchblade". The song tells the story of an American soldier in Germany who got into a little trouble over a fraulein. She was married to another American soldier, but the narrator, due to the absence of a ring on the lady's hand and the limitations of his proficiency in German, was unaware of this fact. The woman's husband produced a switchblade and pursued the narrator who deftly escaped. When he got back to his quarters, he was somewhat shocked to find that his coat had been "split right down the back" by his pursuer's slash.

On other occasions we may have time to pray and cry out because the distress we are in is obvious and more prolonged. But what is it we expect God to do for us? How is the Creator supposed to step into our situation and rectify it? A friend of mine was fond of quoting Luke 6:38, the last phrase of which says in the KJV, "...shall men give into your bosom." He emphasized that point because he said God is not a counterfeiter to rain down twenty dollar bills from heaven (yet another difference between God and the Federal Reserve). Our faith will cause God to move upon other people to "do the right thing" to help us out.

Grace is sometimes defined as the "unmerited favor of God". The grace of God can give us favor with other people to our benefit. When that has happened to me, as it has so often, I see it as my job to justify the provision of that grace, to repay those who have been kind to me. We cannot simply say, "The Lord has been good to me" and ignore the implied obligation. I have been forgiven; I must forgive. I have been given much; of me, much is required. For all those who seem to not understand how privilege works, you might want to re-read this paragraph.

But the thing that impresses me about the passage I quoted from Psalm 18 is the frightening implication of it. If God really does help us, if He does answer our prayers, then "...the earth reeled and rocked..." is a pretty good description of what has to be going on. We do not always see it because of the accompanying "thick darkness". But when God comes down, He must, of necessity, bow the heavens. Things are going to be moved around. Reality itself is being altered, not the ultimate and the unchangeable, but the derived reality where we live day to day. When God answers our prayers, reality is being reshaped to look more like heaven ("Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth...").

Our prayers are part of the real evolutionary process that is taking place. We, by our crying out to God, are moving the world more and more toward the kingdom. We are being transformed which in turn transforms all of creation. When we stir God up against injustice and unrighteousness, the foundations get shaken up. This is the power of prayer. This is the responsibility that we have been handed when we bind and loose. More than a few Christians need to think this through and sober up.

Those who choose not to believe can get away with it because the Lord mostly cloaks Himself. The unbelieving see only the moving, impenetrable darkness, only the catastrophic consequences. They fail to perceive the Mover.

Sometimes He escapes even the notice of His children.

Schambach Goes Home

2012-01-23T08:33:00.000-06:00

I had heard that Brother Schambach was not in good health, but I was unaware of his passing until yesterday. If you have never heard of him,his Wikipedia page is here.

He was an interesting person, probably the last of the big tent revival preachers. The combination of evangelism and self-promotion is a unique American phenomenon. It is easy to dismiss it because of the self-promotion part, but thousands really did find themselves drawn closer to God. People were encouraged to pray, to seek God, and live better lives because of men and women like R.W. Schambach.

For the most part, I believe Brother Schambach's intent was to do good. When he passed the "plate" in services, he used buckets. When someone asked why he used such large containers, he replied, "Because they hold more money." He believed that people who gave to him in faith would be rewarded by God, not because he was special but because their action in giving was an acknowledgement of their dependence on the Lord and their willingness to trust Him. It is one of those things that makes no sense unless it does.

One thing that people like Schambach do well is present complex issues in ways that even the simplest hearer can grasp. Perhaps, some will say, they over-simplify and reduce great theological constructs to bumperstickers. Maybe so. My guess is, though, there will be more peasants than PhDs in heaven.

Christ meets us where we are. He will debate with the doctors. He loves the little children.

"You don't have any trouble; all you need is faith in God." -- R.W. Schambach

Seize the Donkey

2012-01-18T11:49:00.001-06:00

And the men were afraid because they were brought to Joseph's house, and they said, “It is because of the money, which was replaced in our sacks the first time, that we are brought in, so that he may assault us and fall upon us to make us servants and seize our donkeys.” — Genesis 43:18

The witness of the Spirit is the reason I know the Bible is true. However, I believe the Bible is also correctly recorded in part because of bits like the verse above. In the King James it is even more amusing, "...that he may seek occasion against us, and fall upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses." At least it doesn't say "seize our asses." You know how those Egyptians are. We see passages in the Bible that remind us of legendary, heroic stories — the confrontation between David and Goliath is the stuff of myth and legend. I believe it happened, but I also believe somebody could have made it up and come pretty close to the same tale — which would not make it any the less true. But other times, the Bible records the unflattering, the commonplace, the utterly human, as it does here. You really can't "make this stuff" up. At worst, it will be "based on a true story."

The donkey was the ultra-compact utility vehicle of its day, an ATV of sorts. Though undoubtedly relatively valuable, even a dozen of the sturdy animals were hardly a windfall for the prime minister of the world's superpower. Our fears will lead us to assign all manner of bizarre motivations to the object of those fears. As MacDonald says in The Princess and the Goblin, "... but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of."

I have known a few people afflicted in some degree with paranoia, and I suppose I might have suffered with twinges of it myself (but they really were out to get me). You can't argue a person out of it. Logic is useless. I have probably become more paranoid of paranoia than I am of almost anything else. I will do my best to tear apart any evidence that suggests malicious intent or conspiracy. I am much more likely to err in the other direction and think that ignorance and stupidity are to blame — unless money is clearly involved, or jealousy and envy. People will sometimes act out of envy to their own detriment, which I have trouble understanding, though I certainly struggled with jealousy enough as a teenager to grasp how dangerous it can be.

And it was, in fact, jealousy that brought those brothers down to Egypt, that caused them to fear the loss of their freedom and their donkeys. It was their jealousy that had put their younger brother Joseph in bondage in the first place. Now they were the ones in whom fear played upon their long-shadowed guilt. Time had rid them of the delusion that what they had done was right or acceptable. Though their actions were hidden from their father, they had caused him great anguish by their deception. Unknown lies still corrode relationships.

If I have lied to someone, they may never know it, but I know it all along and forever. The only way to neutralize that acid burning in my soul is to tell the truth — if not to the person (and sometimes that does more harm than good, only the parties involved can make that call) then at least to myself, possibly to a trusted confessor, certainly to my Father in heaven. The brothers were not altogether ready to speak the whole truth which they all knew. When confronted by Joseph, still unknown to them, they had said only that the twelfth brother "was not." They said nothing of their betrayal. They could not yet embrace the cure.

For someone diagnosed with clinical paranoia or a paranoid personality disorder, the problem may lie in brain chemistry. For most of us, irrational fears spring up from the bitter root of unacknowledged sin, whether it is envy, jealousy, greed, lust, pride, or something else. We may not have acted on the jealousy as Joseph's brothers did, but that evil has lain long in the pit and spread its invasive tendrils through far too much of our lives. We have specialized in the choice bit of gossip, the carefully dressed innuendo, the sarcastic strike in the dark. Meanwhile, we fearfully suspect that someone, perhaps God Himself, has it in for us, is setting us up, just waiting for the most humiliating moment to yank the rug from under us and laugh at our fall.

Seriously, there are people who, through no fault of your own, you may have offended. They may try to destroy you in some way, large or small. Such was the case with Joseph. Yes, he probably should have kept quiet about the dreams, but how else would he have been in the right place at the right time to see those dreams materialize? There is no excusing or explaining away the evil that his brothers did, yet Joseph continued to hold on to his righteousness and thus to his destiny. He could fain paranoia, but he never felt it. There was no bitterness in him. He was no more perfect than any other human, but he was transparent, the same all the way through. He did not surrender to evil but overcame it with good.

If we ever find ourselves thinking that someone could desire to "seize our donkeys," it might be a good time to step back and see if there is something we need to deal with in our own hearts, a confession we need to make, a wrong we need to address that holds us back from fully and joyfully trusting God with our earthly lives as well as the life everlasting. The donkey thief is sly. Sometimes you can only catch him in a mirror.

At the End of the World is a Well

2012-01-09T09:49:00.000-06:00

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. – Genesis 21:19

The idea that what we as humans can know is all that exists is hardly worth dismissing. The most materialistic of materialists might wax eloquent on the existence of the vast quantum world which we can experience only indirectly and speak of sensibly only through intricate mathematics. We have been able to create new instruments and tools that extend our human senses and inform us that the natural eye sees only a narrow range of the spectrum and that the natural ear responds to only a segment of the sound waves striking it continually.

The verse above is taken from the story of Hagar and Ishmael. After the birth of the promised heir, Isaac, his mother, Sarah, insisted that her servant Hagar and her son Ishmael, fathered by Abraham, be sent away. Sarah perceived Ishmael as a threat to Isaac and potentially a negative influence upon his development. Putting aside that it was Sarah’s idea to have a “proxy” son by her servant, she was probably right in demanding a separation. We see later in Genesis how the jealousy of an older sibling toward a favored younger brother created difficulties on a couple of occasions.

Driven into the wilderness with only a skin of water and some bread, Hagar and her fourteen-year-old son wander rather hopelessness without apparent direction until the water is gone. Did she intend to try to return to her people in Egypt? Did she have a destination in mind and lose her way? Or was she so distraught by the uprooting of her life and her loss of purpose and status that she simply gave up?

There were established settlements in that region. There were trade and travel routes that could be followed where water could be obtained at regular intervals. Hagar apparently sought out none of those roads. Abraham did not provision Hagar and Ishmael in the way that he did with the intent that they would simply go away and die somewhere out of sight. He loved Ishmael and had received a promise from the Lord on the boy’s behalf. Being a wealthy and generous person, we can be assured that he gave the exiles enough to allow them to reach some other camp. Perhaps he even directed them to the encampment of one of his friends or allies. It was Hagar who squandered their resources.

Her life was settled, so she thought. Hagar was more than a servant in Abraham’s entourage, she was the birth-mother of the patriarch’s son. I have no doubt that Hagar loved her son, but she also viewed him as her prize, the thing that distinguished her from everybody else. It was Ishmael’s relationship to Abraham that heightened Hagar’s self-image and made her feel slightly elevated above the other servants. She had pride and position. When her status was lost, Hagar decided that her life was over. She gave up and walked aimlessly into a deserted area until she and her son reached a point where they were about to die of thirst. Unwilling to watch the death of her son, she left him in the shade of a bush and moved away. Ishmael means “God hears”. As the boy began to cry in need, the Lord heard him. God roused Hagar and spoke to her, opening her eyes to the boy’s future. It was not to end in agony as a pitiful feast for scavengers. This child, too, was Abraham’s seed. Despite not being the chosen line for the Seed of Abraham, Ishmael would still found a great nation, and, ultimately, a great adversary for the Chosen.

We can take a spiritual lesson from Hagar’s trouble. We can see that our lives have lost purpose and direction, and we have wandered until death was upon us. We gave up, but something in us cried out to God, and He opened our eyes. We saw our Well of Living Water, finding Christ and a renewed destiny.

But we lose something if we “over spiritualize” the reality. Was there a well there? Yes. Was there a well there before Hagar saw it? We don’t know. Perhaps in her extremity, Hagar missed seeing something that was plainly before her. She would hardly be the first or the last. The most reasonable explanation would be that Hagar knew there was a well in the area and was looking for it but had been unable to locate it. After sitting in the shade for a bit and recovering, she was able to process the visual information correctly and figure out where she was.

Reasonable, though, is not always true. There is a reality that underlies what we normally see and experience. When that reality breaks through, we are apt to call the event a miracle. That which we need is ever before us. We long for what is at hand, unless we have allowed our minds to be so perverted and twisted by lies that repentance has become for us impossible. Hagar could have rejected the voice of God, denied it and died, but she was not far gone in self-absorption.

I really do not think God minds all that much if we struggle to find a more “reasonable” explanation, if, in the end, we rise, go to the Well, and drink. Reality can be pretty disturbing to humans who have grown so accustomed to this derived manifestation, which is, after all, God’s creation. He is satisfied if, when we are in need, we remember, He hears.

Mystics of many countries and many centuries have spoken of this memory; and the honest men and charlatans, who keep the magical traditions which will some day be studied as a part of folk-lore, base most that is of importance in their claims upon this memory. … It is perhaps well that so few believe in it, for if many did many would go out of parliaments and universities and libraries and run into the wilderness to so waste the body, and to so hush the unquiet mind that, still living, they might pass the doors the dead pass daily; for who among the wise would trouble himself with making laws or in writing history or in weighing the earth if the things of eternity seemed ready to hand?

- W. B. Yeats from “Magic” in Ideas of Good and Evil.

House Cleaning

2012-01-03T09:16:00.000-06:00

“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord. – Zephaniah 1:2

There are times when we can fix things and reform things. We can renovate. It has been several years since we were interviewing contractors to build our house but I still remember talking to one man who related that he had learned his trade while working on his childhood home. It seemed to him that his father had them constantly remodeling, ripping out and rebuilding some part of the old house for most of the years he was growing up. He concluded his story, saying, “When we were finally done, do you know what we had? An old house.”

Most of us approach change in our lives with a remodeling mentality. There are just, we think, a few little rough places we need to smooth out, a few neglected corners we need to clean. It may turn into a bigger job than we imagined, and, when we are done, as often as not, we end up with the same old Adam. Nothing is really changed, most of the time, by our New Year’s resolutions because they do not get to the core of who we are. In effect, all we do is put on a fresh paint job or put down new carpet or perhaps get a new roof. The foundation is still as uncertain, as shaky, as prone to collapse as it ever was.

God takes a different approach. He says, before you can plant, you must plow and uproot the old weedy and unproductive life. Before you can build, you must tear down. Before you can live, you have to die. We will never have a good, solid, square house until we go down to the bare ground and return to the Lord’s perfect Cornerstone as the starting point for our foundation. God does not “sweep away” out of His anger but out of His mercy. It is His grace that breaks our dependencies on the old structure, His grace that sustains and encourages us when we look at the bare ground where our rickety old lives used to stand.

Many of us may have seen this happen in the last several years, and we may see more of it in the years ahead. Things that seemed such solid elements of our lives may be overthrown and blown away like dead leaves on the wind. I believe God is in the process of sweeping away false anchors, misplaced trusts, distractions, wrong relationships, and wrong understandings. Too many have placed trust in the transient and the temporal. The tempest will carry away these false hopes and allow us to anchor our lives to the eternal and unchanging.

Even those of us who have a right foundation and have built our lives upon Christ the Chief Cornerstone must look to how we have built. Paul warns us (1 Corinthians 3:9-15) that it is possible to build upon the True Foundation carnal lives that consist of only “wood, hay, or straw.” The quality of our building, as partners with God, does not match the quality of our foundation. When the winds come, our shanty efforts are swept away down to the foundation, allowing us to reconstruct an abode suitable for the eternal Truth and Life upon which we build. We can build again with “gold, silver, [and] costly stones” a structure that will last throughout time and eternity, one that remains unshaken, unmarred by the storms and upheavals that ravage the world system.

It is, again, the grace and mercy of the Lord that these old-nature buildings are swept away before it is too late. Let us see these acts of God for the divine wisdom that they are. Let us turn from slapping together temporary structures that please or impress the world and build, instead, for the everlasting kingdom.

There is a River

2011-12-30T23:24:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, and I promise this is the last poem I will inflict on my gentle readers in 2011.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High. — Psalm 46:4

I am drawn to water
To dark pools glowing in the depths
To bright riffles that never slept
Oceans solemn with secret bones
Languid birthright and limpid home

I am drawn to water
With ships rocking on endless waves
Treasures hidden in coral caves
Tides rising by the lunar clock
Life rolls on as we rest at dock

I am born of water
And to it stinging sweat returns
Though our toil be on desert rock
Though living fire within does burn
Though red plowed field the rain may spurn

I am living water
Beneath the sands green rivers flow
Scorners drily deny and mock
Though the course of streams they may know
By life above its path does show

It Could Be 'Verse

2011-12-28T07:44:00.001-06:00

They hatch cockatrice' eggs,
and weave the spider's web:
he that eateth of their eggs dieth,
and that which is crushed
breaketh out into a viper.
— Isaiah 59:5 (KJV)

Knotty truth to be firmly grasped sometimes
Calls on language Shakespearean, 1611
Sounds right when we utter syllables time-strained,
             Reality caught

In the spaces of our cleverly woven
Linguistic web. The translators for good
King James saw words as more than handy software
            Aptly to employ.

Even the best of intentions are too apt
To bite us in the ass like Cleopatra's
Asp which we think to crush in vitro under
           Cobwebby boot heels

Not calculating additional adders
In the eggshell unleashed, wrapping and snapping
Consequential consequences intended
            Never not at all.

Who ever thought that sowing such thoughts so small
Would amount to cloud seeding spiders and snakes?
Not me nor the people who raised me from dust
            Knew what serpents eat.

The Risk

2011-12-20T15:29:00.000-06:00

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. — Hebrews 2:14-15

Surely the Creator, the One who created man in His image and likeness, knew what it was like to be human. God dwelt within the world all along. Yet the Incarnation is different for it is more than some stirring of God's empathy. In Christ, God invests Himself totally in man.

This is the meaning of Christmas. God put Himself into the hands of man, specifically a woman and a man. There was no backup plan. If Joseph failed, if Mary failed, if Herod succeeded, it was all over. The entire history of humanity — which means the whole of creation, hung upon one man doing the right thing under pressure. We can understand, sort of, Jesus coming through for us, but before He could, He had to trust entirely in the love, the strength and the wisdom of two "regular" people. God chose well, no doubt. He poured His grace into their lives, certainly. Still, history pivots on a hinge so frail and insignificant that we wonder how it could bear the weight.

God came to know what it was to be flesh and blood, to be weak and helpless and to have someone risk everything to bring Him into the world and to protect and provide for Him once He was here. Through the Incarnation, we learn of God's love for us, but He learned of our love for one another. He knew our weaknesses and our sins. He learned of our hopeless courage, our remarkable ability to endure, our almost stupid joy when a new one of us shows up.

We get frustrated with ourselves and with those around us. We see addictions and abuse, neglect and ingratitude, greed and violence. We wonder sometimes what God sees in us, or how He could love us, or how a loving God could even have created such hapless and sometimes despicable creatures.

But then comes Christmas.

People remember that once a very vulnerable baby came into the world, and stars shone, and angels sang, shepherds marveled, and wise men traveled far. We have made a lot of mistakes since then, but, once, we did the right thing. Not all of us, not all of the time, but Christmas is a reminder of what we are can be, what we are at our best, and of where we are headed.

Merry Christmas.

Thy Kingdom Come

2011-12-13T01:39:00.000-06:00

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. -- Matthew 4:17

Before Jesus was baptized, His cousin, John the Baptist, came in the spirit and power of Elijah calling on his hearers to "repent for the kingdom heaven is at hand". After the resurrection, Jesus gave instructions to His disciples and "to them he presented himself alive after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3 -- emphasis added). Many of the parables we read relate to the kingdom, and Jesus spoke often about it, as if were vitally important.

If a person didn't know better, he might get the impression that the whole of history, the Incarnation, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and the establishment of the Church was intimately related to the kingdom of God. Of course, that is silly since no one ever talks much about the kingdom. No, the important doctrines have to do with whether or not we can dance and drink beer. The kingdom is heaven or something. It's all in the sweet by-and-by -- or maybe the sweet buy-and-buy. Or maybe not.

A kingdom is a realm of dominion -- a place where a king has authority and rules by edict, statute and decree. A kingdom has subjects or citizens, those who are born into the realm and live under the king's rule. There is no better system of government than a monarchy -- provided, of course, that the monarch is wise and good. I believe I was first offended by a similar statement somewhere in Dune, but I have come to accept that it is true. The reason we have turned from monarchies is because anyone wise enough and good enough to do the job probably has sense enough not to want it. We are then left with the merely clever, the ambitious, the warped, the weak, the wicked, the greedy, the domineering, and the foolish -- but enough about Congress.

The first qualification for a king, having primacy even over wisdom and goodness, is that he love his kingdom and his subjects. Though a monarch be foolish and vile by nature, if he truly loves his people and his land, when the weight of responsibility is laid upon him, he will strive to become wise and good.

We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We travel through this strange land as pilgrims and adventurers, and, like Jake and Elwood, we are all on a mission from God because scattered across this world, sown like seeds upon the wind, there are others of the kingdom. They are our brothers and sisters, separated at the first birth, destined to be reunited in a second one. We all need to be found and told us who we are, to have the veil drawn back and to comprehend that our sense of unease and alienation makes sense for this world is not our home. Once we have come to recognize our citizenship in the kingdom, we realize that there are many more like ourselves to be found.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. -- Mark 1:9-13

The Spirit immediately drove Him out into the wilderness. This happened to Jesus after He was baptized and declared to be the Son of God. Something similar happened to you and to me. God said, "I am going to plant this child of mine in the world." The Holy Spirit caught you up, and you were sown into a time and place, into a family and a situation that He chose for you. For many of us, it was a period of being lost in the boonies. It happens once in the flesh. But then we are awakened, and, like Jesus, it happens again as we are born of the Spirit.

I have been out here in the desolate places, harassed by the enemy and by the non-kingdom forces and entities that run wild in this world system. But there are those who come around, messengers from my Father, to remind me who I am, to assure me that I have a purpose, that this wilderness is merely a trial that I must pass through.

The desert places will cleanse our vision and open the doors of our perception to the realities of the kingdom, putting us back in touch with our Lord. And then we, too, become messengers, agents of awakening that the children of the kingdom might be born from above. Everything is about the kingdom, about the restoration of God's sovereign rule over His own chosen ones.

When the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ, how will that kingdom look and how will it operate?

The Wings of Gravity

2011-12-07T15:27:00.001-06:00

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. -- 2 Corinthian 3:17

There is nothing more important than freedom. Life itself is an expression of freedom, of God’s freedom in the universe. It is a breaking away from the determinism of matter, acquiring and utilizing energy through choices and for choices that run counter to an elemental force like gravity. When a man walks or a bird flies, the rules of gravitation are not broken but superseded. There are laws of motion and aerodynamics and thermodynamics that allow a living creature to work with gravity, to use forces of friction and inertia which would seem to hold it in place in order to move and go where it chooses.

If there were a creature that could survive in a weightless vacuum somewhere, perhaps in a potential space where there was no gravitation or anything to impede movement, that creature would be unable to move. We need resistance. We need something to drive against in order to propel ourselves toward our goals. Our imaginary creature in our imaginary space would, in one sense, I suppose, be absolutely unhindered, but in reality it would be perfectly imprisoned.

Evil may not be the right word here, but it is a convenient one. We wonder why there is evil let loose upon the world. Evil may be a function of spirit or morality as gravity is a function of matter. Evil is not meant to conquer us any more than gravity is meant to chain us to one spot. Evil enables moral freedom in the same way that gravity enables an eagle to soar or a plane to fly across the ocean. It is in our resistance against evil that we learn the truth of the law of life and liberty in Christ.

In my better moments I understand that not only is it pointless to ask for an easy life free from labor, suffering, sacrifice and pain, but the truth is that it would not be much fun. Of what value is a life without challenges, a life without failure as well as success? What would freedom mean in a world where a person never had to conquer, if nothing else, his own fears and faults? I should say, especially my own faults and fears.

Being in Christ gives us the power to overcome, but we must live for a while in a world where there are things to overcome in order to understand that. Even the Lord Himself had to come to this earth, to be incarnated, to be limited and subject to the darkness that His light might be seen.

Great Expectations

2011-11-30T19:22:00.000-06:00

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day- just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. -- Jude 5-7

(Hey) Jude understood that we need reminding more than we need teaching. He sounds a little like John in his first epistle when he says, "But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge." It sometimes seems there is nothing we can learn that we do not already know. It is not new facts or information we need but a refreshing of realization and insight. The word John uses is eido, related to eidon, "to see". There is a distinction between eido or oida which signifies a full, complete, even perfect knowledge and ginosko which is more about progress in knowledge.

So, too, Jude uses the same word to indicate that our knowledge was once fully mature and perfected, and it is still available to us if we will look once more upon it, allowing ourselves to be reminded of the truth we know. Jude says that Jesus was the Deliverer who brought His people out of bondage. But the Deliverer is not the delivery boy. God does not reject anyone. We are forced, on occasion, to use language such that it sounds as though God has turned away and left us, but the rejection is always done by man. It is humanity's failure to trust in and embrace reality that results in killing, stealing, and destroying.

This is as true for fallen angels as for fallen men, or for any other class of being under God. We desert the light and forge chains of darkness and despair that will hold us in thrall until there comes a judgment. Jude wants to make sure we understand the nature of the consequences — "eternal chains" hold the mighty powers and authorities that rebelled against their Sovereign. "Eternal fire" consumes the sin of the cities of the plain. The plain of the Jordan near the Dead Sea no longer smolders and smokes with the judgment that fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but the fires of judgment are eternal in their consequences. God will do whatever it takes to deliver us from our delusions and our rejection of reality.

"Unnatural desire" is not a statement of disgust but a statement of fact. To focus strictly on homosexuality is to miss the greater point. Immorality, whether of the kind we traditionally associate with Sodom or of any other variety, is built upon an exaltation and embrace of the unreal. Little Richard had some problems in this area. He claimed that God spoke to him one day and told him that he was a man not a woman. "If you had been a woman," God said, "your mother would have named you Martha." This is terribly obvious. The reason the Bible seems to come down especially hard on homosexuality is that this particular lie is so easy to expose. You really have to deliberately shut down all your senses including your common sense to accept it. Chastity Bono can call herself 'Chaz', get hormone injections, grow a beard, and have that operation — what do you call it? addadictome? — but if you check the DNA in her blood or tissue, it is still XX. That is the reality. We can dress people up, cut them up, remold and remake them on the outside, but who and what they are remains stubbornly unchanged.

Perhaps there is a lesson there.

You can take the Israelite out of Egypt, but what matters is whether you can take Egypt out of the Israelite. God reveals to us through a series of dramatic historical events that merely getting a man out from under the control of the taskmasters does not make him a free man. Placing a man in a new environment and new circumstances does not make him a new man. Jude says that Jesus "afterward destroyed those who did not believe". Did not believe what? They did not believe something that was "too good to be true". I can imagine that is how those former slaves looked at it. Freedom, abundant life, forgiveness, mercy, peace and joy are all part of the offer, and we cannot believe that it is real. We pass it off as dreams or ignorance or insanity. We turn away from the truth to chase shadows. We bypass life to embrace corruption and death.

God will never disappoint us.

It might be well to think on both sides of that.

With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
(Psalm 18:25-26)

To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. (Titus 1:15)

Why It Depends on Faith

2011-11-21T11:37:00.001-06:00

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. – Romans 4:16-17

I started re-reading C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces yesterday, but I did not get very far. I was sidetracked almost immediately from what may be the best fiction Lewis ever wrote -- if you can call it fiction. I was drawn away by the hook that is the principal difference between the traditional story of Cupid and Psyche and the Lewis version. In an afterword to the book, the master explains in his own words: The central alteration in my own version Psyche’s palace invisible to normal, mortal eyes – if “making” is not the wrong word for something which forced itself upon me, almost at my first reading of the story, as the way the thing must have been.

When I say something critical of those who have trouble with faith, I am speaking mostly of myself. I often struggle and complain that so much depends upon faith, upon trusting the Unseen when the Seen thrusts its ugly mug into my face, filling and overwhelming my natural vision. I want a clear path to a known destination, preferably with the occasional angelic visitation to guide, direct, and confirm. I would like to see my calling written in the sky, even if it is only “Plow Corn”. At least I would know. I don’t like looking foolish, despite knowing that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise”.

Sight, though, negates faith, and without faith there can be no grace, just as without grace there can be no faith. These are the head and the tail of the coin.

It was the same with Psyche as with Adam; as it was with Adam so it is with me. We are content with simply who we are and the faith of unknowing until, as Paul says, the commandment comes. The role the law plays is paradoxical. It enables us to know in part the great Good that meets us in the dark, but it also tempts us. The human mind can hardly resist the impulse to taste the fruit, to pull back the veil, to light the lamp, to rattle the present under the tree. We want to know, not merely accept. Sin comes alive, and we insist on looking upon that which faith forbids. Christ makes possible our restoration, but we always have to accept a certain amount of uncertainty. He leaves us free to imagine, free to fill in the blanks.

Why? That is how we know and become what we are meant to be. Psyche filled the darkness with beauty and love. Her jealous sisters filled it with horror and evil. The difference lies in who is doing the picturing. Psyche was right. I think if her sister had been in Psyche's place, the sister might have been right as well. Even for Psyche the truth was more beautiful and wondrous than the soul could imagine, at its best. But to look upon it by man’s light is to lose it. It is better to await the unveiling.

I think, perhaps, we will come back to this and review Till We Have Faces in detail at some point. For now, though, imagine a classically beautiful woman, a Venus, someone perhaps like Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly. Suppose one day this beautiful woman wakes and realizes that, though she can attract any man she desires, they are all drawn to her physical beauty. She seeks true love, love that does not turn on appearances. In an effort to find her heart’s desire, she disguises herself by mitigating her beauty and goes, in effect, veiled into the world looking for someone true. It is the plot of thousand tales, though the protagonist may sometimes be a male of wealth or position. We are drawn to that story because it connects with something in ourselves. At some level we know this recapitulates what God is doing in calling upon us to know Him and love Him by faith.

For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

The Fire Next Time

2011-11-16T14:21:00.000-06:00

They will say, Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. -- 2 Peter 3:4

Even if I had the gift of prophecy, I would be tempted to keep it to myself. Prophecy is just not a paying business. Nobody likes a prophet when he is right — even if they listen to him or her. If the prophecy is wrong, or appears to be wrong, everybody mocks the prophet. Prophecy is more about truth-telling than predicting. If we know enough of the truth about our state and condition, most of us can foresee the possible ends. Predicting is a secondary function of the prophetic word while its primary purpose is to reveal God to the limited comprehension of man. If people respond correctly to the revelation, the prediction often becomes irrelevant or obsolete. A case in point might be Jonah prediction of the imminent destruction of Ninevah. Because the Ninevites heard Jonah and accepted the truth of his prophecy, repenting of their wickedness in sackcloth and ashes, the city was not destroyed. I doubt not that there may have been some among the citizenry who eventually questioned the reliability and track-record of whale-borne Israelite preachers.

We sometimes call it feedback, and we tend to ignore it in our projections. Thus our projections rarely hold up for very long. My father used to say that the debt America was incurring was unsustainable. I have heard him many times declare that eventually the exponential growth of debt would necessitate "striking new money", to use his phrase. He said this in the mid-1960s. He probably said it before that, but I don't remember it. For the last forty-five years or more, he has been wrong, not because his basic calculations were faulty, but because increasing productivity and feedback between the various elements of a civilized society slowed and at times even checked the momentum of what now appears inevitable (though it may not be inevitable for several reasons).

Perhaps the same is true in the spiritual realm. A little further on in this Epistle, Peter explains that Christians are "waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God".

We have seen many advancements in society over the last couple of thousand years, attributable largely to the Judeo-Christian worldview and ethos. Technological improvements have often been derived from those social and structural advancements. In many ways we have moved toward the kingdom, but the feedback provided by greater ease and luxury in life has paradoxically added to the friction and turbulence of that movement. We have decelerated, perhaps even changed course to some degree. Our greater wealth, better health, longer lives, increased mobility, and multiplied opportunities have made us less sensitive to community than were our grandparents and great-grandparents. We may also be, for the most part, less sensitive to the Spirit and less focused on real purpose.

Whether history repeats, rhymes, or raps is of far less interest when we realize that it is in fact spiraling up toward an Omega Point and that we, insignificant creatures with insignificant lives, have a part in determining the slope of the spiral, its tightness, and the speed with which we approach it. In one sense the scoffers are right: all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. All things have always been rumbling, running, slouching, sliding toward a choke-point that once seemed lost in eternity future but now looms a little larger, a little nearer. Is it a black gate leading down into oblivion? Or is it a birth canal opening to a new and endless world?

But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13).

But Never Everything

2011-11-11T00:19:00.000-06:00

For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord. – Judges 6:3-6

In the movie The Magnificent Seven, a Mexican village is raided by bandits and plundered season after season, leaving the villagers with little to sustain them. They have no hope of prosperity or a better life for their children. In desperation they go up on the mountainside to the house of a wise old man believing that he can give them the guidance and wisdom they need. Do they risk the bandits’ anger by hiding food? Do they abandon the village and try to live elsewhere? Do they resist? The old man tells them they must fight the bandits. When they say they have no weapons, the old man offers them his gold watch which he keeps secreted in a bag. He tells them to take the watch along with all the other small treasures of the villagers and travel to a border town where they are to sell the valuables so that they might be able to purchase guns and ammunition.

When those sent on the mission arrive at a town, they witness a pair of what are obviously warriors engage in an act of defiance and daring in the face of unrighteousness. They go to one of the warriors afterward, a man named Chris – short, perhaps, for Christopher, i.e., “Christ-bearer”, or Christian. They tell him that they trust him to help them in their mission. He suggests that instead of buying weapons they do not know how to use, they should hire men, who, he says are cheaper than weapons.

Like the villagers and like the Israelites of old, we often find ourselves assailed by an enemy we cannot handle. We seem to lack the tools and the skills needed to address the spiritual assaults we face. Perhaps we resign ourselves to living spiritually demolished and ravaged. Perhaps we try to negotiate with an intractable foe. Perhaps we work a little harder, try a little harder. We think that, sooner or later, the attacks will cease. The enemy will forget about us. But he is implacable and relentless. He just keeps coming back. At some point we have to decide if we are going to try to continue to live an impoverished life accommodating our foe, or if we are going to find a way to defeat him.

The first thing Jesus tells us to do is to count the cost. Do not pass over this point lightly. It is better, as Henry Hazlitt said, to make fewer resolutions and keep more of them. Consider if you are really “all in” to destroying the enemy. To fight, to resist oppression, to throw off the domination of thought patterns and mental strongholds and find spiritual freedom is not cheap. It will cost us all that we have. All the little treasures we hide away and cherish in secret must be surrendered to Christ. When the villagers tell Chris they have sold all they have, he says, "I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything." Like the gunmen Chris brought to the battle, Christ does not ask us to pay what He is worth. This is infinitely beyond our means. He simply asks for what we have, asks us to entrust our meager wealth to Him – all of it. He will make what we give Him more than enough, just as He did with a couple of fish and five loaves of bread in feeding a multitude. We must go to the Spirit of Wisdom who dwells within us but apart and a little higher up. As we seek His counsel, He will instruct us on surrendering our treasures to a Man We Can Trust.

It is Christ Himself, the mighty warrior, who will come to aid us. We have seen Him upon the Cross defy and defeat death, hell, and the grave. He will come to us and break the chains of bondage and enslavement, release us from fear and captivity, empower us to face our enemies and throw them down. There is no need to live in spiritual poverty, hopelessness, and defeat. God intends for us to live in victory, to live lives filled with truth, power, and liberty.

There is a danger illustrated by the movie as well. Just at the point where there is a chance of driving away the bandits, some of the village leaders decide to surrender to them rather than fight. They prefer the devil they know. And we are often similarly tempted. Even positive change is uncomfortable for us. We decide, after struggling and not achieving immediate and complete victory, that the cost is higher than we anticipated, and we are not really willing to pay the price. Perhaps we are not cut out to be overcomers. Slavery may suit us better – keep us humble. Freedom, really, can be a little scary.

Great victories are rarely flawless. Every battle has its setbacks and fluctuations. Sometimes things get messy and chaotic. We are not sure how it is going to turn out. But that is the time to hold onto our trust in Christ and fight on. If we slip and fall or get knocked down, we are not defeated so long as we get back up. If the battle drags on longer than we expected, we keep going. Liberation can take time. Freedom is worth the fight.

Banjo Jokes

2011-11-07T19:30:00.000-06:00

I am sort of out again this week, so in the interest of political correctness, we offer Dry Branch Fire Squad's banjo jokes.

And Brother Dave Gardner's motorcycle story.

Fishing on Sunday

2011-11-02T15:25:00.001-05:00

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. -- 1 Corinthians 15:50

This would seem to say that the kingdom of God is completely out of reach of flesh-and-blood, material entities. Yet Jesus Himself spoke frequently of how we might strive to enter into the kingdom. Both He and John the Baptist preached that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. In the prayer He taught His disciples, we read, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Also when we read Christ’s parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price, the Lord is telling us that we must give up everything if we would gain the kingdom. The very next parable in Matthew’s gospel describes the kingdom as a net cast into the sea that brings out fish of all kinds – large, small, acceptable and unacceptable. It suggests that many are lured by the kingdom, but not all find a home therein.

Though Paul is primarily addressing the death of believers and the necessity of a resurrection both of the Lord and of His saints, our transformation out of the flesh does not begin with physical death, for, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” In order to be a part of the kingdom one must belong to Christ which can only happen if the Spirit of God dwells in us. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (Romans 8:8-11). That is a new kind of life, a life that is eternal in its nature, not just its duration. This mortal begins to put on immortality. It's almost like being a little pregnant, but it is true.

In the same way and at the same point, our death to the flesh begins as we are drawn into the kingdom. Maybe we should take a closer look at the Parable of the Dragnet: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:47-50). Normally we think of each fish as a person who is judged by God’s standard, i.e., Christ, to be worthy or unworthy of inclusion in the kingdom. That is correct, but there is another way to look at it. I caught, filleted, and deep-fried a couple of fish this past weekend. They are, as animals, quite simple. You could not construct a human being out of hundreds of fish – except, to some extent, by the process of a person digesting said fish. We are far more than the sum of our parts; yet there are parts to us.

When by His Spirit the Lord draws us into His kingdom, if we are willing to surrender ourselves completely to Him, He will sort through us like the fisherman opening his net. Some of those seemingly alive parts of us -- “raw and wiggling” as Gollum prefers them – are acceptable while the Spirit must dispose of other parts. He is separating "the evil from the righteous". The flesh cannot enter in, and all that is flesh that must be consigned without mercy to the furnace of judgment. Weeping and gnashing of teeth indeed is present there.

How I have wailed over my weaknesses, often less because I could not overcome them than out of fear that I might lose them and lose, in the process, something I thought of as an essential part of my identity. Have you ever said, “that’s just me”, or of another, “that’s just him” with regard to a foible or “eccentricity”? It is a sacrifice to surrender those ugly, useless, worthless fish.

Under the Law, God decreed that the fires of the altar might burn throughout the night for the burnt offering. Those fires would, nevertheless, from time to time, need to be lit and fueled. In the kingdom, the fire is never quenched. There are flames always patiently waiting to consume the flesh we will sacrifice that we may pass clean through the gates.

Camouflage

2011-10-25T12:47:00.000-05:00

Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. – John 20:17

I considered this passage a year or two ago, but I came back to it the last couple of days because it is so poetic and unique in its perspective.

Mary weeps among the tombs filled with remains, clutching at the straw of the wheat after the reaping. One approaches with the rising sun behind, his face in shadows. Perhaps he knows. She pleads with him. He tells her who He is by calling her name and warns her not to cling to Him for He must ascend. He goes to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, the Comforter of the same kind as Jesus Himself who will be with them and in them.

This is our question: will we know Him when He comes if we insist on clinging to a single mode of understanding Christ? When He comes instead in rushing winds and tongues of fire, in a strange, new selfless love, in persecutions that scatter the seeding saints as a dandelion’s fertile cloud, will we know Him? When He comes to Jerusalem in judgment and destruction, as the besieging armies of the heathen, will we recognize Him?

To those seekers looking into the light, His face will always be in shadow and mystery. It is not to forms and appearances and surfaces but to the voice, the word, and the truth that we cling. In darkness and shadow or in blinding light we cannot trust our eyes so we listen. It is not another’s name He will call but yours, and mine. Only then are we sure to be undeceived.

The Lord asks us if we are willing to know Him when we meet Him as brother or sister, mother or child, friend or stranger. Can we forget the shade of human limitation and sin and hear the voice that calls? He has kept His promise to never leave nor forsake us, in the storm, in the stones. He is the stake, the flint and steel and the spark struck. He is the passing angel who whispers forewarning to our presumptuousness; the one who pours courage like molten metal into our collapsing hope. He is the Unchanging God of Infinite Guises, rising in circumstances like gale-driven winds of the sea, always calm as the depths.

Paul, standing amid the Athenians on Mars Hill, references the poet Epimenides of Crete, “Yet [God] is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’”. It is our own ignorance that creates a distance between ourselves and God. We can find Him everyday, everywhere in everything. Without light and shadow, color and contrast, the world would be flat and dimensionless in our eyes. God stands above, but He also permeates the world, and it is His presence in and around us that gives us the ability to discern and perceive, to understand and apprehend. He gives us our depth of vision. He causes us to hear the music.

How we doubt Him in the grind and the pain.

How we forget Him in the joy and the gain.

In a voice like rain, He calls me:

When you drown in My love as the ocean,

When you are devoured by My love as a beast,

When as a sword My love descends

To unburden you for release,

Will you know Me?

Wheel in the Sky

2011-10-19T00:03:00.000-05:00

Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another, and he was given a great sword. When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!” When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. – Revelation 6:1-8

My wife bought a book recently. It was written by one of the popular teachers on prophecy. He points out that “end times” does not mean “the end of time”, which is true if somewhat obvious. I like to think about it like the Ages in Lord of the Rings. Certain elements have ascendancy in a given age. Those elements may weaken or even disappear in a subsequent age. This is different from the natural cycles of history, though those cycles are part of any age. A prophetic book whether the Revelation of John, the prophecies of Jeremiah, or The Chronicles of Narnia will be applicable in any epoch or administration and fulfillment may be glimpsed in types more than once. Humanity has seen in Christ the anti-type that casts all of the shadows of the Law and the Prophets. Some dark day humanity may see the ultimate anti-type of the many antichrists that pop up in history. I do not know.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been around and may come around again. They speak of a process that breaks down civilization. It begins with the rider on the white horse. Some say this is Christ, some say it is the Antichrist. My interpretation is my own, but I see this first rider as tyranny, for tyranny almost always arises in a Good Cause -- on a white horse. The tyrant comes as a rescuer, as one who can solve the problems inherent in, as Bill Clinton once said, too much freedom. The sword of the red horse rider is a weapon symbolic of war in general, so perhaps the bow is meant to be a more specific symbol of suppression. After all, the white horse rider comes as a conqueror rather than a warrior. He is not fighting defensively. He is the invader, the usurper and, ultimately, the despot.

Tyranny and conquest are naturally tied to war and conflict. Thus the conqueror is followed by one who takes peace from the earth and initiates great slaughter among humanity. We see this played out on a small scale throughout the world as people find it impossible from time to time to live without killing their neighbors. Many of these conflicts threaten to flare up and engulf much larger regions in blood red flames of war.

The third rider is on a black horse and is the harbinger of economic hardship, famine, and lack. Again this is a natural extension of the destruction of war which hampers the production of food and other resources along with trade and transport. In addition to hampering production and displacing resources, war itself is directly demanding in terms of food, fuel, and material. There is nothing constructive or productive about war. It is the ultimate form of broken-glass business stimulation. It creates only to destroy. The lives of many are disrupted. Many become refugees, losing their own power to produce and becoming a drain on the productivity of others.

Displaced people without enough food, lacking adequate shelter, often crowded together in unsanitary conditions are near perfect incubators for epidemics. We are not surprised when the pale horse of pestilence follows hard in the footsteps of war and economic collapse. As in our own American Civil War, disease often kills more than the war machines themselves.

What is unveiled to us is the dance of history, the cyclical destruction of humanity’s best efforts. We build our civilizations and systems, determined to eliminate the flaws and weaknesses of prior systems only to find that we have created a weakness of a different kind. There is only one kingdom that has a sure Foundation, and even that one must be tested, purged, purified, and refined. The Church will endure, though at times it must be reduced to the Remnant, so it seems. A company or two of prophets will be hidden away, and the Lord will find His seven thousand who have not bowed to Baal, and, in the end, we will come, not to another cycle of exaltation and destruction, but "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ". And He shall reign.

Until then, while the horsemen ride their rounds and the old earth rolls as a sleeper in a recurring dream, the sun goes down each day, and I hear Yeats reading the evening news.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

A Week of Paint and Pain

2011-10-10T22:14:00.000-05:00

It was just a few years ago that I painted all the ceilings in this house, painted all the walls, did the tile and trim. I remember my hands hurting from nailing all the hardi-backer boards for the tile. I do not remember pain like this in my knee and shoulders -- and this time all I have done so far is paint about about a thousand square feet of ceiling and the kitchen walls. And I took down the border in the kitchen which was a lot of work, but still I am obviously getting old.

Anyway, I won't be online much. I will be busy "enjoying" my "vacation".

I am reminded of the story our old friend Wilbur used to tell about a coon hunt. It was Wilbur's turn to climb the tree. He was up pretty high, he thought, when he spotted the raccoon clinging to the end of what looked like a mighty skinny branch. He called down to the boys on the ground that he could see the quarry.

"What are you waitin' for? Go out and shake 'im loose."

Wilbur looked at the limb for a minute and hollered, "What if I fall?"

After a brief pause the reply came back, "We'll tell 'em you went for a good cause."

Though the Fig Tree Should Not Blossom

2011-10-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. – Mark 11:12-14

This event occurred at the time of Passover. In fact, the day before was marked by Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem which we commemorate as Palm Sunday. Therefore we would say that Jesus cursed the fig tree on Monday of Holy Week leading up to His Crucifixion.

The fig tree produces two crops per year – one in the spring and a main crop in the fall. The fruit of the main crop is preferable, but in spring, the fruit begins to grow before the leaves emerge. Though it was not the “season for figs”, a fig tree in full leaf promised the presence of fruit. When Jesus saw the tree, He was drawn to it that He might satisfy His hunger. Upon finding it barren, and even deceptively so, He cursed it.

Bible expositors often tell us that the fig tree is symbolic of the nation of Israel. In fact, Matthew 24:32-34 is a frequently quoted passage among students of Bible prophecy, especially those advocating a pre-millennial, pre-tribulation rapture. Here is what it says, “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” This is believed by many to be a prophecy of Israel’s restoration to the land and the return of Jerusalem to the Jewish people as it took place in 1948 (or possibly 1967).

Jesus was not cursing a mere plant when He caused that fig tree to wither. The curse of Mark 11, as well as much (if not all) the prophecy of Matthew 24, was fulfilled with precision in 70 AD when the Roman forces under Titus destroyed Jerusalem, leveled the Temple, and drove the Jews into exile. Assuming that Christ was crucified somewhere around 30 to 33 AD, the Jews would exist as a nation in their homeland for a “generation” of about 40 years (or perhaps exactly 40 since resistance remained at Masada until the year 73).

This curse, however, did not fall upon the fig tree because it failed to bear fruit out of season. It was cursed for its deceptiveness, for the appearance that it would provide nourishment for the hungry and weary when it fact, it offered nothing. The religion of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the First Century was a religion of appearances. They liked to look good, to receive the praises of the crowd, to be noticed, but they had nothing to offer those whose souls were famished and desperate. Lacking the courage to acknowledge their own emptiness, they had nothing more than a dead letter to offer the sinners and seekers.

The Messiah came to His people, and they, for the most part, rejected Him because He upset their notions; He was not what they expected. He did not concern Himself with their shallow rules or adhere to their misguided standards. He shattered appearances and struck at the heart.

As He approached Jerusalem amid the shouts of a fickle mob, He paused: And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)

The season had come, the time of visitation, the time to turn from illusions to reality. God does not blame us or expect fruitfulness out of season. But if we practice hypocrisy and pretend to be something we are not, we will find ourselves withering and suffering under the curse that falls relentlessly upon the deceptive.

My friend Eddie used to speak often of Nicodemus who came to Jesus “in secret”. He said that Christ does not want any “secret disciples”. And he was right. In the end, Nicodemus had to come forward along with others who perhaps feared for their social standing and acceptance to express his devotion to the Lord by helping to provide for embalming and burial. Nicodemus did not fail to bear fruit in his season.

We must not hide our light under a bucket or refuse to be salt in a decaying world. But above all, we must be as honest about where we are as we can be. There are going to be times in our lives when we are barren and unfruitful, when we seem dead to the world. At those times, it will be easy for our enemies, our friends of Job's Friends, the world, and especially our own carnal minds to mock us and call us failures, to ask where God is in our lives, to ask why He has forsaken us. We will be tempted, at times, to cover ourselves in fig leaves, to appear to have something we do not have. Yet if we are willing to stand naked in our barrenness, stripped and silent before ridicule, the season of figs will come around again.

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
-- Habakkuk 3:17-19

And When We Pray

2011-09-30T09:52:00.000-05:00

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. – Matthew 6:5-6

Back when I used to teach in church, I did a lot of studying. That goes along with my nature. I enjoy reading. With a couple of translations of the Bible, a Strong’s Concordance, Vine’s Word Studies in the New Testament, and resorting on occasion to a commentary or the footnotes in my fat NIV Study Bible, I could have a fine time putting together a fairly substantial lesson for the Adult Sanctuary Class. Reading the Bible was never an issue for me. What did nag at me in terms of spiritual discipline, from the moment I began to follow Christ, was my neglect of prayer.

Of course, I prayed when I was in a bind and my wife was sick or the kids were in trouble or I needed a job or I could not pay the bills. I would pray early on Sunday morning as part of my preparation for teaching. I prayed in agreement with others during church services. Sometimes I would go down and pray at the mourners' benches in a Sunday evening service, either as my own response to a message or in support of someone else. In spite of that, prayer for the sake of prayer, or more rightly, for the sake of talking to my Father remained a difficulty.

Sometimes I would make an effort to set aside time in the morning, or I would commit to a time in the evening. I had a rosary for a while. I have tried to follow that ancient practice sometimes called the daily office or liturgy of the hours. I think that would be a good practice for some, but at this point in life, it does not work for me. (If anyone is interested, there is a recent book on it called In Constant Prayer by Robert Benson.) One day, after using the Psalms for prayer, I realized, finally, the real nature of my problem. Left to itself, my mind is like a hungry goat that has escaped from the pen. Everything thing looks edible, and there is edible stuff everywhere. Without something to focus on, I am like “a leaf on the wind” to quote Wash from Serenity.

Praying the Psalms worked for me as a focal point, but it was a little too much like, well, like reading the Bible. What I needed was more than a prayer list; I needed something like a personal psalm. I got a little cheap notebook that I could hide because there are things I pray about that are no one else’s business (see the warning above about "street corners"). The first page is a single statement of how I see my purpose in the world. The next few pages are just about me, asking God for help with specific struggles and talking about the places where I need help and where I stumble. Following that are sections for specific people and situations. I try to leave some blank space -- at least the back of a page, for new requests for an individual. Except for the opening page with its reminder of what I am doing, everything is written in pencil. I sometimes need to re-word things a little, or I realize my understanding of a situation was incorrect and a prayer needs to be phrased differently.

These are not long prayers. I try to make my requests as brief and as specific as possible to guard against "vain repetitions" and empty words. I may have multiple requests for a given person, but each is separate. If one is answered, it becomes a thanksgiving instead of a plea, a standing stone attesting to God’s grace and power.

You may have noticed that I used the word “specific” several times. A while back it was mentioned that Jesus often asked people what they wanted Him to do for them. The story of Blind Bartimaeus from Mark 10:46-52 is a case in point:

And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.”

Do we think that Jesus could not see that the poor man was blind? What did He think a blind man might want? No, the Lord was not unaware of the blindness, but He wanted Bartimaeus to know what Bartimaeus wanted. There are times when it is quite appropriate to fall down before God and cry out, “Have mercy on me!” We can be overwhelmed by circumstances that are beyond our comprehension and understanding. There is nothing wrong with a general plea. But if we have a problem that can be defined in detail, we should address it in detail. As the old song says, “Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want.”

My method is very practical and appropriate for me. Most people have better mental discipline than I have and can afford to be more spontaneous. Oddly enough, I have found that writing my prayers down this way makes them more accessible to me when I find myself with a few spare minutes. One of my requests will often come to mind as I am getting ready to go to sleep or as I am waking up in the morning. Very slowly, prayer is beginning to infiltrate my life.

Almost Cut My Hair Today

2011-09-26T17:28:00.000-05:00

And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you, and after that I will quit.” And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Etam. – Judges 15:7-8

Samson is always an interesting character. He is unique in the biblical record where possibly only Jonah is able to approach him in terms of behavior and attitude. The name Samson means sun-like. We might look at him as a Hebrew version of Apollo. He certainly has the hubris and amorality that typify a pagan god. His strength and power are also godlike, along with a potential weakness that is Homeric.

Samson was born to judge and deliver Israel from Philistine oppression. Though he killed many of his enemies, he is the only protagonist in the book of Judges who failed, ultimately, to break the oppressor’s hold over the land. Despite his personal victories, Samson is a lone wolf. It is no accident that he finds himself in Etam, which means a den or lair. The Philistines are humiliated time and again by this isolated figure, but they maintain their cities, their military power, and, for the most part, their control over the Israelite tribes.

Though God has sent Samson and ordained his destiny, the Almighty seems to have only the most minimal influence in the hero’s life. Samson did as he pleased and brought God along for the ride – or so he thought. He initially entered into conflict with the Philistines not because he wanted freedom for his people or because he desired to be obedient to the Lord but because he lusted after one of the Philistine women. He went down to the city of Timnah and proposed marriage to a girl there. This, as we shall see, is the only way that God could the “sun-like” hero to do anything other than look for a good time.

Traveling back and forth between his home and the home of his bride-to-be, Samson is attacked by a lion which he simply grabs and rips in half. He tosses the carcass aside and, on a subsequent trek, finds that bees have built a honeycomb in the lion’s remains. Apparently not too concerned about cleanliness, ritual or otherwise, the hero unhesitatingly scoops out some of the honey and shares with his parents. This leads to Samson offering a riddle with a wager to his wife’s kinfolk: Out of the eater came something eat/ Out of the strong came something sweet. His wife is threatened by those about to lose the wager, and she coaxes the answer from her avowed husband so that he loses the bet. This begins a cycle of death and revenge that carries through the initial period of Samson’s rise to power and leadership among the Israelites.

To pay his debt, an angry Samson kills thirty Philistines of Ashkelon then goes away. The bride’s father, thinking that Samson is done with the girl, gives her in marriage to another man. When Samson, looking for love, returns with the peace offering of a goat (so much more practical than roses), he is devastated to learn that he no longer has a wife. The Philistines find that, like the old Nazareth song, now they are messing with an SOB. And one with a mighty twisted sense of humor: So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.

Would Rambo or even Chuck Norris have been able to pull this off? Samson’s only regret? He had to use torches instead of lasers.

But this seems almost petty compared to the accomplishments of a judge like Gideon who destroyed an opposing army against odds of one hundred to one. If Superman were pledging a fraternity, he might pull a stunt like Samson’s. The results were also probably not what Samson wanted, if he wanted anything other than to boast of a awesome prank. The enraged Philistines did not go after Samson but after his former girlfriend and her family: And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire (Judges 15:6).

Revenge breeds more revenge, and Samson responds by striking down his adversaries, saying after he is avenged, he will quit. Having been satiated, Samson retreats to Etam, thinking, perhaps, he has shown the Philistines the folly of attacking him. But the blows fall elsewhere again. The Philistines, knowing their nemesis is in tribal territory, attacks Judah. When the tribal leaders ask for an explanation, they are told to give up Samson. The men of Judah go down to Etam and call Samson out, explaining that they will be the ones who suffer if Samson does not allow himself to be taken captive.

It is evident that everybody knew where Samson was hiding; it was just that no one wanted to go in after him. They knew they had no chance against him in what amounted to his “fortress of solitude”. Samson agrees to be bound as long as his kinsmen will not kill him before he is handed over to the enemy. Bound with two new ropes, the mighty man is delivered to the oppressors. Under threat, the Spirit comes upon Samson. He breaks his bonds, grabs the nearest object, which happens to be a fresh jawbone of a donkey (one wonders how fresh it could be). He proceeds to strike down a thousand of the Philistines, again humiliating them.

As impressive as Samson’s feat is, it is still merely an act of personal deliverance. Nothing in the text of his story indicates that he does anything other than mock and sometimes frighten his adversaries. He does not deliver the people of God.

Samson is perhaps a type of the modern church. Today’s church is capable of impressive displays, of filling stadiums and massive auditoriums with great numbers of believers. Christians own television and radio stations and broadcast the gospel around the world. Yet our culture continues to deteriorate. Materialism grows unchecked by Christianity’s efforts. Like Samson, we can put on a show, but our efforts do not deliver. We are still under the oppressive power of the enemy who seems to be growing stronger.

Yet the end is not in question. Christ conquered our enemies once for all through the Cross. So, too, Samson accomplished his greatest work after his own bondage and through his own death. Will the Church in the West soon be shackled to grind at the prison mill? I do not know. If, however, you ever find yourself shorn and eyeless in Gaza, remember this:

But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

An Infinity of Mirrors

2011-09-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." – Matthew 22:35-40

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. -- John 15:7

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. – 1 John 5:14-15

Saint Augustine said, “Love God, and then do what you please.” This has long struck me as a sort of Catch-22 since love, as best I can define it, seeks to please the object of love. For example, I am simply happy to be in the presence of my grandchildren, to see them filled with joy even when it costs me aches and pains, time and money. In a perfectly balanced love relationship, each party would try to ensure that the other was happier in order to derive his or her own happiness, which brings to mind, immediately, O. Henry’s famous story.

If we are not careful, we may find ourselves thinking that, if God wants us to be happy, we might please Him by pleasing ourselves. This would be akin to a married person thinking that if the spouse’s foremost desire is the happiness of the beloved then, if the beloved desires to engage another person, the spouse would be happy. In truth, I know that my wife would be very unhappy if I cheated on her, especially at the funeral. What actions like adultery say is that the one does not find full pleasure in the pleasure of the other.

Over and over in the Bible, God assures us that we will find our joy in Him and Him alone. Everything else, every pleasure, every success, every achievement in life can derive its meaning and fulfillment only from Him and our love for Him. When Jesus said that we cannot serve both God and mammon, He did not say that we would not have to work for a living, that we could get by without money, or that we should all go off and live as hermits. There are some who are called to a life of solitary prayer, but the vast majority of us are called to live for and to love God in the midst of a contrary and often hostile system. I have gotten through many difficult days by offering the pressures and stresses to the Lord, saying I do not work for the supervisor, the manager, the CEO, or the company but for Jesus. And, of course, some days I have forgotten and suffered needlessly for it.

Somehow I must know that what I go through in life and, more importantly, how I go through the trials of life will bring honor and glory to the God that I love. No man or woman will sacrifice their lives, labor long hours, and endure deprivation and hardship for nothing, but all will do just that and more for someone or even something that they love. Every day men and women lay down their lives for a country they love or a cause to which they are devoted. Parents sacrifice present pleasures and future dreams that their children might have better opportunities in life.

Ultimately, an old saying gets close to the truth, “Love is not a feeling; it’s an act of the will.” If I find, as I sometimes do, that the joy has gone from my life, that I am struggling and suffering in what seems to be a pointless existence then perhaps I need to stop where I am and renew my love to God, to find what it is in my life that pleases Him, and to pursue it even sacrificially. For when God rejoices in me, I will rejoice.

But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into that same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Nimrod

2011-09-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. -- (Genesis 10:8-10)

A day such as this one is a precursor to Fall around here, cool and cloudy and slightly damp. Last night, just at sunset, the coyotes set up howling at a distant siren. This morning the cats were hunting early and have just now returned without any chipmunks, field mice or the small, short-tailed brown rats that populate the runways in the fescue. They were just having a look-see, getting their stalk on, tuning up, one might say. None of us are taking hunting season too seriously, yet. There will be heat again before the first frost, unless the next ice age is impending. I have heard fools argue that hunting is some sort of sexual sublimation. The walking clay from which God formed us hunted long before being human. If anything, some of the sexual deviants in the world should take up the sport. They might find what they seek.

The dayrunning houndmen live for weather like this when the wind is not too strong and the scent hangs in the cool, moist air like a fat curveball that fails to break. Loosed to jump their quarry before the stars fade in the east, the deep-chested dogs can run all day and push even the leggiest coyote to his limits.

They are fewer these days, the houndmen. Closed land, the costs of maintaining a pack, the time-pressure of the smart phone age, it all works against them. The coyote hunters evolved, mostly, from the fox hunters. Fox hunters were nightrunners. They would walk or ride, and later drive, to an appointed spot with a cold-nosed Walker or two or three in tow, meeting often on a spot of high ground after the day's work was done, the cows were milked, and every creature, except those called to the ministry, had fed. The fasting runners sensed what was coming and almost nervously emptied themselves ahead of the challenge. One of the men might bring coffee, another a smoke-blackened pot. Soon a fire would be lit, as much for light to talk by as to dispel the chill. Hounds would be loosed, though not always all at first, and the mixed pack would head off in search of a race. No one, including the hounds, wanted to hole a fox right away, let alone catch or kill one. The object was the voice, and maybe, too, the social aspect. The hounds wanted to run, to catch the scent of a gray, or, preferably, a more sporting red and let it fill their nostrils with a mystery that moved their tongues in ecstatic utterances.

The old-line Walkers were relatively slow. They did not push the circling creature too hard. The game for the hounds was not to catch the fox but to run ahead of the other dogs, to be at the apex of the pack. There were no sexual distinctions. It was often a light-footed bitch in the lead. The hounds in front are more vocal; the hounds in back or that are trying to catch up are less vocal. Each man knew the voice of each of his hounds and those of his more frequent companions as well, if not better than, the voices of his own children. It is fairly easy to pick up the unique notes and tones of a dog's running voice, even out of the pack chorus. Like humans, running dogs have their tenors and basses, altos and sopranos. Some day, as a new dawn breaks on some golden hill, I will hear again the high, fine mouth of the hound we called Dodger carrying through rich, still air above the voices of his brethren, and I will know familiar faces wait not far ahead.

Coyotes are mostly all business in front of a pack, but they might know that coyote hounds run to catch. The short-winded, more feline gray fox will seek escape at the earliest opportunity, but the red, Ol' Reynard himself, he is a game player. The old-timers tell of seeing a red fox pause to sit, to catch his breath with laughing, lolling tongue, and to listen to his choir of inquisitors as if he enjoyed laying the track as much as they enjoyed searching it out. Though these predators may fear humans -- just as they fear other predators and even some of their own kind, they have learned to deal with us. We have brought something into the world which challenges and elevates them, a hint of meaning and an ethereal fragrance of a glory they cannot know apart from us. But, the Disneyfied object, you bring them death. It is true. Sometimes we do, but death is ever the constant companion of the beasts of the field. They, too, live by death. The game is in playing it, dodging it, outwitting it. Josey Wales might have been correct when he said, "Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy." Nevertheless, dying is a part of it, the fire we dance around and that with which we pepper the game to rush the blood to our faces, the tears to our eyes, and to vibrate our tongues in chilling, joyous cries.

Dead Reckoning

2011-09-12T11:31:00.000-05:00

So you also must consider yourselves deadto sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. – Romans 6:11

The ESV is a little weak, though correct. I just like the old KJV word “reckon” betterthan the more generic “consider”. Itsounds like something Josey Wales might say.

“They say you’re dead to sin, Wales.”

Spit. “I reckon so.”

Considering oneself dead to sin makes sense only in light ofthe preceding statement in verse 2: How can we who died to sin stilllive in it? The truth is thatreckoning has more in common with accounting than with gunslinging. When we write down the balance in our accountbook, it had best be the amount that is actually in the account. Otherwise we can find ourselves guilty ofwriting bad checks or perpetrating fraud – unless, of course, we are thefederal government. Come to think of it,“account” would be a better modern word than consider.

We can account ourselves dead to sin because we identifywith Christ, or rather He identified with us. He immersed Himself in human flesh. He made His obedience and death ours. We are drawn into and immersed in His death, or, as it is moretraditionally put, we are baptized into His death. This accounting, then, is a matter ofrecognizing, acknowledging, and operating in accordance with the revealedtruth.

By accounting ourselves dead to sin, we are not like theLittle Christian Who Could, huffing, “I think I’m dead. I think I’m dead.” We are not by our heroic efforts making ahope or even an uncertainty into a reality. The illusion is not that we are dead to sin but that we feel the need tosin.

I suppose I should stop and make the point that when I say “sin”I am just using a shorthand for anything that is perpetrated by the old Adamicnature, anything that is done out of material or animal impulses. A lot of us have never committed adulterybecause, frankly, it is a lot of trouble, and we are just too lazy to doit. Some of us have never committedmurder or stolen diamonds only because we are scared of getting caught andwinding up in prison; or, we don’t know a trustworthy fence, or because cleaningup the gore after a homicide might cause us to miss “Dancing With The Stars”. And, really, there is a reason they call it “deadweight”.

Instead we steal time from our family and friends byshifting our work onto them. We cutpeople up with cruel words. We fill ourminds with vicarious adulteries and “romances” and violence via television andthe internet. We manipulate and deceivein order to get our way or not suffer the consequences of our actions. I could go on, but, as Leonard Cohen says, everybodyknows.

If we are indeed dead to the old nature, why do we feel suchan obligation to it? Why does it seem totrap and hold us so much of the time? Everythingis answered in Genesis. And Godblessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earthand subdue it and have dominion over thefish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thingthat moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28 – emphasis added). We are meant to rule. But equally and reasonably we are meant to be ruled over. We feel an obligation, a sense of loyalty,and we do not know to what or to Whom we rightfully owe it.

Did you ever wonder how Lucifer could rule a bunch of fallenangels that were already rebels? Ihave. It looks to me like the devil wouldbe so busy putting down uprising that he would hardly have time to annoy me. But all of God’s creatures, fallen or not,are built with a sense of loyalty. This is why we find the traitors punished in the very lowest circle of hell. No one respects a traitor, not even those whobenefit from the betrayal. Many shouldbe fearful.

Though Adam has long repented his failure and thetransference of his allegiance to the enemy, we followed our father in hisdisloyalty and rebellion under a new master. We could not helpourselves. We were bound to theflesh. We could not break the curse withoutbecoming accursed. So it was that Goddivinely provided an alternative. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between youroffspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruisehis heel (Genesis 3:15). Onewould come born of woman but owing fealty to another Father. He took the curse upon Himself and broke itspower.

Now, if we obey only our heavenly Father, no one can accountus as traitors. While many may notdesire to have the Lord be their Lord, they do not become rulers themselves butremain subject to the flesh, for all of creation will give allegiance to that which it believes is master -- no matter how base or destructive. In the midst of a world system that operates on the power of the flesh,we must remind ourselves of the truth regularly. It is like the illusion of a rising andsetting sun. It is easy to forget thatit is a function of the spinning earth.

… be transformed by the renewal of your mind …(Romans 12:2).