Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-29-24

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of things they say about Jesus Christ are not true. Especially hearing all that Jesus-stuff around Easter, you know? Enough! What bothers me, really, is that we’re not hearing about that other Jesus, as I call Him.

Oh, He was serene and holy, like the peaceful face we see in stories about the Shroud. And I’m sure He smiled a lot, and sometimes wore perfectly starched robes, and went around patting children on the head, like I saw on the covers of all those Sunday-School pamphlets.

And if I remember correctly we have stories of Him preaching and dispensing wisdom and then moving on to the next town, other river banks. Like in the Chosen TV series. Yes, He was misunderstood; people were jealous of Him or threatened by Him; and He was an innocent victim of persecution. I understand all that.

But why can’t He just leave me alone with those images? Messiah, I get it. Died for my sins, fine. Shouldn’t that be enough, like at Christmas and Easter? A lot of people think that’s the whole package… but it turns out that’s not the case.

Which is what makes me annoyed, drives me crazy.

A Jesus who smiles all the time? No… I see Him otherwise. Sometimes He is angry. Sometimes He is disappointed and looks sad. Sometimes I see tears in His eyes. In those moments He confronts me. He reminds me that I make mistakes and even sin, that I am lost in this crazy world. He pleads with me to make a choice. To change. To believe in Him. To replace the junk in my heart with the goodness He promises. I’ve heard it. I hear it.

The annoying thing: He never shuts up. I wish there were a fishing village down the road, or some little group of followers that He would move on to. He persists. He won’t let me go, leave me alone. Those paintings of Jesus standing at the door and knocking? Don’t let that kid you. He knocks at the front door. The back door. He scratches at the windows. He is like an alarm clock; like virtual phone calls and texts. “Why do you ignore Me, reject Me?” is what He seems to be saying. “I love you! Don’t you understand? I love you! Let me in!”

And how annoying is this? – I’m getting the feeling that Christmas and Easter are not enough for Him. Or church once in a while. Or even every Sunday morning. He wants me, not my schedule or my habits or my family’s customs. But don’t I pray… or think about praying… or tell people I will pray… when someone is sick, or I’m having another crisis? What does He want from me, anyhow???

Why, why can’t Jesus be like the guys in those other religions? A wise man, a powerful teacher, a prophet, a role model… those are good enough gods for all those other followers, and their lives are OK. Well, maybe not, but at least those religions are sensible. I mean, Buddha and Mohamed and Confucius and the rest didn’t ever claim they were sons of God, or “God With Us.”

Isn’t it just like Jesus, though, to be the only One claiming that this is exactly who He is? That accepting Him is the way, the only way, to experience forgiveness, to have eternal life? It gets annoying, doesn’t it?

Because if it’s true… I’m fried. If that persistent, sincere, earnest, holy, logical, annoying Person called Jesus is telling the truth, I should be scared crazy. I heard that Bono recently said, “Jesus isn’t lettin’ you off the hook… When people say, you know, ‘Good teacher,’ ‘Prophet,’ ‘Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge: either Jesus was who He said He was, or He’s a complete and utter nutcase… You have to make a choice about that.”

Annoying! “Make a choice!” First Jesus says it; and then all those people who died as martyrs, embracing Him; and then these guys like C S Lewis and Bono, laying it out so logically; and then… then… then I know I do have to make a choice. Annoying!

Everything else in life these days frees us from having to make choices. Or, if we make bad choices, someone is right there to say “No worries” and “It’s OK” and “No problem.” That’s what is great about modern life, right? But… “Make a choice, make a choice!”

It’s not like my life depended on it. Can’t you see how annoying this Jesus is? Why? WHY?

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The simplest Sunday-School song, maybe the very first hymn a lot us remember hearing, answers the question of Why Jesus is so… well, annoying, sometimes. But Jesus loves me, this I know.

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Click: Yes, Jesus Loves Me

4-8-24

America once was called the Land of Many Churches. In many places, it still looks like that.

Whether it is the Land of Many Christians, compared to the past, however, is an open question. I will not count or recite statistics about how previous standards have fallen, or that fewer people believe in God these days. But the dissolution of traditional faith among the general population is one matter. That traditional faith has declined in many churches and denominations is something to note with alarm.

Whether the decline in faith has brought societal decay, or vice versa, is open to question. It ultimately is a silly question… or I should say frightening, because it is a condition, not a riddle, that confronts us. Nevertheless it is interesting, especially considering the historical sweep of Christianity, that the Christian faith might be retreating in Europe, the UK, and America; but it is growing and thriving south of the Equator. Contrary to common belief, it is, for instance, growing faster in Africa than Islam is.

Further, it is the case that African churches are sending missionaries to Europe, the UK, and America – the opposite of centuries-old paradigms – seeing mission-fields needing to learn about Christ.

This situation in America occurs to me when I receive letters or when people talk to me, usually in response to blog essays I write. I am eager to talk to people who have fallen away from their faith; reaching such people is one of my goals. Sometimes when people have spiritual crises, it is not because of intellectual debate, or other varieties of belief, or the siren-calls of the world’s temptations. It grieves me that there are people, and I’m afraid a lot of people, who have been turned off by… churches themselves, and other Christians.

Many churches, and whole denominations, have abandoned the essentials of the faith. Relativism, secular values, and the denial of Biblical truths – even the Virgin birth and Christ’s divinity – have crept into pulpits. Many churches conform to the world instead of trying to redeem the world. Of course people will begin to wonder, “What’s the point?” and children will ask, “What’s so special about Christianity?”

Is this not everywhere? No, it is not. But it should be nowhere.

Worst of all, however, is an age-old cancer on the church that is virulent today. Its adherents think they are defending orthodoxy and spiritual purity – and sometimes they do – but very often they show themselves as judgmental, censorious, exclusionary, and hateful. In our midst as Christians, we have today some very learned and influential leaders who argue – yes, sometimes, hatefully – about fine points of theology.

Quickly, I say that matters of faith – regarding salvation, sin, sacraments – are essential. But angels dance on the heads of pins when Christian leaders thunderously intone against “wayward” beliefs about when the Tribulation will take place… whether History unfolds as literal Dispensation we can discern from Bible study… whether the Gifts of the Spirit were valid only in Apostolic days. None of these things – or, more pertinent to many people, social policies and current events – affects anyone’s salvation. That is, knowing Christ, and knowing that your eternal home will be in Heaven.

A letter I received, responding to a recent Easter essay here, illustrates how these malignant attitudes are repelling people, not drawing them, to Jesus. I summarize the heartfelt letter:

The Old Testament followers rejected him because they were expecting a military-type leader, not a forgiving, all-inclusive loving teacher. I’m afraid many so-called Christians today have reverted to the earlier kind of thinking. They say Jesus of the New Testament is too wimpy and “woke”. They are not following Christ. I realize I am opening myself up to angry criticism. So, bring it on, Haters. I hope, rather, that you may immerse yourself in serious introspective thought with the utmost of humility and God’s Grace.

I was compelled to respond. Summary:

My own experience through all the years is that there are probably roughly equal percentages of people who love Jesus but can be “mean,” even haters, and those who hate Jesus and can be “nice,” each by the world’s definitions.

One problem with religion is that people frequently use it as a tool – or a weapon – to attack others according to their settled prejudices. As if they know, or really care, about what Christ said, or taught, or died for, or Who He was. One-tenth of the effort to criticize the “other” side in such arguments, if channeled instead to love, would lead to a better world and better people, more harmony. More forgiveness, more understanding.

But life (literally) is about more than peace and understanding. It is “all about,” or should be, what Jesus said, and Who He is: not what people want to weaponize, even friendly tools like social harmony. Another Easter comes and goes with so many people using Jesus… instead of surrendering themselves to be used BY Him.

There are Christian haters, sure. As with the religious leaders in Jesus’s day, they can be as vipers. Whited sepulchers. I have often stated that organized religion, not only self-righteous leaders, might have sent more people to hell than half of Satan’s demons. Hypocrites abound in our churches.

But… there is always room for one more. It is a tragedy when it becomes easier to hear the Haters than to see the Loving Savior.

Do not reject Christ because some of His followers are flawed. Do not avoid faith when some people practice their faith badly. Do not cheat yourself of the blessings of walking with the Savior when you might feel so empty… and He is opening His loving arms

Remember the words of Jesus, who still suffers abuse in His name:

A new commandment I give unto you, That you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all people know that you are my followers (John 13: 34,35).

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Click: They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love

Easter, 2024

Every Christmas, Handel’s Messiah is Top-Ten in peoples’ lives. In concert halls, churches, and community sings; on radio and TV we hear the oratorio, or at least the familiar “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” and the “Hallelujah” Chorus. Even if only once a year, this is a good thing, culturally and spiritually.

Handel’s masterpiece encompasses, as its simple title proclaims, the entire life of the Savior, from prophesy to Resurrection. Handel lived his life in Germany, in Italy, and thence to England where he generally is embraced as a British composer. Messiah actually was first performed in Dublin. I was privileged to see his writing desk on display in the Writers Museum in the Irish capital.

More provincial than Handel was his landsman Johann Sebastian Bach, born the same year, 1685, only a few miles away, although the two musical titans never met. Bach’s musical reach, however, arguably is greater than Handel’s geographical realms; as great as that of any mortal who ever hummed a tune or wrote a melody.

They may be compared – just as Christmas and Easter may be compared in the business of our lives – but if their works may be compared, it is unfortunate that Bach’s supernal religious works probably are less celebrated than Handel’s Messiah. Anyway, less “familiar” to the ears of average folks, especially during holidays. This is regrettable, because Bach wrote music of astonishing power, musically and of deep emotional import. The B minor Mass; Magnificat; more than 200 cantatas; motets; and two Passions, St John’s and St Matthew’s.

It might seem like I have begun with a predictable tangent before I have even begun this Easter message. But, no; I want to draw attention to the amazing way the human race’s greatest composer presented the Easter story. I wish it were better known to people: more familiar.

For Holy Week vespers services in Leipzig, Germany, Bach wrote the St Matthew Passion and the St John Passion, which were each performed in the St Thomas and St Nicholas churches on alternate years for decades. Three other Passions apparently have been lost. Bach wrote about 1800 pieces of music in his lifetime, and about 1200 are extant. Approximately half of his output was Christian music.

His Passions were series of cantatas to be performed during Holy Week, and in parts during services. They were similar to oratorios or operas but without costumes or drama – singers were assigned roles, and there was a musical “narrator.” The straight biblical narrative was distributed among soloists (evangelists and individual figures including Jesus, Peter, and Pilate) and choirs (various crowds, high priests, Roman soldiers, and Jews). We can appreciate the spectacle that the congregation beheld: a combination of church and theater, Greek-style drama and opera, music and voice, emotive performances.

Two broad categories commend Bach’s favored Passion (possibly the work of which he was proudest of all his compositions), The Passion According to St Matthew.

Musically, it is a succession of amazing melodies, alternating gentle beauty, then tense drama, then profound emotion. It has musical motifs and phrases interlaced, reflecting the underlying themes and meanings of events during Holy Week. The combinations of solo instruments and voices; unique combinations and harmonies; and grand choruses of voices and full orchestral power are impressive.

All is outpaced, of course, by the spiritual message, the meaning of every scene and biblical phrase, and the skill of dramatization – the masterful presentation of the events – and the spiritual significance of every element. This is not a mere recitation of happenings, or a reading of Bible verses. The “Narrator” guides us, but Bach’s composition is a stunning re-creation of the agony and ecstasy of the Crucifixion story. By the verses and voices, the St Matthew Passion provides the points of view of all the participants and observers – including God, by quoted Bible prophesies; Jesus, by His words; and even us, dramatically through the eyes of the crowds in Jerusalem.

History came to call Bach “The Fifth Evangelist,” the accolade bypassing even his spiritual mentor Martin Luther, because of his clarity of spiritual understanding and the power of his musical talent. Some 15 years ago I wrote a major biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, and with every fact I researched, every work I listened to (and listened again and again) my awe increased. He was, in the end, a theologian who could write music, the greatest that humankind has produced or heard. It will be savored as long as men have ears, in the words of H L Mencken.

My friend the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris wrote me a note wherein he called my Bach biography superior to his own study of Beethoven, if you will permit me a little boast (well, I don’t give you a choice). However, he averred that I painted a portrait of Bach as being too much of a Christian; that spirituality was not a major component of Bach’s character. I am afraid that this opinion reflected more of Edmund than it did of Johann. For all of the old German’s success, Bach confessed that he was proudest of being a follower of Christ; then, a husband and father in his community; then, a music-maker.

And here we meet the Easter theme. We must all be proudest – first importance in our lives; the focus of all we do – of “knowing Christ and Him crucified.” The Easter story, the dramatic Passions, should be read and listened to and meditated upon, every week of the year, not only during Holy Week.

Indeed, the message of the cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, should be the themes of our lives. Church “days” are useful to help us focus, motivating our faith and devotion, reminding us of how the Savior of our souls suffered on our behalf. His sorrows and pain were endured to fully identify with broken humanity. His death was a substitute for the punishment we deserve as sinners.

God became flesh and dwelt among us, a sublime mystery. And – you know the story – His Incarnate Son’s resurrection from the dead is to show the promise of our eternal life. Unspeakable glory awaits us.

You can experience the story in what may be a new way. I recommend that you set apart a couple hours, open the link to the music video below, and let the story of Passion Week, the genius of J S Bach, and the mastery of conductor Karl Richter bathe your soul. The artistry of the performance matches the innovative music of Bach. Orchestra and choir are in a stark setting here. A giant cross above and behind the musicians changes its position amid bright and dark lighting, reflecting the tones of the unfolding Biblical text. I pray that you find the time to savor this.

And have an even more blessed Easter.

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Click: Bach St Matthew Passion BWV 244 Karl Richter in parts

3-25-24

Mama, I just don’t understand the things in Jerusalem this week. There are strange things happening every day. I am scared, very scared. And just a week ago, on the Sabbath, I was wild with joy, as I wrote you afterward. I write to you now about more recent events.

Maybe you have heard all these things. Or maybe not; maybe it will all be forgotten in a fortnight. I don’t know.

You remember how I wrote about this man called Jesus, the preacher and healer everybody talked about – some called the Messiah, including himself – how he finally entered Jerusalem. I wrote how the people, almost the whole city it seemed, welcomed him and cheered him.

Yes, I was in that happy crowd. I called his name. I put my cloak on the ground before him. I waved palms to honor him. Maybe you heard – he rode on a donkey. Some thought it strange, but you and I talked about how many ancient words and prophecies were fulfilled in his life and the things he did. Too many to number! And this was one of them, the humble king choosing to come as a servant.

Then. Day after day, it was like a nightmare. The Jewish elders accused him of blasphemy. Some people started to doubt who Jesus said he was, and made up stories about the miracles. The religious leaders made demands that the Roman rulers arrest Jesus. They threatened a revolt in the streets.

Pontius Pilate went along with their demands, and the people became a mob, convinced of all the lies being told. The Romans arrested Jesus, but that was not enough. Pilate offered the mob to pardon Jesus, but that was not enough. Jesus was thrown in jail, but that was not enough. In the public square, Jesus was stripped and whipped until the skin on his back was like bloody ribbons, but that was not enough. Usually, for the Romans, that is a virtual substitute for the death penalty, but that was not enough. The religious leaders and the mob screamed that Jesus be nailed to a cross until dead.

Pilate made a show, washing his hands of responsibility… but that was not enough.

No one spoke for Jesus. His mother wept, but all his friends scattered and claimed they never knew him. I am ashamed to say that I hid, too, and was silent. You know who else was silent? Jesus himself – he just quietly suffered. Mama, I just don’t understand.

I did watch as he carried that heavy cross to the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem. I watched as they nailed his wrists and his ankles to the wooden cross and raised it. I watched for three hours as he writhed in pain. He finally spoke a few words. You will be interested in things he said – he prayed to God that his tormentors be forgiven, for they know not what they do.

There were two other crosses, one on each side – condemned men. One mocked Jesus; the other called him Messiah, and begged forgiveness. Jesus uttered that the man would be with him in Paradise.

Jesus looked down on his mother, and said “Behold, your son.” Her sorrow was wrenching. Then he looked, it seemed, into my eyes too! And it was like he saw into my soul. It was like he saw all humanity. It was like he looked toward eternity.

Just before he died, he said, “It is finished,” and I wondered whether he meant his life… or his mission, his purpose. Maybe we will never know. Will this all be forgotten? It looks like the religious leaders, the government, maybe Satan himself, have won.

Mama, I don’t understand any of this. A week ago, the only things that many of us could think of were his teachings, his miracles, his healing. His love. And now… this. Please don’t condemn me. I went along with the crowd. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? I went along with the government rulers. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? I went along with the religious leaders. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they?

I must go to you, and let us search the scriptures together. For I seem to remember that he foretold that he would overcome death. And we have been taught that the Messiah would suffer the punishments for sin that we deserve. And he said he would rise again.

But, Mama, I have to tell you that he did die. I saw it. The skies turned dark and the earth trembled. It felt like all of creation groaned. A Roman centurion looked up and called him the Son of God. But they took his dead body from the cross. They prepared it for burial. They put him in a tomb, and they sealed it.

Mama, two days have passed, and he has not come back to life.

There are strange things happening every day, but Jesus rising from the dead is not one of them. Mama, I just don’t understand.

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Click: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded – Bach’s St Matthew Passion

3-4-24

Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus.

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Immediately after a devastating tornado hit his house, but with his family safe, a Kentucky man was able to praise the Name of Jesus.

Click: There’s Something About That Name

2-19-24

This essay is published mid-way between the birth day of Abraham Lincoln and the homogenized American consumer-holiday called Presidents Day.

The imports and legacies of great Americans like Lincoln and Washington cannot be ameliorated by the elevation of three-day weekends and used-car commercials with buffoons dressed in stovepipe hats. But the unrelenting trashing of American traditions continues in uncountable ways, from legislation and court decisions, to entertainment and media content, to re-branding the formerly solemn regard once paid to icons of our heritage.

Yet figures like Abraham Lincoln survive.

Lincoln is the closest we have had to a civic saint: certainly a secular saint for his wisdom, words, and actions. I think so partly because he was not exalted, except by ballots, but more as he was the simplest of men; common; honest. Literally, a typical American.

Theodore Roosevelt (whom readers know I also revere) framed his assessment of Lincoln (and George Washington): “There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these.”

More than anything, we are struck by Lincoln’s humanity. He was forever patient. He arrived at policies amid anguish, but he executed them firmly. He knew firsthand the turmoil of broken families, brothers fighting brothers; he suffered all these painful tests and duties. We know he kept his sense of humor. But what I have come to admire as much as any other trait is Lincoln’s faith.

It is a matter of debate how “religious” Lincoln was; whether he accepted Jesus as the Son of God; whether he believed in salvation or the need of personal salvation. It is not a matter of debate that he seldom attended or joined churches. It is a matter of record that he read the Bible his entire life, quoted even obscure verses often, and laced his speeches and writing with Bible quotations, scriptural allusions, King James cadences.

We cannot judge most of these things: some close friends like his longtime Illinois law partner Billy Herndon claimed that Lincoln was a gnarly heathen – but Herndon’s relationship was always rocky, and he wrote a biography of Lincoln after the assassination that sniped at a hundred minor particulars. However, Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay (another hero of mine, by the way; a neglected figure in history), testified to Lincoln’s spiritual struggles, and his reliance on prayer in the White House. This was a time, generally, of private expressions of faith, when many Christians thought that respecting Christ’s teachings was more important than publicly affirming His divinity (this is not a recent phenomenon!), and when Old Testament lessons were preached more than New Testament parables. And many babies received Hebrew names.

Yet it was also a time, despite these anomalies of private beliefs and public expressions, of latter-day “Great Awakenings” as they are called, when waves of revivals spread throughout America, and when conversions to Christianity led to movements like Abolitionism, against slavery.

There are aspects of Lincoln’s faith in Christ that are beyond doubt. The pressures of holding a country together, and prosecuting a horrendous war, coincided with Lincoln’s growing faith. It is inspiring to read of this evolution (and I have read more than 65 books on Lincoln, including his complete letters and all his speeches), but most inspiring is to read his own words.

Lincoln, during his last years, displayed a steady progression of appeals to God… invocations of Providence… references to Jesus as Savior… seeking the Lord’s guidance… biblical quotations… allusions to Bible history… setting aside national days of prayer, as well as fasting, humiliation, and thanksgiving; a multitude of times; and with increasing clarity and spiritual contexts. By the end of the war, the speeches and proclamations of President Lincoln resembled actual sermons, always beseeching God in humility, never presumption; always inspiring.

It is this Abraham Lincoln we remember today.

Some of his quotations included his reference in the first inaugural address to “a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” In the second address, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” And of course his reference in the Gettysburg Address that this “nation shall under God have a new birth of freedom.”

A proclamation:
It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the Supreme Government of God; to bow in humble submission to His chastisement; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray, with all fervency and contrition, for the pardon of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action. And whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.

In private communication, 1862:
We are indeed going through a great trial – a fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happened to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so, I have sought His aid.

About his “dark” moments when Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln wrote:
When everyone seemed panic-stricken… I went to my room… and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed… Soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into His own hands….

During the war, Lincoln responded to someone’s wish that “the Lord was on the Union’s side.” Lincoln responded:
I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.

Lincoln said about the Bible:
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book.

And other reflections:
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.

Imagine, if you will – and we ought to – an American president who would write or speak, or believe, such things today. Lincoln was reviled then, and often now, as an “agnostic, deist, infidel.” But by their fruits ye shall know them.

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A country-flavored version of a favorite hymn – well, Lincoln WAS from Kentucky – but with a true story of the President’s exercise of Christ-like compassion:

Click: Abraham Lincoln – What a Friend We Have in Jesus

2-12-24

It seems lately that I have a disproportionate number of friends (Don’t stop there! Keep reading…) a lot of friends who are going through tough times. Hard times, financially; various personal crises; health challenges. It is everyone’s lot to endure such things, and maybe I am just more aware of conditions – not that I am immune, either. Believe me.

The Bible, for all of its wonderful promises, tells us – assures us; warns us; almost promises us – that tribulation will come. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” In fact, in the short run and the long run, the righteous shall experience persecution and tribulation.

Nevertheless it is proper to ask relief from such things in life. Of course. And we learn from suffering. God never sends sickness or disease, but there is sin and corruption in this world. In general and in particular, we bring many things upon ourselves. As we overcome, God is glorified. “All things work for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes.” It doesn’t mean all things are good; we must work to make things right. To turn the devil’s oppression back on him; to redeem aspects of those tough situations; to glorify God. By relying on Him, more than ourselves.

This is His plan. We must see this through our moments of torment and pressure. There is a mystery, therefore, in suffering. “Redemption draweth nigh.”

Don’t take my word for it. Nature itself, all around us, provides examples.

The beautiful, iridescent pearl, so rare and lovely and prized in jewelry and fashion, begins its life as an irritant – a speck of sand that worked its way into an oyster and attracts mineral coating. What began as an annoying invader ends as a precious thing of rare beauty.

Then there is that empty oyster shell itself, or other colorful or mother-of-pearl or iridescent shells like conch and abalone and cowrie and sunshine shells and volutes and miters and snail shells and varieties of scallop shells and complex, wondrous nautilus shells… all are, simply, empty husks of what they once were. They housed living mollusks, and are now dead skeletal remnants. Yet we prize them for their beauty, their new lives. What they became.

The greatest example of this principle, this view of new life, second chances, redemption, and benefiting from great pressure, is the diamond. Those rare and precious and beautiful gems all began their lives as chunks of coal. What plays some of the roles in their transformation? Time and… pressure.

It matters not at all whether we bring problems and crises and pressure upon ourselves, or not. Tough times are tough times. It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts, a wise man once said. God has told us to be more than “overcomers.”

Listen. I surely am aware of the cautions, and the implications, in the story of Winston Churchill during the London blitz. Probably apocryphal, but as the bombs were falling on the burning city, an aide supposedly said: “This might be a blessing in disguise.” Churchill’s legendary response: “Some blessing. Some disguise.” A reaffirmation: we are to look beyond circumstances, past our tough times.

We can be “more than conquerors.” Billy Joe Shaver put it in a song – “I’m just an old chunk of coal… but I’m gonna be a diamond some day!”

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Click: I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal

2-5-24

I was pulled over on the Interstate recently, according to the officer, for “going 75 in a 55 zone.” My defense was futile but worth a try: “Isn’t 75 the new 55?” Actually this is a parable; it didn’t happen.

Technically, it is a fib, not a parable, but at my age that’s the best I can do. Speaking of age, I have just passed that “milestone,” the three-quarters of a century mark. For those of you not blessed enough to have gone down life’s pathway that far, I can share that I almost had, not a Senior Moment, but a Typo Moment. That is, some milestones seem like millstones.

Actually, that is another fib. I move a little slower, and my joints, when they move or bend at all, sometimes creak and moan. Oh, I forget things occasionally, but I always have; don’t we all? Maybe it’s been more frequent lately. I asked my doctor if I should be concerned and I related three instances. “How long has this been going on?” he asked. “How long has what been going on?” I responded.

We all have moments in the supermarket when we forget why we drove there (Right? Don’t we? Please say Yes!) but I have to admit it is worrying when I find myself in the bathroom and forget why I’m there.

But God has blessed me with reasonably good health. As for my “mind,” I might have just exploded, here, any claims to clarity and sanity. But I am as busy as I ever have been in the fields the Lord has assigned: writing, reading, drawing and painting, researching. The coincidence of having just published my 75^th book in, now, my 75^th year is a convenient coincidence: When I forget one number, I simply recall the other.

The apocryphal “Chinese Curse” – “May you live in interesting times” – has always seemed like a blessing to me. My curiosity and numerous interests have made me a polymath (as well as a pauper) but I continue to discover old things that are refreshingly new, and I turn new things into old friends, as a reader and collector. God has led me to accomplish a few things; I am proud of my children; I have met many of my heroes and even encountered colorful scoundrels along the way. Travel, jobs, hobbies – a rich mosaic.

I have learned that repeated readings of God’s Word, and ever more intimate praying, make my relationship with the Savior more alive, not old and tired. He created the universe, yet He cares for me, enough to sacrifice His life. I have grievously sinned in uncountable ways, yet I have repented and asked forgiveness, and He has forgiven me. In the words of the Gospel song – it is all richer, deeper, fuller, sweeter as the days go by.

And the days do go by.

My old friend, the late cartoonist Dik Browne (Hagar the Horrible) and I had a mutual friend about whom Dik would quietly say, “That boy hears voices.” It was an old-fashioned and polite way to say that the fellow was a little odd at times. Delusional folks can claim inspiration from phantoms, but it can be otherwise. Joan of Arc heard voices, or claimed to; and people held her in reverence.

My late wife Nancy, in our moments of grief when we lost our first child, heard God’s voice, seemingly audible: “You will have multiple healthy children.” A peace came over her and, despite her fragile health, we subsequently had three healthy children. The voice, and that peace, were as much miracles as the healthy births.

One last story (I can hear “hoorays,” almost audible) – a parable, finally, along these lines.

A guy heard a voice he believed to be from the Lord: “You are going to live a long, long life!” The fellow was so convinced it was from Heaven that he went into overdrive, preparing to live it up. Or long-live it up. He got a new wardrobe of slick duds to impress the chicks; he got a tummy tuck; a dentist gave him capped teeth; a doctor gave him a facelift; he colored the hair that was his own, and some miracle-worker gave him hair plugs. Then when he was slick enough to hit the town, he got behind the wheel of his expensive new sports car, and…

… he was killed when a big dump truck ran into him. Up in Heaven, he looked for God and asked, “Lord, you said I would live a long life…”

He received this answer: “Frankly, I didn’t recognize you anymore!” The guy had remembered the promise, but forgotten the Promise-Maker. God forbid that any of us let that happen in our lives.

Life must be about quality, not quantity… or length. All the learning I have accumulated in my 75 years, and all the exciting things I still yearn to discover have, in the end, not fogged my vision. I have learned a lot – book-lessons and life-lessons – but when it comes to God Almighty, who created me and even knows the number of hairs on my head, He knows “what is needful and best” for me, and that is fine. It is good to know God’s Ways; I don’t need to know His Whys.

What fills in the (many) gaps when our understanding is faulty? God provides… Jesus teaches… and the Holy Spirit gifts us… with Faith. Walking with my Savior is like a 24/7 birthday party. Only better. In fact richer, deeper, fuller, sweeter. Life with Jesus is like a long, long party. How’s that for a parable?
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Click: Sweeter As The Days Go By

1-22-24

Quick: Word-Association. I say “Life,” you think – what? An old magazine? A prison sentence? A breakfast cereal?

This week the annual March For Life occurred in Washington. Somewhat ironically it was held during a brutal, raging snowstorm – thousands and thousands of people figuratively shaking their fists at Cold Death, and affirming Life.

Half a century ago Roe vs Wade became the law of the land – or, more properly, it swept away many laws of this land. It was consequential, and the Supreme Court ruling can be seen as defining an “era.” Then, recently, another ruling reversed much of Roe’s finding, and now we live in a Post-Roe Age.

Rather than outlawing abortion, the recent Dobbs Decision essentially lets the individual states decide policies regarding abortion – matters of sanctions, “pain thresholds,” gestational life and viability, coercion of medical staffs, etc. It was inevitable that fifty, or more, bitter debates would emerge from Dobbs. As people dispute the beginning and the end of life, the debates about abortion will not end.

It was recently calculated that the Dobbs decision likely has resulted in more than 50,000 births that otherwise would have been ended. In the political numbers games, that will be compared to millions of babies murdered (excuse me, “terminated”) under Roe. Having just employed both euphemisms and incendiary words, I am aware of the emotionalism that inevitably attends this discussion. Like many people, from President Trump to neighbors and relatives, I once was pro-abortion, or indifferent to its horrors; and have repented. Some of those neighbors and relatives gave birth instead of aborting. Some, in fact, are people whose mothers decided against aborting them at the last moments.

“Life.”

It is more – we need to remind ourselves above the din and clamor of political debates – than magazine titles or breakfast cereals; and surely more than merely escaping the abortionist’s tools. But when we cheapen Life amid arguments about scientific data, and “hardships on pregnant woman,” and a mother’s right to privacy vs a baby’s right to life, etc, we also cheapen the value of Life-beyond-birth. It is no coincidence that during the Roe era there was a precipitous rise in child abuse; neglect and abandonment; the dissolution of the nuclear family; and, at the other end of the line, growing acceptance of elder abuse and neglect, and (call in more euphemisms!) “mercy killings.”

Twenty years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey, the woman who was the “Roe” of Roe vs Wade. The simple and shy women seldom granted interviews, so I was fortunate to glean first-hand impressions of her crises, the manipulation she endured, and her transformation to anti-abortion advocacy.

My late wife Nancy became an expert on Life, so to speak – having received, at death’s door, a transplanted heart. She also received a kidney transplant, and endured diabetes, strokes, cancer, celiac disease, amputations, and other challenges. She wrote about her encounters with Life:

I was diagnosed with heart disease when my three children were 15, 14, and 11. After three heart attacks in 10 months the doctors told me that I would not survive a fourth. This news came on my 42nd birthday. Within the month I was transferred from our local hospital to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and put on the transplant list for a heart; and for my failing kidney as well.

Events moved quickly, and I really didn’t have much time to think about what was ahead. As a diabetic, I had assumed that at some time I might need a kidney transplant – I had never thought about needing a new heart! I also assumed that the whole process was like changing a battery: take out the old and put in the new.

Not quite. Because my doctors could not guarantee my survival at home for longer than two weeks, I had to stay in the hospital, with heart monitors attached to my chest, and an IV tube continuously feeding me medicines that kept my heart working at its maximum possible efficiency.

In the beginning of this process, I think most patients in my “group” of potential organ recipients were, like me, a bit naive. We didn’t know about some of the complications associated with the surgery. Strokes, blood clots causing the loss of limbs, and blindness were just some of the potential problems. Our group of approximately 16 patients was relatively healthy or at least stable, but every now and then reality would strike.

Without warning, people “coded” (heart stopping); sometimes they could not be revived. Other times those who had received transplanted organs would return to the hospital with rejection (the body fighting the new organ).

We all know there are no guarantees in life, but no matter how young or old, we tend to take some things for granted. However, when hospitalized in a heart-failure unit, never knowing what the next minutes might bring, I developed a deeper sense of what was important to me.

I prayed for more time – time to be a mother to my children, for us to be together as a family. I cried out to God, “How much longer?” He answered in the words of I Peter 5:6,7: Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you.

And I learned to trust Him. Just as He was taking care of me, He would take care of my family. And each time I asked “How much longer?” He would remind me of a promise I made to Him that I would stay for as long as He wanted me to. And God gave me His total peace.

In all ways my hospital stay – eight weeks before organs became available; then three weeks after the operation, until I could go home – was a good experience. I came to know God in a more intimate way, to learn to trust Him and His ways, and to appreciate all that He has given me. I began praying for the other patients on the floor; first for those on their way to the ER, then weekly Bible studies, then prayer-support groups. We started a family ministry that lasted more than seven years.

I have seen all three of my children grow up. Heather became a youth minister; Ted is a television news producer [now in Washington DC] and Emily moved to Ireland after doing missions work [and has started her own business of American-style foods]. And I have four beautiful grandchildren. I am very proud of them all.

At one time I did not have real hope, leaning on my own view of life. But as Psalm 119:50 says:

My comfort in my suffering was this: “Your promise preserves my life!”

Nancy lived 16 years after her new heart and new life. There’s life and there’s Life. There’s Life, and there is Living. There is extended life… and there is Eternal Life. Go ahead and embrace the euphemisms! God lives in them and we can too.

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Click: I’ll Have a New Life

1-15-24

I have shared the story many times, but not here, of my mother’s passing; or to skirt the euphemism, her death. She would have been a hundred years old next year, and died a couple decades ago. The circumstances attending her death were fairly remarkable, but all the times I have shared the story my contexts were medical, statistical, and with emotions bouncing like a pinball between sad and astonishing and humorous.

But a friend recently saw them in a spiritual context. Through the years I certainly appreciated the spiritual component, but not the lessons worth sharing. Cue Paul Harvey’s “Now you’ll know the rest of the story…”

My parents had moved to Florida as many retirees are wont to do; my two sisters and I remained up north, visiting on occasion. The occasions grew frequent, however, when Mom’s health slipped precipitously. She had been a lifelong Christian, church-going and always devoted to Jesus. Not affecting her salvation but affecting her health were also unfortunate lifelong devotions to cigarettes and booze.

Smoking and drinking accelerated her decline from various ailments, although, oddly, her lungs and liver were about the only things that worked right as she eventually was placed on a hospice list. I hope it is not a “spoiler” to any reader to share that hospice is not a get-well regimen: it is, formally, a recognition that the patient is dying, and is designed to make those final days or months comfortable, not expecting a cure.

Mom was put in home-hospice care with visiting nurses; my sisters and I rotated visits to Florida to help Dad and say our good-byes. Stubbornly, it seemed, my mother got weaker, and stronger; she grew foggy, then lucid; she wasted away but hung on. Each of our “good-byes” were in fact “so longs,” as my sisters and I returned again and again.

During one of my visits a kindly neighbor said, “It must be hard to lose your mother…” I replied: “It’s almost impossible!”

However Mom did go downhill until she was barely conscious. In a virtual coma. We were able to put a chip of ice or bit of Jell-O between her lips, only a few times a day. She exhibited several of the “signs of impending death” the Hospice booklet listed. Finally for two solid days there was not a sign of life from her beyond a weak pulse.

Then one night – I slept on the living-room sofa next to her hospital bed – she made a faint gurgling sound. No other signs or movement. Almost 24 hours later, she mumbled; no discernible words, but an apparent attempt. On the next morning, there were words, but random and unconnected.

Over the next days she managed more ice chips and Jell-O and even broth. And she spoke words. Sentences. They made sense. I’ll tell you how much sense: they were Bible verses. Fragments at first, then random, then full verses, but as if in her sleep.

Bible verses! Mom was not opening her eyes or making eye contact at first; but she was reciting passages from the Bible. Soon she recognized us, spoke our names… but rather than asking where she was, or why we looked so concerned, she just recited Bible verses. Eventually, lines from hymns.

I will leap ahead, so to speak. Mom recovered her strength. The bed was put aside. She resumed a life, slowly (she moved around the house, but with a walker). She gained some weight. She never had eaten much, but now she did eat and even cooked – we all had a Florida Thanksgiving reunion where she prepared a full meal. She did not resume drinking, and I was grateful that my kids were able finally to know their Oma – sober, and tender and funny, as I had known her in my own childhood.

She lived almost a full “bonus” year before a natural death overtook her. Hospice nurses said that patients were known to live maybe six months after being “listed,” but they scarcely knew of bounce-backs like Mom’s, much less of a full year.

But when I told Mom of her “bounce-back” while she seemingly was unconscious… she was as incredulous as nurses or neighbors were. I have said that she was religious all her life, but she knew that she never had committed all those Bible verses to memory.

“Rick, some of them I know, of course. And I’m sure I heard them all in Sunday School and church, or have read them, but I never memorized all of them! I never tried to!” I read to her the verses she recited from that deathbed… and try as she might, she could not recite them from memory again. But there had been many, and they had risen from her lips, complete and correct.

This was the story I often have told – shame on me, almost like describing magic tricks or a trained-seal act. My friend refreshed me with the spiritual lesson. What had sustained Mom when medicines did not? What “filled those empty spaces”? We witnessed an example of “the Lord worketh in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” What lessons should the rest of us learn from this?

Psalm 119 talks about “hiding the Word in our hearts.”

I had known that verse, and always assumed it was a recommendation to memorize Bible verses. It is. But more than that, it tells us (in Isaiah 55) that “My Word that goeth forth out of My mouth shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.”

The power of God’s Word blessed my mother, even when it had been heard and processed casually. It accomplished things in her. It blessed us, and may it bless those who hear this story.

“Faith comes by hearing…” There is no seed that when planted cannot grow in mighty ways, multiply, and feed others. Let us just be the fertile soil. God will plant; the Spirit will nurture; Jesus will be glorified. Please be encouraged to keep the things of God close, even in “casual” ways, whether words, messages, songs; open to lessons the Bible offers, or Christian music you can listen to. Absorb. Share. Hide in your heart.

In the end, it wasn’t hard to lose my mother. She was ready, after a few more tasks – even if she did not fully know the assignments – at the End of the Way.

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Click: When I Get To the End Of the Way

1-8-24

Some cultural critics and many traditional Christians lament the state of things today. “Things”? Maybe almost everything… everywhere we look… even the future is despaired of. Believers “know the end of the story,” the glorious promises of God, yet among those promises are trials and tribulations, we know. “What kind of world are we leaving for our children?” is often asked.

This angst and pessimism – or realism? – is not exclusive to the traditionalists and religious people, however. This is an age of discontent: radicals, revolutionaries, the “Woke” armies likewise are weary, or rebellious, against the current System and what brought societies to this point.

It is the Age of Discontent, which term is the title of a book of observations by Sigmund Freud. More pertinent is the earlier essay by Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay.

Of all the isms that plague us these days, and no matter your place on the philosophical and political spectrums, the strongest is Incrementalism. Surely it is the most insidious. Most of the things that upset most of us were not advocated by us, not designed, not forecast. Yet often we act surprised that certain identifiable decisions were wrong, horribly wrong.

Our temples gradually have crumbled; our swamps quietly have risen and spread. Surely, we – all of us – have been blind and careless, we have grown sloppy about commitments, and dismissive of standards. Like fallen civilizations of the past, we have a subliminal sense of security that we somehow are immune from decline and self-destruction.

In this we are, of course, fools.

If analysis might be useful and lead to course-correction, we should reject the idea that we (let us focus on “Christendom,” so-called Western Civilization) have “lost faith.” It is a point of view automatic among the religious; and it is mistaken. Oh, church attendance is down, and we are confronted by statistics that are alarms to those of who work to resist the drift. But a recent book The Secular Age cited polls claiming that more than half the population does not belong to an organized religion, only a third believe in life after death, 16 per cent in reincarnation, and only half believe in a higher power. (And of course “higher power” these days can mean gods invented on the spot. Or as my daughter says about the current pathology of those who switch genders every week, “choosing to be, or believe in, a hairbrush.”) And so forth, as we all know.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Our problems do not stem from our peoples’ lack of faith, but the situation that people hold to faith in many, many, many things. Indiscriminately. Irresponsibly. Incrementally.

Of course my critique is that Christendom has abandoned Christianity. The “Faith of our fathers” has largely become as attractive to broad swaths of contemporary society as the ties and dresses, dance steps and home décor of previous generations. Christian dogma is seldom asserted in many of our churches. Worship conforms to the latest (and changeable) tastes and demands of audiences. The Biblical “givens” that underlay government, schools, courts, even the entertainment media… are no longer a priori assumptions.

Indeed, Biblical standards routinely are rejected, mocked, and suppressed. So what should we expect? People who believe in everything… effectively believe in nothing. When a society has no standards, we must expect that even “right” and “wrong” are obsolete concepts.

We have a natural tendency to feel overwhelmed by the forces of evil. We are tempted, despite our faith in Jesus and the promises of God, to fear that all is hopeless, at least outside our own spheres. I am reminded that when the Communist Whittaker Chambers found Christ and became a patriot, he wrote that he believed in God, but that – as a citizen in a decaying American society – he was joining the “losing side.” His soul would live in Heaven but his country was doomed. Do you have those feelings?

What I cling to, among many truths and revelations, are the verses about God adorning the lilies of the field, and caring even for small sparrows. Yes, we must know the Truth. Yes, we must fight for our faith and families and future. Yes, the enemies of Christ are many, and are wily and vicious.

It is worthwhile, and daunting I know, to resist. But how often do we stop and remember that it is His fight? God will equip us; the Holy Spirit was sent to strengthen our… faith. Faith. We cannot cast about to find new faith in new remedies. God’s answers are in front of us. If your simple faith in God and His promises sometime go weak, remember that the Gift of Faith is one of the Spiritual Gifts that He has promised, and we can access at any time.

Asking God for more faith, purer faith, mighty faith in Him, is not a sign of weakness. His provision of the Holy Spirit must not be treated as a futile act unless you respond feebly.

Our world might be drifting, and in directions we hate. As we do battle – for we must! – how typical of God that He can encourage us with the simplest, gentlest assurance that His eye is on the sparrow, and we know He watches us too. Let us be happy warriors. The battle is the Lord’s!

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Click: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

1-1-24

I wonder what the “over / under” is with New Year resolutions that are kept; that is, let’s say, kept by most people beyond the third week of the year. Or third day? Most of mine are history by the third hour. Resolutions are stronger than intentions, and I shudder when reminded that the road to hell is paved with the latter…

Nevertheless, many of us make New Years resolutions… or we intend to. If in the process we make an inventory of our shortcomings and prioritize our goals, we have accomplished something after all.

This has prompted me to speculate on whether God makes Resolutions. Without being presumptuous or blasphemous or outright ignorant (have I headed everyone off at the pass?) I know that everything in the Bible, indeed His workings as revealed in history, from the Commandments to the Incarnation to judgments and miracles, are reflections of His resolutions… but let us wonder for a moment. 

If God would compose a list of resolutions, at least to remind us of how He works, and what He desires, what would they be?

I think God would resolve not to give up on His people. He is swift to judgment, yet long-suffering.

Salvation is free but will continue to be offered at a precious cost; God will ever grieve for those who reject Him.

God, who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, will continue to act amongst us, and in us, through His Holy Spirit.

The eternal “I am” will resolve as always never to be the “I was.”

Among other resolutions of God, if we might put His will into our words, would be:

He always will be Without end… He will never change… He will keep every promise… He always will be – He only can be – Holy… He will be righteous, compassionate, and just… He will be faithful in His resolutions and promises.

How will He act? God resolves to communicate with His people through prayer… He will be “the God who healeth thee”… He will punish sin but ever remind us that “He chastises those whom He loves”… He will affirm His rules for a satisfied and joy-filled life through Resolutions already shared, from the 10 Commandments to the teachings of Jesus.

God resolves that His character will not change. We may be secure in knowing that He is omniscient, He is omnipresent, He is omnipotent… He does not only love; He is love… He is trustworthy… He is good all the time, and all the time He is good… He extends Grace to those who love Him – while we were yet revels and sinners He provided a way to be reconciled to Him.

You might notice that none of these resolutions are new. I did not have to “stretch” or imagine attributes of our Heavenly Father. He has revealed Himself; He is Unchanging; He is – let us say part of his job description? – “from Everlasting to Everlasting.” 

We make resolutions to correct our mistakes and try to do better.

God has made resolutions, affirming that He cannot make mistakes; when all is said and done, this year and every year, He is the best that we can imagine.

Let us hereby resolve, ourselves, that we praise His Holy Name and dedicate ourselves to serve Him. 

Happy New Year!

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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness 

12-25-23

“Wars and rumors of war.”

The Bible foretells of the End Times, and signs of its imminence. God keeps us on our toes, because wars, like the poor, we always have with us. Has there ever been a good war or a bad peace, as many have asked through the ages? I say yes; there may be just wars, and the willingness to do battle is irretrievably part of a nation’s soul.

“If I must choose between peace and righteousness,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “I choose righteousness.” Nevertheless, lately I am persuaded to settle for a long wait if people want to find a war to be joined…

Humankind seems not to have “advanced” much through the centuries; neither with children on playgrounds nor adults on battlefields that once were playgrounds. We congratulate each other – that is, fool ourselves – that “progress” is the hallmark of our times. Yet the bloodiest death toll from wars, in any century of the earth’s existence, was in the Twentieth Century, more than in all previous centuries combined. We brag that we – “civilizations” – have finally ended the scourge of slavery; yet there are greater numbers of slaves today than ever in human history. The numbers now are not the faces that flash in our minds: bondservants. But, instead, all manner of children, women, minorities, homeless, voiceless, migrants, the anonymous.

As long as there are power elites; as long as greed outpaces love; as long as hypocrisy can always find a nicer name, humankind will be (in the Bible’s phrase, Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 2:22) like dogs returning to their vomit. Think about what changes have occurred, really, when science develops new ways to save lives… as it also invents new ways to end lives. What a spectacle, when people march to save baby seals and whales, and march for the right to kill babies.

Well, Merry Christmas, anyway. Let the holiday sing.

Some wars are years, or generations, festering; some start on a random morning, or so it seems. But one thing we seldom encounter is peace breaking out. In the midst of a raging war, interrupting a bloody battle. Yet it has happened. Not many people know about the Christmas Truce. It was a virtual miracle during the first Christmas, in 1914, of World War I – the so-called Great War, surely the most useless of history’s many useless wars.

A few months after war was declared in Europe, by almost every big and small nation on the continent, almost a million soldiers already had been slaughtered. Christmastime was come, and soldiers were mired in trenches that were to become so established that for more than two years the battle line never moved more than 30 miles one way or another. In that unlikely hellhole a miracle occurred.

Minor details differ but the dispositive facts are acknowledged: Peace broke out.

Soldiers of Germany, England (Scotland, actually), and France, at night, spontaneously sang Christmas carols… and were joined by their “enemies” who could hear across No Man’s Land… nervous soldiers climbed from trenches to greet their foes, and shake hands… gifts were exchanged, even little trinkets, but also pastries and wine sent from home. They shared pictures of wives and children… more hymn singing… fireworks, intended to illuminate battlefields so to aim the cannons, were now shot skyward in celebration. There were tentative, but successful, attempts to communicate.

Of course they communicated. The languages that night were hymns and Bibles and chocolates and cigars. Handshakes and smiles and tears.

A Merry Christmas. A Holy Christmas. Peace on earth… at least in that narrow 27-mile-long battle line, south of Ypres and east of Armentieres, site of the song about les Mademoiselles, that night.

A British soldier recalled the Christmas Truce almost two decades later: We stuck up a board with a Merry Christmas on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. … Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans did the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

We and the Germans met in the middle of No Man’s Land. Their officers were also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them.… One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it. (Frank Richards, “Old Soldiers Never Die,” 1933)

Another history records: [The British] Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive forbidding fraternization: “For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks. … Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.” (Stanley Weintraub, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce,” 2001)

How much different would the next day have been – how much different would the world be today – if the Truce had held?

Note that chocolates and cigars were only the presents. The GIFTS were hymns and Bible verses – they brought the soldiers out of trenches; not the prospect of snacks or smokes or a soccer game in the snow.

Christmas. God did not intend for Jesus’s Incarnation, the spirit of that Christmas Truce, to be a one-time miracle, but to be everyday life. He intended that we know-and-show that love and fellowship can be normal, not rare. We can be changed by the Holy Day, not be annoyed by yet another holiday.

“You started it!” “No, you did!!!” Wouldn’t it be great if we all exchanged those words happily, about starting love, sharing affection, and living in Heavenly Peace?

Who “started it”? God did.

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If your YouTube video opens in anything besides a man playing a bagpipe, then you need to switch to a desktop to play the video. There is a problem we have not solved yet with the videos on pads and phones.

Click for an excerpt of the motion picture: Joyeaux Noel

12-11-23

As Christmas celebrations draw closer, people tend to think more about Jesus than they do at most other times of year. … or, anyway, what He might have looked like and acted like during His earthly ministry.

Speaking personally, I am grateful to movies like Passion of the Christ and TV series like The Chosen because, if nothing else, their producers dared show a Jesus who was realistic (as we must assume) – laughing, crying, feeling pain, experiencing betrayal and suffering.

In the Year of our Lord (giving credit where credit is due) 2023, however, the impressions of our childhoods persist. People can be forgiven, to coin a phrase, if their conception of Jesus is of a fair-haired, well-groomed, moon-faced, smiley guy with children always nearby to sit on His lap. Artwork on Sunday-school pamphlets told me so.

Throughout my life I have heard Christians and skeptics alike ask why Jesus “had” to come to earth 2000 years ago – so far back in time, so far away. Believers say their faith would intensify if they could just see Him. Non-believers and agnostics have a similar desire – that if they could just see Jesus, they would believe.

Well, we should remember that the Apostles who lived and ate and walked and talked with Jesus for three years, hearing His teaching, and witnessing miracles… if they betrayed and denied Him, and scattered when things got a little tough, would we be much different? Get real. Remember what Jesus said to Doubting Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”

But Christmas displays have got me to thinking. Not that Jesus is a plastic Savior-figure for sale at the Dollar Store; nor a blow-up plastic baby-in-the-manger for a lawn display; nor a face on T-shirts of the worship band at the new church down the street. But I wonder what Christianity would be like if Jesus had come to earth in our lifetimes. How would Jesus present Himself?

• We don’t have many “Lords” and “Ladies” any more, so those terms might have to be altered. What is the modern-day equivalent of Lord? It would sound strange – “President God”? Would we be told to address Jesus as “Boss”?
• Very few guilty criminals are put to death these days, and when they are, the Cross is virtually obsolete. Would Christian gift shops sell trinkets of syringes, if that is how Jesus would be put to death, by lethal injection, today?
• Would people wear necklaces with little electric chairs instead of crosses?
• The Great Commission – “Go into all the world and preach the Good News” – would be the same. But today, the spread of communications (and, I’ll admit, employing some 20-20 hindsight in my scenario here) might alter the message of the Apostles and evangelists.
• Today the Disciples would be seen as recruiters and motivational speakers. But if they could know what becoming a follower of Christ entails, even modern sales techniques would present some challenges. Consider:

– Become a Christian! When you commit to follow Jesus, your family might resent you, friends might leave you, strangers might persecute you!

– Become a Christian! Share what you believe and you might lose a job! Neighbors will regard you as nuts!

– Become a Christian! If you heed His call and perhaps go into missions work, you can be harassed, even martyred, like so many Christians in history… and still, today!

– Become a Christian! Among the perks – not certain, but very common – you will be misunderstood, criticized, ridiculed… sometimes by those you love the most!

Those are some of the “perks” of being a Christian. They are not much different than any time in the past 2000 years. But I would suggest, if you think about “Lord” versus “Boss,” and symbols of crosses versus electric chairs, that today’s evangelistic “sales pitch” might be more challenging than in times past.

In fact, everything is more challenging than in times past. As we slouch toward Gomorrah – in the words of the William Butler Yeats poem and the book by the great Robert H Bork – as our culture is ever more engulfed by moral relativism and secularism, the challenges of being a Christ-follower are increasingly stark.

Generally, we live in a post-Christian age. Thank God, literally, the DNA of the twenty-first century church seems to be healthier in the southern hemisphere. Christianity, as it always has, thrives in lands of persecution; believers, that is, one by one, refined by fire. Africa, once the destination of missionaries, now sends missionaries to apostate societies in Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America.

There is hope.

And by the way, regarding the premise I posed at the beginning – “If Jesus were alive today…” Here’s the dirty little secret, which is not so dirty; not so little; not so secret –

Jesus is alive today.

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What does it cost to be a Christian? What DID it cost 2000 years ago, when Jesus was born? Remember the “Slaughter of the Innocents” – the command to slay all baby boys under the age of two; the Establishment’s effort to deny the coming King. Hostility threatened Christianity then… today its stark enemy is indifference.

Click: Rachel’s Lament

11-27-23

We in the United States have celebrated, if not observed, another Thanksgiving. Like other holy days… holidays… long weekends, it has begun to endure the onslaught of secularization. No longer are there widespread expressions of thanks to Almighty God in schools, from the White House, and, yes, even in churches.

It is beneficial for us to remember that Thanksgiving, as a holiday, is not really traced to the Pilgrims, as thankful as they were “24/7,” in many ways formal and informal. It was a lowly politician – in proper view, the closest we have had to a saint in Washington, President Abraham Lincoln – who conceived the idea of setting apart a day for government and citizenry to beseech God for mercy and forgiveness, and literally count our blessings.

His Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1863 began a tradition that held, until recently. He wrote in part after enumerating some of the gifts God bestowed upon America:

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens… to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them… ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings….

We can fast-forward to now, when a supposedly Catholic president dutifully issued a proclamation, but included no mention of God. Even simple logic, if not religion, should have suggested to Biden that if you urge people to be thankful, you should mention to Whom they should be thankful. His 2023 proclamation instead distorted history and denigrated faith by claiming the Pilgrims merely “honored the harvest” and expressed gratitude for the “Wampanoag people who made it possible.”

The current president then stated that Americans would gather this year to “celebrate the love they share and the traditions they built together… grateful for our Nation and the incredible soul of America…. I encourage the people of the United States of America to join together and give thanks for the friends, neighbors, family members, and strangers who have supported each other over the past year in a reflection of goodwill and unity.”

The current White House surely knows how to pinpoint things it advocates or hates. But “being thankful,” a passive, neutered term – instead of giving thanks – is a willful avoidance of a worldview that acknowledges God and His role in our national heritage and current affairs. When Biden gives thanks for “Friends,” he might well be talking about the episode where Joey gave Chandler a goat.

This is a symptom, of course, of the country at large; certainly the popular culture. But also of the Party in power. That party and its allies would be suing or censoring Abraham Lincoln for engaging in “hate speech” in the Proclamation.

This New Ingratitude trickles down to everyday speech and social interaction. Take note, this coming week, to how people express and receive Thanks. Remembering that words mean things and are significant, listen in stores, food counters, and dialogue on TV programs. “Thank you” is still uttered, but usually “Thanks” is the grandest form of sincerity.

Moreover, these days “You’re Welcome” is a virtually obsolete phrase. The response, rather, often is something like: Sure… You bet… No problem, or No prob… You got it… Sure thing… Back atcha…

Words have consequences. To paraphrase William Butler Yeats, we are slouching toward a society of ingratitude, or, worse, indifference. Americans – and I include much of the church – know how to complain; what to hate; whom to resent; when to lose patience. But we have lost the capacity to be grateful; to acknowledge good happenings; to share credit; to… thank God, not just our own work or luck, for blessings.

Almighty God does not demand gratitude and thanks from us… Well, yes, He does, actually. He is a “jealous God” and through the Bible we are told, by Him and His prophets, that gratitude and thanks are due Him. Our worship liturgies remind us that it is “meet, right, and salutary that at all times and in all places we give thanks to Him”… “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever”… “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”… “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name”…

At one time we were a people who knew that God was the source of good things, and that He was worthy of praise and thanks. Now we are a people routinely expecting entitlements.

I want to view the Lord and Thanks-giving in one more way. It is proper that we have an attitude of gratitude. But through the Bible, God does not only demand our thanks, praise, and obligation. We should also recognize that Christianity is a two-way street, so to speak.

What I mean is this: God thanks us, too. His blessings are “thanks” for our faithfulness. His amazing Creation was given, a gift, to humankind. Answered prayers are “thanks” for our devotion and supplications. The Gifts of the Spirit surely are His reaching down to bless us. The very fact that He became incarnate flesh to dwell among us and offer a plan of salvation is a manner of advance-thanks.

God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Was there ever a more heartfelt “Thank You”? The Lord considers us worthy of thanks, this verse says, before we would even deserve it. Thanks for believing on Him; loving Him; serving Him. The challenge to Christians is how we return thanks, how we give life to “You’re Welcome, Lord.”

But respond we must, with sincerity and purpose. Gratitude. And a spirit of giving Thanks.

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Click: Thank You

11-20-23

Our post-Christian culture has become, rather, so anti-Christian that it sometimes has to distort the past to justify the brave new world. Here are examples of notable figures from history whose relationships to Christ have been suppressed, and will surprise some people.

Vincent van Gogh is generally regarded as the greatest of artists, or among the few supernal geniuses who put brush to canvas. His works are respected and valued, yet his private life often is viewed as sad and twisted; that he was a disturbed figure to be pitied; that cutting his ear and committing suicide are evidences of an unbalanced mind.

Vincent’s life was troubled, certainly. Of many hundreds of paintings, he sold only two in his lifetime. He continually relied on friends and his brother for money. Once when especially despondent, he drank too much and was almost institutionalized.

Yet. Vincent was the son of a pastor, and brother of another. He aspired to be a minister himself, but was turned down by a seminary. He visited missions and charity halls, even once traveling to London to minister to the poor. He was almost as beset by what he felt as his inadequate service to Christ, as by his paintings’ lack of acceptance. I have just finished his Complete Letters – three massive volumes; how did he find time to write so much and paint so much? – and they are filled with Christian references. Until recently his Biblical-themed paintings were sublimated, but there are many, and they reveal his profound faith.

His brother Theo was the recipient of most of Vincent’s letters. In one typical example he wrote of his heart and his art: to paint men and women with that something of the Eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we seek to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring. Among Biblical scenes he painted, many people see allegorical compositions in paintings like “Cafe Terrace at Night,” elements of which echo the Last Supper.

To much of the world today, van Gogh is thought of as a crazy man who cut off his ear. Modern studies have concluded that he did not commit suicide but was killed by a stray bullet. But a genius who was passionate about Jesus and wanted to reflect God’s glory in his art? Our age does not want to know that van Gogh!

Another figure from history whose persona is firmly established is Oscar Wilde. Playwright, poet, aesthete, epigramist, he also shocked Victorian England as a homosexual and proud pedophile. Only after the father of Wilde’s most consistent lover grew enraged, was the writer lambasted in public and convicted under Victorian statutes against immorality. Subsequent to a colorful public prosecution, Wilde was thrown in jail.

There (in Reading Jail, or Gaol as the Brits spell it) he might have rotted. Well, in fact he very nearly did rot. But he did not buck the system nor shake his fist at the bench or the heavens. In books like The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis he reflected a recognition of his sins – personal and social – and evinced a respect for Jesus Christ. He sought out clergy; he expressed his need for absolution.

Wilde wrote, near the end of his life: That is the charm about Christ, when all is said: He is just like a work of art…The little supper with His companions, one of whom has already sold Him for a price; the anguish in the quiet moon-lit garden; the false friend coming close to Him so as to betray Him with a kiss; the friend who still believed in Him, and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge for Man, denying Him as the bird cried to the dawn; His own utter loneliness, His submission, His acceptance of everything… the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the eyes of His mother… the terrible death by which He gave the world its most eternal symbol; and His final burial in the tomb of the rich man, His body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though He had been a king’s son.

Oscar spent his last days in exile in Paris, destitute and sick. He had not lost his trademark wit, even self-deprecatory. He complained of the cheap boarding-house room in which he lived: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” Modern studies have focused on Wilde’s earlier aggressive iconoclasm and flamboyant homosexuality, but not much on his embrace of the Savior. Oh, not in these times.

I nominate a third person, or people, who can be in the category of “those we didn’t know were Christians.” Myself. I will explain:

I was at a party a number of years ago. Cartoonists and writers, folks I knew fairly well, but I was chatting with a friend’s wife I barely knew. The subject of a recent project was raised, and she said, startled, “Oh! You’re a Christian? I didn’t know!” Now: she was a committed believer too; and the statement was in the mode of “Oh! You’re left-handed?” or “You’re a vegetarian? I didn’t know that!”

I am neither one of those people; however the point is relevant – I immediately was “convicted,” a truth brought home to me. She knew the professional-Rick but not the Christian-Rick… and there should be no difference. Van Gogh and Oscar were, respectively, celebrities wrapped in eccentricities or end-of-life controversies; and whose reputations were “protected” by those who cared little about publicizing their spiritual rebirths.

You and I, on the other hand, are – I hope and assume – alive and kicking. If we are Christians, that fact should not take anybody by surprise. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” a song goes. We don’t wear signs around our necks, and should not have to wear jewelry or lapel pins to announce or prove our faith-commitments to anyone.

We must not be ashamed of the Gospel. We can show love. We can forgive. We can share the words of Christ. We can serve the needy and the sick, the broken and hurting. We can – first of all – confess Jesus as the Son of God; believe that He rose from the dead after sacrificing Himself, taking our sins upon Him. The Holy Spirit will then see that we bear fruit as Jesus intended.

… And soon we will be saying to each other: “Oh! You’re a Christian too? I knew it!”

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Click: Vincent – Starry, Starry Night

11-6-23

Christianity was berthed in Jerusalem as a vibrant, living body of believers. It moved to Greece and became a philosophy. It moved to Rome and became an institution. It moved to Europe and became a culture. It moved to America and became a business.

Somewhere in there, Christianity the Religion was corrupted and became synonymous with the Established Order. “Be ye in the world, but not of the world,” a command of Jesus Christ, has become obsolete in the post-Christian West. This week was the observance – scarcely observed any more, actually – of Reformation Day. It has caused me to wonder how many steps forward Christianity has made since Martin Luther’s day… and how many steps back.

In his times, Luther was not the first Christian to dissent from practices, corruption, and wayward theology in the Church. For more than a hundred years, believers had been tortured, imprisoned, and burned alive for questioning doctrinal inventions of Rome, and daring to translate Scripture into languages of the people. Luther, a monk, nailed a list of his complaints to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He too was persecuted, excommunicated, chased, went into hiding… and translated the Bible into the language of his people, the Germans.

“Reform” became the Reformation. “Protest” became Protestantism. But what have the movements since become?

Luther sought reform, not revolution, yet revolution occurred: half of Europe caught fire with the belief that faith alone, by God’s grace, actuated salvation; and that people needed no intercessor with God except Christ; not saints (many of whom were fictional inventions), not Marys, not purchased “indulgences.” As doctrines, “Faith Alone,” “Scripture Alone,” “Christ Alone,” and “Grace Alone” were themselves resurrected.

The Reformation finally caught fire after the accumulation of martyrs. Other Reform denominations were founded. Luther, who never intended to break with the Church much less see a denomination established with his name, had to rein in his followers, the radical among whom had begun to destroy statues and Christian art. At the other extreme, Luther rode the wave, often manifested in secular art, of the Renaissance. Because his Reformation respected literacy and inquiry, local ecclesiastical and political control, and the dignity of the individual, the whirlwind he unleashed effectively led to the printing press, the Enlightenment, and Western democracy.

(For another essay we must examine the seeming contradictions in Luther’s rejection of Modernism – he can be seen as the last of the Medievalists – and remember his dictum that “Reason is the enemy of faith.”)

But, for those of us who commemorate the “birth” of the Reformation, let us think about the denominational movements, collectively called Protestant. Historians know what was protested 500 years ago. What do they protest against today? “Christendom” – the Western Church, certainly the American church in virtually all its corners — is in dire need of reformation again.

Many Protestant churches have become as secularized, money-oriented, and social, as the offending Roman churches were 500 years ago.

Many Protestant churches emphasize “works” – rewards, incentives, trying to please God through good deeds – no less than the Papacy did when Luther was disgusted by it all.

Many Protestant churches ignore the tenets of the faith, deny the Divinity of Christ, and question essential doctrines of the faith… to an extent worse than Luther beheld in Rome.

Christians must live in this world protesting – that is, not accepting the world’s standards, not conforming to the ways of the world. We must either offend the world-system or be a sweet savor; but NOT become like the world. Jesus did not “go along”! What does Protestantism protest against any more?

The Reformation succeeded in part because the larger culture enthusiastically embraced, for a time, the melding of Christian and social, civic lifestyles. But now, upon the altars of inclusion, pluralism, and multi-culturalism, Western societies increasingly eschew even mentions of Christianity and its standards, much less respect them.

Martin Luther accepted martyrdom for his beliefs, even to the point of his rescue. A letter on display at the Museum of the Bible, written the night before his trial, displays how accepting he was of his fate… and how ready to defend his conscience, to die for His Lord. He said when he was called on trial to recant his beliefs and writings (under the threat of death), Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can not and will not retract [my writings]. For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.

The time is coming in this contemporary world when Christians will have it demanded of them to renounce their faith; in fact, it has begun. That this is already a time of anti-Christian persecution is abundantly clear. Not only in pagan and Communist lands, but our own. Believers daily suffer indignities and are asked to compromise their principles and forced to sublimate their voices.

Some day soon Christians will have to suffer no longer in silence, and will lose the luxury of withdrawing into small groups and communities of believers. The Bible does not merely warn… prophets did not just threaten… but God foretold and promised this holy challenge to the saints of God in the End Times.

We must, like Martin Luther, embrace our faith and moral integrity, at all costs; and find the spiritual strength to say:

It is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other.

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A clip of Niall MacGinnis’s iconic portrayal of Martin Luther:

Click: Here I Stand

10-30-23a

I recently have had cause to “describe what I do.” Because of a flurry of interviews and articles, I am being asked to list the activities and high points, such as they might be, of my career.

Some books, various jobs, a few awards, and lengthy prison terms (= three truths and a lie) routinely have been accepted, but I have had “pushback,” occasionally, about activities I label as “Christian apologetics.” Apologetics is something that has been exercised since the Resurrection of Jesus, and this blog site’s fare – my 14 years or so of sharing these thoughts every week – is an example of the form.

Some people evidently misunderstand the term, which infrequently is used except in the religious context; and less often even in that case. Because of similarity to “apology,” the word can carry the connotation of being defensive about our faith. Or whining about elements of theology. Or making excuses for Christians who commit offenses. No.

Christian apologetics is derived from the Greek word apologia, which simply means offering an explanation or a defense. In other words, it is a method of presenting the Gospel. One might think that all sermons or religious writing does that, yet that is hardly the case. Since the Disciples’ time (“the Apostolic Age”) and down through the centuries, writers and speakers also (or alternatively) have concentrated on teaching, or exhortations, or correction, or evangelism, or social action, or…

I have chosen in several books and these blog messages to know Christ and to make Him known, in the words of the motto of a church in which I worshiped years ago in Connecticut. This “calling” motivates me perhaps because that is what I needed most at points in my life – and still, often today. That is why in these essays I share my thoughts more than preach from a platform. I sometimes am encouraged to collect some of these essays in a book, and I would title that book Eavesdropping on God, because I have learned His truths by paying attention when He acts; and then sharing (“experiential apologetics,” to be precise).

Beyond the basics, no form of sharing the Gospel (“Good News”) is superior to the others – their utility and efficacy depend more upon the hearer than the speaker. Yet some of the great giants of the faith over 2000 years have been apologists: St Paul at times; early saints of the church, cited by the amazing historian Eusebius, who defended the faith during days of Roman persecution; Justin Martyr; Origen; Augustine of course; Anselm. History tends to persuade people today that philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment were “enlightened” because they developed intellectual arguments against Christianity, but the opposite was true: they largely discovered scientific proofs and arguments for the truth of the Gospel.

The philosopher, scientist, and essayist Blaise Pascal was one who defended the form of apologetics when he wrote: Men despise religion; they hate it [because they] fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true.

In our day, perhaps because the world is desperate for it, many have chosen to help people know Jesus by adopting methods of apologetics. C S Lewis, most powerfully; G K Chesterton; Francis Schaeffer; my old friend Mike Yaconelli; Josh McDowell; John MacArthur; R C Sproul; Father Robert Barron; Jimmy Swaggart; and of course Billy and Franklin Graham.

Having explained the explainers and explanation, however, there are some who wonder why God Almighty does not make Himself known more directly. I have a friend who is a fervent Christian, but going through some personal crises. She cries out – as we all have in certain moments – why God does not make Himself appear to us, perhaps physically or audibly. Why faith is required when, for instance, the Disciples could see and talk to Jesus. “The Gospel of Jesus is easy to understand; but the person of Jesus sometimes is hard to know…”

Sharing the Gospel, employing apologetics, is the challenge and the privilege afforded to those of us who serve Him when dealing with such “assignments.”

• One reason I cherish story is because we can only “explain” and “defend” so much; ultimately the person of Christ, has to be met, not only described. We try, but there is no substitution.
• Do you yearn to see a physical Jesus? His Disciples walked with Him for three and a half years, yet when things got dicey, they denied knowing Him, and scattered. Would we be any different, in the midst of our problems?
• Thomas literally could not believe his eyes when the risen Savior approached him. When he beheld the wounds, Jesus said, “You believe because you see. But blessed are those who believe in me but who have not seen.”
• I employ apologetics when I bypass theological arguments and fire-and-brimstone, and simply explain to people that “I know that I know that I know.” We all can identify with such inner assurances. I have met Him – no; He has met me – in times of trouble and crisis. And no less in times of confusion and anguish. And joy. A difference between head-knowledge and heart-knowledge.
• I have witnessed miracles. And for all the glorious physical mysteries I cannot explain, least of all can I explain what He brings – “the peace that passeth all understanding.” The world can’t give that; the world can’t take it away.

So I bring no apologies for bringing apologetics to you. I can attempt the methods of historicity and theology and teleology and familiar threats of eternal damnation and promises of eternal life in Paradise – all courses of the same meal, as it were. But I have chosen to know Jesus and make Him known by sharing what He shows me, and what He has done in my life, and what I see He does in the lives of others.

Can I introduce you to my best friend? I’ve got a story or two to tell you…

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Click: Do You Know My Jesus?

10-16-23

This following is not a parable; not at all. It is a true story I heard and pass along with names changed to protect the innocent, and blessed, parties.

I will call the principal figure Charlie, who just observed his 50^th anniversary with his wife Sally, as we will call her. Their sons threw an elaborate and surprise anniversary party. There were guests old and young, from old times and recent, attending from far and wide. There was a lot of love in the restaurant room.

This story – remember where you are reading this – has a spiritual component. This aspect was not planned, nor even noticed by all the guests. But it is an example of how God does not always shout – He often whispers. The Holy Spirit can virtually shove us sometimes! But He can also tenderly, gently tug at our hearts.

Charlie and one of the “farthest drive” guests were college roommates all those years ago, and were not particularly religious. At the party they shared some of the fun times, funny stories, and practical jokes. In the subsequent years Charlie’s friend Rich as we shall call him, has grown in his faith and sometimes shares encouraging messages with people.

Among the memories that popped up was a recollection from those college days about another friend named David, let us say, who in intervening years experienced a crisis; and that Charlie suggested that Rich talk and pray with David. It seems this was an uncharacteristic thing for Charlie to do, at least back in the day. But evidently those prayers had some impact, and since then David has been following Rich’s occasional encouraging messages. Now they are brothers in Christ.

Charlie had, and has, a real brother who could be called George and is known as an impressive brainiac, sharing the love but not the politics nor faith of Charlie. Nevertheless, as Rich learned in surprise, Charlie has been forwarding his messages in those two areas… and George made a point, at this party, of expressing his appreciation and discussing some thoughts. Charlie the evangelist? Some would be surprised.

In another story, or backstory, Charlie and Rich had never met each other’s children through the years. Yet Charlie was so upset at the rupture in the relationship of Rich and one of his daughters that he often volunteered to call her out of the blue and try to heal the situation. Which eventually he did.

That is not the most surprising aspect of that particular story. Charlie’s niece, who could be called Connie, is one of the most active Christians in that family. She works, through her church, with missionaries. Making friends with Rich, she spoke of a concern for Uncle Charlie’s faith. But she was surprised to hear the story of his intervention in the father-daughter problem… and especially her uncle’s reassurance, through the years to Rich, that he “prays for them every night and for their heartache.”

To the extent that Connie was surprised is the main reason I am sharing this story.

Friendships endure, or grow cold. Families grow closer, or drift apart. Seeds of faith are planted, and sometimes sprout and grow; in fact that often happens – no surprise. But as all this – for the lack of a better term and for the sake of this story, let us call it life – happens, deepening faith and learning to share Christian love, gets manifested in myriad ways.

This Charlie fellow is not like the cousin of a friend of mine whose own faith has been growing despite (or because?) of a great crisis with her son. My friend’s cousin is a Christian of comfortable means, and gives greatly to charity. How do we know that? He brags about it. Oh, it comes out in small talk, or anecdotes, or references to details… but everyone knows how “good” he is.

The Bible – our Lord Himself – firmly tell us not to be like that man. Have you heard the words? Not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing (don’t do things for praise). Not to utter the loudest prayers in places of worship. That the widow’s mite is more meaningful than ostentation. When Jesus talked about not hiding one’s light under a bushel, He meant that our faith should shine as a glowing candle; but works, our deeds, may be in secret.

Who sees the good works? The giver, who surely is blessed; the recipients, who benefit; and God, who knows.

Well, as stories were loudly shared during that anniversary party, so also were stories of different sorts — privately, of faith and witness and love. No surprise: that’s how life ought to be. A mosaic of experiences, friendships, memories. Often, memories that bring tears to our eyes.

But it sounds like at that surprise party for Charlie and Sally, there were two kinds of tears flowing. Some of them like showers of blessing. We also have an illustration of the saying that we should always “share the Gospel… sometimes even using words.”

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Click: There Shall Be Showers of Blessing

10-9-23

Toe-stepping alert. Some will be offended here; maybe a greater number of you than usually happens. But as they say in legislative debates, I rise on a Point of Personal Privilege. Or, I don’t know… what cats do with hairballs.

Recently I wrote about how Jesus was treated in the days leading to His crucifixion “by us.” What I mean was that there is no reason to think that any of us would have acted any differently in those horrible days than the people who, just days before, welcomed Him with Hosannas, or even His closest friends who abandoned and denied Him despite three years spent in His entourage, seeing miracles, knowing His love.

Yes, we can be fickle. We often revere the most common things in life. And we often are casual or even dismissive of the holiest.

Exhibit A: It is amazing – and to me, personally, annoying – how many people, even nominal Christians, who refer to God Almighty as “the Man Upstairs.”

It is almost like a superstition, a fear of calling the Most Holy God, Creator of the Universe, Love of our souls, by any of His many proper names. It seems like trying to hold two like-poles of a magnet together. But it is, in reality, an insult.

Would it be much different than God referring to us as “Those little fleas down there”?

Except, maybe, as matter of degree – like physical abuse or cruder insults – disrespect is disrespect, we might be dangerously close to acting like those abusive crowds in Jerusalem. Even those of us who have repented of our sins and asked forgiveness were, as it were, virtually among those crowds who despised and rejected Him, when we choose to continue to live in sin; when we choose to show proper respect before Him. Which we always are: before Him; in His presence.

Do I paint an extreme picture, go too far? You don’t think so? Would you have acted differently back then? Are you as resectful of the Savior… as He deserves? Even His disciples mostly scattered like autumn leaves in a windy street when things got rough, before our Savior was mocked, kicked, and spat upon, betrayed, seized, jailed, accused, tortured, and killed. And then “we” hid in fear for three days until He rose from the dead and had to show Himself to us.

You know, sometimes I wonder – if such a thing could be measured – whether “Jesus Christ” is uttered more as a curse than a blessing or in prayer across the United States every day. Possibly so. Shame on us.

The “Man Upstairs” must be awfully disappointed.

When He comes again in Glory it will be humankind’s second chance. Will He be despised and rejected by us again? Take your pulse, as it were – will we hide our faces from Him? Will you “esteem Him not” (as Isaiah predicted 700 years before Jesus was crucified)? When He returns will He be kicked and punched again? Will you spit on Him?

Will He be called names?

Yes. He will.

Will it be “Son of the Man Upstairs”? Will it be “Je-sus Christ” as in some bitter curse? Or… will we call Him King of kings, Lord of lords; Savior of our souls?

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Click: Rise Again

10-2-23

I have come through a stretch where friends, or acquaintances of friends, have died or observed anniversaries of deaths, or have faced serious life-threats. There have even been sad stories of different people’s similar ailments, tempting one to think they are more than coincidences. Have you ever noticed such trends?

We wonder at those times: Is there something in the water? Conspiracies afoot? Phases of the moon?

There is something called apophenia – confirmation bias – that can fool our perceptions; self-fulfilling prophesies in our minds. Examples are when we take note of weather trends like global warming; or crime statistics; or cancer and other diseases – are things changing, or is there only better reporting?

Nevertheless, we sometimes want to toss statistics (whether affirming or contrary) and “expert opinions” out the window. For instance, when we see more children exhibiting signs of autistic behavior; or know of more folks dying of cancer than in, say, Colonial days; or hear about examples of more auto-immune diseases than existed years ago. If these are just perceptions, or heightened awareness, we can point to another adage – what the Romans called omne trium perfectum – that things come in threes. (Like my lists in these previous paragraphs!)

In fact our minds often run in threes. There are sayings that both good things and bad things happen in threes. The Bible, beginning of course with the Trinity, points to 3 as the number of perfection. Writers are taught to have three main “peaks” in a storyline; fewer are dull, more are confusing. Similarly, orators and pastors are taught to hold audiences with three main points. Homiletics: explanation; illustration; and application. (“Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them.”)

So… our minds want to “see” patterns in myriad ways.

Yet, to return to cancer. The disease does seem to be on the rise, at least in its horrible varieties… more than three, sadly. For all the accounts of “thank God it was detected early” – and we do thank Him in such cases – there are counter-balance stories. In my case, an old church friend whose husband was “opened up” to search for the cause of stomach discomfort… was quickly “stitched up” when many cancers were evident; he died soon thereafter. Another new friend’s son-in-law was diagnosed but surgery seems to have “caught” the suspicious lymphatic glands. But another friend’s husband went from diagnosis of brain cancer to death in five quick weeks. “Mercifully short”? Clichés are of scant comfort…

Cancer – the “Big C” – looms larger in our collective minds than almost all other diseases; perhaps more ominous than international crises or environmental challenges (which, in fact, might be closely related to the cancer epidemic), touching almost every family and neighborhood. The “Big C,” people call it.

It’s a little odd how humankind makes light of dangers. You know, phrases like “acts of God.” Jokes like “The devil made me do it!” Back to cancer again – smokers who cynically call cigarettes “C-sticks.” In fact, if we insist on reverting to shorthand or nicknames, let us adopt another use of the term “the Big C,” and apply it to the real Big C – Christ.

We, the human race, had our chance one time when Christ “became flesh and dwelt among us,” as the Bible refers to His earthly ministry. Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah prophesied and predicted, and even described what Jesus would look like… and how He would be treated by us: Despised and rejected of men; a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. We hid our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

Yes, the “Big C” came to earth, to teach and heal but mainly to Save – to offer Himself as the sacrifice for the punishments we deserve as rebels against our Heavenly Father.

He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed. Full circle back to cancers and afflictions? Does Christ, by this, always heal as we would wish? Not as we would wish – my wife was miraculously healed of thyroid cancer… yet despite fervent prayers, she had to receive heart and kidney transplants. However she faithfully believed she was healed by the miracle of surgery, God’s chosen answer in that circumstance. And she was given a testimony to share.

If there are lessons through all these mysteries, it is that God is sovereign. We trust Him to answer prayer as He will. We praise Him at all times: that is faith. God’s “Big C” – our elder brother, Christ Jesus – is bigger than cancer and any other problems we face.

No matter what we call the challenges, we should call Jesus by Who He is – Christ, our Savior.

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A beautiful, pertinent song by cancer survivor Janet Paschal, written by her and her half-sister Charlotte Ahlemann.
Click: You’re Still Lord

9-25-23

The Holy Bible is comprised of many books written by many hands over many centuries in many locations. Most of the writers did not know each other; neither did they dream of how their texts would be joined or bequeathed through subsequent history.

In fact some of the books were written frankly to record events; some were written to inform and instruct other believers; some were written in the clear belief of writers that they were transcribing God’s words and warnings and commandments.

All the writers, however, were inspired. Consider that word literally: in-spired; as per respiration and other words, the root is “breathing.” So the Holy Spirit of God, by common belief of all the scribes, believed that the Lord “breathed in” to their hearts. As our Creator-God, He did such things. In these later times and by other ways, He still whispers His truths to us… He speaks to us in answered prayer, and inspired thoughts. Like no other deity in other “religions,” His words are confirmed multiplied times over, through the ages.

The “harmony of Scripture” and “unity of the Gospel” are therefore truths that reassure believers, and astonish mathematicians, among others. Think about the probabilities of disparate people agreeing with others whom they did not know; or confirming facts about which they had no tangible clues; or sharing predictions and prophecies that happened, as it turned out, “to the letter.”

These people “recorded” as the Spirit of God dictated to their hearts, things that sometimes made no sense, or seemed irrelevant at the times… but of course have powerful relevance to humankind. Scientists and archaeologists today are discovering places and persons in ancient Scripture that were recently thought to be poetry or fantasy or fiction… but – we discover that those kings, those battles, those cities were real.

The Bible tells us so.

So, despite the stubborn secularists and agnostics who regard it all as a fable or insider-conspiracy or poetic nonsense, we stand in awe of the Holy Bible as history (“His story”); as wisdom and guidance; as a Love Letter from God Almighty. Between its covers are not random contents and disputes and admonitions, but exceedingly precise, intentional words for our comings-and-goings. And for our lives.

There are nit-pickers, some of whom seem sincere, and some of whom have huff-and-puff scholarly manners, who tell of minute differences between, say, accounts in the Gospels – just how many things did Jesus say when hanging on the cross? Or renewed skepticism when their “proofs” against, say, a Great Flood or the actual existence of an ancient Biblical kingdom, have been upended. If they spent one one-thousandth of the time studying the truths in God’s Word, as they do searching for contradictions…

They, and the world, might be better off.

If we look hard enough, anyone can see what they want to see, or miss what they want to miss. I was on the editorial team of the republication of the 1599 Geneva Bible, which was in fact the translation of John Calvin that (among other significance) Pilgrims brought to the colonies; not the King James version. It lives in history as the “Breeches” Bible because translators handled the account in Genesis 3:7, where Adam sewed fig leaves together to cover his nakedness, and called the garment “breeches.” Somehow mankind seemed to pay as much attention to that, as to the entirety of Scripture.

There are other tempests in teapots – or angels dancing on heads of pins. The Apocrypha is, or is not, regarded as canon; and portions of Daniel and Esther are regarded by some Christians as “Deuterocanonical” – added or discovered at dates later than “accepted” Scripture. Martin Luther doubted the authority of the Book of James. I recently have been studying the movement of the early church father Marcion, who held unorthodox views on the relevance of the Old Testament, and establishment of the Apostolic church, to Christ’s mission and message. Some view him as heretical, but without his movement, we might not have some of New Testament Scripture and traditions.

Again, my point – and my willingness to raise such issues – is that we as humankind are face-to-face with God’s existence, Jesus’s reality, and the Holy Spirit’s essential role in our lives. Yes… the devil can be in details, sometimes.

We need to keep our eyes on Heaven, and our feet on the ground.

I know Jesus is real because I have met Him. He mightily has intervened in my life, and that of my family. He has worked miracles that no other person, no other power, could do. Can I explain this to skeptics. No, not really… it is for everyone to experience. And I would say that it is not so important that we love Him – it is to our salvation; yes, but what is most important to grasp is that He loves us.

If we had to order a priority (and it is not really a priority: both things are true and essential), but I would plead to those who have not yet accepted Salvation to grasp the fact that God so loved the world that He allowed His Son to take our sins upon Him… that we may be one with the Father. That makes the Bible – however else the world debates it – a thousand translations; the source of debates; the essence of holy wisdom; a handbook for conducting one’s life; a record of miracles; prophecies of end times – when all is said and done, a love story.

I think we cannot fall in love with God fully until we are aware of the awesome fact that the Creator of the Universe knows and loves you and me. The Bible is God’s love letter to us; love is in every word, every verse, every chapter, every book.

Yes, Jesus Loves Me. The Bible tells me so.

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Click: Jesus Loves Me

9-18-23

There have been a few small denominations that discouraged music in worship, just as there were sects that outlawed sex. For similar reasons those groups seemed to perish, disappear… and are missed by few.

Music is a part of humans’ souls. Mysterious in its way because not everybody has the talent to create tunes… or perform well… yet we all respond to music. Those who “can’t carry a tune” (and some people cannot) still enjoy listening. The most hardened people find their hearts softened when they hear a familiar melody. Songs are composed to win lovers and to send boys to war; to bond and to bind; to remember… and, by diversion, to heal and forget.

I am not aware of a survey, but I figure that 95 per cent of songs are love songs. Tennessee Ernie Ford once was asked why he sang so many Gospel songs and not more love songs, and he answered, “Gospel songs are the greatest love songs of all.”

Instrumental music is, to me, the most mysterious, and profound, of all music… all of all the arts. Abstract, yet specific in intent. And musical notation is a language all its own – a universal language. Composers who begin their work with blank staves… and finish with “sounds” that can move us literally and also move us to tears and smiles… perform a kind of miracle.

Johann Sebastian Bach took those blank pages, and before beginning to compose any work, wrote “Jesus, help me” at the top of the first page. When the composition was finished, he wrote “Thanks be to God” on the last page, acknowledging his source and strength of inspiration.

Quirky denominations aside, all cultures, in their social and religious practices, have relied on musical expression. The Bible overflows with descriptions, and endorsements, of joyful music. In Genesis 4 Jubal is identified as the ancestor of “all those who play the lyre and pipe.” Elsewhere, Elisha commanded, “Get me a musician,” wherewith a blessing was delivered. David, the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” ministered to Saul by playing music at night, much as Bach’s Goldberg Variations were composed to soothe those who sought rest.

Martin Luther, the great reformer and preacher, was also a composer (for instance of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) and he defended music in church: “The devil does not need all the good tunes to himself!”

Some of the most important American historians are those who have studied and recorded (including literally) the folklore and folk music of the American past. I was privileged to know (and play music with, even past his 100^th birthday!) the legendary Wade Mainer, whose banjo-picking style influenced Earl Scruggs years before the Bluegrass Sound was born. To hear his stories of rural North Carolina, and hear the songs he and his wife Julia (whose stage name back in the day was Hillbilly Lilly) sang together was like walking through history.

A friend recently reminded me of the excellent book and movie Songcatcher, about those who kept those musical traditions alive. One of the characters mused about the “thread” of a favorite song, perhaps “a touchstone with the past – a remembrance of all the singers who had ever kept a story alive on the strength of their music, and that singing the ballad was a chance to join that chain of voices stretching all the way back to across the ocean to the place where the families began.”

Yes, music hath charms. It is the case, of course, with mighty hymns as well as humble folk tunes. May I provide an example?

Here is a video of a performance of the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee, which was composed in 1841. Its meaningful words were set to music by several people through the years, including Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Its words were on the lips of President William McKinley as he died of an assassin’s bullet – imagine an American president today having this as his last thought? – and by legend, as The Titanic sank, Theodore Roosevelt’s former military aide Archie Butt directed the ship’s musicians to play it.

In this video, André Rieu conducts his Johann Strauss Orchestra, plus 400 brass players and a hundred singers in a performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee. The audience of thousands is a mixed, international group in an open square in Maastricht – and the hymn is performed without words, the singers chanting. Does the audience miss the significance? Not counted by the emotions, and tears, on listeners’ faces!

To hear this hymn, even once, impresses the powerful words on one’s mind, carried by the music. And the reverence of this elaborate performance… confirms the Power of Music.

In words written in 1697 in William Congreve’s play The Mourning Bride, “Musick hath Charms to soothe the savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.” And it can lift souls, and carry us somehow Heavenward too:

Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

There let the way appear, steps unto heaven; All that thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

As Bach, “the Fifth Evangelist,” said, “With devotional music, God is always present in His grace.”

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Click: Nearer My God To Thee

9-4-23

The unofficial end of Summer: This weekend there will be the sounds of parades, the colors of flags, the sights of smiling friends and family, and if nothing else… the aromas of barbecues. Particularly dear to me as, these very weeks, my daughter Emily, who lives in Northern Ireland, is amping up her American-barbecue business in Ireland and the UK; the BBQueen of Derry. Appropriate Cultural Appropriation you can taste!

I have told this story before about summer get-togethers. When I skip it, I get letters asking “Where was that great song you post every summer?” On this Labor Day weekend, I remember a simple barbecue, but one of the most profound days of my life. A holiday far away from my home… but very close to my heart. It happened on a summer holiday almost 30 years ago.

And it always makes me wonder, Is an America we once knew disappearing?

I lived in East Texas back then for a few months, conducting interviews and research for a book I was writing. Once settled, I took out the Yellow Pages (remember them?) to chart the location of nearby Assembly of God churches, intent on visiting as many as I could through the summer. East Texas was in every way new to me, and I wanted to experience everything I could.

Well, the first one I visited was in Cut and Shoot. That’s a town’s name; you can look it up. A small white frame AG church was my first stop that summer… and I never visited another. In that tiny congregation, it was, um, obvious in three minutes that I was not from East Texas. I was born in New York City. Yet I was treated like family as if the folks had known me for decades. A fellow named Dave Gilbert asked me if I’d like to go to his farm for a barbecue where a bunch of people were just going to get together and “do some visitin’.”

I brought the biggest watermelon I could find as my contribution to the pot-luck. There were dozens and dozens of folks. I couldn’t tell which was family and who were friends, because everybody acted like kinfolk. When folks from East Texas ask, “How are you?” they really mean it. There were several monstrous barrel barbecue smokers with chimneys, all slow-cooking beef brisket. (Every region brags about its barbecue traditions, but I’ll fight anyone who doesn’t agree that low-heat, slow-smoked, no sauce, East-Texas barbecue is the best.) There was visitin’, surely; there were delicious side dishes; there was softball and volleyball and kids dirt-biking; and breaks for sweet tea and spontaneous singing of patriotic songs.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is America.”

As the sun set, the same food came out again – smoked brisket galore; all the side dishes; and desserts of all sorts. Better than the first time. Then the Gilberts cleared their house’s porch. People brought instruments out of their cars and trucks. Folks tuned their guitars; some microphones and amps were set up; chairs and blankets dotted the lawn. Dave Gilbert and his brothers, I learned, sang gospel music semi-professionally in the area. Pastor Charles Wigley of that local church, during the summer had opened for Gold City Quartet at a local concert, playing gospel music on the saxophone.

In some churches, in some parts of America, you sing solo every once in a while. You’re not only expected to – you want to. So into the evening, as the sun went down and the moon came up over those farms and fields, everyone at that picnic naturally sang, together or solo or in duets or quartets. Spontaneously, mostly. Far into the night, exuberantly with smiles, or heartfelt with tears, singing unto the Lord.

I sat back in the folding chair, and I thought, “This is Heaven.”

I have grown sad for people who have not experienced the type of worship where singers, and people who pray, do so spontaneously. From the congregation. Moving to the front. Sharing their hearts. Crying tears of joy or conviction. Loving the Lord, and each other, freely. If you have not… then visit a church where this is commonplace. Even witnessing it is an uplifting balm to the soul, where there is freedom and joy in singing spontaneously.

I attach a video that very closely captures the music, and the feeling – the fellowship – of that evening. A wooden ranch house, a barbecue picnic just ended, a campfire, and singers spontaneously worshiping, joining in, clapping, and “taking choruses.” Smiling, hugging. There were cameras at this particular get-together, but it took this city boy back to that holiday weekend, finding himself among a brand-new family, the greatest barbecue I ever tasted before or since… and the sweetest songs I know.

And I think to myself, nervously shedding a tear… “THIS is the America we are losing.”

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Click: The Sweetest Song I Know

8-28-23

Nothing in the Holy Bible is an accident. Every word of Scripture has application to our lives. That we are not nomads or shepherds is irrelevant. Truth, sin, purity, love, and God’s sovereignty are matters as pertinent to us today as to any people through past centuries and many lands. The smallest details are as important as the larger narratives.

In that perspective I invite a look at the first of Jesus’s miracles. In the second chapter of John’s Gospel we have the account of the Wedding Feast at Cana. It is where Jesus turned water into wine as the feast ran short.

This is the first of Jesus’s recorded miracles. We may marvel, as the wedding couple and the guests did. The important point is to focus on the miracle, not specifically the wine (for all its symbolism, I suppose Jesus might have made a miracle at the wedding feast of bread or fish or… wait; that’s for later). But The miracle itself was intended to impress the guests. Jesus’s actions have significance. His presence as a “mere” guest affirms His own humility, the “servant king.” And so forth.

But let us pause with those who focus on the role of wine at this event. Many people – and multiplied-more others – have lives that are scarred by alcohol abuse. It was the case in my family, and probably the same with most of you readers. It is a weakness in the human condition; and although specific to wine and liquor, I am persuaded that many people are basically addicted to being addicted; alcohol is the tendency or “flavor” or option of many self-destructive life-choices.

Virtually every addict, no matter the frequency or pleasure of the “highs,” regrets the addiction… sometimes (or repeatedly) seeks release… grieves over the consequences. Relationships, jobs, family, career, health, life.

Stick with me, please. The focus of the Water-Into-Wine miracle should not be the food or wine, nor even the miracle itself… but the Miracle-Maker.

Let us say that you have an addiction. We all do, in myriad ways, even to the common addictions to sinning, transgressing, pride, not fully serving God. Many believers – and I address well-meaning Christians – often pray that we be freed from bondage to this or that temptation. But those prayers are often in this context: “Help me be strong, Lord, that I can battle these problems. Watch me!”

As God reads our well-meaning hearts, we often mean: “Get me to that point, Lord, where I can resist these challenges on my own.” And it’s likely we really mean: “I want You to be proud of me, Lord. Give me wisdom and strength that I can overcome these temptations by myself.” And we are in effect wanting to get to the point of saying, “Thank you, Lord! I will take over from here!”

That’s spiritual maturity, right?

No, that is spiritual immaturity.

Let us never forget the Biblical reminder that “we can do nothing except through the Christ who strengthens us.” Remember that Jesus wants to run with us, not watch us hand off the baton and then cheer from the bleachers. Why did God send the Holy Spirit except to be our constant Guide and Comforter and Wisdom and Strength?

Was Christ’s work on the cross something that we should regard as “finished” when we think we know how much to receive from it?

In the case of our focus here, sometimes for addicts the greatest miracle is not to be free of the alcohol… but rather to become addicted to Jesus. “I’ll take it from here, God…” is self-swindling. A greater personal “overcoming,” a greater miracle, is to change our lives that we learn to be dependent, not independent. To be dependent on Jesus instead of the bottle, our own wills.

We are impressed by the account of that miracle at the Wedding Feast, turning water into wine. In our own lives it would not be a matter of weakness, but of strength, if we were to plead for a different miracle. Many things we simply cannot do on our own. God, please turn the wines of our lives – our tendencies to sin; our disobedience; our addictions – back into water.

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Click: Wine Into Water

8-21-23

The pictures and videos of the devastating fire in Hawaii, in the city of Lahaina on the island of Maui – much less the bare news and statistics – are nightmarish. Arising spontaneously; whipped by bizarre winds; approximately 3000 structures destroyed almost instantly; many people literally incinerated. Death tolls of more than a hundred folks are sure to rise, as many hundreds are unaccounted.

We tend to use words like “unprecedented” when we hear of such disasters, yet we sadly and too easily can recall other natural disasters like Pompeii 2000 years ago, or the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, when upwards of 8000 people died.

When the news of the fires broke, I called a friend in Seattle. He has a home on Maui, about two miles from the fires, as I learned. He has been reassured that his home was safe, yet he wept as the memories of familiar and favorite neighborhoods – and, of course, possibly many friends and neighbors – might be among the horrific losses.

Our minds might go back to another legendary fire, the Chicago Fire of 1871. Debates still rage, virtually as heated and wild as the flames themselves: Was the fire’s origin of “man-made” causes? How responsible were poor city planning or faulty responses in Chicago… or in Lahaina? Or are such disasters (for instance, in great forested lands) inevitable and cyclical? My webmaster, who is formatting this message, recently was on a car trip half a continent away from a burst pipe in his basement. Family heirlooms and uncountable photos were ruined. That sort of a flood can be as personally tragic as the 1889 Johnstown Flood.

My friend with the house on Maui shed real tears for the disaster in “paradise,” despite his own property being spared. And yet – I am not naming him to protect his privacy – his tears of compassion were being shed despite the immediacy of his current situations. He is dealing with two very serious medical problems; and his wife is very sick, too, at the moment.

How quickly beautiful oases of serenity and security, like Lahaina or suburban Seattle, can become virtual “valleys of the shadow of death…”

A prosperous Chicagoan in 1871 had lost properties and much of his wealth in the legendary fire. Horatio Spafford was further devastated by the Wall Street Panic and Depression of 1873. With meager resources he decided to have his family – his wife and four daughters – live for a spell, frugally, in England. Attending to final arrangements, Spafford sent his wife and daughters ahead, intending to join them soon afterward.

But a cable arrived from England with news that their liner had collided, mid-Atlantic, with a Scottish freighter. His four daughters were among those who drowned; more than 300 souls in all. Even in an ocean there are “valleys of shadows of death.”

As Spafford sailed for England to join his wife who survived, the captain of his vessel slowed the ship at one point and announced to passengers that, as close as he could reckon, they were at the approximate spot where that “famous, recent maritime disaster and loss of life occurred.” Can you imagine the anguish of experiencing fire and flood (so to speak), so personal, and even floating on ocean waters where his dead daughters might have been below?

Spafford, a devout Christian and supporter of the noted Chicago evangelist Dwight L Moody, reacted in a way that only the Holy Spirit could embrace and give strength – anyway, I am not sure I could have had the spiritual courage… to write a poem in reaction. That poem became the words of one of the great hymns of the church: “It Is Well With My Soul.”

When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control – That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! – My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul!

It is well (it is well) With my soul (with my soul); It is well, it is well with my soul!

It would seem to take superhuman faith to compose such words at that moment. In fact – whether with this background or not; the Hawaiian wildfires on the news, or not – it takes great faith to read these words, sing that hymn, and believe that truth.

Because whatever befalls the believer, it is well with our souls if they are in Jesus. Even in the worst circumstances… health or status… self or family… things of the moment, things of the future… even loss of jobs, of homes, of friends, of lovers… “let goods and kindred go,” in the words of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress”… God is yet the Captain of our ship, our souls.

Impossible to accept, believe, embrace? That’s what faith is.

• Sometimes friends are revealed as inconstant; and we realize that in a situation, we had hope in a person, instead of faith in God.
• Or we pray and plan, and yet the programs fail; and we realize that we sought direction from everyone and everywhere except the One who orders our steps.
• We know what we want; and then we are reminded that God knows what we need.

There are mysteries in the Ways of God. I do not believe He sends disasters or disease, even to “teach lessons.” He is not a child abuser. Yet there is sin in the world, and our sins have corrupted the beautiful world He created, and sometimes obscure our vision of the beautiful life He promises.

God’s love does not depend upon our understanding of it. Even receiving it does not depend on our total understanding of it! As His ways are mysterious, His love is profoundly without limit. We trust and obey; there’s no other way. And – even in the face of circumstances seemingly to the contrary – it will be well with your soul.

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Click: It Is Well With My Soul

8-14-23

(A guest message by our sometime contributor and all-time friend Leah Morgan)

My apologies to this bee.

I’m so sorry, that’s false fruit. You may be salivating for pollen, but you’ve just received some miscommunication. There’s no nourishment here.

Our own bodies are so magnificently engineered with such heightened perception, they can mistakenly respond to false stimuli too. Our nervous system perceives danger and reverts to a sympathetic condition that propels us in to a fight-or-flight response. High alert! Adrenaline pumping! Physically ready to react! But… it was just political news. Or… it was just someone’s relational chaos we insist on listening to.

The hazards of living in this sympathetic state of perpetual high alert – or stress, as we more commonly know it – are devastating for us physically, mentally, and emotionally. We are meant to immediately revert to operating in a parasympathetic nervous state after dangers pass.

It’s the opposite of fight-or-flight; more like rest-and-digest. But if there are perpetual false alarms, and we continually fatigue our brilliant system, essentially crying wolf, we teach our bodies to never feel safe.

We won’t rest well or digest well, when our nervous system is locked into focusing on danger, real or perceived.

It’s why a particular declaration in Psalm 23 is so profound and such a paradox. He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Our nervous system downgrades the priority of resting and digesting, when an enemy is present and a threat is imminent. It reserves its energy for allowing us to escape through confrontation or retreat. Fight or flight.

Eating a prepared meal at a table as an enemy lurks nearby, not mindlessly grabbing a snack on the run for our lives, is a startling portrait. It contradicts how we’ve been wired to live. It invites us into a relationship like this with the Good Shepherd who provides for our thriving in every climate, even under duress.

What kind of sheep can rest and digest when a wolf is near? One who is led by love, not driven by fear. A sheep who is confident that every wolf has to first pass through the gate – a sheep with a Shepherd so good he becomes the gate. He positions His body at the entrance and the wolf has to take out the Shepherd before he can ever get to the sheep.

That has been attempted. You might have heard of this great showdown outside the city gate. It commenced at Calvary and culminated in a garden. The mouth of the gate of the tomb was rolled away to reveal the Shepherd still capable of protecting the sheep and defeating the wolf. Hell itself is no competitor against Him.

So when He prepares a table for us, we eat. We are able to eat. To rest and digest. And we never believe it to be our last supper.

(www. Leahcmorgan.com)

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Click: That’s The Power

8-7-23

Alienation.

It is one the most prevalent, and serious, of problems in society today. No… not an “alien nation.” That controversy – or threat, or mystery, or conspiracy of silence – I am persuadable is a manufactured distraction from real, honest, terrestrial dangers.

But we do hear a lot about people who are “alienated” from society, from their families, from neighbors and co-workers. It is ironic and therefore true (irony always derives from truth) that the more crowded our society is… the more “inter-connected”… the more “welcoming,” “accessible,” “integrated” we are – the more alienated people have become.

Alienation, isolation. Many people – again, despite the crush of neighbors and the menu of diversions – are convinced of having arrived at the end of the line. Their lines… their lives. They know nobody; they trust nobody; they have nobody to turn to.

How can they know if we don’t tell them? That situation is a lie from hell – they are not isolated; they don’t have to feel that way.

OK, your family has left you. But Jesus hasn’t.

Your friends have betrayed you. Hey, it happened to Jesus too; He knows. He will not betray.

Counselors have been worthless? Don’t trust in people.

Government outreaches are… Let’s not even go there.

Calling out to God is a prayer that never goes unanswered. Opening a Bible will lead to Comfort. Finding a Christian to talk to, pray with, share things… will never come up empty.

Prayer cancels alienation.

Lonely people already have an answer, even if they do not know it. “When two or three are gathered in My name…” You can be the loneliest person in the Lonely Spot in the middle of Lonelieville… and there will be two gathered when you seek the Lord. The Holy Spirit is promised to be with you in those moments when your heart cries out. You are never alone.

The Bible also talks about the “Great Cloud of Witnesses” in Heaven who watch us… and cheer us on.

In my life, I went through a period of doubt, who hasn’t? and my father said he trusted me. My mother always prayed with me. But my mother’s brother, Ed, and his wife, my Aunt Mildred, had strayed from the family’s Lutheran roots and became “religious nuts” (in my parents’ view) – they went to a Billy Graham crusade. And, horrors, they were more committed Christians.

Aunt Mildred used to phone me out of the blue and encourage me – no “hard sell”; she was praying for me, that’s all. Uncle Ed, when he visited Washington DC when I was in college, arranged lunches and reminded me… that he was praying for me. In the midst of my wise-ass doubting stage, I never was offended, but… I never forgot these gestures either. When my cousin Irene went to college near me outside Chicago the year I worked there, I almost felt like I would catch some strange spiritual disease from her…

Well, eventually I became more of a religious nut than they (um, a Pentecostal reference). Eventually I delivered one of the eulogies at Uncle Ed’s funeral. And Reni is my dearest cousin.

Eventually, you see, I realized the power of prayer… was not always my prayers, but even the prayers of people I didn’t know were praying for me.

Allow Captain Obvious to share this: God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. He does do what He wants. Yet… He has instituted the “channel” of prayer – the language; the means of communication. Can prayer influence God? Well, the Bible has examples of that; yes. Does He answer every prayer? Yes. But… sometimes in “His time.” And sometimes His answer is No.

That’s where faith and trust come in. But it all pleases God. Prayer is the key to Heaven, but faith unlocks the door; do you know that song?

And in the meantime… friends are praying for you. Strangers are praying for you. The hosts of Heaven are watching and cheering. And, as I said, when you pray, you are never alone.

… and, hey – in the meantime, what happened to “alienation”? Praying people are in the Family of God. Not alone. Will never face challenges alone, or problems alone.

Once upon a time there was a group of men, gathered from far and wide, risking their lives to make momentous decisions. Gathered in a hot room – this was in the middle of summer in the 1700s, and they kept the windows closed – but they suddenly felt frustrated, at odds, arguing, almost alone in their deliberations.

It was the Founders of our Nation, the brightest and bravest, but all of a sudden in a confused crisis… can we say alienated, not knowing which way or ways to turn? Benjamin Franklin stood up and suggested that they do something immediately that the group had not done yet… and do it every morning henceforth: Pray together.

The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (James 5:16).

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Click: Prayer Is the Key To Heaven

7-31-23

I have been thinking a lot about candles recently. Maybe it’s because it’s the wick-end. Maybe I’m just thinking of an old flame. Perhaps I am just waxing nostalgic…

OK. That’s out of my system. Honestly, I have been thinking about candles. I have a new friend who is “into” candles, for all the right reasons – in these hurried times, they represent serenity; they release fragrance; their glow is peaceful. And with other friends – and in my own moments of meditation lately – I have been longing for traditional, “older” forms of worship. Older for me; older in history’s unfolding.

Candles remind us of when churches were lit by candlelight. Of matins services, of Christmas-Eve candlelight worship, when the soft glow of many candles enveloped us in gentle light. I have been in cathedrals in Europe where the glow of uncountable candles is as central to the spirit of worship as the echoing strains of an organ, and the distant voices of a choir.

… complementing, of course the sharing of the Word, the message of a sermon, the presence of the Lord. No candles or choirs or architecture can substitute, only complement. But, oh, they do!

I increasingly yearn for quiet, reverent, may I say “glowing,” worship these days. I have been blessed by exuberance, unallayed joy, excited praise… but no less by seeking – and finding – the Lord in those quiet places.

There are some religious traditions that use candles in worship. Older faiths turn them into formal elements of service and even offerings. There are newer faiths that almost make fetishes of candles, creating “mystery” environments that are parts of multi-media experiences with video screens, smoke machines, and such. In both cases, worshipers ought be careful not to let candles or any other human-manufactured props substitute for the actual presence of the Holy Spirit; or the real, not symbolic, “mystical presence” of Jesus.

But let us return here to appreciate candles in all their variety and what they bring to our lives. What they can add! Yes, their moods and aromas and beauty; but what they represent too. For instance, it is not necessarily New-Agey to see tens of thousands of candles at a rally, or during a concert’s closing song, or during a patriotic moment, waving in unison. A single candle, placed in honor by a casket or during a memorial event, can be profound. Candles at home, or in a hospital room by a picture of a departed loved one, touch our hearts.

Moreover – you knew this was coming – we easily can see spiritual messages. Jesus told us, recorded in John 8:12, I am the Light of the world, and surely He is. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness.

You must know the verse too: Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:15,16).

I have always been impressed by this graphic truth: If you were in the blackest of black places, say the darkest night, no moon or stars – “pitch black” – you know that if a single candle, a dime-store candle, were lit, miles away, you would see it flickering, piercing the blackness.

But if you were in a place of blinding light – let’s say a parched desert under a midday sun – and you held up something dark, let’s say an open box on its side, you could not see its dark interior more than a few dozen feet away.

This little light of mine…

Remember that song? Yes, about candles… about light… and what we do with them. In the same way, about the flames of candles, another lesson:

As the wax melts away, candles might go out, but that is a function of the wax, not the flame itself. You can light candle after candle after new candle, “passing along” the flame of that first candle… and those acts do not shorten the life of that flame… nor dim the candle’s glow.

Be candles. Be light. Be the flames. Share your flames. Glow until others are lit too, and warmed. Be fragrant! Light the way for others. Pierce the darkness.

The Holy Spirit would have us do something more than just be lit, so to speak; or to shine only where we are. Step out of your candle-holder, climb down from your candelabra. Walk – no; run – into the darkness.

This world is a dark place, and growing blacker, darker, all the time. People are stumbling, lost; sometimes they simply cannot see. Light their way!

Carry your candle, run to the darkness

Seek out the hopeless, deceived and poor.

Hold out your candle for all to see it,

Take your candle, and go light your world!

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Click: Go Light Your World

7-24-23

Last week’s metaphorical garden walk evoked great response. Among the characteristics of pretty and seemingly fragile flowers are, frequently, a tenacity that can inspire us to persevere against life’s onslaughts.

Perhaps the most opposite of objects to a fragile flower that we can think of in nature is a mountain. A giant rock, a monolith, an “immovable object.” Oh, yeah?

When I was a young teenager I visited Italy. I was interested, who isn’t, in Renaissance art, and I was grateful to be able to visit the legendary marble quarries of Carrara. It is an area where primeval formations during the creation of the world caused a wide swath of mountains to be composed of marble. Marble has unique properties – it is a rock (metamorphic carbonate), to be sure, hard and heavy, but at the same time malleable and in some conditions, a virginal pure white.

Michelangelo coveted the marble from Carrara and Seravezza for his planned façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and Pope Leo X indulged him, but Michelangelo knew his marble, having sculpted the supernal “David” and “Pieta” several years earlier. He was so intent on moving that marble of Carrara to that city of Florence – hundreds of miles down the Mediterranean coast, thence east into the boot, through Pisa to Florence – that he put aside painting and sculpting and architecture to oversee the “quarrying” of marble and moving gargantuan slabs down the sea and across lands. He became like Leonardo during those many months, inventing rigs and carts and boats and bridges.

Allora. Yes, to get to my point. I was fascinated, as a teenaged tourist, to learn how giant pieces of marble were secured – separated from the mountains that held them. Dynamite existed at the time, and primitive explosions might have been tried… but were not. Many workers with sledgehammers? No. Beasts of burden strapped with great ropes affixed to peaks and outcroppings? Not at all.

The giant chunks of marble were instead separated from the mountains by mere modest slivers of wood.

Wedges. It is a property of some stone, especially marble, that it can crack under pressure (hmmm… like many people do, but that is not my message!). Small cracks were found, or made, in the great marble monoliths, and Michelangelo, studying and planning properly, had narrow wooden wedges tapped into those cracks. Then water was applied to the wood, which expanded slightly from the moisture.

On the next day, after the engorged wood had, unlikely as it seems, pushed the marble monolith apart ever so slightly, other wedges were tapped in – a little larger in size, and soaked again.

This process was repeated, day after day, until (again with forethought and examination for the planned “capture” of the marble that was figured to break free) eventually the marble broke free. Making sure the chunks of rock were “caught,” not to crash down, they were lowered, then to make their serpentine way to Florence. No easy tricks themselves… but compared to the separating and securing of tons of precious marble from a massive mountain?

Now, I made reference to people cracking under pressure. Surely that is a simile if not a metaphor. But the real lesson – a valuable and quite appropriate lesson to learn – is similar to that provided by tenacious little flowers! Can you picture what I described in the quarry-process? “Moving mountains”… The power of planning, patience, and persistence… Being content with slow but steady results… Accomplishing a seemingly impossible task… and using seemingly absurd ideas and tools in order to succeed greatly.

May I suggest further: as beautiful as those snow-white chucks of a mountain were, they still were only pieces of rock. But in a master’s hand (and in the Master’s Hand) they became stunning façades of cathedrals; and lifelike statues of Moses and David; and of Mary holding her crucified Son. Living, breathing, miracles can emerge from cold stone. “The rocks cry out!”

Finally, before we forget the mountain itself: We think of Sisyphus, his impossible task being to push an impossible rock up an impossible mountain. We recall Moses smiting the rock. We remember God’s promise that with prayer and in faith we can move the metaphorical mountains that stand in our way. We remember hymns like A Mighty Fortress and Rock of Ages – that God is our refuge and strength.

But we remember too the fissures in mighty rocks and mountains. Remember how Michelangelo utilized the cracks – the “clefts” – that certainly play their own roles.

When we need it, as God assured us in His Word, those rocks can provide refuges too. He provides safe havens when we need protection from the world, even for a spell. Mountainous rocks can provide hiding places from the world’s attacks and storms, where we may regain strength and courage.

What promises! Move those mountains… and, when needed, find those safe places where God invites you to pray “Hide Thou Me.”

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Since we shared much here about Michelangelo, I would like to close with lines he wrote toward the end of his life:

Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that Divine love that opened His arms on the cross to take us in.

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Click: Hide Thou Me

7-10-23

My good friend Gordon Pennington, a remarkable and accomplished man, has moved on in his life from several successful careers — not abandoned but “graduated” — and today is a motivational speaker, conference guest, lecturer, organizer… and evangelist. In his latter role he is not connected to a ministry, nor associated with a movement – other than the movement to witness to people who have not yet accepted Christ. He is a recruit, a volunteer, and a worker in the pursuit Jesus would have us all to fulfill, the “Great Commission.” Winning souls.

Gordon has a remarkable gift for engaging people on sidewalks or waiting rooms or over coffee; comfortably making friendships; discussing their “situations”; and sharing the Gospel. Uncountable people have accepted Jesus – and most importantly have changed their lives and “stuck” with their Christian walk – because he exercises that gift. He does as all believers should do, in our own ways of course. The opportunities are always there.

How many of us respond to that prompting of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to act on the command of the Great Commission? How many readers are yourselves in a good place because someone shared the Good News with you? How often do you feel that spiritual revolution in your soul that is as “new” today as when you first experienced it?

Have you had a “religious experience”? Experiential events are important in life, and often are vital parts of emotional, even intellectual, breakthroughs; but they also can be seductive. They can prove temporary. Life changes need to put down roots in our minds, hearts, and souls; not be mere refreshing breezes.

A challenge is the oft-stated and dispositive distinction drawn between Religion and Relationship. Christian denominations – and there are hundreds – can be caught up in divisions and disagreements, interpretations and inclusions (and exclusions!), rituals and rules. On the other hand, true Christianity (or “Mere Christianity” as the reliably brilliant C S Lewis defined it) is no more and no less than a relationship with Jesus.

That relationship – friendship, intimacy, trust – is all that is asked. A question posed not only by C S Lewis, but by Jesus Himself. No frills, no conditions, no membership requirements or quizzes! Belief that He is the Son of God, that He rose from the dead, that He loves you ineffably, beyond our ability to understand… but not beyond our ability to accept. And to embrace.

There are skeptics, or examples we know, of people whose faith wavered. Folks who have had bad experiences with religion (there’s that word again). Cynics because of religious experiences proven hollow, or religious people proven flawed. And there are hypocrites aplenty in, probably, every church we can visit.

But there’s always room for one more.

On the other hand, it is refreshing to discover new-born Christians (oh, yes: “Born-again Christians”) whose conversions and new lives, while genuine, did not change every single aspect of their old selves. It does frighten some converts – “Do I have to start wearing bow ties, mow a suburban lawn, and go to Sunday School picnics once a week?” Converts like Alice Cooper, Bob Dylan, Chuck Norris, and Robert Duvall looked the same and remained in their professions, even while the great Interior Decorator worked on the inside aspects of their lives.

Let us remember that Jesus “hung around” with some unsavory types — the people He most needed to reach. And remember that St Paul was determined to “be all things to all people” in order to interact with those who would not otherwise be in a place to hear the Gospel.

If you, or someone you know, has been curious to know Christ; or tempted to yield to cynicism about following Him – I invite you to think a little harder about the question, Have you had a religious experience?

And then I would remind you that Jesus Himself had a religious experience:

It was religious people who rejected, accused, tortured, condemned, and killed Him.

Keep in your mind the wide difference between joining a religion and becoming a follower of Jesus. Respect tradition, but always be open to questioning traditions and rules and social pressures that are empty or misleading.

We are well reminded to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. But never forget to yield to God the things that are God’s… and that includes your very soul.

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An example of a Christian’s change of heart being sui generis – important unto itself, not relying on arbitrary sets of external rules, or other peoples’ opinions – is the German punk queen Nina Hagen. After a life of drugs, rebellion, artistic experimentation, political extremes, and wild performance art… she met Jesus. She was baptized. She reads the Bible to audiences while on stage. Little changed in her outward self; she is however evidently much changed inside, where – after all – her Savior lives. Here is a clip from her Personal Jesus tour, singing an American Southern Gospel song.

NiNA HAGEN – This World Is Not My Home – Personal Jesus Tour, PARiS

7-3-23

I once made a deal with my late wife that we would split the duties facing us, the issues we had to deal with as a couple. I mean, it was a sort of a deal. My plan was that she would handle the minor things like utility bills, car payments, and house repairs. I would concern myself with larger issues like world peace, nuclear disarmament, and the energy crisis.

It seemed like an intelligent plan, to me.

The human mind, or in my case the “mind,” has an infinite capacity for self-deception. Beyond that, self-delusion. Even further afield… well, you see a pattern. And recently, here, we considered the matter of “Progress” as a false god, evanescent at best; a cruel chimera at worst.

I invite us to switch our consideration from material miseries to those pathologies of “self,” as we started listing above. Self-ishness can be a positive motive when it inspires prudence, protection, and preservation. As with airplane safety procedures, we can best care for others when we properly tend to ourselves.

In a Christian context, I frequently remind believers who are active, very active, in ministries and missions, that Jesus came to earth to save them… individuals… you and me… not (primarily) our programs, plans, and priorities. Those things will follow, but He died for our sins, not those of some committee or organization.

Is that “selfish” in the pejorative sense? No – especially if we identify it as Jesus’s point of view. Is it selfish, grabbing glory for ourselves? Heaven forbid. In fact when we truly consider who we are, it is, instead, very humbling.

Of all the things increasingly in short supply in the world today, I say that Humility is the most threatened of resources. Being humble. And the opposite of Humility is Pride. Ah, Pride – which I consider the deadliest of the Deadly Sins, and which to me is the wellspring of all other sins. From back in the Garden, down to every hour of every day in our own spheres.

Pride preceded rebellion against God: “We know better than Him.” Pride: “I can ignore God’s commandments; I’ll bet He spares me the punishment.” Pride: “If God is good, how can He keep me from Heaven?” Pride: “I am not as bad as a lot of horrible people around the world.” Pride: “I give to charities; I care about the poor people. Isn’t that enough?” Pride: “Why should I bother God with my problems?” Pride: “Thank God I am not like other people…”

To be filed under “Unconscious Irony,” Pride Month has just ended. By proclamations and the movement’s very flag, this Pride is not about academic achievement or conquered diseases or even material advances, but the celebration of sin. It is as if a month, or special holidays, were devoted to cheating on one’s taxes or betraying marriage vows or abusing children. Yes, my seat belt is fastened; these are incendiary remarks these days. But this new, branded Pride also encompasses choosing to ignore or overrule or endorse things that the Bible condemns, over and over.

Humankind’s Pride assumes many forms, many of which are not so obviously toxic; but sin is sin. I remember debates some short years ago when computers played chess matches against humans, and sometimes won. “Is this the end of humans’ dominance in the world?” people asked, with some prescience. My reaction was that if computers won such competitions… computers had been created and programmed by humans, so didn’t “we” win after all?

The same “long view” is needed in the current discussions about Artificial Intelligence. This bundle of Brave New World technologies (and projected consequences) has dominated a lot of research and development; is actually fueling some stock-market booms; and animates a lot of hopeful dreaming. But it is prompting apocalyptic fears, too.

It is my opinion that if “machines” become able to fool us, influence our decisions, steal our independence, and lull us into deadly slumbers… this will not be a perversion of liberty, but the natural consequence of unbridled liberty. The history of humankind – our natural tendencies; “human nature” – has been a chronicle of fooling each other, influencing unsuspecting people, and stealing goods and ideas. In the 21^st century we merely have better tools.

So the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

With the Bible as our road map, so to speak, throughout history, we can know the way forward. History’s second best-seller, The Pilgrim’s Progress, is a brilliant if thinly veiled metaphor of life – its pitfalls, detours, dangers, and its ultimate joy-filled destination. Some people “get it”; that is, wisely choosing between Pride and Truth. But even John Bunyan himself learned it after mistakes, failings, and persecution – he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress from a dank jail. John Newton only was able to write Amazing Grace after almost suicidal remorse for being a slave-trader.

Those experiences qualify as major ingredients in Humility, as discussed above. It might seem unfortunate, but nevertheless true that Wisdom usually follows stupid decisions. Liberation cannot come except from bondage. Salvation is from sin. Joy is measured against misery. Are these paradigms in fact unfortunate? No, it is a way that Life works. Let us learn.

And let us pay attention to words, the way we express our understanding. Artificial Intelligence: we should be a little skeptical – humble – about what constitutes Intelligence. And we need to respect the qualifier, Artificial. Some things we don’t understand; some things we never will understand.

That is God’s way. There is “Intelligent Design” – I think God planned Life so that for all the manifold things we cannot understand, we seek Him.

For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly (Proverbs 2: 6,7).

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A precious example of someone who has had a right to ask “Why?” and want to understand things in life is Joni Eareckson Tada, the talented singer, artist, speaker, and paraplegic. I interviewed her at Billy Graham’s retreat center The Cove a few years ago. Here, with Joni and her mom; and Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea of the Billy Graham Association. Please click on Joni’s brief testimony and song:

Farther Along, We’ll Know All About It

6-26-23

This is the Age of Grievance.

People these days are eager to assert claims about the hurts they suffer, the wrongs committed against them, the compensations they are owed. In this land of plenty. During this period of prosperity, despite blips on the economic graphs. “I know my rights!!!” yell protesters in street riots – even when most them do not know or understand the status of laws and statutes. “Rights” versus “wrongs” they might commit themselves.

People these days are not happy unless they complain. And, too often, about bogus complanints.

In this litigious society, lawyers stand ready to monetize the wrongs you think you have suffered, or have been convinced that you have suffered. Rather than moral palliatives, the “solutions” always translate to money, not explanations or apologies or corrections. Actual, direct damages cease to be legitimate justifications for picking others’ pockets.

The Slavery Reparations movement that first flourished in the Radical ‘60s has blossomed again in our day. Formulas for how much money contemporary Black people should be paid by White people – all non-Blacks, essentially – are calculated. Brazenly, the enormous sums are “due” to brothers and sisters who were not slaves (obviously) but also to those whose ancestors did not live in slave-era America. Or cannot substantiate their bloodlines. Or do not “suffer” any related effects. Proponents in California, with pens poised over other citizens’ checkbooks, dismiss these points as irrelevancies.

Similarly, the “Holocaust,” past which fewer and fewer people are alive, has partly become a Reparations movement. Dr Norman Finkelstein, whose parents survived Nazi concentration camps, has written a book, The Holocaust Industry, in which he documents his claims that “a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters” routinely engage in virtual blackmail-by-PR campaigns. He documents the flow of money to “lawyers and institutional actors” instead of putative survivors. Yet TV commercials depict starving Jews today, even supposedly in Israel itself, pleading for money.

So forth and so on. It seems like every group on the landscape is aggrieved; every mendicant may choose a reason to whine — like “Pin the tail on the guilty,” down to virtual blindfolds. It begins with “hurt feelings” of invented groups and genders; and ends with threats of arrest if you do not surrender yourself to the Compassion Police. And it ends with transforming your value system, if you let them; and ponying up money. The paradigm is common these days. Every aggrieved person and every assembled group climbs aboard the bandwagon.

Almost every person and group, that is. It is still safe in America and the post-Christian West, to be prejudiced against Christians.

With increasing rapidity, followers of Jesus are proscribed, ridiculed, sanctioned, silenced, and discriminated against. By governmental laws and regulations and court decisions, Christians are becoming second-class citizens. In popular media they can be criticized as, say, Jews or Muslims or homosexuals cannot be. In government schools and on state media, many perverted ideas once regarded as taboos are endorsed, even encouraged – while Christian ideas, traditions, expressions, even innocent decorations are forbidden.

So forth and so on. Yet – unlike every other group of whiners across the spectrum – Christians are not seeking Reparations. Grievances are not new; for two thousand years Christians have been persecuted. The blood of martyrs has soaked many a soil; and still today there is prejudice and abuse of believers, all around the world. Have Christians committed sins too, through history? Yes, against some groups filing grievances today. But are Christians demanding Reparations for old grievances?

The answer, generally, is no; and the reason, specifically, is this: For all the promises of peace and the assurances of Heaven… the Lord Jesus Christ told His followers – us – that persecution will come. We are to expect resistance, opposition, and tribulation in this world. We should not be surprised by hatred. The world hated Him first, after all.

We have been told that believers might be “trouble” in their households. Friends and family might actually despise us. The Jesus you see in paintings, standing amidst the lilies? That same Jesus told us He comes with a sword. He told us about the things we must be prepared to put aside – to sacrifice, but also to endure – if we follow Him.

Jesus died on the cross to fulfill His mission, taking upon Himself the sin-punishments we deserve. But He did not free us from the rejections and persecutions He experienced. In fact He not only predicted such treatment… He virtually promised it. It will come. If it doesn’t… perhaps we are not doing our job as Christians.

Who will save us? Surely not the government: we are seeing that. The churches? No: remember that it was religious people who demanded that Jesus be crucified; the religious Establishment. Remember that.

The Christian’s “Reparation” will not come in this world, in our lifetimes. It cannot. We should be suspicious if it is offered. Our Reparation – our rewards – can be earned now (and only by His Grace, not our works) but realized only in Glory.

My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! –
My sin, not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul!

Thus is Reparation paid. In full.

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It Is Well With My Soul

6-19-23

It will not surprise those who know me that I went through a rebellious streak in my younger days. I remember it well – it lasted 15 or 20 minutes back in the…

No – of course, no. Anyone with a pulse experiences certain changes. Winston Churchill supposedly said that anyone in his 20s who is not a liberal has no heart; and anyone older who is not a conservative has no brains. Well, I was never a liberal, but I get his point. We do evolve… because the world around us revolves.

I suppose, if “rebellion” has a cousin, I have always been a contrarian.

Back in my high-school days I did go through a cynical stage. Recently I recalled to a friend that when I was a high-school junior I memorized about a third of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as beautiful but as cynical, worldly, and secular a group of quatrains one could find under this inverted bowl we call the sky. (Oddly, I then rattled off several dozens of them, despite not having thought of them in decades. “Oddly,” because half the time I go to the supermarket these days I forget what the heck I needed to buy…)

But during that mildly cynical phase of my life, it was time go off to college. I was allowing skepticism to creep into my faith, and I wanted to discuss it with my father. Our conversation is vivid in my “mind” because it was a Saturday afternoon, and he was flat on his back, a captive audience, fixing something under his bathroom sink.

“And why are you telling me this?” he asked.

Now I realize that I really wanted him to talk me out of my doubts, but I shared the other reason: “I have these thoughts on my own. I don’t want you think down the road that college filled my head with these ideas.”

Did he get angry? Did he laugh at my youthful foolishness? Did he sit up and reason with me?

No, no, and no. He hardly moved an inch, except to tighten the valve or something. “Oh, it’s a phase,” said. “You’ll grow out of it.”

I almost felt offended. Years later, I identified with Elaine Benes: “Don’t you care if I go to hell?” But at that moment, I asked, “Dad… Don’t you believe in Jesus?”That’s when he sat up.

“Of course I do. You know that. I believe you do, too, but if you don’t test your faith it won’t grow stronger. I’m not worried. I trust God, and I trust you.”

He asked if anything triggered my doubts. There was one book I recently had read, a disputed Mark Twain book that was anti-God, not funny, and featured a character named Satan. He had begun The Mysterious Stranger three times through his life, its final version (perhaps doctored by someone else after he died) written after his daughter’s death when Twain was more cynical than he routinely was.

I told Dad about the Mark Twain book. Then he chuckled. Despite my processing of its valid challenges to Scripture, Dad said, “I think you’re safe.”

Then he went back to the monkey wrench. And I went back to… my thoughts. I think I was insulted that he didn’t go full-bore and call the Scriptural Rescue Squad. We used to debate everything – politics, philosophy, literature, classical music. Why not this, I thought.

He trusted me.

And he let me know that God trusted me. Now, you might think that was a risky strategy. But it was a winning strategy. I felt respected; honored; trusted. That trust meant more, and stayed with me, than a weekend full of arguments, than a briefcase full of tracts, than weekly calls, tracking my behavior.

When it comes to it, our Heavenly Father trusts us too. He has revealed His Truth; He has sent teachers and prophets; He even sent His Son to die so that we might live.

He loved us first, before we loved Him.

In fact, He trusted us before we trusted Him.

Does that inspire love, and trust, in you?

Remember, on Father’s Day, that we should honor… love… and trust… our Heavenly Father too.

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Click: Like Father, Like Son

6-5-23

We know what we want; God knows what we need.

Jesus, your best friend, would ask – not how many friends you have of your own, but how many people cherish you as their friend.

Our society is doomed when Christianity becomes a habit instead of a passion.

God is not dead. He is merely unemployed.

Evil triumphs less when people hate the pure and holy, than when they are indifferent to such ideals.

God does not care that you are successful; He desires that you are obedient,

What matters more to God than your salary or your bank account – is how you acquired your resources, and what you do with them.

Men have forgotten God. That’s why all this has happened.

Equity is not Equality. Uniformity is not unity.

God fervently desires that we talk to Him. If you reach out to Him mostly when hard times come… I’ll let you finish that thought.

If the Lord does not wreak justice on America, does He owe an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah?

“All things work for good to those who love God…” does not mean that all things are good; but surely it means that nothing is good apart from God.

Never be in the position to say with regret, “I never had the chance…” when in fact you never took the chance.

The God of the mountain is still God in the valley.

If it were against the law to be a Christian, would there be enough evidence to charge you?

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” Jesus will never barge into your life. He knocks because He requires that we invite Him in.

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Click: When I Get to The End of the Way

5-29-23

The followers of Christ were frightened and confused. Their Jesus had been tortured, killed, and buried. On the third day He rose from the dead. He was with them for 40 days, then left them again. He ascended bodily to Heaven. But among the words He left were two specific things. He said it was “better” that He leave them, because “One would come” who would give them each, individually, “power from on high.” None of them understood. He also told them to “wait.”

In the meantime, for the harvest commemoration called Pentecost, Jews from “every nation on earth” were gathered in Jerusalem, many with the Apostles. They waited… for what? They were confused, nervous, choosing a replacement for Judas, anxious, wondering…

… until, suddenly, in an upper room of a house where they waited, a “mighty rushing wind” blew through. On their foreheads were strange sights – “tongues as of fire” appeared on those gathered. Then (some began to remember) as Old Testament prophesies and words of John the Baptist had foretold, the men and women were “filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

So this is what they were told to wait for. Was it merely a strange occurrence, a bizarre one-time event, with incomprehensible meaning? Some people, in subsequent generations, have attempted to obscure this event, but it was crystal-clear.

This was Jesus’s Promise fulfilled. The Holy Spirit – the next manifestation of God on earth; the third member of the Trinity – had come to reside in the hearts of believers in Christ. For that day, and for the rest of humankind’s history.

Many things changed, profoundly, that Day. The fear and confusion among the Disciples evaporated. Peter, who had always been an impulsive and sometimes foolish Follower, was suddenly mature in faith and leadership. He became the head of the newly organized church.

Yes, this was the birth of the Church.

Those who had gathered from other lands likewise were filled with Truth and Power, and returned home to spread the Gospel. Members of the Twelve became missionaries who visited them, and other lands, to establish groups of believers. So the acceptance of Jesus as Savior, and His Church, spread. Before the year 70 A.D., there were even Christian fellowships as far away as England.

The second chapter of the Book of Acts recorded these events of Pentecost; and so did secular reporters of the day, and contemporary historians like Josephus. But in ancient Scripture, it had been foretold. And in the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy; your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

All through the New Testament are accounts of how God subsequently poured out His gifts. St Paul listed them succinctly in his first letter to the Church at Corinth: Words of wisdom; Words of knowledge; the Gift of supernatural faith; Gifts of healing; the working of miracles; the Gift of prophecy; the ability to discern spirits; speaking in tongues; and the interpretation of tongues.

After two thousand years, these Gifts still sound strange to some people, but scarcely are stranger than Jesus, and His followers, making the blind to see; raising people from the dead; and – perhaps most audaciously – forgiving people of their sins in the Name of Jesus. Oh, that’s not for today? Then the Savior Who promised these things is a liar.

Further than that – if you might be someone to whom these things sound like fairy tales or delusional rants – I have experienced many of these Gifts. I have seen them exercised by others. I have seen healings; I have been at exorcisms; I have found myself praying over people things that I had no way of knowing – not in a trance; nothing like that, but just aware what God wanted me to share. My daughter prayed over my wife who was diagnosed with three types of cancer, somehow aware that God had healed her. Indeed the doctors found no cancers the next day. It was not my daughter’s prayer that healed, but she had an inspiration to share what God had done at that moment. That is a Gift.

Manifestations of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit – Pentecostalism; the Charismatic Movement; Holy-Ghost Revival – never died, but since around 1900 have exploded around the world. There are major denominations in America. The Underground Church in China is largely Pentecostal. There are more Pentecostals than Catholics in Africa and South America. The Assemblies of God has more adherents in Brazil than in the United States and Europe combined. Think of news stories you have recently heard of “revival” breaking out in Kentucky and elsewhere…

Readers, you might know and be already at home with many of these things. Or maybe they are foreign to you. Or are rumors you have heard; or perhaps are unknown to you. Your salvation does not depend at all on whether you accept or reject the Gifts. You might respond – or not – with ecstatic worship. There are no rules! My own “prayer language,” when exercised, is in private.

But just think about the Gifts of God He offers you through the experience of the Holy Spirit. I invite you think back on any Christmas morning, or birthday. How many wonderful gifts were given to you by your loving parents; how many times that you said… “No… not for me.”

Really?

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In the chance any of this intrigues you, please contact me and I can offer you information, and will prayerfully answer your questions.

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This is not a church service; just worship time:

Click: Cleansed / Look What the Lord Has Done

5-22-23

If you live in a city, you can see the moon and a few stars in the night sky. In suburbs on clear nights you can find Venus and Mars and maybe the famous constellations. In the Great Plains or on ocean cruises, look up at the night sky and you will never lose your wonderment at the blanket of planets and stars, twinkling like sparkles on a pretty date’s dress and shoes. If you are fortunate to have beheld the Milky Way, you know it more resembles a magical, glowing ribbon than a band of individual stars.

The James Webb Space Telescope is treating us to pictures of billions of stars; galaxies previously unknown; “events” in space calculated to have happened billions of light-years ago (or away, take your pick of terminology) – that actually might have “burned out” by now, despite their images traveling 187,000 miles per second and only coming close to our view now.

Whether you believe the universe is 6000 years old or sixty-skillion years old, your hair may start hurting now over such thoughts.

Speaking of stars. And hair. I got a chuckle this week from a review of a book called Observer by a “scientist,” Robert Lanza, co-written with a science-fiction writer. Not really a review; rather, a collection of quotations and self-congratulations on Lanza’s own website.

Breathless endorsements suggest that the authors have kissed the Face of Truth in their construction of themes – like the serious-sounding quantum-physics hoodoo – basically, that our thoughts can influence the physical universe. An MSNBC “Science Editor” claims that “special relativity and quantum mechanics have provided solid grounding for the idea that the act of observation has an effect on external phenomena.” (Why doesn’t he “visualize” better ratings? …but I digress.)

A few years ago Dr Jim Garlow and I co-authored The Secret Revealed in which book we took the New Age best-seller The Secret to task. Besides peeling back its absurd claims and century-old rostrums, we applied logic on one hand, and a little detective work on the other. For instance, the author’s blatant misquoting of supposed experts in “thinking and realization” like Winston Churchill. She quoted Martin Luther King, and we reached out to his niece Alveda who denied that Dr King ever meant, or said, the things attributed to him in that book.

Yet The Secret “spoke” to a million itching ears, promoted on Oprah and elsewhere. And today its author is working on a sequel, and, surprise, endorses Observer as a book of substantial import. She is cited as a “#1 New York Times bestselling author,” not a fabulist, but she says that Lanza “has taken the gigantic step of incorporating his ideas into a science fiction novel…. Often-complex concepts are illuminated through a riveting and moving story.” She claims that Lanza’s previous work has “backed up everything I knew to be true on a spiritual level…. It is the leading-edge scientists such as Dr. Robert Lanza who will help take humanity out of the dark ages and into a new world.”

The authors say about themselves that “if life and consciousness are really central to everything else, then countless puzzling anomalies in science enjoy immediate clarification…. The simplest [?] explanation is that the laws and conditions of the universe allow for the observer because the observer generates them.”

Obviously this book and its proponents and its promotion do precisely what the contemporary world does – blurring lines between science and fiction; intelligence and “Artificial Intelligence”; and truth and lies. The phrase I used above, “itching ears,” is from the Bible, about people who crave unreality. A country-music song title captured the impulse well: “Lie To Me.”

The extensive review and promotion, just as with The Secret and myriad other manifestations of today’s culture, addresses the most serious matters and questions about reality – existence; the physical universe; our roles in life – but never utters one word about God.

How we got here… why we are here… who created the billions of stars… who created, well, us? Forget science fiction or this book specifically: those questions, and their answer, are seldom addressed seriously any more in media, in schoolrooms, in education… sadly, less and less in churches. Hint: The answer is God.

Authors and movie-makers and Oprah can speculate – and even believe – all their nonsense all they want, but I am still thrilled by quotations from another Book:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have ordained, what are mortals, that You should be mindful of them; mere human beings, that You should seek them out?

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father seeing. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than sparrows!

I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesmen to the world.

No two snowflakes are alike. We cannot survey the uncountable stars. We contemplate the numbers of grains of sand on the earth’s shores. And yet the Creator of all this, of the universe seen and unseen, has created us too… and knows everything about us.

More than that: He cares more about you and me than about everything else in His creation. That’s what He tells us. Is someone like Him going to lie? He cannot.

No fiction in His Book.

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Click: His Eye Is On the Sparrow

5-15-23

Traditional liturgical formations in worship are not universally followed these days. Their separate parts once represented the essential aspects of Christ’s ministry and significance, just as His life on earth was comprised of separate, meaningful acts. That is, lessons for us, to understand Him better.

When Mary conceived, it was the fulfillment of many prophecies. When Jesus was born, it was the long-hoped Incarnation, God in human form. When He preached, He explained the ways of God. When He healed, it showed the power of God. When He forgave people – how presumptuous, except as the Son of God – He shared the love of God.

When Jesus gave Himself up, He became the sacrifice for the penalties our sins should be ours to pay. When He was betrayed, He understood our sorrows. When He was tortured and He suffered, He understood our pains. When He died on the cross, He fulfilled His mission – “It is finished.” When He arose, it represented the promise that we too may overcome physical death and have life eternal.

Traditional church services similarly would focus on aspects – for instance, the “Agnus Dei,” the “Lamb of God” to remind us of the sacrifice of this Sinless Man. And so forth. Losing this structured reminder of the Savior’s ministry is a down-side of contemporary, free-form worship.

I invite you to see the life of Christ, even for only a moment, in perhaps a different light than you are used to.

All of the familiar events in Jesus’s life, even the uncountable prophesies fulfilled, even the powerful miracles, suggest that He was the Son of God. Suggest? Only suggest? Is this blasphemy? No… stick with me. Of course we know the prophesies, the signs, the wonders, represented His anointing. Of course we know and respect His claims. Of course we know the confirmations that He rose from the dead; let us remember that so did Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus; and they are not regarded as Saviors of humankind.

What I am asking us to remember is the half-forgotten holiday of the church calendar, Ascension Day.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And after saying this, Jesus was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see Him. As they strained to see Him rising into Heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. They said, “Why are you standing here staring into Heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into Heaven, but some day He will return from Heaven in the same way you saw Him go!”

This account is from The Acts of the Apostles, the very first chapter; the history of the Early Church. This was the confirmation – the final puzzle-piece, if I may – that Jesus was not only a teacher or a healer or a prophet; not merely a persecuted good man; not just one of history’s misunderstood and saintly persons. He was physically lifted to Heaven… reunited with His Heavenly Father… promising us that He will live in our hearts in the Person of the Holy Spirit of God. The heroes of faith of the Old Testament appeared at the scene to seal the event, and His promise.

The bodily Ascension of Jesus confirmed that He was indeed the Son of God. Messiah. God-with-us.

That act, Ascension, which is celebrated this week – 40 days after Easter – as well as the promise Jesus made, the Gift of the Holy Spirit (on Pentecost, soon to come) should not be forgotten by the church, or by His followers. For centuries, in fact, the Ascension Of Our Lord virtually was the most important observance-day in the church year. In some countries (do Americans know this fact?) it is still observed as a public holiday.

The sobering challenge we face in the 21^st century is not whether we identify as Christians. It is not how we justify our social views based on what we think the Church says (or used to say). It is not whether Christian traditions “inform” our life choices.

It is whether we believe Jesus is Lord. One with the Father, Creator God, Lord of all creation. If you don’t… stop playing around; be honest; and go over to the other side. If you do believe Jesus is God, has saved your soul, and will return again in Glory… act like it.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” These words of Jesus (Revelation 3:15,16) are what He will say when He returns.

Are you “standing here,” even “looking up to Heaven”?

He ascended. Now it is our turn, our time, to do His will on earth.

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Click: Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise

4-24-23

This weekend marks an anniversary in my family. Usually that word “anniversary” connotes a happy date but in this case it was associated with much sadness. My niece Liza died on an April 22^nd, after a difficult birth, a severe case of cerebral palsy, an eventual three-month mental maturity level, a prognosis of perhaps three years of life but ultimately well more than two decades of these conditions. Her sweet smiles masked the tragedy of her daily life.

My sister Barbara was a single mom who battled this situation bravely and lovingly. After some years, at a certain point she stumbled and sustained her own individual health problems and myriad other challenges, some virtually nightmarish. Many people might have thought her situation could not possibly have been worse. And then Liza died.

Recalling all this on the phone this week, Barbara, still facing challenges, spoke with perfect peace. So many past memories have been replaced, she said, by the joy and hope – no: the knowledge – that one day she will be with Liza in Glory. And they both will be whole. And that now, she knows, Liza is in the arms of my late wife Nancy, also the victim of many ailments in her own painful journey on earth. What a reunion that will be!

It can be an empty phrase, or a cruel joke, to say that we can choose joy despite life’s pitfalls. On the other hand, many people who know the truths of God’s promises nevertheless choose despair and depression and sorrow. Excuse me, but those choices are empty, cruel, and joyless.

Among the choices that my sister Barbara made along the way, and that made all the difference, was to accept Jesus. I quickly say that “accepting Jesus” is another phrase that we frequently hear, or say, but it has many deeper shades of meaning. Something so profound cannot be reduced to a phrase, and if you are a Christian who deals honestly with your faith walk (or even if you are not) you know how many steps there have been, and will be, on that “walk.”

Even a lightning-bolt conversion, the “road to Damascus” experience, is never the whole story. We all have progressive revelation… we see through glasses darkly, then with increasing clarity… we experience doubts… we learn lessons… we rebel and return… we hunger for the Word… we grow bold… we receive spiritual chastisement… we feel the peace that passes understanding… we “know that we know that we know”…

Sometimes these experiences are stretched out over years. Sometimes they can all seem to come in one day of spiritual yearning! And everything in between. Faith is a living thing, growing; almost breathing. In fact, the Holy Spirit does breathe into us the profound truths of God – literally in-spiration.

So Barbara cannot really be described as suddenly “accepting Jesus.” As her brother who prayed for her and with her, it has seemed to me more like she gradually realized Jesus had been there with her all the time. And then the realization that Jesus had accepted her, not just the other way around.

Then that “walk” didn’t seem so lonely anymore.

In all these ways a miracle can take place – for it is miraculous that amid horrible conditions and seemingly hopeless situations such as this mother and daughter experienced… joy and peace can come out of it. The world cannot give that, and the world cannot take it away.

And the devil cannot take away an anniversary that, somehow, is a Happy Anniversary after all.

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Click: What a Meeting In the Air

4-17-23

I cannot be surprised or critical or… anything other than empathetic when I meet Christians who are sincere, maybe lifelong churchgoers, even those who are secure and comfortable in their faith – but don’t know some of the bedrock truths of the Gospel.

I don’t mean knowing the “rules.” Or being familiar with the traditions. Nor creeds and hymns. I mean knowing Christ, that last and important step. I recently read a brilliant squib reminding us that all one of the thieves on the cross did was to acknowledge Jesus… who then told him, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

And I cannot be critical of those who have “missed” important truths, in spite of knowing rules and rituals… because I was there too.

I have been in those “places,” and, thank God, still got through some crises of faith, and weathered some of them, but not all. Or not all well. Here are some things all believers should know up-front.

1. For instance, after years of being a Sunday-school boy and regular church member, even on committees, I was thunderstruck when I finally realized we can know now whether we will spend Eternity in Heaven, or not. No waiting to step up to St Peter at the Pearly Gates.

In fact, Peter cannot pull rank on us, much less issue passes, in Heaven, nor will he want to. Just as “all have fallen short of God’s glory” here on earth, all the saints will be equal in Glory. “Saints” includes us. Further, think of the title that R W Schambach used to use, which still blesses me – “our elder brother Jesus”! Think about it!

2. I don’t have to pray over and over (“without ceasing”) to be forgiven for this-or-that. When we are truly repentant, God forgives. And forgets (which is more than we are usually able to do! What a feeling of liberation)! Is there something God cannot do? — Yes, He tells us He cannot remember our forgiven sins and hold them against us!

3. We should lose the well intentioned attitude, seemingly humble, of many Christians – especially new or “baby” Christians – to pray with the attitude of “I am a miserable sinner, how can I approach You, I am not worthy…” etc., etc. No! When we have Jesus in our hearts, God sees the Jesus in us, not the “old” us anymore. Jesus died for us so when God looks at us, we are “covered in the blood” – He sees that, and not our flawed, finite, former, selves. This is an amazing fact that few believers realize or exercise. And is why the Bible says we can – we should – boldly approach the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

(Now. About prayer and forgiveness and the “burdens of our heart,” it is, still, a mystery. Yes, God casts our sins into “the sea of forgetfulness.” Yes, when we are saved, all is washed away, “all things are made new.” Yes, He has the power to know the future; He knows all. But… there are mysteries. The Bible says we should “pray believing”… so can we always say, “Done!” Or, do repeated prayers suggest our occasional lack of faith? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Through such mysteries we are led, when we rely on the Holy Spirit’s guiding. When the Bible encourages us at times to pray without ceasing, in our strong faith we will want to, and we do. The born-again believer knows when God wants to minister to our spirits… and prayer becomes a conversation, not a list of requests.)

This is one reason Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, “who will lift our prayers to the high places… who prays for us in the Heavenlies and before the Throne… and [I love this] when we cannot find the words, will groan for us before God, on our behalf.” It is why I cherish the Pentecostal mode of the Early Church: we can access the Gifts of the communication with the Lord, the prayer-language of angels. The Spirit will approach God for us with groanings we cannot express; but God knows… and will be touched.

I grieve that some Christians do not know the full Gospel, do not avail themselves of the peace – and the power – that God has laid before us. As tools, sometimes. As weapons, frequently. As aids, all the time.

Does religion lie to us? Yes, it has lied; it has confused the Truth; it has obscured and hidden truths. Read your Bible. God does not lie; He cannot lie. It is not about religions; it is about Jesus. If you are on a figurative cross of sin, or doubt, of hurting – or even exercise smugness – turn to the Savior on His cross. He will invite you too to Paradise.

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Click: How Firm a Foundation, originally written in 1787.

Easter 2023, 4-10-23 message

There are many ways to think about Easter – including, I earnestly mean, ways for us to contemplate and meditate upon its significance.

Beyond its secular trappings and pagan associations, the eggs and candy and (once upon a time) Easter parades, and hunting for eggs. The bunnies. The “traditional” Easter menus.

Even, at our churches, the end of Lent with, for some Christians, its ashes and sacrifices, palms on Sunday and Good Friday observances. Even sunrise services and special hymns. Beyond all that…

I once had a Christian friend who was a faithful, lifelong churchgoer. An orthodox (but not Orthodox) Protestant. But to the extent he had a personal theology, he had some gripes with God. For instance, he always wondered how God could be a “God of love” who required that Abraham kill his boy Isaac as a sacrifice. Do you know the story? Neither did Abraham understand, but he obeyed. He took Isaac up on a mountainside and prepared to slay him. As we know, God intervened and told Abraham to let up.

The whole act seemed to my friend to be unbelievably cruel – from the strange command to the “tease” of calling off the bizarre command at the last minute. “God of Vengeance I understand,” my friend said about the “Old Testament” revelations of God; “Even a God of Judgment. But to torture a father in such a way, and to even present a scenario of preparing the boy to be killed… what kind of a God is that?”

Well, He is a God who evidently was not introduced to congragations over a lifetime of Sunday sermons. For between the lines of the Abraham-and-Isaac story is a God of love.

We can, perhaps, forgive my friend. Because despite the ancient Israelites always looking to the “coming Messiah” and receiving myriad signs and prophesies, very few of them understood the ways of the Lord. For that matter, even the Disciples who lived with Jesus for three and a half years, who witnessed miracles and listened to teachings, did not fully understand the message of the cross. Right down to the arrest and passion of Jesus; his crucifixion and death – even immediately upon His miraculous resurrection from the tomb – they did not fully understand what we are considering here: the meaning of Easter.

Jesus was God-Become-Man, the Incarnation. Not in order to live as much as to die.

His mission was only peripherally, however important, to teach and heal and bear witness to the Father. His mission was to be killed.

As the Christ he touched people’s lives as they happened to meet Him. But it was never meant to be that His life on earth would “draw all unto Me.” That was the purpose of His death, not His life – “If I be lifted up.”

The message of the cross and the meaning of Easter were in the sacrificial death of the spotless lamb, Jesus Christ. Unlike the sinless Jesus, all of humanity has sinned. And no one can stand sinless before a Holy God, “no, not one.” Rules, commandments, religious laws had not brought salvation to humankind. How many times a year (or a week, or a day) do you commit any sort of sin?

Jesus became that sin offering; His death is substitutionary. “Believe in Me,” Jesus told us, “and ye shall never die.” That is – life eternal, forgiveness of those sins, acceptance by God. We only have to believe it in our hearts, and confess it with our mouths.

After Jesus died for the punishment we deserve, He rose from the dead to show that, indeed, sin and death have been defeated on our behalf. Then He, 40 days later, ascended bodily into Heaven, to finally confirm His divinity. Then the Holy Spirit came to believers – as it does today – on the day of Pentecost, to be God-within-us.

It sounds simple. Maybe even crazy, but no crazier than Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son. It was picture, a foretelling, a prophesy, of the Lord God’s willingness to sacrifice His own Son. Indeed, it stood as His promise to do so.

“Life” was, perhaps, viewed a little differently in Old Testament days; infant mortality was common. And in today’s world (ironically, especially in “Christian” countries) life seems cheaper all the time, as our culture of death normalizes abortion and euthanasia, trafficking and abuse. Yet the slaying of one’s child, directly, or planning it, as God ordered the Passion of the Christ… is a different matter.

If God the Father ever wept, it was then.

And the meaning of Easter is not only Jesus’s death, but all He endured – for us. The unjust arrest, the false accusations, the mocking, the whipping, the physical abuse, the crown of thorns, the carrying of the rough cross through streets, the spikes through wrists and feet, hanging, bleeding, suffocating. And, in my imagination, the most painful aspect might have been the Savior’s realization of betrayal by His closest friends and followers.

“What kind of God,” as my friend might have asked, “would write such a script?”

The answer is the Easter message: A God who loves us to such an extent.

That Easter message, ultimately, is a love story. Nothing more; and surely nothing less. The hymns we sing are love songs back to God. The unified story of the entire Bible, its centrality the hours between the cross and the empty tomb, was God’s plan for His incarnate Son. And for us.

But it’s not over. Jesus does not “merely” live today. There is a lesson of a little boy playing Jesus in a Sunday School Easter pageant, in his bedroom robe, jumping from the cardboard tomb and yelling “Here I come, ready or not!!!”

In fact, that is close to what Jesus says. It’s our turn now. “What kind of God” has been answered. Now the question is – What kind of people will respond?

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Click: Were You There?

4-3-23

This time of year we focus once again on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, the Resurrection, the Ascension. In fact we should meditate on these events – and the truths behind them – more often than once a year. What was a miracle on the morning called Easter is a miracle to cherish in summer, fall, and winter too, and every day of our lives.

In the same manner also I have learned to look “beyond the familiar,” regarding the events of this season, and all events recorded in the Bible, all passages that speak to us. To know contexts is to enrich the truths.

For instance, the story of Blind Man Bartimaeus has always been compelling to me. The setting is just before Holy Week as we call it; just before Jesus entered Jerusalem. We know from the Palm Sunday story that His reputation preceded Jesus. Multitudes of people thronged about Him – happy mobs, really. They knew of His miracles, heard about His teaching; shared in the popular adulation. We read of His entrance to Jerusalem, the crowds, the palms laid in His path, the Hosannas. (We know too how the mob turned, as mobs often do; that is for another time.)

On His way to Jerusalem Jesus passed through the city of Jericho. We know a little bit about Jericho – a city of sin and resistance where “Joshua fought the battle” and destroyed the walls; where, also and perhaps significantly, Jesus named it in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Three Gospels describe the “celebrity tour” (if we can picture it in today’s mode) of Jesus, His entourage of Disciples, and the cheering crowds, as they headed for Jerusalem.

In the midst of this hubbub, a lonely street beggar, blind and poor, became aware that Jesus approached; the Miracle-Maker from Galilee. Here I have always wanted to “go beyond.” There is so much to “unpack” in this seemingly simple story of one more of Jesus’s miracles.

Join me in the various examples of symbolism. “The rest of the story” as Bartimaeus was made to see, his eyes healed.

We can meditate on the significance: Physical blindness being a “type” of spiritual blindness. Even the Disciples, knowing Scripture and prophesies and hearing Jesus’ own references to His imminent fate, were themselves blind to the reality of what was about to happen… and its spiritual importance. Yes, we all need our eyes opened.

We can realize that what Jesus heard was not the poor beggar’s cries, but what Bartimaeus called out: not Jesus’s name, but His title: Son of David. This was (and not from the mouth of a temple scholar) the Scriptural identification of the coming Messiah. This was not Ancestry.com trivia, but an acknowledgment that this Jesus, passing by, was indeed the Son of God incarnate. Yes, we all need to acknowledge the Savior.

In some translations, the cry of Bartimaeus is “Have pity on me!” but in the original Greek it reads, “Have mercy on me!” (Thus Kyrie Eleison, “Have mercy on us,” in traditional liturgies.) Of course, both pleas are appropriate. The cry for mercy, however, speaks as much to the longing of his soul – for forgiveness – as for pity, concern for his physical state. Yes, we all have serious spiritual needs, no matter the condition of our health or comfort in life.

To me, an important lesson has been the nature of the Disciples’ efforts, as we read, to make Bartimaeus shut up. I can almost imagine them saying, “Who are YOU? This is the Master wanting to move on! (Implying, ‘WE are important too!’) Stop yelling out! We are trying to keep this parade organized…” But Jesus had other priorities, and other ideas about order and dignity. Yes, we all need to respond to Jesus Christ as He would have us do… not as people around us – or even people around Him – do!

In contemporary context, I will recall my own experiences. Growing up in churches where prayers – even “Hallelujahs” and “Hosannas” – were sleepily mumbled by writ, with no hints or feelings of joy. Many churches discourage “amens” and raised hands from the congregation when Good News is shared. At the seeming other extreme, some churches order joy and dancing, but likewise discourage weeping in conviction, or expressing needs for forgiveness

“Shut up, blind man! We’re having CHURCH here!”

Thank God, Jesus heard Blind Man Bartimaeus. And He stopped. And He healed. May we all call out to Jesus, laugh with Jesus, cry unto Jesus. Praise Him in whatever circumstance, and wherever you are. He is always ready to call out to us, laugh with us, and cry with us.

Jesus will even stop parades to be there for us.

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That was a meditation on what happened just before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Here is a song about what might have happened just before Easter itself:

Click: The Night Before Easter

3-27-23

The “issue” of crime is in the news these days. In some polls it is the major concern of citizens, at least as troubling as the virtual invasion of millions of illegal migrants and the rotten economy. Unchecked immigration is a literal crime (“il-legal”); and high prices are cursed as virtual “crimes” by every shopper making every tough choice every day…

But across international stages, to our nation, cities, and towns, on sidewalks and in schoolrooms, crimes are on the rise as an epidemic; crimes being ignored and therefore spreading. Ignored… except by the victims. Spreading… because lack of punishment encourages their proliferation.

Crimes and sins are related – maybe in the chicken-and-egg context – but essentially, crimes are legal questions and sins are moral questions. That’s how “legalism” would define the differences. But there are deeper distinctions.

A crime is an act; sin is a tendency. The moment you commit a crime, you are guilty. A guilty act, and formal verdicts of guilt, can be pardoned. Sins, however, often have worse consequences, whether they lead to actual crimes or not. And where crimes can be pardoned, sins cannot.

Sins can only be forgiven.

Weeks before Easter, this still is an Easter message. In fact it is the message of all Scripture, the whole Bible, all of life.

Jesus was condemned by “legalists” who accused Him of crimes, and He was charged, tried, sentenced, tortured, and killed for “crimes.” We know that He was, of course, sinless. His “crimes” were twisted accusations by haters – healing people on the wrong day of the week; showing compassion to the wrong ethnic groups; citing prophecies – and, much like today, the authorities ignored what they should have respected and were upset by things they ought to have ignored. Does this sound like today?

The eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, despite its events chronologically well before Holy Week, addresses the centrality of Easter’s message: Forgiveness. The stark contrast represented by Jesus’s death on the cross was on one hand the crimes imputed by both the state and religion, and the sins of humankind on the other. More so, between the connivance of the malignant forces of state and religion… versus the liberating peace, freedom, and salvation offered by God: Forgiveness.

John chapter 8 begins with the religious hierarchy of Pharisees – Legalists – hauling an adulteress before Jesus, demanding that He approve her imminent stoning as punishment for her sins. Their first priority was to trap Jesus in a legalistic argument. Their second purpose was to scorn, hate, condemn, and kill the woman. Their last thought was to counsel her and lead her to repent. Least of all, Forgiveness.

Scripture tells how Jesus was diffident during their rant, casually writing in the dust; it does not explain what He doodled. My idea was the numbers 1-10, because He then challenged, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” reminding them, perhaps, of the Ten Commandments. In any event, as they dropped their murderous rocks and silently walked away, Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” The usual interpretation is that He spoke only to the woman, but the message was also to the “Holy” mob… and to us.

Today, too many in the Establishment of media, education, and the state – and, sadly, the Church – want us to confront sin, but find a “welcoming” way to meet it halfway. Jesus spent much time, we read, with sinners. But in the Gospels it was they who went away changed, not Him.

Then John 8 records how the Pharisees engaged in debates with Jesus over His claims about prophecy, and Father Abraham, and fulfilling the Law of Moses, instead of what He taught and how He lived. Legalism was deadly, being a convenient excuse for those who would not see.

And Legalism is no less deadly today, as a crutch for those who wallow in their own sins and errors, rebellion and destruction.

Legalism, so much a component of organized religion, has sent more people on paths of misery straight to hell, than have accumulations of sinning… because it enables sin.

What Jesus taught that day, and spoke through the Message of the Cross, and pleads with us today, is that sin is the problem; not the sinner.

Willingly deaf to His words, the Jews in this chapter did not relent; they peppered Jesus with challenges (“You are not yet 50 years old, and yet you say you have seen Abraham?”) and their logic about the Law of Moses (to which He replied, “I am the Law of Moses”). They found the stones again, to throw at Him… but He disappeared out of the midst of them. His time was not yet come. Holy Week, as we call it, Good Friday, the Cross, and the Resurrection, were yet ahead.

But in the meantime, as we read, when He beheld Jerusalem, Jesus wept.

Surely He weeps today over America and this world of sin and error. He weeps for an apostate Church and a culture that prattles about what is “fair”… but not as much about what is pure, and just, and holy.

Let us weep too. Not to respond and act would be more than a crime. It would be a sin.

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Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

3-13-23

A friend recently asked about Messianic Jews and Christians who choose to observe the traditions of the ancient Hebrews. Festivals, dietary laws, customs of holy days. Should Christians, and “fulfilled” People of the Book, feel obligated or be encouraged to observe practices from centuries prior to Christ’s incarnation?

Those ancient traditions pointed toward the Messiah’s coming. Discernment was required with all prophesies, customs, ceremonies, and the most minute elements of observances. Things that inspired people of Old Testament times can provide reminders to Christians of our time: God’s sovereign and eternal plan; the unity of the full Gospel; the confirmation of His miracle workings.

To the extent that awareness of ancient observances can turn into obsessions into substitutions into replacements, we should discourage these things. Anything that takes our eyes from Christ Himself must be resisted. Christ and Him crucified, Christ risen and reigning – all else pales. Customs and prophecies become academic; signs and wonders are confirmations. Luke 12:30 warns us that “these things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world.” Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Taking these thoughts further, I remembered one of the most powerful books of warnings, so to speak, in the Bible, and one of its most powerful chapters. Amos the Prophet speaks to us today.

The customs and observances of the Old Testament were for the times in which they were given by God. As I said, they are for our edification still today; all of Scripture is inspired. Laws and commandments are likewise of God, and yet we should remember that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. However, the books of the Prophets are slightly different, in my view. Many of the prophecies, especially the Jeremiahs, were for people of the day – warnings to repent and return to God. And many of those warnings, as we know, were rejected… resulting in punishment, wrath, and exile.

Yet many prophecies were spoken and written to us, too. For us. About us. Not only in human-nature categories of advice, but specifically to our circumstances – our places is historical dispensation; our situations. The sixth chapter of Amos reads that way, as if Amos looked almost 3000 years into future and knew our society, reading our headlines.

And what he saw is not pretty.

We know things are not pretty today. And the more serious our crises are, contemporary life dresses things up to look pretty… taste sweet… and appear harmless. But don’t we know that these are perilous times? Problems barely beneath the surface? Amos did. God does.

Woe to you who are at ease…

Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, Who cause the seat of violence to come near; Who lie on beds of ivory, Stretch out on your couches, Eat lambs from the flock And calves from the midst of the stall; Who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, And invent for yourselves musical instruments like David;
Who drink wine from bowls, And anoint yourselves with the best ointments, But are not grieved…

The LORD God of hosts says: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, And hate his palaces; Therefore I will deliver up the city And all that is in it.”

You have turned justice into poison, And the fruit of righteousness into bitterness.

“Behold, I will raise up a nation against you…” says the Lord God of hosts; “And they will afflict you…”

“Woe to the complacent” is the thrust of this prophecy. It is a stark reality – a tragic truth – that America and the “Christian” West have arrived at a point where we are not only diverted by, but we put our trust in, bread and circuses. We look to wealth and armaments for protection. We believe we are privileged and secure. We think that because the world loves our rock ‘n’ roll and blue jeans, others are not jealous and lustful after our resources and blessings. We call good evil and evil good, fooling ourselves that it makes no difference. We have manufactured our own morality – believing that sin has no consequences; that we can exploit and abuse each other; that marriages, babies, and the “inconvenient” among us are expendable. Crimes are not crimes anymore; and substance abuse is assuaged by more and more substance abuse. We have become insensitive to beauty and truth.

We have come, on this mad journey of democratic license and self-indulgent capitalism, to a point of elevating Self – the deity of contemporary life. Human nature reigns supreme, the ultimate force to be trusted, a secular god that believes nothing, forgives everything, and demands our worship and trust.

All of this instead of trusting in the Lord.

How is this working out? How has it ever worked out, three thousand years ago or in any civilization, past or present?

We have turned the fruits of righteousness – to which we delude ourselves into thinking we are dedicated – into bitterness. And justice in contemporary life – whether regarding neighborhood crime, or respect for the sanctity of life, or international relations – we are turning into poison. And poison kills.

Thus spake the Prophet. The words are true, even if we ignore them.

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Click: Purcell Funeral March

3-6-23

Like the boy who cries wolf, the people behind the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists seldom are noticed anymore, or as much or as often as they once were. In 1947, at the dawn of the Atomic Age, the group’s “Doomsday Clock” was calibrated and publicized, meant to represent how close humankind was to obliterating civilization on earth.

Significantly it was issued at a time when nuclear weapons were a monopoly of the United States, and indeed the USA was the only nation, and remains so, to have unleashed nuclear weapons on people, military or civilian. To me that is a matter of shame, but my purpose is not to discuss wartime strategies.

Peacetime strategies of certain groups also deserve our attention. The “Doomsday Clock” – how close the world supposedly is to annihilating itself, “midnight” being the death-knell – was set at “seven minutes to midnight” as per the Bulletin’s first press release. Two months ago our current death sentence, so to speak, is calculated at 90 seconds away from doom. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, by the way, so we can see what the fuss is about. Since 1947 other nations have joined the “nuclear club.” (The Soviet Union in 1949; the UK in 1952; France, 1960; China, 1964; and at least five other countries.) The Bulletin of “scientists” has widened their list of threats to life on earth include over-population, green concerns, and global warming (or as it is known at the moment, “climate change”).

The United States is always cast as the boogy man in such alarums. I do not doubt the malign effects, both wanton and avoidable, of civilization and its discontents. It might even be the case that Chicken Littles in white lab-coats have inspired reforms. Yet there have been unseen consequences of Doomsday scenarios despite the absence of nuclear bombs being dropped during all the wars since 1947. My generation of schoolkids surely absorbed psychic poison from warnings about our homes being incinerated, and the necessity of hiding our little heads under desks during bombing-raid rehearsals in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Some day soon I believe we also will look back on the futility of two years of societal lockdowns over a relative of the flu.

I suggest that our problems with ticking clocks and last pages of calendars, of big bombs and little viruses, is “not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” That quotation is from Shakespeare, not the Bible; but there is wisdom in it. Another wise man wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”

In these famous lines, the “Preacher,” acknowledged as the son of David, King Solomon, did not address “vanity” as being conceited or boastful, or chasing after fashion, except in the (much) larger sense – the contrast between substantial things and temporary concerns. The difference between the pertinent and the impertinent. The important things in life, and, yes, the futility of some things we humans chase after.

In that sense, things like atomic bombs and fossil fuels pale in significance to the many things the entire human race is doing in myriad other ways to kill itself. Yes, a bomb’s blast is palpably horrific: ask the many survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet the moral decay of hatred, prejudice, corruption, deceit, abuse, addiction, exploitation – of sin – is individual, widespread, and, unlike international treaties and federal regulations, within the power of each of us to remedy.

This human condition – vanity; the sense of futility we share in ever-increasing ways – can be addressed by humans. Spiritual crises require spiritual answers

Solomon, thousands of years ago, addressed the same challenges to “human nature” wherewith we contend today:

Says the Preacher, “Vanity, vanities, all is vanity.”

What profit has a man from all his labor In which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever.

The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit.

All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again. All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing.

That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.

There is no remembrance of things past, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.

Does this mean we should do nothing about our manifold problems? No – I have listed the problems I believe ultimately are most important that face our species and our families. If we can solve those, the “larger” crises might sort themselves out, for we will be wiser, more responsible, more loving.

Does this suggest a new form of hyper-individualism, addressing our problems ourselves? To the extent we should rely less on scientists who cry wolf with Bulletins, or governments who intimidate us by claiming to have all answers to all things… yes.

Does it say that life is futile; we are doomed according to a ticking Doomsday Clock?

No. These thoughts remind us that God is in charge. We are not to look to the stars, be scared by clocks, or even rely, solely, on ourselves – but to Him.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Galatians 6:7).

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Click: The Great Judgment Morning

2-27-23

Ashes marked on the forehead in Ash Wednesday services, marking the beginning of Lent’s 40 days before Easter, is not mentioned in the Bible. It was not practiced during the first Holy Week, nor for the first thousand years of Christianity. It is an ordinance observed by Catholics and some other denominations, a tradition meant to focus on sacrifice.

For many centuries – indeed, back into earliest Old Testament times – the wearing of sackcloth (a coarse, uncomfortable fabric made of hemp or flax) and imposition of ashes (the modest reminder of dust, as in “dust to dust”) were symbols of humility, repentance, and willingness to do penance for sins.

When an association was drawn with the Message of the Cross, the mark on the forehead as a visible statement of sorrow and repenting of sins (in the manner that believers’ water baptism is regarded as an outward sign of spiritual cleansing) became a custom at the beginning of the Lenten season.

Soon the further practice of “giving something up” as Easter approached also became a custom, a sacrifice, reflecting the sacrifice of Jesus giving Himself up unto death. In time, the taking of sackcloth and ashes became the liturgical tradition of receiving ashes on the forehead as a symbol of absolution and forgiveness.

As many elements of liturgy and rituals can morph from rite to rote, so can the man-made tradition of “giving something up” for Lent morph, sometimes, into hollow customs. And too often a habit that is honored “in the breach.”

Not always, of course, but all too often such Holy Intentions dwindle into simple jokes. Contests of sorts – “who held out the longest?” or silly, insincere pledges to start with – like chocolates (when the person has been trying to diet, anyway) or smoking (what?… again?) having little to do with the suffering and crucifixion of Christ on the cross.

Too often, Lenten “sacrifices” are mere churchy versions of New Year’s resolutions – and just as meaningful.

A proposal: Why don’t we TAKE UP something up for Lent?

Perform, instead, some extra deed for 40 days.

Determine to help someone in a new way.

Reach out to a stranger… or a friend. Intentionally, daily.

Such actions, likely involving thought and effort, are as “sacrificial” as denying bad habits, giving up chocolates, or quitting smokes. The actions would lead to contemplation of what the Cross is all about – caring, serving, true sacrifice.

Instead of stopping something… we can start something.

And it might indeed start something… in our lives, our families, our neighborhoods, our nation, our world.

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Click: Create In Me a New Spirit

2-20-23

There are strange things happening every day.

For a change, not everything in the news seems Apocalyptic. At a small university in Kentucky, a religious revival has broken out. Stranger than its occurrence, perhaps, is the fact that it is being noticed by the news media. Social media, these days, cannot keep the lid on much.

Revival. It was only on February 6 that this blog made an argument that Christians stop praying to God to send revival – my point being that we should, ourselves, work to revive our faith, our churches, our communities, our nation; and then God will bless us. “Revive us again,” in the words of the old Gospel song: inspire us to do Your work that You may bless our land.

God does, after all, work in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. On February 8, in a morning chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, a seemingly routine message, based on Romans 12: 9-21, was delivered. Its message was love – one of Scripture’s most forceful presentations of the necessity to discern Christ’s love, to share love, to be love. Mostly students in attendance, the young campus speaker in a stained T-shirt; when chapel was over there was an invitation to pray.

Chapel did not end, however. There was prayer in the seats and in front of the stage. Students did not leave. Praying and singing grew more intense. By evening the auditorium was full, the balconies too, and praying and singing continued – singly, in groups; quiet and exuberant. A choir sang and individuals spontaneously preached. Everyone prayed and laughed and cried and hugged. Now adults joined the throng – faculty and neighborhood folk.

This did not stop at end of day. It continued overnight, into the next day. It continues still, more than 10 days later. As word spread (as the Word spread!) the university opened satellite locations around campus; people gathered and prayed and sang on lawns and elsewhere on campus. Social media accelerated the phenomenon – yes, clearly a revival – and there was news of similar occurrences on other campuses around the nation. People arrived from around America.

Besides the prayer and worship there have been testimonies, conversion experiences, healings, ecstatic gifts, demons cast out; and no less significant, profound private prayer and quiet fellowship, prophesies and revelations from God, and answered prayer requests. I have been to Pentecostal revivals that are more exuberant, but… God works in mysterious, and myriad, ways.

I want no one to think I am implying a connection between my little call for individuals’ need for revival, and the Asbury events a few days later. I should be struck down if I thought to imply such. However, if the Holy Spirit moved me, and others, to address the need for a proper understanding of revival in our land… well, that working of God is perhaps mysterious but not “strange.” The Holy Spirit might be motivating many people at the same time. And, I notice, a movie about the Jesus Movement has been released just now.

In fact an aspect of the current Asbury Revival (there have been others on that campus, most recently in 1970) was the “strange” story of a Christian couple from Malaysia, of all places, who were inspired to move to Kentucky, of all places, and wait for the falling of the Holy Spirit in a worship-revival setting. It did not come for years, and, discouraged, they moved to New York City. But they were inspired in their hearts to return to Kentucky, which they did… days before the current revival fell. After God moves, His timetable becomes clearer!

This had been my point. That we, as believers, cannot order God around with a wish-list that He “send” deeper spiritual experiences on demand. That is our job. But there is a holy synergy.

When His people work and wait… expect and believe… study and spread the Word… open their hearts and “till the soil,” so to speak – He will plant the seeds. And bring a harvest such as we see at Asbury right now. Remember: “Revive” means, literally, Re-Birth.

As I said, I have been in revivals like the famous one in Pensacola, the “Brownsville Revival” that lasted years. There have been others. In fact, what the Asbury chapel resembles is the early, first-century church after Christ’s ascension. Other experiences have included the four notable “Great Awakenings” between the Colonial days and the Civil War, as well as in brush arbors and camp meetings on the American frontier; but they have accelerated in the past century: Wichita in 1900; Asuza Street in L.A. in 1906; revivals in Wales and Scotland; the Toronto Blessing; etc. Their increase suggests that the End Times are approaching.

In the Second Chapter of Acts it is foretold: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Regarding my recent message here: “Hasn’t God sent revival after all?” Yes. My plea, again, was for us, like watchmen at the wall (Isaiah 62:6) to wait, warn, and work. Also – there is Revival and there is Revival. A “revival” of the nation’s politics and morality is important. But even the most well-meaning Christian patriots must not confuse the priorities:

We must work for our own spiritual revivals, in our households and communities, before working for, and expecting, national policy-revivals. Any other order is futile.

And – this is so important to notice about the Asbury Revival! – this is happening among the youth!

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There are many, many cameras trained on the Asbury Revival right now. Search Google and YouTube and elsewhere; you will easily find video clips and news reports and even live streams. Experience it for yourself, even on the TV or computer screen… and maybe invite the Holy Spirit to your own community.

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Click: News report on the Asbury Revival

1-28-23

The great comedian Norm Macdonald, who died last year, was a confessing Christian. And his faith grew stronger even as his life-situation grew “worse.” He died of cancer that been diagnosed 10 years earlier and few people knew – he did not share his slow, impending death with even close friends.

Sometimes, occasionally at abrupt moments, he asserted his faith, and even upbraided people who scorned the Gospel. At other times he could be as raunchy as some other comedians (but usually funnier), yet he admitted in serious interviews that he read the Bible and was a believer. There was one thing he wrestled with about a loving God, however. When asked, he would answer simply, “kids with cancer.”

It is the type of question that many well-meaning portions of humanity ask, too. The British writer Christopher Hitchens achieved some of his celebrity by writing a book God Is Not Great. We can note that many skeptics and agnostics like him often criticize the nature of God… but not always God Himself. Hitchens did not write, There Is No God, So It Doesn’t Matter Whether He Is Great Or Not.

Ministers and priests can display a similar ignorance, if not oafishness. Especially in the materialist West, uncountable sermons and books and fund-appeals have centered around the topics “Why do good things happen to bad people?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

At worst, these ministers and priests engage in diversions, because Belief does not depend on your rewards. Believe me, God’s Truth does not depend on your opinion of it.

I believe the major theme of the Bible can be summarized this way: God is not not so much concerned about us scurrying around being “good” or “bad,” but He very much cares that we be obedient. Good and bad – and salvation; eternity with Him – will then fall into place. “Life is real; life is earnest,” the poet Wordsworth said, however, and it is impossible not to be touched and challenged by some things, for instance what troubled Norm Macdonald.

I want to share related thoughts inspired this week by two new friends of mine.

The five-year-old son of one friend’s friend is the cutest little boy you can imagine. Innocent smile, happy surroundings in photos of him, recent photos, as his smile remained, but showing him thinner and thinner, and losing his hair. Then, still smiling, sitting in a bed, totally bald, with the appearance we know in cancer patients.

She learned that the boy and the family has left for St Jude’s, an incredible hospital where, among the research and healings, parents are sometimes told those awful words, “There’s nothing we can do any more,” which these parents were told, now taking their boy on his last trip.

Why? Why? we ask. Life, much less death itself, is not supposed to work that way.

That boy, as he comprehends what’s going on, might ask that himself. Parents, comedians, you, me, all of humankind, cry out – all too often – with this question. When my eldest daughter was young she asked a variation of that old question, “Why are there bad things in God’s world?” A little older and she would have said “evil,” which is the root of bad things.

My answer was and is not cheery, but it is true. There is sin in the world, and sin corrupts and corrodes. We have all sinned – fallen short of the glory of God – and there are consequences. Trees do not sin, neither do oceans; neither, we can feel sure, did that five-year-old cancer victim. God promised to walk with us through the valleys of the shadows of death… not to pluck us out, but to be with us.

My other new friend shares a hundred points of contact, but I learned that in one of her past lives she was an opera singer. Not in the shower, like me, but on stages like La Scala. With Pavarotti, receiving her spray of roses next to him. I have been to the Met (the opera house, not the ballpark) and the Paris Opera, but still dream of sitting in the sixth row at La Scala and just hearing singers.

So, the connection. Talking about great sopranos, and then hearing about this little boy, my attention converged on a favorite soprano, the Bohemian Magdalena Kožená, and a performance of hers from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. In the video below, it is paired with scenes of distress, illustrating the theme in that portion of the presentation of Christ’s suffering.

Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears! See, here before you, heart and eyes weep bitterly. Have mercy, my God!

… are the words. It is a proper prayer, not cynical nor rebellious, for in Bach’s personal and creative world, he also knew the “end of the story” – Joy. No matter our sufferings and anguish, no matter our bitterness nor grief, He loves us. It’s the text and subtext and “end of the story” of the entire Bible, too.

A happy ending.

We can know God… but only so much. If we understood all, we would be God. But the important thing, through all the sorrow and mystery, is that He knows us.

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Since preparing this message, we have learned that the little boy has died. We add prayers for “the peace that passeth understanding” promised to those who are in the Lord.

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Click: Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott

1-21-23

In this weekly blog I have been writing for almost 14 years I occasionally feel presumptuous on your attention as I attempt to share His messages. Eavesdropping, I consider it, on words that the Lord whispers and sometimes shouts to His children.

Today I will be more personal than I sometimes am. One more “share,” but with a lesson for others, I pray.

It was 10 years ago, January 21, 2013, that my wife Nancy died. She led a remarkable life, touching many people while she lived as she reflected joy, through her manifold sufferings; and since her death.

I had come home after college graduation and was promptly volunteered to be Sunday School Superintendent at my little church; I was introduced to Nancy the nursery-school teacher. She immediately struck me as the most beautiful girl I could ever meet, and that was a prophecy fulfilled – also her outward beauty.

Her nature can be illustrated by the first Sunday morning I visited her classroom. Utter chaos prevailed, kids screeching and climbing and doing everything possible. In their midst was gentle Nancy, urging, “Simon says sit down…”

Our first date was one month later to the day (a George Jones and Tammy Wynette concert) and one year later to the day I proposed. After we left the Chinatown restaurant Nancy called her family from a phone booth (kids, ask your grandparents what that is), and then I called a disk jockey I knew at WHN, the New York City radio station, and asked if he could maybe announce our news on the air. He did better, to our surprise. He invited us to the station. It was after midnight, and he instructed the guard in the lobby to let us enter, and he interviewed us on the air!

Fast-forward, another “to the day” anniversary.

A lot happened, of course, in between. We had a three-week European honeymoon. We had three wonderful children – Heather, Ted, and Emily – proud of them all; and four grandchildren. We lived in Weston, Connecticut; suburban Chicago; suburban Philadelphia; San Diego; and Michigan. We visited many national parks, had family vacations in Florida, Palm Springs, Europe, and points between. Many ups and a few downs.

Among the “downs” was her health. Diabetes had hit her at 13, and was the direct cause of eye troubles (virtually losing her sight twice), kidney failure, amputation of toes, and several strokes and heart attacks. She had heart and kidney transplants. She also endured celiac disease, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and when her new kidney was failing, early signs of dementia. Nevertheless she lived 16 years subsequent to the transplants, after being told she had “gained” possibly three to five years of extended life.

Nancy was not defined by her afflictions, however. She had a strong faith in God, and Jesus became her best Friend. Congenitally shy, she had a spiritual-heart transplant, so to speak, and became bold about sharing her faith. She started a family ministry at the hospital, all five of us holding services, visiting and praying with patients.

It is not true, nor fair to others with ailments, to say that she was never discouraged; eventually she grew sick and tired of being sick and tired. But, mostly, 15/16ths was a good record of defiance against defeat. She said, rather, that she would not choose to go through again what she had… but she wouldn’t trade her “walk” for anything. She inspired uncountable people.

Her Bible – well worn, full of highlights, notes, margin comments – has, underscored, Romans 14:8: “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord.”

I have claimed as a personal anthem of ours the words of the Gospel song The Far Side Banks of Jordan:

I believe my steps are growing wearier each day;
Still I’ve got a journey on my mind.
Lures of this old world have ceased to make me want to stay,
And my one regret is leaving you behind.

But if it proves to be His will that I am first to go,
And somehow I’ve a feeling it will be,
When it comes your time to travel likewise, don’t feel lost
For I will be the first one that you’ll see.

Through this life we’ve labored hard to earn our meager fare,
It’s brought us trembling hands and failing eyes.
So I’ll just rest here on the shore and turn my eyes away
Until you come, then we’ll see Paradise!

And I’ll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan;
I’ll be sitting, drawing pictures in the sand.
And when I see you coming, I will rise up with a shout
And come running through the shallow waters, reaching for your hand.

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Click: Far Side Banks of Jordan

1-16-23

There is an old description of untruths or falsehoods – “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” It is, of course, more of an accusation against statisticians than everyday, garden-variety liars; and my own assessments of that profession is: “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.”

We see this proven most glaringly in politics and public-opinion polling, but it is everywhere, in every sphere, used at every possible opportunity. I will assert that 78 percent of people agree with me.

Having disposed of that, we are left with lies, a subject or at least a practice with which most of us are familiar. But I rather mean for us to think about “damned” lies, and I hope nobody is offended by the word, but it is chosen and should be considered carefully.

To employ the “D” word, as earlier generations liked to politely clothe it, involves one of the most serious matters, with the most serious consequences, of all things. There is a heaven and there is a hell, even if contemporary society denies the existence of both. Even modern – or I should say post-modern – churches tend to deny hell; at the least we can note that many denominations avoid the subject of hell; many churches ignore the consequences of hell; many preachers deny the existence of hell.

And when the Bible, when Jesus Himself, spoke of hell and its reality, the contemporary world in its denials, finds it easy, or in fact, logically incumbent, to dismiss heaven – the desire for heaven, the reality of heaven, the existence of heaven. Besides, contemporary life and paternalistic governments bring us heaven on earth, right? So what’s the need?

When people, much less denominations, say that they know more than the Bible, and better than Jesus, their “faith” is no faith at all.

But damnation is real. It is a severe caution, and it is a literal threat. To state the previous point another way, if there is no hell and no damnation, God had no reason to become incarnate, to have Jesus come to earth, suffer, and die. If there is no hell to be saved from, there is no heaven to hope for, and then God Almighty is flawed, and His Son Jesus was a fool – worse, a liar.

There’s that word – Liar. God cannot lie. It is not in His nature. But one of the Bible’s several names of Satan is “Liar.” Further, his job description, pictured most fully in the Book of Job but elsewhere too, is “Accuser.” We can say it is his job description.

Whether literally true – I believe it is true, but I mean whether every minute or daily or in a physical setting – we are not told and I do not care about such details. God knows all, but nevertheless it is written that Satan accuses the saints (us). As I said, God knows everything anyway, so there must be a point to our being reminded in the Word that our sins are seen in unseen places, known to God and the heavenly host and even the devil… perhaps as Satan’s final effort (his job description again, according to the Scripture) to “steal, kill, and destroy.”

Jesus told us, “If you believe in God, believe also in Me.” So as night follows day, what God said and Jesus taught about heaven and hell should keep us aware. Hell and damnation are not things casually to dismiss, and certainly not things to talk about lightly. “Damn this,” and “damned that,” and “Go to hell!” — when we say such things, we are playing with fire.

There is one more thought about lies, and the devil accusing us before the throne of God. Whether literal or Scripture’s way of helping us picture reality is not as important as this truth:

If Satan is a liar, I don’t care so much about him accusing us, lying about us, to God.

What we should be concerned about – tremble with fear, actually – is that the devil would tell the truth about us.

Why? If we are sinners, we have already condemned ourselves. If we have accepted Jesus, however, our robes are clean.

We must not be concerned with what the devil claims, but Whom our hearts have claimed.

And that’s no lie.

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Satan, the enemy of our souls, roams about and among us seeking whom to devour, as the Bible says. He might rant and roar against us before God… yet let us remember that softly and tenderly Jesus is calling.

Click: Softly and Tenderly