Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-13-22

I’m not going to go Theological on you here. I will take a moment, however, to invite us all to consider a glaring matter (I believe to be a problem) in today’s churches.

The root of “Theology” literally is “the study of God,” so I might break my promise before I start, but I rather think in this matter we should study not God so much as contemporary worship, the practices of Western churches, and the evolution, yes, of denominations.

Simply: I think significant portions of Christendom – north of the Equator, generally, and in America especially – have sublimated important aspects of Christian doctrine. That is to say, the Church that Jesus inspired and the Apostles established.

Stick with me: Essential elements of Christianity, the accepted teaching over many centuries, and the foundational beliefs of Christians… are often ignored today. In Christian churches themselves.

Many Christians are being taught incomplete Gospels, if taught at all.

An incomplete Gospel is not the Gospel at all. Churches and their traditions and denominations used to proclaim “a full Gospel” and be dedicated to “know Christ and make Him known.” Now it is what has become convenient, or appealing, or uncomplicated. And I am not here referring to obscure debates or fine points of, say, eschatology or, you know, “how many angels can dance on the heads of pins.”

Those challenges are serious enough… and I suppose always will be. My concern actually is more basic, and can be illustrated by two recent days in the church “calendar” that are practically ignored in much of today’s church.

The first is Ascension Day. For centuries the Transfiguration of Christ – His bodily ascension to Heaven, witnessed by Disciples and accompanied by faith-heroes of the Old Testament – was a major event, celebrated by churches in a major way, observed for its major significance.

This Transfiguration of the Christ “closed the circle,” made complete His earthly Ministry. The fulfillment of a hundred various prophesies… the details of His life and many miracles performed… His suffering and sacrificial death… all were the varieties of signs and wonders that announced who He was. Of course, His miraculous victory over death, and 40 days of being seen, and preaching anew, were further signs that He was – as His followers were now believing – much greater than the prophets of old.

But Jesus’s bodily Ascension to Heaven, lifted to the clouds, welcomed by the Father… this was the final act in His ministry on earth. The Ascension confirmed, finally, that Jesus was Divine; that He was returning to the Father.

This act, this fact, was profoundly important to the early Church. And it remained a major element of teaching and creeds and church observances for centuries. Properly so.

Today (and believe me, I know and honor the pockets of exceptions) the mainstream denominations scarcely mention the event, the Day, its implications. A needless omission; a symptom of post-Modern disrespect for God Almighty and His plan for His church.

You might ask: Would clergy who undergo training, and people who build churches, really abandon the Faith??? The answer is found, sadly, many times throughout Biblical history. At one time (see Samuel II, chapter 6) the Israelites actually let the Ark of Covenant — delivered and designed by God Himself — be abandoned for three months. There is an example. (King David wanted to return it to Jerusalem, but instead consigned it to the household of Obed-Edom, appropriately, a Levite — and this, I believe, was a sign to us: “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord!”)

Even more egregious, and more widespread, is what I call the “Duine God” who is worshiped and glorified, to the extent He is, by the contemporary church. (That is, opposed to the “Triune God” – the Trinity.)

Ten days after Jesus’s Ascension, a significant promise of His was fulfilled. As the Disciples and others “waited” as Jesus commanded, “there came a rushing sound as from a mighty wind… over the heads of the assembled crowd there appeared what seemed like tongues of flame… everyone began speaking, but in languages of others, and in unknown talk that sounded like gibberish…” (My paraphrase of the account in the Book of Acts.)

Happening on Pentecost (the “Feast of Weeks” on the Jewish calendar; subsequently known as Whit Day, sometimes Whitsunday) – the events of that day gave rise to the Pentecostal experience of believers.

That Pentecost event was the birth-day of the Church. Jesus had assured the Disciples that it was “better that He leave them, because One will come with power, so they might do all things He had done.” A miracle happened that day… and has not ceased. Nine Spiritual Gifts, as listed in I Corinthians and elsewhere, came upon those people, and are still promised to believers today. They include speaking, and understanding, strange tongues, “the language of angels.” Gifts of miraculous knowledge, and wisdom, and prophetic visions; and healing.

Not all “powers” at all times to all people: they are not magic wands. But they are gifts.

And I am astonished how few Christian churches believe in them today. Or seek them. Or accept them. Or teach them. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever… and so is the equal member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit – God in us. Yet today’s churches are afraid to see the Gifts, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, as anything but a 2000-year-old religious relic. Tragic.

Some people today claim that this experience was “emotionalism.” But things changed, forever. Peter, for instance, had been an impulsive and sometimes foolish fan of Jesus. After Pentecost he became a wise, mature, and persuasive leader. Some people today claim that the Pentecostal experience was for that moment only, to “anoint” followers. However, it did not stop. Within decades there were Christian churches as far away as England, and in short centuries, Christianity was the official faith of the Roman Empire. The power of Pentecost!

I have experienced some of the Gifts; and friends have. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of the church, and south of the Equator is overtaking Catholic and traditional Protestant denominations in numbers. Holy-Spirit Christianity is outstripping Islam in Africa (the massacres you hear about in the news are routinely of Pentecostal communities).

These “holes in the Gospel” today I see as nothing less than a religious “cancel culture” of the post-Modern age, with dead, frightened mainstream skeletons behind pulpits of social clubs and mausoleums posing as churches. Churches that deny the Trinity.

That is harsh, but I think Christians need some spiritual tables overturned in church parking lots and courtyards. Would Jesus know His church if He returned today?

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Click: Altar Call – Baptism In the Holy Spirit

6-6-22

Prayer. It is a mysterious thing, really. A gift proffered by the Creator of the Universe to every one of His children – the invitation to have a conversation.

It can be a chat, for it is not supposed to be a one-way street. We let the burdens of our hearts be known; we lift our praise and gratitude; we sometimes cry in helpless confusion.

Other “gods” and figureheads of various religious traditions do not converse. How were they portrayed? They dispensed wisdom or rules. They demand tribute. They have no counterparts of the Holy Spirit, the aspect of God who lives in our hearts and is our Advocate before the Throne.

We are assured that God covets our prayers, and hears the prayers of the righteous; that His Word never comes back void; that the Holy Spirit – when we are unable to pray or might feel inadequate – will nevertheless “groan” on our behalf.

We often list our desires… but the Lord knows our needs. Thank God.

And that is part of the mystery, beyond the miracle that God knows even the number of hairs on our heads: He knows our needs. In fact He feels our pains and joys and burdens and petitions before we organize them in prayer. He knows, already. And He knows the answers.

So why pray? Why does He need for us to approach Him? Why does He “communicate”?

In prayerful communication, He speaks to our hearts; He sometimes speaks audibly; He brings “the peace of God, which passes understanding,” as is promised about prayer; He has assured us that fervent prayer “avails much.”

Part of the mystery should be clear – we are blessed by the act of praying, even before the answers come. Further, prayer is the most palpable form of obedience we can exercise: believing, approaching, trusting – the essence of faith. Prayer is the “key to Heaven, and faith unlocks the door,” as the Gospel song says. We are encouraged to pray for one another: such is our duty, and it pleases God that we fellowship with the saints. The Gifts of the Spirit, enumerated throughout the New Testament, include praying “in the Spirit,” surrendering our tongues and hearts to the language of angels, clearing worldly impediments to conversation with God.

Yet our natural minds still have natural questions.

Frequently asked by skeptics, and sometimes in corners of our own hearts: When we pray “fervently,” when we are “righteous” according to scriptural verses on the matter, when we “pray believing” as commanded, when we seem to be in accord with His Word, when we pray selflessly as we know how…

Why does God sometimes seem to be silent? Why does He sometimes say “no”? More – why does He sometimes seem to say “NO!!!”

An answer, as hard as it often is to accept, is that “no” is an answer. Prayer is not a magic wand. God is not an errand boy. But our response must encompass a deeper understanding than this. God is sovereign; He knows best. He knows better than our want-lists, even when our requests are sincere and righteous. As we agreed, we have our desires; He knows our needs.

Further, as obedient children of a loving God, we have to know that a “no” can really be a “not yet.” Or, “not in your way, but Mine.” Thus saith the Lord.

To reassure ourselves, let’s look at some notable things God did not do… yet, still, were answers to prayer, and examples of how He works His loving will toward us.

• Moses was leading the Hebrew children from the wrath of Pharaoh’s army. The Promised Land was far ahead, but the multitude was stopped at the Red Sea. A miracle-working God could have answered prayers by drying the waters. But God’s answer was to part the waters. There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God makes a way.
• Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were condemned to death, to be cast into the dreaded “Fiery Furnace.” To honor their faith, God could have struck the King dead, or scattered the guards, or extinguished the flames. Yet prayers were answered when they survived unharmed (and in the presence of that “fourth man” appearing at their side). There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God protects us.
• In the well-known Psalm of comfort, we are told to prepare for the “valley of the shadow of death.” If God chooses, He easily could set our paths on the mountaintops above such a valley. Yet we are encouraged to “fear no evil” because His rod and staff will comfort us… in the presence of our enemies. There is a message for us in the way those prayers were answered: God will be by our side.

In these examples, I think we all might have prayed urgently, probably expectantly, surely hopefully.

Naturally. But, hard as it would be to realize, those prayers would not be conversations. God’s lessons would be lost. Yet they happened, and were recorded, for reasons. We were the reasons; to learn the ways in which we can draw closer to God.

And to pray “Thy will be done” at the end, as well as the beginning, of our chats with God.

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Click: In the Night Shadows

5-30-22

America has become so secularized that we are stripping our traditional religious observances – Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving – of spiritual distinctives, re-branding them in schools, public squares, and the media as Winter, Spring, and Fall Fests, and more innocuous labels when they can be found.

Even worse, our secular solemnities also are being neutered. The greatest of presidents whose lives are inspirations have been consigned to virtual snow-globes and shaken up as flakes in a generic “presidents day” flurry, lost among unfortunate and forgotten nonentities. Fireworks and parades on the Fourth of July are symbols that largely have yielded to barbecues and reunions. All of those former commemorative days have morphed into excuses for long weekends and cheesy TV commercials.

Suffering not the least in this rush to homogenize our cultural heritage is Memorial Day. I thank God that some people still recall and honor the origin of the patriotic day, originally “Decoration Day,” established for visits to graves and monuments of fallen heroes.

We can be thankful for small favors, but I generally curse the impulse that kidnaps Memorial Day and uses it as an excuse to “mark the beginning of summer” and inspire weekend sales at furniture outlets and used-car lots.

My dad served in World War II (he overflew D-Day in a Weather Squadron) and came home; so “his day,” as with millions of others, and from other wars, was Veterans Day. Memorial Day honors those who sacrificed their lives.

Military service always incurs sacrifice, whether men were drafted or men and women who volunteer. And no less (to the nation’s shame) spouses and children who often sacrifice greatly too. From my perspective, and what inhabits my desire to memorialize and hold these dead in awe, is what motivated those service personnel whom we honor.

In every war through history, combatants sometimes have been motivated by hate. It manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from summoning bravery… to action “beyond the call of duty”… to, occasionally throughout history, savagery and atrocities. The range of motives and performance is wide – but I have always believed that the essence of hatred, if it could be distilled and measured, routinely is stronger in civilian leaders than in the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

Largely this is due to the underlying causes of many wars. As a historian and as a Christian, I will unfurl the flag of my cynicism. Wars have been fought for noble reasons, including defense and rescue operations. Many also have been fought for territorial gain or commercial advantages – often brutal, yet arguable extensions, as von Clausewitz wrote, of politics and diplomacy.

Cynicism joins the battle, so to speak, when we recognize how many wars have been fought, and lives lost, over hollow objectives; futile suicide missions; changing war goals; civilian slaughter; friendly embraces of recent enemies; abandoned rationales for “why we fight”; and neglect of gold-star families and veterans’ needs.

Should I mention such things on a Memorial Day? I cannot help it; but in my mind such memories inspire a greater motivation – indeed, a necessity – to honor the dead. If not the wars, memorialize the dead.

Most fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, I believe, have not fought and died out of hatred, even against malign enemies… but more out of love.

They love their homeland. They love their families, their Main Streets, their heritage. They love their flag. They love peace, the ultimate goal. More – and here is what leaves me awestruck and deserves our “memorialization” – they love service. They love serving. They love and accept and embrace sacrifice.

How many people have that “DNA” any more? Thank God for the “few and the proud” in all military branches… and we surely can wonder whether the “few” are growing fewer in society. If America’s shores and cities and towns were invaded, would regular citizens be willing (or able, if guns are confiscated) to rise up in defense?

I truly wonder whether the ghostly echelon of the fallen – whose graves I hope we all will visit on Memorial Day, even if the cemeteries and the gravestone names are unfamiliar – would have been so dedicated if they could have looked ahead and could have seen what has America has become. I won’t start a checklist of horrible transformations in our society, but if you have read this far, you probably agree with me. If not… well, the right publicly to disagree, which is threatened, remains one of things our fallen heroes died to protect.

Salute. Shed a tear. Raise a prayer. We honor fallen heroes for wearing the uniform, embracing the flag, and sacrificing “their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor.” Let us honor them too for America’s dwindling (God forbid) spirit of service and sacrifice.

Let us pray that not one of them, after all, did not die in vain.

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Click: Memorial Day – Taking Chance

5-23-22

It is one thing that you and I occasionally ignore God’s Commandments; too frequently we break the laws of God outright and defy His will. We will sin and rebel and disobey, even in our “best” times and despite good intentions. Occasionally? Actually, countless times; but who’s counting? (Oh. God is.)

We have sin natures. Accepting Christ’s atoning work on the cross – that He accepted the punishment we deserve as sinners before a Holy God – will not completely erase our tendencies to sin, nor acts of sin.

A mighty change in the situation, however, is that we are forgiven when confessing the finished work of Jesus, the Message of the Cross.

But I wonder: It is one thing that we tend to defy His will for our lives and ignore Jesus’s teachings about duties as devoted believers in Him…

We might ignore His commands. But how often do we ignore His blessings?

This is a serious question, because it is a serious matter. As sinners, we need forgiveness, and that is why God became Incarnate. He became flesh, dwelt among humankind, knew our temptations and sorrows and pain; He suffered death but overcame it that we might live as He did, and does.

That is theology: We all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. Jesus redeemed us.

Jesus did not come that we learn Gratitude. He did not die in order that we break out in Thanksgiving. It was not necessary that He go to the cross as the way for us to voice Praise.

… those attitudes will follow the saved sinner, born-again Christians. But our focus should be Jesus’s focus: the remission of sins.

However.

I believe that God is grieved when we do not experience Gratitude, or express Thanksgiving, or sing praises to Him. We do not want to grieve God. But it always amazes me when Christians do not exhibit unbridled joy when considering Who God is, and What He has done!

… perhaps it is because we simply do not think about it? Do we take His gifts, and His love, for granted? God forbid!

It is not that He has been shy on the matter! Give thanks to the Lord for He is good… He promises joy unspeakable and full of glory… The JOY of the Lord is my strength… Praise the Lord, o my soul; and all that is within me!… Praise the Lord in song!… Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!… Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His mercy endures forever… Come before His presence with thanksgiving!…

…Through Jesus, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise.

You know the Bible verses, and many others. If these are not commands, they are recommendations! Seriously, they are, even more then recommendations, a checklist of natural responses we should have to the Love of God.

We all have been where I have been lately. There are times when believers – who know the truth, who have accepted Jesus – just get to places where it somehow is difficult to summon that gratitude, and thanksgiving, and praise. The world closes in; circumstances oppress us; the enemy taunts.

Well, that is the time to do what that verse says: offer a sacrifice of praise.

You don’t feel like doing it? That’s why it’s called a sacrifice: it’s not supposed to be easy… and would not be worth much if it were easy. There can never be a moment, or something that you can think of, that you can not thank God for. Begin: A minor thing; a silly thing; a little thing.

Your mind will move to bigger things. Fuller blessings. Greater thanks. The devil will stop taunting and the Holy Spirit will start whispering to you; then, shouting. You will move into a place where your attitude is adjusted. You will not only be praising; you will be happy; you will be joyful, a different thing; you will be grateful. And so will God.

He is worthy of all praise. And you will sense that you have entered the Courts of Praise with thanksgiving!

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Click: Thank You

4-25-22

It is commonly asserted that religion is on the decline in the United States, in the West, and indeed around the world. The polls affirm this; Christians decry the figures; and the growing numbers of secularists in established centers of power and influence celebrate.

The trend is noted about Christianity, but is widely applied to other faiths as well. Islam’s imperialism often is as much military as militant, and of repressive, societal goals. Eastern religions often have faded into traditionalism, and the billions of people who live under Communism endure the illegality of religious practice.

Yet I maintain that the 21st century is one of the most religious eras in the history of humankind.

It is not a word game to invite you to understand the distinctions. Words and definitions are important in an essay, and vital to proceed in our daily lives. Approximately 2.5-billion people in the world are Christians. Roughly one in three souls in the earth’s population profess a belief in Christ. Islam is second in total numbers.

Many people assume that Islam is “on the march” in places like Africa, and Christianity is in retreat. But in fact Christianity is gaining adherents at a faster rate throughout the continent, and it is no coincidence that Mohammedans have turned many areas into bloody battlegrounds. Frequent attacks on Christian schools, Black girls kidnapped and raped, is part of the campaign to intimidate and stifle the spread of Christianity.

There would not be such savagery – or similar attacks in India, Southeast Asia, and China – if Christians were docile, if the faith was in retreat by itself.

… like it is in America and Europe.

Numbers of professing believers in Christ have declined annually for years. Many mainline denominations, churches, and colleges increasing deny the Divinity of Christ. The inerrancy of the Bible is widely renounced. In the view of government, courts, and schools, Biblical standards are rejected – a steady secularist evolution from the beliefs and practices of the Founders.

And so forth. Consistently, people who argue against these points do not defend our spiritual foundations and heritage – they largely and happily welcome the changes; but rather maintain that the trends should cause joy throughout the land.

They are, of course, doomed to repeat the lessons of history, as per Prof. Santayana’s dictum about those who do not learn. It is arrogant nonsense, indeed suicidal foolishness, to think that we have become the first society to successfully experiment with licentiousness, toleration of greed and dishonesty, sexual laxity, corruption of youth, imperialism, and rejection of spiritual values.

Why, then, do I claim that we live in a high-water period of religion?

The distinction I invited early concerns the difference between religion and Christianity.“Religions” are systems of human creation – systems, rules, customs, patterns, laws, inclusions and exclusions. I believe that religion possibly has sent more people to hell than any other external forces.

The difference with Christianity is that (despite the lazy terminology we all employ) it is not a religion. It sounds like a bumper strip, but Christianity is not a religion – it is a relationship. Christ had few “rules”; in fact He was quite clear that the way to find salvation, acceptance by God Almighty, was to believe that Jesus is His Son; that He paid the price, the punishment we deserve before a Holy God; and that He rose from the dead. Believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. That’s it.

Rules, robes, memberships, committees, sacrifices, tithing, memorization, candles, doctrines, all count for nothing in terms of being accepted by God – being a follower of Christ. Oh, we will be motivated to do and share many of these things… but in their proper order! “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

So – again – why do I call this era the most religious of times?

Because of what religion is. As true Christianity declines in America and Europe, religion – remember my definition: belief in human-created rules and regulations – has risen. In this sense, America and Europe live in a post-Christian Age.

But a religion of Secularism has supplanted Christianity. We have secular popes. We have worldly commands and “Thou Shalt Nots” aplenty. There is a common “salvation” according to secular views. Some people anointed – the new “saints” and others are demonized.

The new gospels are agreed upon and advances by Hollywood, Big Media, the Educational-Industrial Complex. Political Correctness provides the new Ten – or more – Commandments. Surely, more and more, people (those with traditional values and Christian standards) are excommunicated: from jobs, schools, neighborhood associations.

It is surprising, really, how the new Secular Religion is counterfeiting many aspects of Christendom. Greta Thunberg is cast as a contemporary Joan of Arc. Activists who discern sudden rights to indoctrinate children act like they have divine revelations; those who resist are cast as heretics. Books are burned by the Politically Correct – an up-to-date Inquisition. Those who impose mandates, or assert that men can declare themselves female, and who legalize abortions and euthanasia… are frankly, declaring themselves gods.

As the Bible prophesied, we live in a time when humankind practices a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof. New England, for instance, is still dotted with beautiful old churches, but many have become literal whited sepulchres – community centers of feel-good and do-good. Maybe people do feel good and do good… but how many throughout America and Europe still preach the Gospel? Accountability for sin? Personal encounters with the Risen Savior?

I am not worried about Jesus – I am not being flippant – but I am worried about His People, His church, the precious heritage we squander. I have peeked ahead to the end of the Book, and… God wins. But that does not at all mean that America wins. Or survives. At the current pace, we don’t deserve to.

We are doomed unless revival comes to the land. I have heard many Christians pray for it, but it is not in God’s nature to bless a wayward generation, the willfully sinfully, so to speak.

Rather it is our task to bring revival, “going forth into all the world,” which in these times means our very neighborhoods. Then we plead for His blessing on the revival we spark. It is useless and false otherwise, much like the charade of godliness this nation has adopted.

Who shall prevail? Is it too late? Is the coming generation too uninformed and misinformed? Is it drugged in bodies and minds? Are the powerful too powerful? Do we have the will to fight – do we know Scripture; do we seek the Lord – in order to defend and counter?

For Christ’s sake, it is all too important.

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A musical allegory of the grief we face. From the 1600s, but regard it as a dirge for Western Civilization, if we do not redeem ourselves.

Click: Dido’s Lament

4-18-22

We have just passed through the darkest days of humankind’s history.

I don’t mean the headlines and videos of the war in Ukraine, or the travails and statistics of our contemporary challenges. I don’t mean, in sweeping reference, to the bloody horrors of the last century.

As we recognize events and commemorate moments of history, whether we learn from the past or pretend things did not happen; whether we honor people or invent heroes of distant days; whether we celebrate fictional events or ignore noble events – I think the most horrible… the coldest… the loneliest… the most confusing… the most frightening days of humankind were the days between the death of Jesus and His rise from the grave.

He died.

The life was gone from Him. The Roman guards pierced his side to make sure, and blood flowed from His heart. He was taken from the cross, and His dead body was cleansed, prepared for burial, covered in a shroud and placed in a donated rich man’s tomb, secured with a heavy stone. His mother and others tended to His burial. Officials placed 24-hour guards at the tomb to make sure that zealots, or His enemies, did not steal the Body.

At the moment that Jesus breathed His last breath, there arose stormy skies and winds. The earth shook. A giant veil in the Temple spontaneously ripped, ceiling to floor. Reports of citizens and contemporary historians, not only Scripture, told of these things.

Turbulent nature was reflected in the minds and hearts of His followers. Distraught that their precious Friend was tortured and killed – taken from them – was compounded by confusion. And terror.

Would they be next?

What of their “movement”?

Not remembering the prophecies of Scripture, or Jesus’s predictions – or His comforting promises – they wondered whether the past three years were a bad dream. Or a ruse, a plot, or a fraud.

They scattered in fear.

What to do? Where to go? Hide? Pretend the Man from Nazareth was a mere teacher, a persuader only, unreliable about all the wisdom He shared?

How to explain all the miracles… the healings, the supernatural wisdom, the changed lives – their changed lives???

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Those few days – after Jesus suddenly had been ripped from their lives and hopes and dreams – must have been the emptiest, coldest hours anyone could experience. Women weeping, men crying for blood, authorities threatening, and… His friends huddled, hiding, shivering in fear.

One disciple said that He had believed Jesus was going to start a revolt against the government. Another said He was sure that Jesus was going to strike the religious leaders and the Roman authorities dead. Another must have doubted that Jesus was the Messiah after all, as they had come to believe.

Surely some – certainly His mother Mary, at least – must have remembered Scriptures, like the symbolism of Jonah in the great fish for three days; or what Jesus said, confusing at the time, about the Temple: if destroyed, it would be restored in three days.

Then the women went to the tomb.

The women intended to honor the dead Jesus, leave perfumes and oils if they could.

The women found the guards gone. The women found the tomb empty. The women saw the burial cloths that had covered the Body… but there was no Body there.

The women returned to the cowering Disciples, sharing what they had seen. All ran, entered the tomb, and saw what the women had reported.

They returned to where they had been hiding, and began to discuss, and plan, and remember things Jesus had foretold, and, and… what? Was Jesus in fact alive? Where was He? Is there hope? Was this not a catastrophe, as they had feared? Was this not — God forgive them for their suspicions — all a strange game? Or was God doing something supernatural, again, in their midst?

Mary Magdalene, however, returned to the tomb. While weeping, a man asked why, and she wondered if “they had stolen” the Savior’s body. She assumed the questioner was a gardener… but she turned and recognized the transformed, resurrected, living Jesus.

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She and the women became the church’s first evangelists. The good news was shared with the Disciples, and then the groups of followers, then the city of Jerusalem and countryside of Galilee, then the world.

Supernatural? For the next 40 days, Jesus appeared spontaneously to individuals and crowds. Walking through walls, performing more miracles, dispensing more wisdom. And now He gave His followers “marching orders,” different than advice about merely how to act. He issued “The Great Commission” – that believers in Him should “go into all the world sharing the Gospel [literally, the good news] and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Not that Jesus’s ministry was ever a game, but henceforth being a follower of Christ became a serious life-commitment.

He challenged His followers: Do you love Me?

He commanded His followers: Feed My sheep.

He promised His followers: Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

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Were they ready?

Are we ready today?

Are you ready?

The Life of Jesus is not a mere story. The ministry of Jesus was more than performances to impress crowds. The torture and death of Jesus is more than a lesson. The Resurrection of Jesus was more than proof that He overcomes death. The Ascension of Jesus will be confirmation that He was Divine. That He is one with the Father.

The world might still ignore Him, reject Him, deny Him, explain Him away, persecute Him (and us), in fact hate Him. And us.

The world can be savage against us – because of the Jesus who lives in us – or it can dismiss us; trivialize the Savior. It can call Christianity a game.

Let them do so. We can turn around and call the “game” Jesus played as something He virtually said that Easter morning:

“Here I come… ready or not!”

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Click: He’s Alive

3-28-22

In these busy days, crowded about as we are with wars and rumors of wars, turmoil seemingly on all sides – the economy; trans-national health crises (or not); political and social recriminations; crime; challenges to traditional values that threaten to turn our world upside-down – a news item this week barely peeped amid the din. What it represents is in inverse proportion to its significance.

The poll revealed that for the first time, a minority of the population of the Netherlands claims adherence to a religious faith; membership in a church; belief in God. The majority claims to be atheist or agnostic.

To my suspicious point of view, this perhaps is the “first time” in the history of polling, but not in the history of our contemporary Western Civilization (what used to be called Christendom). We long have been living in a post-Christian society. I do not need to begin rants, no matter how valid, about “God being taken from our schools” or the Establishment’s war on Christian values, or the growing categorization of the Bible as “hate speech.”

I think what has been polled in Holland – the site of such fervent theological studies and activities in generations past, where English Pilgrims lived before sailing to the New World – is true throughout America and Europe these days.

The “Christian West” no longer holds Biblical truths as a priori components of society, government, law, justice, and relationships. This devolution seems to have happened during our lifetimes, but secularism, virtually a religion in itself, is a symptom, not the cause, of liberal theology, of pluralism, of modernity. The Enlightenment was not the first crack in our spiritual foundation, but actually the last gasp of the Theocentric view of life. Despite what many schools teach, the great Enlightenment thinkers were Christians who sought to reconcile, not separate (or “liberate”), the role of God in the world.

God’s place in the world has never changed, and cannot change. The role He plays can change, because it is what humankind practices and grants Him. When Nietzsche said that God Is Dead, he meant in the sense that society failed to acknowledge Him any more.

I frequently remind myself that Martin Luther, back when the Renaissance was evolving into Modernism, maintained that “Reason is the enemy of Faith.”

That is hard to accept. But it is impossible to refute. The intellectual anarchy from which we suffer is the result of 500 years of futility: the culture’s vain attempt, whether benign or hostile, to reconcile Reason and Faith. “Yes, but…” many people will be quick to say. But we must recognize that “progress,” as we routinely identify it, is difficult to define,. And it is a false god in any case.

Some truths need not be improved upon, because that reveals that… they are not truth at all. “Truth” – Biblical truth, Absolute Truth – is not conditional, relational, nor of any other qualification. The deadly temptation of humankind, and a sin of organized societies, is to think that we can without peril discard Biblical standards. Frankly, this started in the Garden: our problem is the sin of pride – our belief that we know better than God.

I write these words during the Lenten season. And part of my Lenten devotion brings these thoughts to my heart, more than usual.

Lent has become, to many Christians who even think about it, a vaguely religious version of New Year resolutions. At best, to some people, a way to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice. In fact that is not why Lent entered the Church calendar. I confess that this will seem glib, but it suggests that Jesus Himself, our model, might have avoided the cross by giving up chocolate for 40 days.

No, if Lent has real meaning and efficacy, it was commended to followers of Christ as a discipline in order to repent of sin. “Successful” denials of habits or entertainment can be, rather, celebrations of self. Even fasting can be self-centered, when we should seek to know God more than please God. Lent was meant to be a time to find Him anew, not hope that He will notice our obedience.

I am not disparaging motivations, but I do want us to focus properly. My own experiences includes a week once spent at a monastery. All comforts (like phones) were banished; silence was mandated; and I lived among monks. On the grounds were Stations of the Cross, and – as I hoped would be the case – I could do nothing day and night but pray, read, and meditate.

At the end of a week that was planned to draw me closer to God, I felt like I knew less about Him. However, I felt closer to Him than I ever had. A mystery, really — but with God many mysteries are to be cherished. The difference, perhaps – an important distinction – was that He seemed to draw closer to me, rather than vice versa. That is how I felt; the solitude and study allowed that.

Lent ought to be (and, God help us, not only confined to the Lenten season!) something like that experience. I am trying this year to meditate, contemplate, read the Word, and pray… and I realize more than ever how contemporary life robs us of quiet time and the ability to consecrate moments. “Yes, but…”

The Lord will manage, as He always has, with wars and rumors of wars, and all the challenges in the headlines. As if we can change, in major ways, the course of human events.

Christ came to earth – and Easter, which lies before us – not so we can save the planet, but so God can save us.

+ + +

These essays offer to “put songs in our hearts” to start the weeks. But not all songs are pretty tunes, much as such anointed music can bless us. During Lent, in the spirit not of duty but of humility, repentance, contemplation, spiritual sorrow, intimacy with God, re-dedication, and obedience, there are other forms of Christian music.

If there be a “song for our hearts” during Lent, we might adopt “Lachrimae,” a lute song pavane written by John Dowland around 1600. Its melancholy tune was set to words of a forlorn theme titled Flow, My Tears.

Click: Lachrimae: Flow, My Tears

1-17-22

We try to “get through” to people.

Sometimes we succeed, often we fail.

Other times we give up.

Do we really care, if we give up?

If we pray to God about something over and over, is that faith?

Or is praying once, and believing Him… is THAT faith?

There is no correct answer.

We should pray in the Spirit, and by the Spirit.

God will guide us.

Circumstances.

He already knows the burdens of your heart.

But He wants to hear from us.

He desires that we seek Him, earnestly and fervently.

That is why He instituted prayer.

A conversation.

Between friends.

When you want to “get through” to someone, is it because you care?

Does that person know you care?

Do YOU care… about whether you care?

If you want to “get through” to someone, is it worth your trouble?

Can you imagine being “too late”?

Will you be satisfied, then, by saying, “I didn’t have the chance…”?

Because we always DO have the chance.

However, we do not always TAKE the chance.

Love is taking that chance.

Again.

And again.

And all the “agains” you need.

You might say “I love you very much,” and mean it.

But never let it be said that you didn’t love well enough.

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Click: Sometimes I Cry

1-3-2022

I have imagined that if God composed an employment search, it might read “Wanted: Nobody.”

Wait… what a way to start the new year. An ambiguous phrase. God doesn’t want Nobody (what another way to start the new year — ambiguous grammar). Properly stated, of course, God wants everybody.

He created us all, so it is obvious that He wants us all… to be saved, to commune with Him, to find joy, to experience salvation, to be free from the bondage of sin. Why else create us? He grants us free will… but we nevertheless rebel… and yet He offers us a way to redemption.

He loves us. So much that He allowed His incarnate Son to assume our sins unto Himself and pay the penalties we deserve.

Well, that is the Gospel message. It is His desire that not one should perish; “no, not one.” That the Creator of the Universe should care about you and me is astonishing. Yet astonishingly true. A New Year’s resolution for all of us (any year!) might be to contemplate, meditate, and appreciate that humbling but joyful truth.

So in His own way, thank God (um, literally) He doesn’t need Nobody — He is God, so can do as He pleases. (In fact, most of the people in Bible accounts are “nobodies,” not the powerful or celebrities, whom He chose to do His work. That can be another message.)

But He tells us that as much as we need Him in our lives… He needs us. He needs us. He needs us! Astonishing. Why else would He have created the heavens and the earth — and us? To watch us suffer and die? To cry and wander helpless? To curse each other and curse Him?

He desired instead to commune with us — to fellowship, in prayer and by service. To be an ever-present help in times of trouble. To receive the praise and glory that is due Him, and which will be our fondest desire for eternity. (I can’t wait to join THAT party!)

Yes. Shame on me. What I really mean is that, in God’s job search (so to speak) He wants EVERYBODY. Nobody is too lowly or too high. Nobody has messed up so much as to be out of God’s loving reach. Nobody is too dirty who cannot be cleansed and given a robe of pure white.

And, astonishingly, nobody is beyond Jesus’s sacrifice that serves to wash away all of our sins in God’s eyes. Best of all — you don’t need to take a bath in order to be washed by the shower of Christ’s work on the Cross.

Salvation is a come-as-you-are party!

Well, the proper wording for God’s “employment” search would be, and has been throughout history, Wanted: Everybody.

That is not ambiguous. And that is a way to begin the year, and every year.

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Click: You Needed Me

10-25-21

In honor of the World Series, we have a lesson that can be derived from the greatest game that God ever invented. Not quite a parable, which is supposed to be an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. This is more like a heavenly story that is revelant to a people that sometimes seems to in the ninth inning of our lives, with two outs and a full count…

I have never done this, here, but it is a story that has bounced around on the web. Someone wrote it – I wish I could discover who, because it is well told (or told about someone else’s message) – and it has passed from site to site, as these things do. I have edited to its essence. It is called “Seventeen Inches”:

In 1996, Coach [John] Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career that began in 1948. He shuffled to the stage [of a sports dinner] to an impressive standing ovation, wearing dark polyester pants, a light blue shirt, and a string around his neck from which home plate hung — a full-sized, stark-white home plate….

“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,” he said, his voice growing irascible. I laughed along with the others, acknowledging the possibility. “I may be old, but I’m not crazy. The reason I stand before you today is to share with you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home plate in my 78 years.”

Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League coaches were in the room. “Do you know how wide home plate is in Little League?”

After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?”, more of a question than answer.

“That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth [League] coaches in the house?” Another long pause.

“Seventeen inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.

“That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do we have in the room?” Hundreds of hands shot up, as the pattern began to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”

“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.

“You’re right!” Scolinos barked. “And you college coaches, how wide is home plate in college?”

“Seventeen inches!” we said, in unison.

“Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?”… “Seventeen inches!”

“RIGHT! And in the Major Leagues, how wide home plate is in the Major Leagues? “Seventeen inches!”

“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello!” he hollered, drawing raucous laughter. “What they don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make it twenty inches so you have a better chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that, let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.’”

Pause. “Coaches… what do we do when your best player shows up late to practice? or when our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him? Do we widen home plate? “

The chuckles gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog lifting as the old coach’s message began to unfold. He turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to draw something. When he turned it toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our kids. With our discipline.

“We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing to meet standards. We just widen the plate!”

Pause. Then, to the point at the top of the house he added a small American flag. “This is the problem in our schools today. The quality of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped of the tools they need to be successful, and to educate and discipline our young people. We are allowing others to widen home plate! Where is that getting us?”

Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem in the Church, where powerful people in positions of authority have taken advantage of young children, only to have such an atrocity swept under the rug for years. Our church leaders are widening home plate for themselves! And we allow it.

“And the same is true with our government. Our so-called representatives make rules for us that don’t apply to themselves. They take bribes from lobbyists and foreign countries. They no longer serve us. And we allow them to widen home plate! We see our country falling into a dark abyss while we just watch.”

I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better practices, I had learned something far more valuable.

From an old man with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned something about life, about myself, about my own weaknesses and about my responsibilities as a leader. I had to hold myself and others accountable to that which I knew to be right, lest our families, our faith, and our society continue down an undesirable path.

“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach today. It is this: If we fail to hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards, if we are unwilling or unable to provide a consequence when they do not meet the standard; and if our schools & churches & our government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look forward to …”

With that, he held home plate in front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark black backside. “We have dark days ahead!”…

And this is what our country has become and what is wrong with it today, and now go out there and fix it!

Sister Wynona Carr recorded “Life Is a Ball Game” in 1952, a hit that resonated with the general public. As the National Pastime (yes, still America’s Game) is as fresh as old black-and-white film clips are exciting, so do the messages of Coach John Scolinos and Sister Wynona Carr speak to us today.

The game is not over till it’s over. And, remember – don’t widen the plate in our lives!

+ + +

Click: The Ball Game – Sister Wynona Carr

(And click on some of the archived Christian blogs of retired pitching great Jeremy Affeldt toward the end of the list of Recommended Sites links to the right.)

9-20-21

A message from your friendly neighborhood Christian Curmudgeon. Actually, I am risible about some aspects, many aspects, of corporate worship these days, but it is not related to my being a reactionary about many other things. “Reactionary” might be too strong; but I have been called a moon-calf, a fuddy-duddy, a jabbernowl. Perhaps with justice, but I must first grab a dictionary.

I honestly (and earnestly) think that many forms of contemporary worship divert the focus from God and the Christian message, all in the name of – here we go – “relevance,” “inclusion,” “being welcoming,” “attracting youth,” and so forth.

The Italians have a phrase that I remember hearing, or rather I remember the meaning which is very wise. I think it was something like “Per andare avanti, guarda indietro,” and its meaning is, “Before moving forward, one needs to look back.” That is: remember; build on the past; respect your heritage. Further, using another Italian word, “ritorno” can be a palliative. That is: return to values before you lose what is valuable; preserve what carried you to a good place.

Can these stern prescriptions apply to worship and music in the contemporary church? Yes, and applicable to many, many larger aspects of life these days.

You don’t have to be a mossback to recognize that our world is spinning out of control. Specifically I mean “our” world of Western Civilization — Post-Christianity, secularized and hedonist, materialist and moral-relativist. Whether virtually worshiping “science” or finding value in no-values, our world thinks it has found the formula for success in the pursuit of happiness.

We seem to believe that every generation, every society, every belief system in all of human history had it wrong. Contemporary society has figured it out, it tells us: the best religion is no religion; the best standards are no standards. “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man.” The theme song for a generation was really a funeral dirge of self-deception.

Somewhere along the way, their karma ran over our dogma.

Our puppet-masters dance more madly with each other, inspiring the suicidal, incestuous, relentlessly aimless “life” we are forced to live amidst the ruins of religion, order, respect, reverence, law, and learning.

And what of my original choleric indictment of church worship? A minor factor? I don’t believe the trends and modes in Christendom today are peripheral, but are squarely indicative of a rudderless society. Indeed, the general drift in contemporary churches – thank God, not all: I acknowledge that – are mirrors of what afflicts our “civilization.”

So I will address my thoughts to malignant trends in many churches today.

*The mad rush to “run” more and more people into pews is an admission that churches don’t believe the sweet Salvation message is sufficient.

*The transformation of music and “doing” church to be “contemporary” and “relevant” tells those who hunger for Eternal Truth that fads of the moment are what really matter to the clergy.

*Many churches act as if traditional hymns are illegal and printed hymnbooks and prayer books are toxic. Except for the (rare) great old hymns, who knows the words or can sing more than those new songs’ seven words repeated 11 times?

*Performances on stages, with worshipers as mere audiences, now are substitutes for congregational participation.

*Hosts challenge people to smile and grin and yell Good Morning – “Louder! I can’t hear you!” – when in fact some people seek church in order to weep and seek God and listen for Him.

*I am not against instruments other than organs and pianos, but many people leave church services more in love with guitar riffs than with Jesus Christ.

*I have seen uncountable youth pastors, in their 30s and 40s, wearing cargo pants, sporting tattoos, and dying their hair in order to relate to their Middle Schoolers. Kids today don’t need idiot adults pretending to be kids who have classmates and friends already. What kids need are Christian adults to be role models.

*Sin frequently is not addressed in many contemporary Christian churches. To ignore our sin nature and the stain of sin in our life is to deny what Jesus came to defeat, and the Holy Spirit sent to empower our resistance.

*Do we know the prayers of the church any more? The Commandments? The Creeds that summarize our faith? Do we know the distinctives of our denominations, or do differences make no difference? Really?

*Finally, how many American Christians are taught about the history of the church, about the defense of the faith – from schisms within, or from periodic Muslim invasions over 1500 years? How many of us know about, and take inspiration from, the martyrs who died for their faith?

… I believe if we don’t know about all the martyrs who died for the Faith, we surely will die for our lack of faith.

+ + +

Click: The Old Rugged Cross

7-26-21

I do love mysteries. Books, stories, movies, real-life events. I think we all do; but there is a difference in our next steps. Some people, and I think humankind in general particularly in the past few centuries, love mysteries because there is a passion – almost an obsession – to solve them.

Is this a good thing, a natural impulse? Not necessarily. Mysteries, the unknown, deep challenges, dare us in many ways; and we accept the challenges. Answering the call, thus have diseases been conquered, new lands discovered, and faraway planets visited. Not bad things, and an aspect of humankind’s DNA that grows when exercised.

I regret some negative aspects that inevitably follow. We have been deluded into thinking that we can solve any mystery, in time; which is of course ridiculous. We lose sight of the fact that life often substitutes new challenges when some mysteries (diseases, plagues, natural disasters) are met; for nature and human nature seem immutable. And we tend to equate the passage of time with real progress. Some mysteries merely deepen: we solve mysterious sicknesses but insist on inventing better ways to kill each other. How’s that for a mystery?

No, I love mysteries because they are mysteries. We cannot know everything, or else we would be as God – and I admit my credentials are lacking. But I do not merely settle for being very human; I embrace the mysteries that place me apart from God; that is, subordinate.

His mysteries are wonderful, just as His ways are inscrutable. That leads me to the basis, the definition, of faith. There are things I don’t have to know, because God knows. There are things I don’t have to worry about, because He cares for me. If things seem out of control… I know He is in control. Martin Luther said that Reason is the enemy of Faith. Hmmm.

I embrace mysteries like birth, and the formed fingers and joyful smiles of babies. Of flowers that return after seeming to die; of seedlings that push through rocks. Forgiveness is a mystery. Salvation is a mystery I don’t understand, but I accept. And when all is said and done, love is a mystery.

If we dissect a butterfly to see how it can fly, we kill it in the process. Therefore, many of the mysteries of life – of God – I simply accept and embrace.

Parts of the Bible we need to understand; but parts of it present the mysteries of God without explaining them. That’s fine. “We will understand it better bye and bye.”

For instance, in the Book of Revelations – surely a book that reveals as many mysteries as matters of clarity – we read of the “24 Elders” who fall down before the Throne of God in Heaven, and cast down their crowns before Him. We read of treasures in Heaven. We read in two passages about this scene, the “glassy sea” before the Throne of God.

Crowns and treasures that some might have? The rest of us will not? Aren’t we all to be equal, once saved? Maybe the Elders represent churches, or dispensations, or saints of the ages…?

It is true that forgiven and blood-bought Believers are no more, and no less, “saved,” or Children of God, which is confirmed many times in Scripture. In the same way as the vilest sinner on earth might gain Heaven by confessing Christ at the end of his or her life. Or the most generous charity worker might go to hell if he or she never believe and confess Christ. These things fight against our own logic, but are not mysteries. They are God’s honest truth.

About those treasures and crowns, I have always thought that in God’s plan there have been saints or martyrs, perhaps, who have a place of distinction, not greater favor, in His sight… but before the Throne of God, nothing else will matter except bowing before Him, praising Him forever, gathering with other saints around the river and the beautiful, calm, glassy sea; and placing at God’s feet whatever honors there might be.

Greater service, greater perseverance, greater love will seem like nothing when we behold Him. In proper perspective, we will lay everything before Him.

Heaven – we try to imagine. Do you want to see loved ones again? You probably will. Children want to see their pets? If that thought pleases them here, it might happen there. But our minds cannot for a moment imagine the riches that await us in glory. The words of a great hymn attempt a picture:

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee, Who were and are and evermore shall be.

Does this make sense? No matter; let the mystery be. We will see these things.

Some “emergent” churches claim to embrace mystery, but in my experience they embrace candles and incense instead.

For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know (I Corinthians 13:12)…

+ + +

This hymn of church was a poem by Reginald Heber later set to music by John Bacchus Dykes. The “Holy, Holy, Holy” from Revelation reminds us that the Bible’s frequent use of numbers is significant – three for perfection; seven for completion, etc. Not clues for lotteries, but lessons to learn from. Here, worship with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir:

Click: “Holy, Holy, Holy” sung by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir

( If you are reading the blog on a mobile device and have problems downloading, please copy and paste this link — https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=MFdObQIE4tA — into your browser. )

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).

I take comfort from that promise, but I never have read it without thinking in my spirit that there is also a warning; it is consistent with Scripture to think that the “sufferings of this present time” are not the worst that we may face. We might not be close to End Times. Whether believers shall be spared the Tribulation or not, it is very possible that things in this world will get very, very, worse. Much worse.

I have been contemplating matters of sin, lying, false witness, deception, and disappointment lately. Happy thoughts, eh? Very personal to me. There is a book soon to be published about a situation much in the news in recent years. The victim in the story’s center is an unassuming Christian who stood up for his beliefs, was crushed in the mills of Political Correctness, and found his legal case in the highest courts of the land.

I reached out to him when the news first hit the fan. I proposed telling his story in a book, or ghost-writing, and he expressed interest in me. Over a couple years I flew cross-country more than once to see him and interview him; I prepared outlines and proposals; I talked to my publisher and agent (who also visited him); friends graciously hosted a dinner at which we all surveyed plans to collaborate; and countless friends, mutual friends, and church groups kept this project in prayer.

“Long story short,” as people say, he started to fade. He was on media tours and distracted, he told me. I finally said and wrote, “Jack, if you don’t want to do a book, or you want someone else to help you, I will stop bothering you.” “No, Rick,” he told me more than once. “I want to do a book, and I want you to write it.” I trust the word of a Christian brother.

Well, a book is due to be released; his book, not written by him. Nor me. And by my own publisher, of all people. In my archives are there are no notes of thanks or apologies, and I suppose I’ll wait on my own for the paperback or movie versions.

Whether I am hurt materially is immaterial to this essay. Spiritually I was wounded, I will confess… but it is what set me to thinking about this topic, these related activities of people, mentioned above. And what is the Big H?

My friend Donald Phelps, one of our generation’s greatest cultural critics and essayists, and in the great tradition of James Huneker and Whittaker Chambers, wrote a piece years ago about the “H” – hypocrisy – for an alternative magazine. He clinically but compassionately dissected the unique nature of hypocrisy, and I wish I could share it all here. In my own flailing-fish manner I would propose that lying is something we speak, but hypocrisy is something we do. They surely are not synonyms, by intention nor effect.

In a secular sense, hypocrisy probably keeps the wheels of society oiled, yet we know that “great” and “small” sins are alike to God. And yet…

Hypocrisy is a sin unlike any other sin, Donald wrote; first, because it is almost always a connective tissue, an integument, for other sins – notably envy, greed, and cowardice…. Hypocrisy represents an almost perfect symmetry of emotion and judgment, neither quite prevailing; this also sets it apart from other delinquencies… cruelty as well.

Donald visited hypocrites of drama and literature (Moliere even wrote a play called Tartuffe, the Hypocrite); of history’s many examples; and Biblical accounts, for instance the Pharisees and followers who condemned Jesus while twisting Scripture to the priority of their prejudices; and religious people who accept only a percentage (and we may think, even a great percentage) of God’s word – hypocritically. “Pick and choose” morality.

These thoughts might have value beyond my venting; and I pray they do as you read. However it all points to a major crisis in our society and our government these very days. And in the corporate church – organized religion.

I think of Joe Biden. We frequently hear evocations of “Joey, the choir boy”; Joey at the altar as a boy; and press photos of Joe crossing himself and attending mass.

Yet the public-show Catholic Biden, in one his very first acts after inauguration, approved taxpayer funding of abortion programs in the US and overseas. He reversed a Trump administration decision to ban taxpayer-funded research using the bodies of aborted children… which has long been condemned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In testimony from Planned Parenthood, its Dr Forrest Smith admitted that there is “no question” babies are being aborted alive so that their organs can be harvested. An associate, Perrin Larton, admitted under oath seeing aborted children with hearts still beating. She said that “once every couple of months” a baby would fall out intact during an abortion, and would then be dissected.

Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Catholic politician who would vote for abortion after being instructed and warned against it “must” be denied Communion, and if that politician still attempts to receive the Holy Eucharist, the priest must refuse him. Pope Francis confirmed this policy, declaring that Catholic politicians who support abortion should not receive Communion. As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, he wrote in in the “Aparecida Document”:

[W]e should… be conscious that people cannot receive Holy Communion and at the same time act or speak against the commandments, in particular when abortion, euthanasia, and other serious crimes against life and family are facilitated. This responsibility applies particularly to legislators, governors, and health professionals.

So we have the “Public Photo-Op” Joe Biden crossing himself and partaking of the sacraments, presiding over the killing of babies, and forcing us to participate through taxes. And we have the Catholic Church with its volumes of teachings on the sanctity of life, and rules for communicants, on the other side.

Question: Who is the bigger hypocrite?

+ + +

Sinners seek forgiveness; wayward evangelists and politicians sin and repent; yet the very public choice of ongoing hypocrisy unfolds on the nightly news.

Click: The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

5-31-21

Hey, Soldier. Or Sailor, Airman, Marine. Late servicemen and women, fallen or passed on.

It’s Memorial Day. Your day.

Back when all the holidays meant something – and meant something different – this began as “Decoration Day.” When people decorated military graves, or commemorative statues, or monuments and plaques.

That’s why I’m addressing you as one group, and as anonymous veterans, because Decoration Day was designed to memorialize, to remember and honor, dead servicemen and women. All of you. You know, on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence; on Veterans’ Day we honor the retired military among us.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day, maybe because the act of placing decorative flowers and flags was becoming an empty gesture. Or simply wasn’t being done that much anymore. Whatever: most Americans think of it now as “the beginning of summer,” the vacation season. So, backyard barbecues have replaced parades and cemetery services.

Maybe that’s what you fought for, and many of you died for. “The American Way of Life.” My dad didn’t fight in World War II because he hated the “Nazis” or “Japs” like the government told him to hate; he didn’t even believe that Main Streets in the American heartland were about to be invaded. He volunteered and served because it was his duty. That’s another old-fashioned concept.

The dirty little secret about history is that the best fighting forces have met success not because they hated, but because they loved. You American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, in your graves through the land – throughout the world, sometimes buried where you fell – loved the flag, loved your people, your homes, your Main Streets; and you loved the concepts of duty and honor.

Most of you guys are probably like my father, and would tell me that you just “did what you had to do,” and most of your kids are probably like me, in awe of dedication and sacrifice. You would tell us to honor the people in uniform right now, and we do.

I am aching to ask you questions, if I could: is it different now? Today we fight enemies so far from our shores, toward victories that have not been defined. So often fulfilling missions to build roads and schools and deliver classroom computers, when back home here, where many military spouses are on food stamps, there are American communities in need of roads and schools and classroom computers.

I know one thing that’s not different, because I have met some of the returning service people today, and have seen them on TV too. The uniforms still grace good people; people who have a sense of honor and duty; brave people who serve because service is honorable. They might not still be wearing uniforms, but I can recognize missing arms and prosthetic legs and eye patches.

So maybe if anything is different now, it’s not the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines; and maybe, when all is said and done, it’s not so much the service they are asked to perform. Maybe the biggest difference is what kind of America they have been fighting for, what Main Streets they return to. I pray they are not much different than those of your day.

… but it was you men and women, now in your graves and represented in those memorials, who brought us to the point where we can even discuss these questions. You didn’t give us Freedom – God did that – but you all defended it. You knew the difference, and you did it well. Often it was brutally difficult, and usually it was far, far away from your homes.

So I’m going to tell you about trips we will take, many of us, this Memorial Day. Not as far away as your places of service and sacrifice. Some of us are not close to our relatives’ military graves, but all of us are close to some military grave or memorial. I am going to suggest that we, the living, pick some flowers or buy some flowers, or get a little flag, and visit a military cemetery. Or any cemetery, and then look for a military emblem on the stone. Or a town’s war memorial. We are going to place a “decoration,” maybe a thank-you letter or a prayer, to brighten your memory and honor you… whoever you are. We are going to pray thanksgiving for your service. For those of us who cannot get out, we are going to make that trip in our minds.

My friend Ron Ferdinand drew an absolutely brilliant Sunday page for Memorial Day. Dennis the Menace, of all places! Dennis and Good Ol’ Mister Wilson, and Mrs Wilson, are discussing the meaning, and the changing names, of Memorial Day. Dennis observes: “Maybe it’s called Memorial Day because ‘Thanksgiving Day’ was already taken.” Brilliant.

I look forward to visiting the grave of a “stranger.” I will symbolically shake your hand, and salute you. I want to tell you that not all of us want to deface and tear down your graves and memorials… God forgive us, on “Memorial” Day.

You represent much that was great about America. You represented us. And I pray that we are worthy of what you did.

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Click: That Ragged Old Flag

5-24-21

One of my favorite passages in the Bible… Wait, I always feel funny when I start a conversation or a lesson that way. Every passage in the Bible ought to be as important, meaningful, and “favorite” as every other. Right? It’s all God’s word! I remember once thinking about those “red letter” Bibles, that every verse, every chapter, every book, should be in red, since it’s all the word of God.

Well, tangents aren’t in red, so I’ll go on. A Bible passage that speaks to me in many special ways is one that has many aspects and nuances and applications, but has become a favorite scene that attracts my attention.

It is the story of Blind Man Bartimaeus, the last (recorded) miracle of healing performed by Jesus, as He passed through Jericho on the way to Jerusalem where He would be arrested, tortured, and crucified. There was a crowd with Him and the Disciples. Luke 18:35-42:

Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging. And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant. So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried out, saying,“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him,saying,“What do you want Me to do for you?”

He said,“Lord, that I may receive my sight.”

Then Jesus said to him,“Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.”

When I read commentaries on this wonderful account, I am always impressed at the various messages or meanings that people take from it.

Some people relate physical blindness with spiritual blindness, and how Bartimaeus reached out and saw the Truth in his soul as well as his eyes.

Some people note that the term by which Bartimaeus addressed Jesus – “Son of David” – was a significant awareness of Biblical prophecy, and attracted Jesus’s notice.

Some people contrast the helplessness of a blind beggar outside the gate, his status in Jewish society, and the majesty of a King passing by.

Some people bless the modesty of a beggar, who might have pleaded for anything, like raiment of money or food or shelter, but was content to beg for open eyes.

Some people wonder if there is significance that this is the second account of blind eyes being healed by Jesus; or His last miracle recorded; or that Jesus, knowing the need of Bartimaeus, yet asked him to speak it; or how it was that a blind man would know the powers of this miracle-worker who passed by in the midst of a crowd; or…

… or many other lessons. I do not disagree with any meaning one can glean. Like a faceted gem, God’s truths have many messages in them; many applications.

But the meaning that has always seemed specially important to me is one that is seldom discussed. And I think it has special application today, in our lives, our churches, in our culture.

As I picture the scene described in Luke (also in Mark’s gospel) beyond the healing power of Jesus that still can be pleaded, and all the lessons others see, is this detail:

This was a crowd scene before a city gate. Jesus, Disciples, followers, the normal public about their business. Bartimaeus, however, inquired, and knew that Jesus was near. He called out – he acted. He yelled, by necessity, loudly. The Disciples and others tried to shut him up! They “warned” him to be quiet.

I can imagine them saying – even amid the hubbub – “Silence!” Maybe, “Don’t bother the rabbi!” Maybe, “You, down there — be dignified!” Maybe, “Jesus has an agenda. Mind your own business!” (Remember, the Disciples recently had argued about who between them would be “first” and “last” in the coming kingdom.)

Today, would they say, “We’re holding church here! Don’t raise your voice!” Or, “You should have checked with us for permission to call on Jesus!” Or, God forbid, would some say, “Be quiet! Jesus has more important things to do!”

The point is – or the points include – that the persistence of Bartimaeus was honored by Jesus. The “dignity” of the moment, an artifice anyway, was obviously meaningless to the Lord. And the “rules” of the followers – hangers-on, bureaucrats, managerial types – were nothing in the eyes of the Savior. Nor in the “eyes” of the blind man.

Applications today? “All of the above.”

But chief among them – yes, my favorites – are these:

In your personal life, never let tradition nor insecurity nor ignorance prevent you from crying out to the Lord when you need Him.

In your family and church-community life, never let rules and customs keep you from crying out, singing out, laughing, challenging, asking, pleading, confessing, and seeking God’s face. Let no one hush you up! That’s Jesus – and He’s listening for you!

And in your country, what’s left of it – remember Blind Man Bartimaeus as your role model. Speak up. Speak out. Don’t let “officials” tell you to keep quiet. Don’t be quiet!!!

If Bartimaeus had kept quiet, obeyed arbitrary rules, avoided speaking out and speaking up for himself, and missed the opportunity of making contact with holiness in his presence… he would have stayed as one more forgotten blind beggar in the dust. Dignified. Quiet. Polite. And lost.

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This is an old and rough video from a few decades ago, but a great example of worship services when Jesus passes by.

Click: Hymn Medley

(For readers with hand-held devices, copy and paste the following link in your browser: )

https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SIIrwtST8QM

5-17-21

A disease of the 21^st century – frankly, a second pandemic – is what categorizes itself as Fact-Checking.

The name is really a pseudonym. False identity. Camouflage.

Going back to the Age of Legends, it does not represent Diogenes, who with his lantern forsook all earthly possessions and searched the land for an honest man. My friend Bridgette Ehly reminds me that Diogenes is regarded as an actual figure in history, not mythology; and more’s the pity, someone pursuing such a futile goal.

Rather, the practice of “Fact Checking” today resembles the Trojan Horse, something impressive in appearance, but hiding saboteurs and swarming with enemies. It started a few years ago when Important newspapers had “ombudsmen” who kept their staffs honest. You know, The New York Times had a little box on page 2 noting “corrections.” Like “In yesterday’s Travel Section, page C17, the height of Mont Blanc was stated as 15,407 feet. In fact that is its prominence; its height above sea level is 15,777 feet. We regret the error.”

(Whatever a “prominence” is.)

Readers even got the impression that the wayward reporter likely lost vacation privileges at Camp Nawakwa on Lake Sebago up in New York State that summer.

Today, of course, that paper, and the Washington Post, and the three network news departments, and TIME and Newsweek if they still exist, and cable news channels, offer regrets and apologies to readers if they happen to say something positive about President Trump or Christians.

I am exaggerating. But I think they do hand out demerits for mentioning same-sex couples and heterosexuals without describing them as haters.

I think we all have been victims of “Fact Checkers” who lurk on the internet, and watch us all closer than than our parents did when we got our first cell phones. I have a theory about why those spying tricks are called “Al-Gore-Rhythms,” because we know what Big Brother, Big Tech, and Big Pain do. In fact they know what we do, before we do things. Get on the web, mention a country in an e-mail, or do a Google search on the name of a tropical bird you once saw, and within five hours, you will be bombarded with pop-up ads for flights to that country, and recipes for roasting that bird.

It was once confusin’, then amusin.’ Then annoying. Then paranoia-inducing. Rightfully so.

And it was an easy step, especially in the Trump re-election and the plandemic, to be de-platformed, warned, censored, or – at Zuckberg’s kindest – have our posts and messages and blogs slapped with banners pasted over our words with the announcement that “independent” “fact-checkers” have “already” “reviewed” the content and “determined” that… fill in the blanks. We are judged guilty of discussing unproven facts; or spreading rumors; or – worst of all – “violating community standards.”

What “standards”? What “community”? Not a community we want to live in. Yet… here we are. From the guard towers, someone yells through a bullhorn: “You! In that blog post!!! Shut up, and get in line!” Achtung.

Headlines tell us enough. “Christian hate” and “Trump’s Lies” are never conditioned with words like “alleged” or “supposed” – just offered as “facts.” A journalistic crime.

All this is bad enough – very bad – as we surreptitiously are being fitted with ankle chains and GPS-location devices under our skin or by vaccines. But far worse is the censorship and cyber-persecution of Christians.

Almost overnight, sermons about Biblical views on marriage and sex have had pastors arrested and churches closed. A religious perspective on topics in the news is deemed as “hate speech.” Traditional hymns are condemned.

And all this is bad enough when the “community” and press and government and schools and the courts are the storm troopers. But organized religion, heads of denominations, and “mainstream” faith leaders are often the worst offenders. Goons in backward-collars and robes.

So “religion” itself imposes “facts” on those of us they hate. (Aha! Now we get to the real “hate speech”!) The New Puritans are on witch-hunts, and their exclusive possession of Facts are their deadly weapons.

Well, this all is a wake-up call to Christians and conservatives and patriots. Yes, we think we recognize the Truth, but we seek to persuade people, not cancel them. And in the largest sense – life is not about facts. The “keepers” and enforcers of Facts ignore the history of Facts, even “scientific facts,” which often have changed and been proven untrue and abandoned through the centuries.

More valuable is Truth.

We can believe facts, even knowing they sometimes will change. We should trust Truth; and when it seems unclear, we are elevated by seeking truth.

Compulsive fact-checkers, and weaponized fact-trusters, are the totalitarian-minded who have always plagued humanity. On the other hand, truth-seekers, and the hope-filled, have cared for humankind, and want to join the upward paths.

Memo to you brainiacs who invent facts to control the lives of the rest of us: God does not require that we know and accept all your facts. He does require more important things: that we trust and obey. They are the fastest pathways to Truth.

Check that fact, Jack. (And, if this helps, Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”)

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Click: Looking For a City

4-19-21

Life goes on.

Easter is over; Memorial Day is next; Summer begins; will the lockdowns end? Oh, those politicians. Oh, those riots, Oh, those headlines. Best if I ignore TV news for awhile. Before we know it, school will start up again… or will it? I wonder if we’ll get more free checks by then?

It doesn’t always take “bread and circuses” to keep us distracted. Modern life, even without pandemic frenzy and political upheavals, presents a full agenda.

Life goes on; the sun rises, we tend to business, the sun sets, and we sleep till tomorrow. Things please us, and things alarm us… but there’s always tomorrow to worry, and, maybe, fix things. It has always been that way, right?

Just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also [in the last days]: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.

Jesus looked ahead to our times, and (in Matthew and, here, in Luke 17) spoke about complacency, sin, self-delusion, and people taking false comfort in the meme “life goes on.” Who did He think He was, the Son of God or someone, thinking He could prophesy? What gave Him the authority to warn people?

How much worse it will be for those who never really know the Truth – never heard it, or honestly never had it presented to them. But for Christians who came through Easter, who have known the Truth, who have “accepted” Jesus, how many go through the year in effect saying, “Jesus died… Whatever.” Or “He rose from the dead… Whatever.” Or “I’ll go to Heaven, no worries” … and then eat, drink, marry, give in marriage. Whatever.

The suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus gave humankind, in effect, a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. That is so casual a view as to be near blasphemous, unless we realize how basically profound it is. As the saying goes, Salvation is free, but a great price was paid.

What Jesus said about the days of Noah, and our days, is that people putter about, doing this and that, when great things portend, if we would only see them. But we don’t.

Did Jesus die for your sins? Act like you know it, and thank Him!

Did Jesus rise from the dead? Act like it transforms your life too!

Did Jesus send the Holy Spirit? Act with guidance, wisdom, and power!

The Atonement was Jesus trading the punishment for your sins for the chance to live a life of love and service. The greatest deal in history, excuse my casual language again. It does not deserve a “Whatever” from those who have been redeemed.

If you do not act like your life has been transformed by Christ’s grace then, in fact… you have not been transformed.

One of the few things Jesus asked in a response was that we share the news of what He did. Can it be possible, then, to share without showing great enthusiasm? If you had a cure for cancer, and a friend or stranger had cancer, would you not share that? Even if it were “uncomfortable”? Even if they ridiculed you for trying to save their lives?

“Whatever”… and shrugging your shoulders cannot be your response.

We can have a thousand responses. But I suggest three:

1. Come (again?) to know the Truth – Jesus embodied the truth: “I am the way, the Truth, and the life.”

2. Repent of your “Whatevers.” In the St Matthew Passion is the prayer “Erbarme Dich” – Have pity, my God, for the sake of my tears!
Look here, how bitterly my heart and eyes weep before you.
Have pity, my God.

3. Share! “Go tell it!” Love others. Stay above the mundane. Rebuke the Whatevers. “Go into all the world…”

Life goes on. Act like it!

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Click: Have Pity on My Failings
J. S. Bach – “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott”

3-15-21

I have a friend who once – in fact frequently – talked about his wife. “Unburdened himself,” to use an old and somewhat curious phrase. Complaining? Actually, no. We all need someone we trust on whose shoulder we can cry, or at least provide a pair of ears now and then.

Counselors charge a lot of money; sometimes a good friend is all we need.

Anyway, his story was about a marriage where his wife chain-smoked; and then gave it up. Then she took up drinking to embarrassing excess and disappearances and blackouts. And then she quit, cold turkey. I am forgetting the order of these problems, but in between there were various drugs; and then no drugs. She also cheated on my friend on and off – more often “on,” that is, serial affairs. He knew that his three children were not his. If you wonder about bulimia and anorexia, you’re right: those too.

The first time I heard this long litany of his endless heartache and her virtually suicidal pastimes, I asked why he didn’t leave her; get a divorce.

“Because I love her,” he said.

I could end this essay there, because there is a spiritual message, or at least a picture, or a parable, or example, somewhere in there. Maybe like the story about the boy digging through a pile of manure in the belief that “there must be a pony in there somewhere!”

Maybe. Surely there are elements of unconditional love and forgiveness in his story. My friend was not a Christian, yet he reflected some of the ways our Heavenly Father treats us.

… or (we hope and pray) that He treats us.

We all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. We know that because the Bible tells us so. But do we believe it because we genuinely know it? How often do we change the tense and to reflect that “we all sin and fall short of the Glory of God”? — that is, we still sin. But if we have accepted Christ, the “falling short” of God’s Glory cannot be measured any more.

After all, “while we were yet sinners,” Christ took away the punishment that our sins deserve.

“Because I love them,” Jesus would say.

I want to dwell a moment on how much we are all like my friend’s wife. Yes, all of us, in all ways. She was addicted – to this, and that, and the other. Serious, deadly, ugly, dangerous, smelly, stupid, harmful. In truth, it was not nicotine or alcohol or sex or cocaine. She was addicted to being addicted.

And so are we all. We know some of our habits are bad, yet we remain in them. We apologize to enablers… yet hope they will continue to enable. Are serial cheaters looking for the perfect match, or are they in love with being in love, as if they really know what that means?

Our addictions – our continuous problems and failings; our weaknesses; our broken promises to others and to God – can be summed up in one word: sin.

We all have heard stories of people breaking from the grip of specific addictions. Haven’t we? I pray you have heard such testimonies from people. The percentage of deliverance from various addictions is astronomically higher in faith-based programs than from secular therapies. No surprise: if addictions are a reflection of a spiritual problem, they can only really be healed by spiritual means.

I want to leave you with one more thought, as, possibly, your mind is racing through the challenges you have, or a friend or family members has, or an experience you survived. We know Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” words that we realize are almost a confession of our weakness.

So we do pray for things like losing some desires we have; or that we be  gifted with a stronger will; and reminded to live responsibly. In other words, how often do we think the best place, with God’s help, is to be in a spiritual place, a morally responsible position, where we can say, “OK, God! Thank you! I’ll take it from here!”

That is not spiritual maturity. It is spiritual self-delusion.

Our Heavenly Father does not want us to be independent. Everything in God’s Word, all the lessons of saints and martyrs, the many works of Christ, point to the truth that He desires that we be dependent.

Spiritual maturity is when we confess our inability to save ourselves. Christianity can be defined as achieving victory through surrender. No other construct works that way. We cannot dance and jump for joy and run to embrace the Lord except while on our knees. Neat trick, but it’s God’s plan. He is not as much impressed by our deeds as by our obedience.

Jesus performed miracles, and God still performs miracles. We know that the earliest recorded miracle of Jesus was turning water into wine at the wedding feast. The songwriter T. Graham Brown wrote a song during the “lowest of lows” of his alcoholism. It would be a miracle, drunks know, to be freed from the desire to take that one more drink – miracle enough. But he cried out uniquely to save his life: Could God just turn the wine back to water?

A miracle is a miracle! And that perspective actually admits the dependence – at the end of a spiritual rope (have you ever been there?) – instead of seeking a miracle, maybe as a crutch.

Despite our strengths or weaknesses, deliverance is the real miracle, however God takes us there. But let us pray that we can be enabled by the Holy Spirit to invite one more addiction – to be addicted to God’s Word and God’s Will.

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Music Vid: “Turn the Wine Back Into Water”

Every few weeks, some guy hacks the music-video link. WordPress is not helping us. Either hit “refresh” a couple times, or cut and paste this URL — the song is worth watching! (Also for some readers with hand-held devices) Copy and paste link: ) https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=nKTdbqcjogg

Click: Turn the Wine Back Into Water

2-15-21

Of the many things that change before our eyes these days – or while our eyes are turned away –words are being picked from our pockets the fastest. Words and phrases of our language are not being eliminated as much as re-defined.

I risk whiplash, trying to be careful about new meanings, or giving offense when none was meant. Political correctness, mostly. “Gay,” of course, is one kidnapped word. A hundred years ago “holocaust” was not branded by a single event. “Oriental,” “black” and it antecedents, “blind,” “crippled,” “lady,” and “fat” can invite rebukes from half the he, she, and its on the landscape.

Aside from mirroring the culture of self-righteousness and without delving into the branch of linguistics called semantics, we see what’s happening. The hijacking of meanings and the psychological superiority sought by using exclusive, “approved” definitions are the new Rules for Radicals.

For instance, triangulated within mantras, goals, and ironclad standards is the word “Unity.” We hear it these days almost as much as “welcoming,” “inclusive,” and “accepting” (for another discussion – or “conversation,” grrr). Such new meanings demand fealty, at the cost of ostracism from the society of “caring” “folks.”

“Unity” is a typical member of the Newspeak dictionary that sounds warm and fuzzy, but is either imprecise or harmful in its effects. Why? How?

You will hear it in the news, or mumbled by a masked politician, which would be several times an hour. In practice it means “you must agree with me.” Delivered thus, it does not mean “understanding”; it means more than “agreeing”; it translates to “joining,” but not voluntarily. The PC Police virtually will judge you, and drag you to the approved belief-system court.

“Unity,” the mantra of the current crop of politicians, really mean “uniformity.”
“Unity” suggests, but does not mean, compromise. Today’s politicians employ coercion, shame, and intimidation to populate their tribe, to make sure people march to their drums and drumbeats. In… unity.

“Uniformity” suggests, and DOES mean, subscribing to prescribed beliefs and attitudes. It means sharing the prejudices of the Group. “Prejudice”? Yes, today’s cultural elites are as prejudiced as any dominant class in our history.

A growing number of Christians and conservatives, and others, can attest to the fact that – like walls closing in – we are being discriminated against… censored… marginalized… ridiculed… ostracized… “un-friended”… “jailed”… fired… made unwelcome… losing jobs… dropped from applicants’ pools and promotion lists… “Canceled”… in the name of being “woke,” at the altar of “Unity.”

We are in danger as a culture, and as independent people within our spiritual and philosophical heritage, to suffer yet worse at the hands of the new totalitarians. It has happened before, uncountable times in world history, and multiple times, in the West, in the last century. This is all a taste of the Tribulation.

“Unity” is a false god. You can comb the Bible and find many pleas for unity – but never the type of unity that means uniformity, as I have noted. Christians can be together, even closely knit, without having to be the same.

We all have spiritual gifts, but the Bible actually makes a long list of our many, many differences.

God wants us to be “imitators of Christ,” not clones of each other… or some secular leader.

“The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ the Lord,” but martyrs allowed different peoples to find the one Savior in ways that blessed them according to their needs.

In the same way Thomas Jefferson remarked that the Tree of Liberty was best watered by the blood of patriots every generation. That necessity would be obviated if uniform views (masquerading as “Unity”) were imposed on every generation.

Do you agree with me about the subtle difference between unity and uniformity… and how dangerous it is to be seduced by the “new” meaning of Unity? You must agree!!! Um… no. Even in true unity, we should have differences among ourselves, arriving by different paths.

St Paul wrote to the young church at Philippi that he prayed they would be “one in spirit, and of one mind”… having the same love. But he urged them to be “like-minded” – NOT same-minded.

Such distinctions are why we must be wary of prattling about “Unity.”

Further, calls to “compromise” – in the name of Unity, of course – inherently can be just as poisonous. In today’s world, in a diverse society, in an ideologically “blended” culture, in (sadly) a secular environment… It is difficult to avoid compromise.

But we must do what we can, where we are, with what we have. Reason enough to stay in prayer, to read Scripture, to seek guidance – to avoid compromise. Compromising with evil is… allying oneself with evil. Compromising with error… hastens disaster. Compromising with enemies of our faith and our nation… is surrender, even bit by bit by bit. God forbid!

Seek true Unity, not as the world packages it.

Seek God’s checklist, not the world’s. “Did you feed Me? Did you clothe Me? Did you visit Me in prison?” Uniformity is letting the government do these things… or obeying the government’s Compassion Commands.

But joining others where you are, how you can, with what you have… for the same goals, is true unity.

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Click: Getting Used To the Family of God

12-14-20

“It’s your fault!” “No! It’s your fault!” “You started it!” “No, you did!”

We hear exchanges like these yelled back and forth in the schoolyard, or playgrounds.

Or in diplomatic debates. Or on bloody battlefields.

Humankind seems not to have “advanced” much through the centuries; and neither between childhood and adulthood. We congratulate each other, and 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. We brag that we – “civilizations” – have finally ended the scourge of slavery; yet there is greater slavery today than ever in human history. The numbers now are not the faces that flash in our minds, but 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 better 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 occured, 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!

Is society’s spoken wish of the season an empty phrase, or is there a spark of hope when we manage to pause, or think, or sing, or worship around the meaning of that word, that concept – God With Us.

Once it was manifested, only briefly, in a unique setting; and it is largely forgotten by history. Do you know about the Christmas Truce, a virtual miracle during the first Christmas of the “Great War,” World War I, surely the most useless of history’s many useless wars?

It was only a few months after war was declared in Europe, by almost every great and tiny nation. But by Christmas almost a million soldiers were already slaughtered. 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, a miracle did occur.

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 “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 from home… they shared pictures of wives and children… more hymn singing… fireworks, intended to illuminate battlefields to focus cannons, were now shot skyward in celebration… 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 done 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 world be today – how much different even the next day, back then – if the Truce had held? And please 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 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 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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Please do not cheat yourself of watching a moving and superb movie clip dramatizing that Christmas Truce.

Click: Joyeaux Noel

12-7-20

I watched a documentary on TV this morning. It was about Black Holes, and Worm Holes, and the Age of the Universe, and the Big Bang. I chuckled often, and I learned a lot. It was not, however, a comedy show; and despite what I learned I would probably fail the exam prepared by the three experts.

For an hour the experts on Zoom guessed as often as they asserted, and confessed to the ifs and what ifs. There were many shrugged shoulders, and a lot of confused giggles. So I giggled too. They spoke of “changed hypotheses,” even some of Einstein’s. Of course, black holes and the Big bang theory were not even in textbooks a century ago… and might not be, a century from now. These things, I learned.

What interested me, but did not surprise me, was that during an entire hour without commercials not one of the three scientists / experts / metaphysicians (whose domains are reputedly first things and origins) once mentioned God. Or Creation, Or the Bible. Not even as “one of those crazy beliefs,” or even “what people used to think.”

Such lovers of self – that is, reliant on their own wisdom – are the ultimate Deniers in this age when “denial” of any form is a virtual criminal offense. To ignore even a passing nod to the belief system of swaths of humanity over millennia is not an upward step toward enlightenment, but a descent toward baser ignorance. (By the way, this Big Bang idea sounds suspiciously like the first chapter of Genesis, sanitized of the Creator’s Name, doesn’t it?)

The natural questions were not asked, and I think never answered: What was there the moment before the Big Bang? If there is an End or an Outer Limit to the Universe… what is one foot beyond it? If there is creation, there ought to be a creator; so who or what made the Big Bang go bang?

If I don’t have metaphysical answers to these questions, they would claim that citing “God” is crutch of convenience.

OK. I plead guilty. Supporting my belief – my faith in such things – is the Word of God. I believe in Jesus as God Incarnate, and He stated His firm belief in Genesis and all such biblical accounts. Good enough for me; better than good, in fact.

And so forth. In such discussions as on TV, God is not a last resort of the ignorant. He is the source of knowledge and wisdom about First Things.

If I knew the answer to such matters as discussed – and way before my head starts to hurt – I would be God. He is; He knows; and He disposes.

In the meantime, if pinheads who chatter about Black Holes and Worm Holes and Big Bangs can accuse us People of the Book of being superstitious and ignorant seekers of fairy tales… I invite them, every time they say, “my best guess is…” or “current theories suggest…” or “scientists now believe…” to put on dunce caps and sit in the corner until the next round of guessing games.

As I said, I am extremely and honestly interested in scientific discussions and speculation, and even archaeological discoveries. It is, for instance, astonishing to see how many figures and cities and events in biblical history so recently dismissed as “legends” have been confirmed by artifacts and even entire buried cities!

Another “first thing” should be an attitude of humility when it comes to… well, when it comes to the things of God. We might get though life a little better if we trust Him in all ways and in all things, from everyday setbacks to election defeats, to choose two matters at random.

Even if doing so can make our heads hurt a little, we must remember that God does not require of us that we understand everything, but that we trust Him and obey everything.

And as Matthew Harrison Brady said, “I might not know about the ages of rocks, but I do know the Rock of Ages!”

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11-16-20

Today’s message is a guest essay by Bridgette Ehly, a journalist and author of the science-fiction thriller, Smiling Ghosts.

How has the Body of Christ – the church, representing God on this side of Heaven – in our day come to lose the moral high ground in so many realms? To relativists,
secularists, and liberals who talk about kindness, but routinely have supported the violent murder of babies in the womb, erosion of God-given rights, and destructive social policies? It was, after all, righteous Christians who normalized the concept of universal human dignity, the idea that all lives, all people, are precious.

How did we drop the ball? I think it has to do with action vs complacency, and the
spread of what we may call Communist Christianity. Communist in the context of
enforced uniformity, a godless suppression of individual initiative, a denial of the need to obey and please God.

I once read that in His three-year ministry, Jesus Christ traveled over 3000 miles. He was constantly on the move on foot or by sea, and went from town to town revealing God’s loving nature. He healed the sick and showed humankind how to love our neighbors as God commands us.

Jesus was a man of action. And the Holy Spirit literally flows through the Father and the Son and through us as Christ-followers. God is a God of action – as we see from the opening of a rose, the change of the seasons, cycles of birth and death, and the stories of a hundred billion lives.

When Jesus talks about faith, it always is associated with action.

Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me. (Mark 4:35)

Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not put into practice what I teach you? (Luke 6:46)

Are we failing to answer Christ’s call to action? We are the Body of Christ in this world… but sitting idle as our culture and traditions die; are we a body whose legs no longer work? Instead of walking upright, do we now drag our useless limbs behind us? What is the verdict to those charges?

Lack of action on the part of the Church is rooted in what I call Communist Christianity, the descriptive notion that all believers are literally the same.

But if this were true, why does God refer to some people as righteous? If we are all equal, why even have the word righteous? There would be only “saved” and “condemned.” Salvation is instantaneous, but sanctification is a process. Really, what would be the point of living if we do not strive to improve ourselves and become more perfect children of God? St. Paul tells us to “walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists of all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.”

By faith alone through grace we are saved, but what is faith? Is it a thing, a magical trinket in a box that guarantees a Christian entrance to heaven regardless of whether he loves his fellow man or strives to do what Jesus tells us to do? Or do works follow from faith – is faith a manifestation of God in the physical world, a series of actions that turn a belief into a living force for good; that is, God’s will be done on Earth?

Jesus ties faith and action so closely and consistently that we must act, cherishing them as one impulse.

In the Seventh chapter of Luke we read, Then turning towards the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has bathed My feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she has anointed My feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

The woman’s actions and her faith are interchangeable. Jesus says her sins are forgiven because she showed great love, and then says that her faith saved her. We are forgiven in proportion to our love, and love is expressed in a million different ways, the hands and feet of God alive on this earth!

I believe evil people have taught us to think of faith as a “thing” for two reasons. One is to cause fights about theology among Christians and thereby weaken the Church by fracturing our unity. The other motive is to destroy the powerful force of “love in action.” Communist Christianity tells us that a simple prayer, a 10-second pledge to the Will of God, is all that is required from us in this life.

Communist Christianity corrodes the Church just as Communism destroys economies
and societies by crushing a people’s desire to achieve excellence. People who are saved and believe they need to do nothing more, or can do nothing more, to improve their standing before God lack the motivation to please the Father. Jesus told us to visit the sick and spread His Word, but Communist Christianity says it isn’t mandatory, so why do it? (Besides, the government “releases” us from that moral impulse.)

The moment in time that we commit our lives to Christ is the beginning, not the
completion, of our spiritual journey. Certainly, many Christians do answer Jesus’ call to visit the sick and those in prison, but many, many people drop a 20 into the collection plate and call it a week. God forbid!

Faith is God’s love in action. Now more than ever, we need to live our faith by speaking up for Christian beliefs at city council meetings; by volunteering with kids so that they have a Christian influence in their lives; by showing the poor that the helping hand in their neighborhoods is a Christian hand.

We all need to get involved, even a couple of hours a week, not to earn salvation but to exercise faith! We can’t improve the world together, or preserve what is precious about our society, if we don’t act.

Jesus’ life was a series of actions that led to the greatest act of love, His death on the cross. Our Savior said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Jesus’ giving His life freely remains the ultimate expression of faith in God, a standard for us and His revealed plan for our salvation.

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(For readers with hand-held devices, click or copy & paste:
https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=itgTjU5toz0

Click: Hands and Feet

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Click here for information about Bridgette’s new novel

Election Day, 2020

With lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through holy advisers.
– Proverbs 11:4

Use below link on PC only

O God, Our Help In Ages Past

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https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=N-hN740J6qA

Artwork: Winsor McCay, 1914. Restoration copyright Rick Marschall

10-26-20

“May you live in interesting times” supposedly is an ancient Chinese curse. Actually, it seems that it is neither ancient nor Chinese, but has been used to euphemistically describe uncertainty and instability; imminent danger.

For the simple dictionary definition of “interesting,” I say Bring it on, most of the time. We should like change, challenges, and opportunities. But this is all theoretical anyway. Days turns to nights, people marry and are given in marriage, and as per Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun.

However, anyone with pulse knows that within those rubrics, there are pendulum-swings that bring more trouble or less confusion; more worry, various causes of anxiety.

In those regards, these time are more than interesting; these very times.

In the next couple of weeks, we will have a consequential presidential election, perhaps the most important in generations. Many people feel that violence and anarchy will reassert themselves if one candidate prevails. We face, collaterally, control of the Congress. A contentious nomination process for a new Justice just has concluded. We still smell the smoke, literally and metaphorically, from widespread rioting and looting. The world still is in the throes of a plague, with peoples’ health and peoples’ businesses suffering.

As the calendar turns, for someone like me, sharing thoughts and comments, these very days also present an opportunity to recognize Reformation Day. This I will do… not because I see it as a way to visit a calm spiritual subject; but because I think the Revolution wrought by Dr Martin Luther was one of the most “interesting days,” so to speak, in the sweep of Western Civilization.

I think the act of nailing 95 complaints to the church door in Wittenberg 500 years ago changed the course of Western Civilization, not only Christianity. I think the forces that nurtured his revolution – political liberty, literacy, individualism, economic freedom – affected the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and democracy. I think that people today would more firmly reject anarchy, socialism, and relativism if they only would study Luther’s works and acts.

All this despite the fact that Luther himself did not intend to leave the Roman Catholic Church nor launch new denominations. He sought reform – hence Reformation. He even rejected the label of modernism; if anything, he considered himself the last of the Medievalists. He even believed that Reason was the Enemy of Faith (so do I).

The brilliant iconoclast was excommunicated because he intended to translate the Bible into the people’s language (instead of Latin, reserved for priests only). He went on trial because he disturbed public order when he asserted that priests who sold papers assuring people that relatives would be rescued from hell – and such heresies – were in fact blasphemies. He was threatened with death (as other reformers were being martyred at the time) for believing Ephesians Chapter 2, that we are saved to eternal life by grace through faith: not by works that we do.

So in one of the most important moments in human history, the prisoner Dr Luther was hauled before a council (a “Diet”) of regional princes and the power of the Holy Roman Empire, indeed the Vatican itself, all playing out in the small city of Worms, Germany. In the small, rude setting, the world virtually watched – history was watching.

Luther, a brilliant theologian and prolific writer, was required, under penalty of sure death, which he expected, to recant (deny, disown) all his works.

Of course life would have gone on, if he cowardly had surrendered. Other reformers like Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were put to death, and had much changed? Was Luther tempted to give in? Words, after all, are merely words. History is littered, with both heroes and martyrs. And time rolls on.

But here was the fulcrum of history. Words do mean something. We mean something – even we are also in out-of-way places, confronted by massive forces that despise us.

One person, with God, constitute a majority, as Frederick Douglass said… a mighty army. What do we do we stand for? Why are we here? What is the point of a troubled conscience, if we are not spurred to action? Luther did not know, and actually did not care, that his protest of conscience would change the world. He did not look into the future; his testimony was for his own self, his own challenges… his duties as a Christian. As a person of God, whose ideas and ideals mattered.

What might this have to do with us, these days, this year?

A lot. I believe we are at a turning point, not only in politics with an election; not merely in society as forces of anarchy and secularism attack us; not only a crisis of this month or this year but – as with the Reformation – consequences for generations to come.

That’s pretty heavy. But… it’s not the first time, friends. As Ecclesiastes said, “Time and chance happen to all.”

So, with some history as a guide be encouraged.

* Be brave about what you believe. Be armed with knowledge first, then be bold in truth.

* Don’t be intimidated by misinformed family members, kids, teachers, neighbors. Do not compromise with error.

* Discern the truth and avoid media that lie to you. Live without certain TV, movies, news media, papers and magazines. Seek those that speak truth; and redeem the culture.

* In these matters, and voting, consider whether the “lesser of two evils” is something you act upon if you engage or participate. Are you still enabling evil?

* Pray; have fellowship; pray; speak out; pray; let your conscience be not only your guide, but your best friend and constant companion.

* And pray.

And be inspired by words from Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:
Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still;
His kingdom is forever!

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Click: Here I Stand.

10-19-20

Why do any of us do what we do? My question is not about determinism, or motivational seminars, or feeling like a victim of life’s circumstances, but I wonder at least about myself these days, about my responses to the virus, the riots, the election… and I wonder about you.

We have to react to things because in truth there is nowhere to turn these days. Our friends and families and neighbors are all affected by one or more of these things. Our bodies can be hermits, but our minds cannot… our eyes and ears cannot, and the news over TV or phone calls bring us face-to-face with stuff.

And of course many of us want to be engaged. To resist or learn; to “be there” for others; to solve and save, or try to. We are citizens of our neighborhoods, citizens of Heaven, and we feel responsibilities.

– to do… what? Each of us is but one opinion. One voice. One vote.

We can break a sweat; we can even sweat blood, and at the end of every day, we often feel… tired. And lonely. Do we make a difference? Does any of this make a difference? Who cares?

We need to remember that Jesus cares, at least. If you care, yourself, you are fulfilling your duty as you have seen it. Answering a call. We need to have the perspective that the mightiest of cathedrals was after all built with numerous stones; and there was a first small stone.

Together, the small stones became a cathedral.

Thinking about these things, very personally, I write books and articles and blogs, seldom knowing who will read them; and knowing less whether anyone will care or be affected. With the Monday Music Ministry blog I never know who will share or re-print them, but I feel crazy-blessed when I receive a message from some stranger somewhere in the world telling me that she needed that message on that day; or a man asks how I could have known about his circumstance that I addressed. I never know… not on my own, anyway.

In past political campaigns I physically was active. As a kid I loved ringing doorbells and distributing campaign literature. In college, in Washington DC, I was active in national campaigns. For years I was a political cartoonist and columnist. Four years ago I wrote op-eds for several magazines and for the Detroit News. Lately I have been writing articles, more than one a week, for major print and web publications. I have the feeling, however, that I am doing less than before.

Perhaps I suspect I have less impact; or that today’s challenges are so serious that it is tough for any of us to make an impact. But you know what? To answer my first question up top, we do what we do because we have to.

To borrow from Mother Teresa, Our job is not to be successful, but to be obedient. To steal an aphorism ascribed to Theodore Roosevelt (a first time for everything), We must do what we can, where we are, with what we have.

Referring back, also, to thinking about stones: Jesus is quoted in Luke 19:40 – If people are silent, the very stones will cry out in praise!

We are the stones… and we are getting to a sad point where people around us are silent. Maybe, God forbid, we tend toward silence and self-pity and doubt.

Let us do what we can – about life’s challenges, large or small. They all are important. About the lockdowns, about riots, about healthcare, about prejudice, about the economy, about crime, about our flag, about our future, about the elections, about our souls.

In the face of the pandemic, a group calling itself the New York City Virtual Choir and Orchestra, 140 of them, pulled up their metaphorical pants, employed some technology, and jointly sang a hymn and made a video. Yes! – in New York City!!! (Give me a break. I was born in NYC – I know a miracle when I see one!)

Click on it. Its most powerful aspect is not the determination required to put it together, nor its impressive quality. It is the hymn they chose. The favorite old hymn by Robert Lowry, How Can I Keep from Singing, is a message for today.

… doing what we can, where we are, and with what we have.

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Click: How Can I Keep From Singing?

10-12-20
There is a bit in an old Laurel and Hardy comedy where the boys are caught in a situation, Ollie impersonating a rich guy and Stan his servant. “Call me a cab,” Ollie commands, thinking of a way they can escape.

“What?” asks the typically bewildered Stan.

“Call. Me. A. Cab,” Ollie patiently orders.

Stan says, “All right. You’re a cab!”

Fast-forward 90 years or so to this election season. In fact to many aspects of life today, and politics, and in the church. Labels have become virtually meaningless. They have not become obsolete, because everybody is quick to proudly adopt a label, or to smear someone with another label. But labels are now fungible, malleable, chameleon-like.

In the same way, statistics don’t lie; but statisticians do.

President Trump identified himself as a very stable genius, a manner of self-description people usually leave to others than themselves, and usually to posterity. Today, critics immediately challenged one, two, or all three of those words. Kamala Harris is described, by Democrat handlers, as a “moderate,” but she would have considered that an insult during the primaries. We recently were told that Antifa is not an organization but an idea… the distinction holds no difference to shop owners seeing their life-dreams torched street by street, city by city by thugs in identical costumes.
The irony is most bitter in religion of the 21st century. Joe Biden calls himself a “man of faith” (faith in what?) but bristles when priests and cardinals deny him the Eucharist because he denies Catholic Church teaching, for instance on abortion.

If the church, the Bible, Jesus’ teachings do not mean anything – if your opinion is superior to the Revealed Word – what is the point of adopting certain labels, claiming to be a Catholic? Some pastors deny the divinity Of Christ, and the Virgin Birth. Are their salaries the same as taking money under false pretenses?

We all evolve, change opinions, and learn. President Trump used to be accepting of abortion, as was I at one point; and a lot people I know. But science, experience, and conscience “spoke” to us. When politicians who also are aware of science, hear of experiences, and have consciences – when they switch “sides” or switch parties — they cannot fail to know where they fight life’s battles now: Who their new friends are. And what effects their defections will have. I refer to conservatives and Catholics who support the party of abortion-on-demand.

This is not in a vacuum; these new rules – or lack of rules – are a microcosm of life today. Heresy is as old as human nature; its first appearance was in the Garden.

“Relativism,” it is called: What’s OK for me is all that matters; There is no right and wrong; You are free to make up your own rules…

I wonder why many people today rebel against Christianity, democracy, capitalism, when the fruits of our civilization have advanced, refined, and are blessings to so many. To ignore our heritage, to decline to defend our values, and surrender to the enemies of our souls… seems like a crime in itself.

If America does not undergo a spiritual awakening, it does not deserve to continue as the Republic we inherited.

Returning here to the political context, and to shifting labels: Politicians and pollsters do not even know what they mean when they profile and predict about the “evangelical” community. Ah, the “faith-based.” Yes, “family values voters.” Some “evangelicals” have enormous differences between them.

Just as Jesus did not die for denominations or missions organizations or charities or movements or committees, but for individuals – you and me – so will the redemption of America not depend upon parties, movements, organizations.

America will be redeemed, revived, and resuscitated by citizens. Individuals. You and me.

If someone wants to know our label, we can use the one that was a perfect description when this noble project of a Constitutional Republic began – Citizen Patriots.
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Click: Who Am I

6-15-20

These messages here, especially in the past three weeks, have evoked letters from readers who asked virtually the same questions.

How did you know I needed those words at this time in my life?

The Holy Spirit must have guided your hand. You answered questions that were eating at me lately!

I found your site by accident… but it was no accident. Your message brought tears to my eyes.

When I receive messages like this, I am reminded that this is all worthwhile. Sometimes (I hope all the time) I write by inspiration. But who reads; who is impressed of a Godly message… that is out of my hands.

Christians sometimes obsess over what impact we have. We think we have to close every deal when we share the Good News. To borrow from recent messages, that is the Holy Spirit’s job. Our job is to bear witness to the Truth. The Holy Spirit will work on peoples’ hearts.

We plant seeds. The Holy Spirit cultivates and harvests.

When I speak at Christian writers conferences I make a point of pointing to random spots in the audience, or sometimes making eye contact here and there, and encouraging the discouraged as well as the hopeful – that is, reminding every writer and aspiring writer of the consequential opportunities they have; and the responsibilities.

“Something you wrote last week might seem like it died without being noticed. But perhaps one person read it and was touched and saved the clipping. And next year might share it with a distant relative. And that relative might pass the thought along to a stranger who needs those words at that very moment. And that person might change his or her life because of that thought, which can then spread to family members and neighbors. Hundreds, or thousands, of people can find truth and beauty and salvation, all because of something you wrote, and maybe thought a failure or a waste of time.”

Or I share variations of that very plausible scenario. Or that this pertains not only to things we write, but things we might say. Or a way we acted when challenged a certain manner. Or how we reacted, maybe when we thought nobody was looking.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (Hebrews 12:1).

Many times I have thought of the time a small family of missionaries visited our little church when my daughter Emily was a young schoolkid. Their testimonies and stories and slideshow impressed her so much that she broke out in spontaneous prayer, and told my wife later that day that she wanted to be a missionary – that God told her she would serve in the missions field. She did. She went to Bible college; joined missions trips to Russia and Mexico and Ireland. She went to Ireland a second time to do street ministry, more training at a Bible college, and did church work.

I often think what might have happened in her life, or not happened, if she had skipped church that day, or was not open to that message from that family.

But we should all think about the pictures from life’s other side. What if that family had not been open, themselves, to the Holy Spirit’s leading? What if they had grown weary, and not visited that church that morning? What if they had checked their passion at the door, and shared a mere travelogue instead of the powerful stories of lives changed in a faraway land of hurting and needy people?…

The Bible chapter preceding the one cited above – Hebrews 11 – sometimes is called “The Hall Of Fame of Faith.” It contains a long list of the Bible’s heroes who believed, and stepped out, and persisted, and fought the good fight for God’s truths, or “ran the race” well. By the way, they did not all achieve their “goals.” But they are honored in God’s eyes, and in history, for being faithful… as witnessed by uncountable angels, the heavenly host, the “great cloud of witnesses,” and by us today.

You see, God does not require success; only obedience. The Holy Spirit takes the baton to finish our race for us.

For that reason (and as the attached music video powerfully illustrates) we need to be aware of those who watch us. Not to be paranoid, but to be encouraged! Be aware of who watch you – God; the heavenly “great cloud of witnesses”; angels; your spouse or children; your neighbors.

And, sometimes, people you will never meet.

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Click: Thank You For Giving To the Lord

6-8-20

I write this as the third part of an informal tracking of a neglected but essential part of church history – the period after Jesus’s crucifixion and death; Resurrection and 40 days of preaching and witnessing; His bodily Ascension into Heaven, confirming His divine nature; then came the day of Pentecost.

It was the promise of Pentecost – what we have come to call the Pentecostal experience – and Jesus’s careful explanation that it was good that He leave earth, because He would then send to believers the Helper, the Healer, the Comforter: One who would empower and instruct. The Holy Spirit, third manifestation, the third Person, of the Trinity. We shared how the Spirit first fell on worshipers in the upper room, how they received a strange gift of speaking in unknown languages, but understood or interpreted.

This was the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” this spiritual joy and maturity. It was not a one-day event in history. It was merely the first time.

I write this in the midst, whew, of the worldwide pandemic’s fears, afflictions, and social disruption; and in the equally chaotic riots following a police suspect’s death. And… what’s next? People are right to be unsure if not unsafe. Or vice-versa.

As a natural skeptic, I wonder whether we will look back on the shutdowns, this virus, and feel blessed, feel relieved, or feel scammed. And these riots – will we look back and see an explosion of righteousness, or a period of anarchy and looting?

I will keep to my promised theme. I can write about things we see and don’t know are true; or I can write about things we cannot see, but know are true.

Things were different, once the Holy Spirit came. Peter, for instance, had been a bumbling and impulsive disciple who denied knowing Jesus three times when things were dicey – scarcely less an offense than Judas’s betrayal. Yet after the Spirit came upon him in the upper room, Peter became the mature leader of the new church that formed, and a powerful preacher.

What happened to Peter 2000 years ago can happen to believers today, and does happen to believers today. Can you have salvation without the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit? Yes. The gifts are… extra. But who would reject gifts, especially from Almighty God? Would children at birthday parties reject gifts?

Yet, some Christians do. If God chose to express Himself in three ways, we need to remember they were equal manifestations. Jesus was all God and all man; and so is the Spirit.

This same Spirit was explained by this same Peter after he was blessed with gifts of wisdom. He recalled, and shared, the passage from Joel chapter 28 (500-800 years earlier) – And it shall come to pass… says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams…. I will pour out My Spirit in those days…

Now it became clear. “Greater is He that is within you [the Holy Spirit], than he who is in the world [Satan].”

Some Christians claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were only for that first crowd. But that is to doubt Jesus and limit the Father, not to mention denying the subsequent evidence. I know because I have experienced the Baptism, and I have witnessed miracles; I have received the gifts. Many people have.

Other Christians believe that sudden outbreaks of tongues, ecstatic worship, and miracles broke out in Wichita around 1900 and in a black church on Asuza Street, Los Angeles, in 1906 is where it started. And then, as we shared, Pentecostalism spread to half a billion people around the world, second only to Roman Catholicism among Christians. Not for now? How would that explain miracles, church growth, healings, and blessings over the following 2000 years?

There are accounts (described by no less a person than Theodore Roosevelt in his classic book The Winning of West) of pioneer camp-meetings and revivals where worshipers would gather for several days, overtaken by ecstatic worship and strange tongues. In the 1700s, similar responses in Philadelphia to public sermons of Charles Whitefield; Benjamin Franklin recorded these. In the 1800s, a similar reaction among lunchtime worshipers on Wall Street, of all places. The blind hymn-writer Fanny Crosby prayed in “the language of angels” only she and her Lord knew. And so forth, all before Azusa Street.

After that, however, there were spontaneous and simultaneous “eruptions” of Holy Spirit preaching, singing, worship, healings, Words of prophecy, and such, all over the world. Two decades ago I twice attended a famous such revival in Pensacola, Florida – a visiting evangelist was used by God to spark ecstatic worship that was not extinguished – 24/7, for month after month; people attracted from all over the world.

If the Holy Spirit is the equal of Jesus… but you don’t have to receive this “Spirit baptism” to enter heaven… why do some of us consider it so important? But as I implied before, if God offers a spiritual gift and we decline it, we are spiritual fools.

What are the Gifts of the Spirit? They listed several times in the New Testament. Any can be prayed for; they can be-one-time gifts – for self-edification, or ministering to a situation – or occasionally are specialized lifetime ministering gifts, for instance to evangelists with healing ministries. They are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

As I said, I have experienced some (blessing others when needed, or to communicate with God when I felt helpless) and I have witnessed healings, emotional breakthroughs, astonishing revelations.

Listen: Christianity is nothing if not a system of faith and belief and miracles. Plain and simple. How have Christians become so blasé about a Man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and rose from the dead? “Oh, well, that was God, 2000 years ago.” How can there be so many people who go to church (if at all) out of dull habit; who never feel joyful when “Hallelujah” is read from the same old prayer book; who have “forms of godliness, but deny the power thereof”?

They quench the Holy Spirit, embarrassed to seek… reluctant to accept gifts… afraid to exercise the power it enables.

Instead – bringing it today – Christians complain about current events in the news. They feel helpless to do anything about them. They are lost, spiritually, in these uncertain times. In this time of threats and potential disasters facing us, they might even wish for some miracles.

You know what? It is as easy to pray for miracles, as to wish for them. And you have a loving Father who has stored up gifts you can access. Why, oh why, do people neglect the third Person of the Trinity?

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Since the Pentecostal movement is spread across the world, with no one denomination or pope – the Bible is sole authority – it is joyful to see the workings of the Holy Ghost everywhere… and especially, in these day of persecution, how the Spirit empowers traditional Christians, new believers, and persecuted Christians. Here, a group of Iranians who support underground Christians churches in Iran, singing of the sweet Spirit of God.

Click: Come, Holy Spirit

5-25-20

The Pandemic, or as most of us have come to know it in our daily lives, the Pandemonium, even in relative slow motion, has been absorbing seemingly every conversation, every newscast, every blog message.

It is difficult to believe that Easter was only a couple of months ago. Harder still, perhaps, to address the fact that the meaning of Easter seems light-years away. We can note, we do note, that except for a few exceptions the Church has been almost silent on the plague and the reactions to it.

Are church leaders “rendering unto Caesar” and dutifully following rules? Are faith leaders being cowardly? Are they at least stepping forward in their communities, in newspapers, on television, and offering… help? Prayers? Shelter? Alternatives to church meetings?

Mostly, no. Franklin Graham plans a tent hospital in Central Park, in fact in response to a request from Mt Sinai Hospital across the street. The city rejoices. Until he prays when it opens, and dozens of volunteers are in place. Then a successful move begins to force him out of the city. Those New York types hate Christ more than they hate Covid.

Believers have begun to rise up, and now churches are nervously – and occasionally boldly – joining the brave move to exercise First Amendment rights. It is about time! It was getting to be that I thought, if I ever find myself in a foxhole, I would want hairdressers and barbers at my sides.

Yes, we can worship in our living rooms; we can kneel at a stump in our back yards. Yes, we can, but we tend not to; and there is something about worshiping God in a place of God with the people of God.

Since Easter, among the Biblical things that might have been eclipsed is a holiday in the Church calendar that was already fading in importance anyway; a shame. Ascension Day for centuries was a major observance, more important than Christmas.

It falls 40 days after Easter, after the Resurrection. The day is always, therefore, on a Thursday, and most often celebrated on the next Sunday in churches. It marks the event, after Jesus’s final visits and ministering, being seem by multitudes, when He invited the Disciples and others to the Mount of Olives… announced another fulfillment of prophecy… and ascended into Heaven, into the clouds. Bodily. Witnessed by many.

And in that manner, He promised, He would return some day.

In many churches and much of public life today, Ascension Day is scarcely noted. In some countries it still is a national holiday, with schools, banks, and businesses closed… whether it is celebrated in peoples’ hearts or not. I do not know.

But Ascension Day is a holiday in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia(!), Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

Ascension Day should really be the most important celebration on the Christian calendar. My argument here is theological but certainly not dogmatic; I want to address how apologetics – explaining the Gospel – works.

The Annunciation? The world had to take Mary’s account of her pregnancy by her word. Christmas? A beautiful picture, fulfilling prophecy in ancient books. Jesus’s miracles? Coincidences or persuasions, perhaps. The Passion of the Christ? Foretold, too, but… His death? Did that prove Jesus was the Savior – and skeptics asked about the Resurrection.

And so forth. I flirt with blasphemy, forgive me, to make a point. We are told that with the heart one believes and is justified; and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. What do we believe, what do we confess? That Jesus is the Son of God, and God raised Him from the Dead. The final confirmation of Christ’s divinity is when He rose to be again at the right hand of the Father.

A bodily Ascension, witnessed by many, was the final thing that could not be cast into doubt by a skeptical world.

Of course I believe in fulfilled prophecy, the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, powerful miracles, the Passion and substitutionary death of Jesus, and the Resurrection. But until he rejoined the father He was not fully God again.

Jesus did ascend into the clouds; He was witnessed; and He promised to return to redeem His saints, where we will be caught in the clouds with Him. If you wonder whether you would still be in confusion – as, frankly, the Disciples were – after such a unique scene… note, on the linked video, that Jesus directed them to go to Jerusalem and wait. For what?

It was about a week away, and we shall visit ourselves in about a week.

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Click: Ascension Day

5-18-20

Occasionally things happen in history – I mean catastrophic turns – where the old saying about inability to see the forest because of trees, is taken a step further. These rare moments are not events like an invasion; neither a slow evolution, say, from serfdom to democracy; nor the relentless spread of an epidemic across the globe. A creeping four weeks is no different than a speedy month, is it? – and that is not the type of catastrophic turn I address.

When I was in college I had a professor who taught World History not by chronology nor region, but by category topics. They all were fascinating. One class looked at world history – different eras, different societies – through the lens of epidemiology. How did diseases, plagues, and pandemics change history and the course of civilizations? They certainly did, and often. In the 1600s a plague killed one-third of some European lands; the Spanish flu a century ago reportedly killed 100-million souls around the world. More American soldiers died of the flu in World War I than died in battle.

In those times, all through history, plagues were plagues and influenza was influenza. I want us to consider the possibility that our current situation might be a “virus-plus.” Is there an invisible enemy, a coronavirus? It sure seems so, and many have died of diagnosed conditions; I am not a flat-earther.

But this might be the world’s first plague where the fear of it causes more serious problems than the infection itself. Yes, deaths. But our spinning globe has virtually ground to a halt. The harm represented in that metaphor will be seen by future generations, if we survive, as perhaps worse than simple, cold death statistics. Families, careers, livelihoods, social disruptions, international anarchy, countries losing their freedoms, even wars might be the next chapters.

All this we know. And death vs disaster arguments must yield to logic and a larger sympathy. Many people are gripped by the belief that mere citizens of various nations are not threatened as much as the actual human species is threatened. Really?

I have become convinced that over-reaction has replaced caution among our leaders; and that panic has replaced prudence among our neighbors. Scratch a liberal official with rule-making power and a totalitarian pops out. In my state the governor decreed that DIY stores can sell hammers but cannot sell paint. In many states you can openly operate a marijuana shop, but are forbidden to hold church services. Neighborhood clinics have to restrict services medical exams, but abortions are allowed in those types of clinics.

This is the first epidemic in history with an agenda.

That is not the fault of the fuzzy little virus.

Your mind is not affected if you can wonder at the implausible and changing stories about the origin and the rotating lies as the virus spread across the earth.

You may well wonder at the timing, the US in a healthy and dominant position, dropped to its knees… as an election approaches. How – and why – we went from the healthiest economy in world history, to 1930s-depth depression. In weeks.

You should wonder why politicians welcome illegal immigrants, untested; and tolerate feces-covered vagrants by the thousands, yet you and I, law-abiding hermits, have to mask-up, stand in lines, submit to testing and testing.

You should question, as my friend Sarah Phillips recently did, about the massive imposition of imminent DNA collections, retinal and finger scans, cell-phone tracking, and smiling assurances from Bill Gates and other leaders (elected by whom?) that every detail of our activities – plus that of our bloodstreams through mandatory vaccinations – will soon be seen by people we don’t know. Calm down.

It is very possible – I am persuaded very likely – that we are under attack. Not by guns or bombs. Nor even by those furry viruses.

Am I being paranoid? That is not my style, usually… but even paranoiacs can indeed have people conspiring against them. Ah: conspiracy theories. I have a friend who recently ridiculed skeptics as being “conspiracy theorists.” In the same message – I kid you not – he floated his belief that President Trump is signaling an army of goons (?) by the colors and directions of the stripes on his ties every day.

I have a happy suggestion, if you have read this far and think I am crazy. There are some things that may safely distract you from deadly coronas:

* If you are alarmed by death tolls, spend some your precious emotional energy on ending the drug epidemic – yes, epidemic – in this country. That, you can affect. Straighten up the kids under your roof. Maybe drug cartels will dry up, too, with no customers – what a concept.

* If you are concerned about death tolls, think about the fact that hospitals are restricting, or forbidding, “elective” matters like cancer operations, mastectomies, scans, and other procedures — or patients are encouraged to self-deny — and people die. The stats about fewer cancer diagnoses, screenings, and diabetes complications these recent months are nothing to celebrate. Our masters decree that we shuffle morbidities, a fake-numbers game. Because the side-effects of shuttered businesses and lockdowns include more domestic violence and suicides.

* Stop acting like pickpockets, larding corona laws and regulations with back-door funding for abortions and legal weed and gun confiscation. Be honest, and lose in the courts of public opinion, if you dare.

* Resist freeing convicted felons from prisons and arresting hair dressers, pastors, and barbers, throwing them in jail.

* Show some outrage – if you feel any – about policies that leave hospital ships empty but pour infected people into nursing home beds. Wake up to the fact that in some areas, 80 per cent of “virus” deaths are in nursing homes.

* Realize that hospitals are encouraged to check COVID-19 on death forms, even when primary causes were other, and prior, conditions.

* Google a copy of the Constitution. Read it, and the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments. Check off the rights that have been violated recently, and violated with coercion. There will be many… and there will not be fine-print exclusions for influenza. Remind yourself that reportedly more people die in a normal “flu season” than have yet died from COVID-19. Remind yourself a second time of this fact. We don’t stop the world every flu season.

Finally, among those rights that have been violated – and politicians continue to ramp it up – are Freedom of Assembly (allowing crowds of… how many???); Freedom of Speech (social media routinely censors us at increasing rates); the Right to Bear Arms (laws are proposed to restrict gun ownership – because of a virus???)…

And. Freedom of Religion. Christians, People of the Book, are not dopes. We don’t sneeze on each other, even in normal times. We render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s – like respecting suggestions from experts and elected officials. Sure. We also live with consequences. We trust the Lord; we trust our God-given intelligence.

And we cherish our God-given rights.

Churches ordered to close? Worshipers drive to parking lots, listen in cars with closed windows to their church’s radio services, hungry for a minimal sense of community – and are arrested?

If the British Redcoats, those civilized gents 250+ years ago, had tried any such thing, Americans would have said three words: Lock and Load.

Yes, holding our Bibles and guns, Christians and patriots have to keep their spines from being infected by this “virus-plus”; we have to be discerning and consider whether this is all just a “Plandemic,” as I recently wrote; we must calculate the risks of responsible activities – as with a thousand other daily activities in life – and maybe we should regard the incessant and absurd carping of visible, not invisible, enemies in our midst…

And take our country back. The current epidemic is bad enough. A second pandemic — infecting our spirit — would be catastrophic.

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Click: I Know Who Holds Tomorrow

5-11-20

Sometimes, life’s circumstances can be like viruses. Appearing suddenly… not foreseeable… hard to pinpoint, harder to fight, often impossible to overcome – an invisible enemy.

My daughter Emily (yes, in whom I am well pleased!) in Ireland, with her family, has been a victim of life’s circumstances. Except that she has never fully seen the situation that way.

Onslaught? Oh, no question. She was a missionary, went to the “troubled” streets of Derry / Londonderry on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland… lost her missions support… fell in love with a local lad in church, Norman McCorkell… married… went to Bible School together… jobs in church and running a retreat center near Dublin… setbacks… Norman’s epilepsy… with two great children, helpless but not hopeless for a spell, virtually homeless but for friends… returned to the Derry area.

Mr and Mrs Job, eh?

Don’t shed tears. Emily merely has pivoted, and pivoted again, starting an American-style food business (BBQ!) that has been well accepted in the city, her jars and bottles selling to stores and homes; her smoked meats selling via food truck to fans and to groups via catering. Emily has been on radio, in newspapers, magazine covers, billboards. She and Norman, a great team in the prep, production, and deliveries, were about to open a storefront… and then, you guessed it, the pandemic hit like a storm. The city is closed down.

What to do, especially with the insane PP rules? One thing not to do was retreat or moan or wait for things to resolve themselves. While making small batches of BBQ specialties to loyal (and hungry) customers, for non-contact pickups, she pivoted again. With sympathy for healthcare workers in hospitals and clinics, thinking the patients and the doctors should have other “angels,” she inaugurated a program for people to donate food – mostly packaged and easy-to-prepare – for the kitchen spaces in hospitals and clinics. For the workers and the over-worked on shifts, tired when they get home, to make their meals faster and special, and their days easier.

The response was immediate and enormous, after a little publicity and word-of-mouth. Individuals, cafes, stores, opened their cupboards; her garage was filled each day with donations. (As I write this, Emily reported that a man she doesn’t know heard about her “Pantry” campaign and ordered 87 Pounds, about $100, of foods from a shop to be delivered straight to her center.) She and Norman, and little Elsie and Lewis, pivoted to encouragement, thanks, deliveries. People were blessed – both givers and recipients. In interviews, again, Emily explained it all: “It’s what Jesus would do.”

All of these activities, pivoting to new activities, is what businesses call Entrepreneurship. It is what Jesus called “Doing unto the least of these.” The least? Taking care of one’s family is proper, prioritized. Then serving others. Good value and good taste and good service when times are good; good discernment of people’s needs and good organization and good charity – many untold stories, the time spent, the generosity of so many – when times are tight.

All in the space of a couple months. Emily will continue to serve the sometimes-forgotten workers. She is taking orders for no-touch BBQ orders for fans of her meats every Friday. She and Norman are looking again at a food truck with which – lockdown or no – they can deliver foods and be alongside events. Lo+Slo, her little operation, is not little, really, and cannot be suppressed!

How, in the face of health and job and housing and now pandemic opposition, does she thrive? She has a saying – maybe not original? Too good to think others have not used it too. It has become her slogan during lockdowns and isolation:

I Can’t; We Can.

Brilliant, really. An inspirational rallying-cry. As I thought of my daughter, admiring her from afar but talking daily on the phone, I thought of Jesus too – but not only of His admonition that we be charitable; He fed the hungry and said that we should exercise love to the needy.

No, let us think of the larger Christian meaning, a lesson, really, inherent in that phrase I Can’t; We Can.

God has reached down through history via the inspired Word and prophets and given us guidance and wisdom. Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundant; He taught, and offered salvation. The Holy Spirit was sent that we can have spiritual encouragement, gifts, power.

With all this spiritual help, we are blessed. Surely we cannot fail to be good servants – serving God, serving each other…

Yet. Consider I Can’t; We Can. Not only in the context of the fellowship of the saints and the priesthood of all believers, as important as are those truths. No, the “We” I think God would have us remember – and too many Christians tend to forget – is the We of the Godhead. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

How many of us have faced a challenge or gone through a severe crisis, and we pray to God, with confidence (and I hope not pride) – “OK, God, I’ve got it from here.”

That is wrong. The more we know of Him and His ways, the more we need Him, and know that we need Him. The more mature our faith becomes, the more we realize how dependent we are on the Lord. In every aspect of our lives.

Our livelihoods, our families, our homes, our businesses, our health, our budgets. Our patience, our sanity, our resourcefulness. Our future.

I Can’t; We Can. I can’t do these things on my own. We – family, friends, fellowships – are important; thanks. But the We who will see us through is waiting for us to lean on the Everlasting Arms.

I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

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Click: I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief

3-30-20

Three events this week seemed connected in a way I think God would have us see. The unifying factors are these: that God has plans for us that occasionally look anything but good at first glance; we seldom can predict these life-adjustments, or even recognize them at first; and, number 3, God wants to use us. Yes, you and me. He gives us assignments for His work.

* In no particular order. I first will address the Coronavirus pandemic. Of course we have enormous sympathy for the deaths and dislocations – businesses closed and savings gone – that are resulting. But last week I listed some of the new priorities and redundant traditions that are good to be cleared away in a single season, instead of over a generation.

This social (not medical) craziness is bringing out the best in people, and I pray it lasts through and beyond the lockdowns. Acts of charity; innovative ways to care; new initiatives. My daughter Emily, in Ireland, was close to opening a restaurant and making other arrangements for her new food business, just a few weeks ago. She could have been locked into a horrible arrangement, as shops are hard-hit there as in the US. Instead of stewing (ha), she came up the idea of operating a “food pantry” to deliver food to doctors’ offices and hospitals, for those weary workers on extra shifts and unable to enjoy home-cooked food. The community is responding, in her city and elsewhere. Pallets of packaged foods; restaurant surpluses; volunteers; contributions.

Her inspiration was Jesus feeding the 5000. It’s not about her; she calls the initiative the National Health Service Pantry. For “Front Line” workers – what we would call medical first-responders and staffers.

Good will come from this plague. In myriad ways. That’s what Christians should make happen. God does not want people to catch and die from a virus. But in the midst, He has plans for us all while it is here. There’s at least one plan for you – just find it!

* Then I was reminded that the Feast of the Annunciation was this week. Forty weeks before Jesus’ birth. Mary woke up one day a lowly handmaiden; was visited by an angel; and went to sleep knowing she would give birth to the Savior of the human race. Quite a day!

Which means we cannot, usually, predict or expect or recognize events. We think such things are rare, but plagues and storms and wars often surprise us; and things are “never the same”… yet life goes on, doesn’t it? And for the good things too – blessings, gifts, visits from angels. Like Mary, as recorded in her prayer called the Magnificat, our souls magnify the Lord. We are humbled. We need to understand His lovingkindness. Those are acts to undertake. Just find one!

* Finally, did you notice in the news this week that Roger Stone, the perennial political dirty-trickster who was swept up in the “Russian Collusion” hoax, and sentenced to prison, attended a Franklin Graham crusade and gave his heart to Jesus? A little like Chuck Colson, the Nixon operative who was born again and founded the Prison Fellowship ministry.

Is it a legitimate conversion? I have a view of the matter. Many years ago I worked with two partners of his, just before the three founded a Washington lobbying group. More to share in a future column, but this born-again story – and a viral 25-minute video interview on CBN – caught my attention. And it ties in to my third “coincidental” inspiration for this week. Just think —

God has plans for us that are not always clear to us at first. His messages and callings usually are things we could never have expected. But… God wants to use us.

Use us. He doesn’t have to. He could use your neighbor. Or a stranger. Or nobody, and wave His hand over situations; He is God. But He issued a challenge to Emily’s faith… He blessed Mary with an unspeakable privilege… He broke Roger’s heart of Stone. He challenges, we respond. That’s how God works.

These things came together this week, amid good and bad health and financial news. The same message is delivered to us all – be open to God; welcome His surprises; and be willing to be used.

Just listen. Just see. Just act.

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Click: The Unseen Hand

03/17/2020

Not the caricature, please. No green plastic hats and “Kiss Me” buttons and green beer.

Honor the man who honored Christ. Taken into slavery. Found a Bible. Freed, evangelized England. Evangelized Ireland. Evangelized German lands, the first great evangelist since St Paul.

The Patrick who preached, and lived, reconciliation. I have been to places where he stood, where he preached, and where he knelt. Let us kneel with him.

Click: Hayley Westenra,  Abide With Me

3-9-20

A recent poll of American citizens revealed surprising percentages of correct answers about basic American civics, as high schools used to call courses in the essentials of government when they taught such things. The results might surprise you:

70 per cent did not know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land;

44 per cent were unable to define the Bill of Rights;

8 per cent could enumerate the Bill of Rights;

36 per cent did not know how many Supreme Court justices there are;

41 per cent did not know the countries the US fought in World War II;

38 per cent knew how many Representatives and Senators sat in the houses of Congress;

34 per cent knew the lengths of terms of Congressmen and Senators;

… and so forth. I had a high school history teacher who once said, “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.” That might have been the only things really remembered from the year in his class, but he was, mostly, a nitwit. Anyway, this survey might be “off”… but surely not by much. Civics courses on the schedule do not guarantee students being educated in civics.

In a democracy we are supposed to school ourselves, embrace our heritage, protect our freedoms, and advance our liberties. On our own. Even in a constitutional republic – which the United States is; not a democracy, although it leeches into our system – citizens should want to be informed about our “basics,” and not only for final exams, grumble grumble. By the way, citizenship tests for legal immigrants ask the questions above; and applicants, new citizens, know the answers. Hmmm, maybe we should be required to re-apply for citizenship every five or 10 years…

Ask yourself the following questions. And – no snap quiz here – how many basic questions about the Bible, basic questions about the bedrock of Christian doctrine, can you, or friends, answer?

The books of the Bible? The 10 Commandments, in order? The (basic) lineage of Jesus, through Mary and Joseph? The prophesies of the Redeemer? Typology of Salvation and the Savior? The Beatitudes? The nine spiritual gifts? The acts of the Apostles and early-church martyrs? The seven churches of Revelation?

… And what, exactly, we need to do in order to be saved?

When I was young – even now, and I am not young – I could recite the American Dental Association’s endorsement of Crest toothpaste. It is, pun intended, a mouthful, yet I know every word of it. Had I intended to memorize it? No, but as I watched uncountable commercials that once quoted it… it hid itself in my heart. Recently, over dinner, I found that I could repeat the My Pillow pitches of Mike Lindell. And the old guy needing a hearing aid and his son’s love. And those poor little kids in special-needs hospitals. I know all their scripts, and can imitate their voices.

What is wrong in a society where citizens, and “Christians,” do not know the tenets of their citizenship and their faith, yet know by heart things like commercials and pop music lyrics? That is a question we can answer – a lot is wrong.

Contemporary church services are too often entertainment concerts. Church youth programs are too often desperate alternatives for potentially wayward teens. Sunday Schools are too often play dates. Not all – of course – but these are tendencies of the contemporary church. People more in love with the music than with (as Joe Biden recently said), “you know, that Thing.”

God knows I am not a fan of intolerance and the old religious wars, yet I do know why disputes arose – the desire to understand Scripture – and knowledge informs our own views. Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and Presbyterianism and Methodism and Pentecostalism emerged from cherished views of theologians and followers. Today (again: not all, but many) members of denominations do not know the differences between them, or if they have strayed from the Bible. And worshipers’ ignorance can be partly forgiven because their pulpits do not preach the great truths nor the practical distinctions any more. Political correctness, “acceptance” of sinful differences among us, a relativist view of god, whoever he or she really is.

A lot of our church-going neighbors (whose numbers shrink every year) wind up repeating the things they hear, too, by osmosis – learning those heresies by heart. Creeds? The Lord’s Prayer? Endangered species in a lot of churches.

These abominations are rife these days… but are not new. Throughout history, people have gone astray and become lovers of selves, and with “itching ears,” not merely willing but hungry for lies by which to live. In the past, when humankind sinned, God dealt severely. And when His own people turn their backs, He chastises them – with the justice they deserve.

Jesus Himself prophesied, Peoples’ foes shall be those of their own households (Matt 10:36). Don’t blame others; we must blame ourselves.

God chastises those whom He loves. He loves us. Like the old guy in the hearing-aid commercial, pray to God: “I heard you the first time. I just wanted to hear it again!”

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Click: Don’t Forget To Thank the Lord

3-2-20

Despite being shrouded in religious symbolism and tradition, Lent also is a part of Christianity that largely has no Biblical sanction nor institution. That is to say, the holidays and succession of observances were not established by Jesus, the Disciples, St Paul, nor the churches of the early evangelists.

In fact, there are myriad definitions of Lent, numbers of days of Lent, whether Sundays are counted or not, what constitutes holy fasts, what meats can be eaten, what colors of church vestments and displays should be assigned, what parts of the liturgy should be sung or suppressed, even when Lent ends. As many definitions as there are Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox traditions… and of course different views within Protestantism and Orthodox churches. Denominations like the Mennonite church, for instance, traditionally did not observe Lent at all.

Is the observance of Lent a corruption of Christian teaching? No! It is not even obliquely related to anything pagan, as can be deduced from Christmas, Easter, and other holidays. And Lenten practices are informed by the suffering and death of Jesus; the Passion; the meanings behind the largest aspects of Easter (the atonement) to the smallest (reminders of the significance of every “station” of the cross that Jesus carried to Golgotha).

If Lent is not a corruption of the holy aspects of the period preceding Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem and the horrible events of Holy Week, certain observances of Lent can be corrupt. When people “give up” broccoli, or even chocolate – perhaps things they already hate, or things they might indeed love; you have heard them all – it trivializes the acts of the Savior.

“How can self-sacrifice, or discipline, be bad?” we are asked. “And if we lose weight, or spend time in better ways than going to the movies…” is a sentence that does not need to be finished. Dieting, better use of your free time, less video-gaming, can all be done any time (or all times) during the year.

Jesus Christ did not suffer and die for your chocolates or your video games.

I am going to suggest something in place of sacrificing something for Lent. Since the precise details of Lenten observances are not in the Bible, I might feel secure to propose a different way to recall, even “imitate” (in the view of Thomas à Kempis) Christ’s Passion.

Instead of giving something up for Lent, can we take something up for Lent?

Jesus sacrificed His life, but He also gave us something very real: salvation. He renounced earthly pleasures, but He also gave us a supreme picture of service. He endured rejection, betrayal, and torture – which can remind us of how much He loved us, even while we were yet sinners – yet are we only to dwell on these things… or be inspired to lives of fellowship, reconciliation, and love?

He died… that we may live.

Should we think of taking up things – not only the cross, which after all we are commanded to do – and not merely sacrificing this or that for 40 days?

In the spirit of the Lenten season, and Christ’s Passion of which we are mindful, forget the chocolates and video games, and take up something.

These might be word games, of course: To take up something might be seen as a sacrifice; fine. And, as with New Years resolutions, or Lenten sacrifices, we can also “take up” something all the year ‘round. Also fine! In a sense, the life of faith is to see things, and act, in upside-down manners sometime. We need new perspectives. Do we really belong in a life of the world’s old ways of seeing and doing? We should yearn for a place where dead men live, and rich men give.

Take up charity work. And do it as privately as possible. Share something about Jesus to someone. Especially if you are uncomfortable doing so. Think of someone you have resented, and write a note saying you forgive them. And then… forgive them.

Take up something, not because it’s traditional when the calendar says so. Take up something out of passion – your passion – and not automatically.

TAKE UP something for Lent. For Christ’s sake.

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Click: I Don’t Belong (The Sojourner’s Song)

1-6-20

We are deep into the new decade… Well, hardly. Anyway, far enough into the first month of the new year… actually, not so. Um, would you believe almost through the first week?

My question, disregarding the calendar page, becomes easier: how is it going with those New Year’s resolutions?

Let’s have a show of hands: How many of us resolved to give up climbing the Alps in sandals? To cut out all luxuries like miniature pineapples and baby coconuts? To economize by deciding not to purchase luxury boxes for the World Series games?

Easier: How many of us gave up chocolate… or maybe things like broccoli or squid or things we never liked in the first place?

Then we might ask how many of us – being more serious about the “root” of this tradition – how many of us resolved to do positive things, instead of avoiding negative things?

How many of us resolved to pray more, every day? Or to do something “extra” like charity work or sharing foods, intentionally serving our neighbors? To show love… to be love, in the coming year?

All of which makes us think (or should!) about resolutions – things we resolve to do – that we tend to think they should be things we subtract from our lives, when we should rather resolve to add to our lives.

For God’s sake.

And if we become intentional about such things, we can come closer to realizing that God has made resolutions, too. About us. After all, the best promise He made was to send His Son to take the punishment for our sins away… while we were yet sinners.

An amazing promise, that. And from the Giver of Resolutions whose Nature is such that He cannot break His promises.

The questions I asked above have similar answers. Whether we make promises impossible to keep; or about silly ones whose fidelity mean nothing; or even well-intentioned positive resolutions; most of us, being human, have already surrendered. Well, there is always next year.

For our God, however, for Whom a spark is like a thousand years, “next year” is like… eternity. And God’s promises are as from Alpha to Omega. His resolutions cannot be broken. He does not want to: it is not what God does.

On the heavenly scales, our uncountable broken resolutions and promises to God are outweighed by His one resolution: He will remember us.

Happy New Year!

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Click: He Will Remember Me

11-4-19

“If being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Sometimes such aphorisms – what I call bumper-strip theology – pack a lot of implications and wisdom.

In many place around the world, being a Christian is illegal, or nearly so. I can tell that this blog is read in some of those countries, perhaps to the peril of those readers.

Will such a thing ever happen in the United States, in Western Europe? Many of us think so – it has happened in societies that were once like ours – and at the moment, if belief in Christ is not yet illegal it is however improper or at best impolite in many places and situations.

When the leader of ISIS recently was killed, we were reminded that one of his countless victims was the young American missionary Kayla Mueller. The Christian woman had been held in captivity for 18 months, a sex slave of al-Baghdadi himself. The man whose Washington Post obituary called “an austere religious scholar” and a shy man behind spectacles, repeatedly raped and tortured Kayla, according to eyewitnesses like Yezidi sex slaves even younger than Kayla.

That description of Kayla says more about al-Baghdadi – and the Washington Post – than it does about Kayla. Almost.

What is scarcely said in the news stories is that Kayla was repeatedly asked, and frequently beaten and tortured, to renounce her Christian faith. This she never did – by ISIS’s own frustrated reports – and it gained her torture, rape, beatings, and death. Photographs of her bruised and lifeless body were e-mailed to Kayla’s parents by ISIS.

She lost her life. By her confession and faithfulness, as a contemporary martyr, she secured a place in Heaven, we can believe.
Correction: she saved her life.

Kayla was not alone, I am sure she would maintain. Every day, Christians around the world are being persecuted, tortured, and killed for their faith.

We smugly think that things in this world are growing brighter and better. Not everything. There were more Christians killed simply for being Christians in the 20th century than in all the combined centuries since Christ, including the iconic grotesqueries of Nero.

This week we noted – did you? – Reformation Day, the commemoration of Martin Luther’s challenge to the Church of the day. He nailed 95 complaints about corruption to a church door in Germany. It spread beyond Wittenberg’s town square; past the triangle of land formed by Hannover, Berlin, and Dresden; through Germany; to Rome and other territories of the Vatican; through the Christian world… and even unto today.

Luther had not intended to leave the Catholic Church – he was an ordained priest – nor establish a denomination, much less see his protest turn into Protestant-ism. Yet the “world system” that had corrupted the people and practices of the Church transformed widespread dissatisfaction into open revolts.

Luther’s reliance on “Scripture Alone” – that is, not mankind’s rules or new doctrines not found in the Bible – was a revolution of the spirit, conscience, and faith. Indeed, Luther was not the first anti-Romish reformer: previous theologians had similar heartfelt critiques… and had been martyred.

Fired, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, killed for their consciences. Luther was to be the next. Hunted and excommunicated, he was hauled before a council in the city of Worms, Germany.

All his writings – books and pamphlets, sermons and essays – were laid on a table, and Luther was ordered to renounce them. Outside the castle, at night, the Church was burning his books.

“Renounce them?” he said in effect, “How can I, when they all quote the Bible and rely on Scripture?”

Further, he argued that they were the result of his conscience, and “no man, no council, no Pope” can force me to act “against my God-inspired conscience.”

It was made clear that he would suffer death if he did not deny his writings. He said “I will not and I can not.”

With his life on the line, and conscious of the blood of martyrs before him, in the hushed council, Luther firmly said, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” Those simple words, spoken in that obscure German town, have rather thundered like mighty artillery through the ages. Indeed for 500 years they have been spiritual and intellectual bombs. They inspired the translations of Bibles into languages of local peoples. They ignited a rediscovery of Scripture. They freed believers from relying on human intercessors when praying or petitioning God. They inaugurated the spread of literacy. They were the underpinnings of democratic movements around the world.

Luther was not murdered; he was secreted away by German princes who likewise “saw the light.” Thrown out of the Roman Church, he married and continued to write and preach. Others who knew him, and many who never met him but were – and still are – electrified by his words, followed.

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” These are the words, perhaps word for word, that the missionary girl Kayla Mueller spoke.

God forbid – which cliché is my hope, but is not a certainty – that any of us will be in the position of a Martin Luther or a Kayla Mueller. It is not an abstract warning: every day Christians are in those positions.

When you have the opportunity, are you however too shy to speak the Name of Jesus? Do you hold back from sharing your faith with a stranger, or a family member, knowing that they might be on their ways to hell? When politicians, from school boards to the presidency, offend the Truth of the Gospel, do you think, speak, and act in opposition?

Do you “stand”? Will you stand? Can you do no other? If being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

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The “Battle Hymn of the Reformation,” words and music by Martin Luther. All my life, tears come to my eyes when I sing, or try to, the last verse: Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also: The body they may kill – God’s truth abideth still!

Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

10-28-19

The most effort that Christians spend in their “walks” of following Him, I sometimes think, is not time in the Word or in prayer or doing as He would have us do in our interactions. Virtually impossible to compute, but I sometimes wonder if we spend more time making excuses to God, than any other activity.

I don’t mean, “Lord, You know I really didn’t mean to kill that man.” Or the old “comedy” line, “The devil made me do it.”

No, my thought is that there are countless ways that we hope or think that God understands us, and will let something slip by… even a minor sin. (See? Even that thought is what I mean, if we start believing it. There is no such things as a minor sin.)

– that He will understand the pressure we are under, and forgive us of something before we are even contrite. (That leads to assuming less and less that we need forgiveness.)

– that our faithfulness, our good works, the crosses we bear, will in some spiritually cosmic way earn us a Get Out of Jail Free card.

– that God knows our heart, in the big picture; and surely He cannot hold us to the same measures applied to unsaved people…

Surely? When you think about it – and this reflection can be a healthy thing for our souls – if we do not verbalize such thoughts, many Christians internalize the assumptions. Almost to the extent that our spiritual DNA is mutated. Not a good thing.

What is a good thing is that we do not have to correct these tendencies on our own. If the critique sounds familiar, ask your self one more question:

Why do you think God sent the Holy Spirit?

Jesus actually said that it was good that He “go,” because One would come who would enable, guide, strengthen us. The Holy Ghost. I also sometimes think the least employed member of the Godhead, the least known of God’s ever-present resources.

We don’t have to be “better,” or more mindful of God’s commands and Jesus’s example, on our own. There is no shame in calling on the Holy Spirit’s help. He pleads for you to reach out.

It is not a sign of weakness in a Christian to seek the Spirit’s help: it is a sign of strength and maturity.

I have told the story, perhaps true, of the great comedian W. C. Fields, in the last months of his life, in sanatorium, visited one morning by a friend. Fields sat in a corner, by a window with sun shining in, a Bible on his lap, which surprised his friend. “Bill, what are you doing? I’ve never seen you reading a Bible!”

Fields looked up and said, “Looking for loopholes.”

Godfrey Daniel!!! There are no loopholes in life. We might think so… we might fervently hope so… we might fool ourselves and think there must be, “if God is a loving God!”

But God leapfrogged over that definition of love. He sent Jesus to settle that question; and sent His Holy Spirit to remind us. We need reminders about, um, shopping lists and movie times. Why not about pleasing God and doing His will?

Remind me, dear Lord.

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Recorded at the Cove, Billy Graham’s retreat center in North Carolina, a place with special memories for me, having interviewed Bev Shea, Cliff Barrows, Joni Eareckson, and others there. A beautiful spot.

Click: Remind Me, Dear Lord

10-21-19

Recently I have visited churches, worshiping away from home, and have been reminded of when I lived in California. What rang bells in my personal belfry is not exclusive to the Golden State. (And Larry Gatlin had it right about all the gold in California, but that’s for another time…)

There is a “trendency” in the American church that probably began in California, probably with the “Jesus Movement” of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It is the stranger side of the welcoming “Seeker” type of worship. Come as you are… God does not require three-piece suits and long dresses and heels (for women and men, respectively… although we do have the California context)… dress codes can be intimidating… God is interested in your heart, not your wardrobe.

You have heard these things; maybe even believe them or have been persuaded; or, of course, might bristle at the non-rules. The other extreme is formalism that makes formality a form of Godliness, more extreme than dress codes. I have been in churches where women (in head coverings) are segregated from male worshipers; where my son and I were forbidden Communion because we had not first met with the church’s pastor (our actual denomination, but a different synod).

As I say, God knows our hearts after all. But in the church I visited last Sunday, the pastor who introduced himself already stood out… as the person in the dirtiest flannel shirt; in the jeans with the most rips in them; in the most beat-up work boots. In many churches today, leaders nor worshipers dress formally, despite perhaps clean T-shirts or jeans. Many pastors perch on stools, wear Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. “Worship leaders” seem required to wear uniforms of grunge.

Is all this a reaction against a generation of pastors and televangelists who wrapped themselves in three-piece suits and blow-dried hair? Perhaps. Is it legitimate to resist formalism? I say yes… as long as it is not confused with formality.

Taking that further, there are differences between formalism, as I say, and formality… a difference between rules and the law, and legalism… a difference between liberty and license… a difference between unity and uniformity… a difference between reverence and rudeness… a difference between respect and dirty jeans when worshiping Almighty God.

The fact that God does not require you to wear ties and jackets, or modest dresses or slacks, does not mean that you have to dress in your cleanest dirty shirt, to quote Kris Kristofferson
.
Will these things keep you out of Heaven? Of course not. But I just wonder at the level of respect – I despair at the disappearance of reverence – when we have lost the impulse to approach God, and God’s people, in a little different manner than we do people in the supermarket, ball field, or work weekend.

Does the Bible have a suggestion for a dress code? As with everything else… yes. Stick with me:

Take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

These are well-known words from the sixth chapter of Ephesians, and only partly are dispositive here. The advice is for a spiritual wardrobe, not how you would show up to church, clanging breastplates and swords. Metaphorically, what a well-dressed Christian will wear the remainder of the week.

However, there is one more item whose preparation is important to how we present ourselves before others… and before God.

How about your heart? Is it right with God? As Bennie Tripplet wrote in that great Gospel song,

People often see you
As you are outside;
Jesus really knows you,
For He looks inside.

Those are the rules for the Believer’s fashion show.
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Click: How About Your Heart

10-14-19

Some day I want to put together a new version of the Holy Bible. Ambitious, yes. But I believe that the Bible is a Book that many people know, but not everybody understands.

There is a human tendency to assume, to take for granted, things that largely are familiar to us. And you know what often happens when we assume. Familiarity does not always breed contempt… but it can lead to indifference. Hard truths, even when brilliantly expressed, can grow trite when we are intellectually careless.

My version of the Bible would be called the NSL Version – Not Saith the Lord.

If we can remind ourselves of familiar verses and passages of Scripture, and really – No: REALLY – think about them, and their meaning; their application to our lives… they can burst on our consciousness like thunderclaps. Sometimes as if we had never heard them before!

I know, because it has happened to me.

I will revisit this idea, going forward, and solicit nominations of verses and passages from you.

Here is one instance. “Give us this day our daily bread…” Yes, yes, “provide for me, please.” I think too many of us focus (if we focus at all as we rush through the Lord’s Prayer or the “Our Father”) on the “Give” and “us” and “bread” and what they represent.

But when Jesus outlined the perfect prayer, or topics to include when we approach God, I believe He wanted, in this passage, to remind us of the “daily.”

The Lord provides for us, we know and trust that. As with the sparrows, as with the lilies of the field. We seek it, and He indeed provides, spiritually as well as materially.

But how often does God provide? Not occasionally… not in crises alone… not only when we are desperate. But, daily. Daily “bread.”

That is not merely a petition of wanting, but is worded to remind us to be thankful that God does provide. Daily!

In fact, between spiritual and material matters, so much, so often, so “daily,” that sometimes we take His provisions for granted.

So when you next pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” you can remind yourself of how much more than bread He hath provided (and we “shall not live by bread alone,” right?). But have your mind focus too on His daily, constant, reliable provisions.

His gifts… before we know we need them! Indeed, great is His faithfulness.

Our daily “bread”? Be bold to ask… be grateful to receive. Thus saith the Lord.

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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

8-26-19

Oh, yes; God plays games. Not to deceive us, of course. But He is a play-ful God, never think otherwise. Despite the moon-faced Jesus of some movies and Sunday-school calendars, I believe He smiled as much as He rebuked; He wept but He laughed. He was tender with His mother; He gathered children around Him; He welcomed crowds.

“Jesus loves me; this I know.” He doesn’t get there by being stern or vacant. When God created the earth, He paused and “saw that it was good.” Smile!

God has used – and still uses – uncountable ways to instruct us. He shares His will for our lives through inspiration of the Holy Spirit; by Biblical passages; via circumstances. Balaam’s ass, you know the story. Sometimes even people who themselves are… well, you know, unexpected sources. Hard lessons. “Coincidences,” that some of us recognize afterwards as “God-incidences.” Sermons. Books. Radio and TV preachers. Song lyrics.

When God doesn’t whisper, sometimes He shouts.

Thinking on these things, I wondered whether we can find Godly messages even in games. Games, that is, that we might re-purpose, to see His purpose.

Here are some suggestions:

Ready Or Not, Here I Come! Can you picture Jesus calling that out? In a very real way, that’s what He said as He emerged from the tomb on Easter Sunday. His mother, and the disciples, hoped for the Resurrection, and vaguely remembered His promise… yet they were surprised. Were they ready? Are we ready? Because the Resurrection was an event at which to marvel, but – “ready or not” – then there is the life-long obligation to remain joyful, and to follow His commands. Here He Comes!

Tag, You’re It! In that game, the rules are strict. As much as you might wiggle or hide or evade, when the leader tags you… you are it. You know that Jesus seeks you, and soon enough will “tag” you. You’re it!

Leapfrog. Do kids play this any more? And maybe it’s a stretch, but let’s compare the jumpers to the challenges in life we have to get over. Isn’t it funny (or not) how every time we overcome the challenge before us, something or someone jumps over us and gets in the way all over again. Gotta keep jumping, running the race, and leaping!

Truth or Dare. This is easy. Can you keep secrets from God? Can you avoid His call? Can you avert His gaze? He already knows the Truth about your situation better than you do… do you dare break the rules?

Rock, Paper, Scissors. Um… whatever configuration, no matter how many do-overs, God always wins. He made the rocks, paper, and scissors!

Simon Says. Another old-timer. In the new version, Simon is God, giving the requests. Or, Simon is Jesus, who showed us how to obey. Or Simon is the Holy Spirit, who will help us play.

And win.

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Click: Hide Thou Me

8-5-19

I am writing this in the first week of August, a time that once, and elsewhere, carries more significance than a new calendar page. In the 19th century, a lot of magazines published “Mid-Summer Numbers,” observing some sort of moment in the earth’s cycle, like taking a breath. In Europe – France especially – the entire month of August is devoted to vacations; trips far away from home. Some streets in Paris are virtually empty except for unlucky waiters and gendarmes.

For me, August reminds me of summers growing up outside New York City, in New Jersey. The Jersey Shore? Palisades Park? No, as an eternal foodie, my memories are of the best corn and the best tomatoes on earth. It is futile to seek such quality elsewhere, but these weeks beat Spring flowers and Fall harvests in many ways. De gustibus and all that…

It requires no stretch to see a spiritual aspect to the unique time between planting and harvest. We make plans, we live in hope, we anticipate; we pray. Planting seeds is a metaphor for being intentional about life, and commitments, our directions. Harvest? We anticipate the results of our work and plans. And prayers.

This week my son Ted, my daughter Emily, and I coincidentally went through separate but similar experiences, all related to the work we do. We praise God (always) for His leading, and His hand, the calling on our lives. But sometimes – without stopping to acknowledge God as the Master Farmer – it seems like we plant soybeans and we harvest alfalfa (or whatever those two plants look like; have mercy on this City boy; this is still a metaphor).

That growth period is just as important as Planting and Harvesting.

When Emily was very young, missionaries from Central America visited our little church and made a presentation about their work. Somehow their stories, their passion, affected her. As young as she was, she was overtaken with emotion and tears and… a conviction that she would serve in the missions field when she grew up. She eventually went to Bible College, joined missions trips to Mexico, Russia, and Ireland. And Ireland again. Her heart was joined there – in two ways; as she fell in love with Norman, attending a Bible college in Dublin, marrying, and being fruitful and multiplying. Still serving the Lod, of course.

Would all this have happened without that impactful visit of a missionary family decades ago? Maybe, or maybe not in the same way… but as a father I am awestruck at the growth (and nurture) of certain seeds that are planted in lives.

My friend Becky Spencer (writer, missionary, singer, songwriter) and her husband Tracy run a B+B and a Thrift Boutique in Kansas, to help finance their longtime work in Swaziland, now eSwatini in Africa. (I’m sorry, but the country’s new name sounds more like a video game to me…) It is a land with many challenges of health, poverty, disease, and education. And more. These past weeks has seen her crew from GrandStaffMinistries (.com, you know) experienced some family crises among relatives before they left America; financial challenges of course; a stolen passport at a stopover airport; stolen credit cards and money at another airport, followed by crazy rules and balky “facilitators” when help was needed; a ton-of-bricks debilitating infection to Becky herself… and so forth.

[And just as I write this, I received an emergency message from Becky in eSwatini that their facilities have caught fire that is spreading. Please pray, friends!]

Hard truth: when the devil attacks, it often means that you are doing something right. But when missions work – schools, clinics, worship centers, food sharing, teaching – is savagely attacked… is this God’s harvest for work well planned?

Well, yes, it is. For the overall accomplishments and victories of Grand Staff Ministries; for the work Emily has done and the blessings she receives; for the results of yieldedness that unfolds for Ted and me (and multiplied other testimonies), God does not bless our agendas. It’s about His plan, not our ideas of what His plan should be. He knows where we are headed. (Pssst – I can share a secret about how to know it: It is where He wants us.) And, almost always, He does not ordain where, and in what form, that harvest will be manifested.

Excuse me: He does ordain it. He just seldom shares it with us. And if we do work as unto the Lord, there are no “good” results or “bad” results; only God-results.

In fact I believe there is an aspect to spiritual planting-and-harvesting that we seldom think about. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices to serve Him, by serving others; we understand that, and we obey (not often enough, most us, but that’s another message). But our Sovereign God can use other people and other methods. But… the fact that He chooses us is a reminder that He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

It is truly the case that God wants to do a good work in us, not only in third-world kids or starving villages or abused women. By sharing Christ, sharing resources, and sharing ourselves we do not only do favors for the “lost”… but for ourselves.

And that is good theology. God will not take our lives, or our souls, for granted, as we do good. He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

Mary did not merely honor and bless Jesus by anointing His feet. She was blessed, and received honor and blessing from the Savior, for the choice she made. “The poor ye shall always have with you.” St Augustine saw that not as an admission of futility. He recognized that God wants to encourage in us, not only our loving targets, the reality of His love.

Not something only to deliver, but something to live, ourselves. Harvest time approacheth.

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Click: Thank You For Giving To the Lord

7-29-19

There is a story about the late gospel singer J D Sumner, once cited by the Guinness Book of World Records as possessing the deepest bass voice ever recorded. He performed as a member of famous groups, and even backed up Elvis Presley for a time. Variously gruff and given to broad humor, this story showed a side of him that displayed, appropriately when all is said and done, Biblical wisdom.

J D held sway in parts of the South, and one Christmastime he persuaded local authorities to release a prisoner whom he befriended and witnessed to, from jail over the holidays. The inmate would visit and stay with his own wife and kids.

The singer-comedian Mark Lowry was a neighbor of J D and when he heard this news he asked what the prisoner had done; what his offense had been.

“Does it make a difference?” Sumner replied in his other-worldly deep drawl.

How much do we really appreciate Forgiveness and Pardon? When Don Adams’ catch-phrase in the old Get Smart TV show entered the language, “Sorry ‘bout that” became everybody’s euphemistic apology. A substitute, really. Once upon a time, “Excuse me” and “I beg your pardon” were more formal ways of expressing formal apologies, perhaps until dulled into irrelevance.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This is the best-known reference to Forgiveness in our language; and, again, perhaps blunted by uncountable recitations. But we must realize that Jesus, when offering this “model prayer,” suggested a deal of sorts. He suggested that God’s forgiveness is granted in some relationship to the forgiveness we show others.

But isn’t God’s forgiveness, as an aspect of His love, unconditional? Yes, if we repent He will forgive our sins.

But we should be prompted – by gratitude if not basic theology – to forgive unconditionally, in the same manner as God does, those who have sinned against us. Wronged us, offended us, harmed us. “But, Rick, that’s hard!” (By the way, talk to God, not me…) Yes, it is hard. Almost impossible. But as God reads our hearts, He does not count the results of our forgiving spirit, but the number of times we exercise it.

“Forgiveness,” “Pardon,” “Second chance,” and all those related impulses, elevate our spirits. Indeed they open our ability to receive God’s forgiveness… more accurately to be aware of it and savor it. No longer an aspect of a spiritual bargain as we might be tempted to think, the Spirit of Forgiveness is blessed liberation you cannot imagine until employed fully and without strings.

There are very few things the Bible suggests that God cannot do. But it says that when we are Forgiven, God takes our sins and figuratively “throws them into a Sea of Forgetfulness.” I return to my question up top – how much do we appreciate Forgiveness?

Here is what I mean: have you ever done something, or thought something, that made you feel guilty? Did you repent and pray for God’s forgiveness? And again, and more times, reflecting your remorse and guilt?

You can understand Forgiveness a little better if you realize that after your first sincere prayer you are only telling God about something He already forgot.

Forgive… and forget. We have a great Role Model to show us how.

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Click: Forgiven

7-1-19

Two different things, faith and faithfulness.

We can generalize and say that Faith is what you believe, and faithfulness is how you act.

As with most generalities, we can go deeper than that. Both concepts are two-way streets, at least. In the matter of God Himself, I reckon that we don’t always think of the implications that God has faith in us, not merely the necessity of our belief in Him; in Christ as His only Son; in Jesus’s death for out sins and His resurrection and ascension to the Heavenly throne.

With Jesus in our hearts, that completes the requirements for salvation… but only begins the duties of Children of God. We need to be versed in the Word, and attentive to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. “Imitators of Christ.”

Saying “Yes” to Jesus is more than a “Get out of jail free” card. God has faith in us – you and I individuals of the flock – to do His will. He has faith in us: what an awesome concept… and responsibility.

Faithfulness is, perhaps, an easier concept to grasp. We can make resolutions, and establish purposes, and try our hardest, to be faithful to God. To trust Him; to share His love; to do His will. “It is meet and right so to do,” the old liturgies say. And it is a matter of belief that God can only act faithfully on His words and promises and gifts.

So, that’s that. Right? Not really. Sometimes the most well-meaning Christians can substitute their own versions of what they think is faithfulness. Maybe some people you know –

* Thinking that infant baptism seals their souls into Eternity?
* Believing that church membership satisfies God, with no other factors?
* That charitable works, or giving, is a step toward Heaven?
* Trusting that welcoming sinners, and accepting their sins, is doing God’s will?
* Assuming that God’s rules for life are not for today; only other people, other times

… and so forth. We are nation – our Western civilization is a culture – where the Bible probably still is the best-selling of books. Almost every home has one, somewhere; and every Walmart and Barnes and Noble has stacks of them. Where churches are on many street corners, and dot the landscape.

But those are not signs of faithfulness; nor, by themselves, of faith. How many Bibles remained stacked in super-stores? In how many homes is there “dust on the Bible”? How many churches are closed, or merging, or converted to community centers for Jazzercise?

Such “relative” proof of faithfulness or, God help us, faith, may grieve the heart of the Lord.

However we can be – we are – secure in the knowledge that God’s faithfulness is not relative; does not change; and is something we can hold to.

May that knowledge, and profound gratitude for such a loving God, have us cleave to Him… to exercise our faith… and blow the dust off our Bibles whenever it settles.

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul; ‘Therefore I hope in Him!’” (Lamentations 3:22-24)

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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness

6-24-19

Let’s get a couple things straight.

God is a sovereign God. He is all-powerful; omni-present; omniscient (all-knowing). He is the Creator of all things, the Great “I Am” – present in time before there was time. Regarding things we cannot understand, that’s OK. He understands. That’s part of Him being God, us being mortal, and a perspective-point of our proper relationship with Him.

God’s Word and God’s Will are immutable. That means that His nature is such that He will not, cannot, change His Word. The Bible, therefore, cannot contradict itself. His promises, ordinances – and warnings, threats – are eternal. What about mercy? Mercy never vitiates God’s standards, but rather affirms His love. And His justice. Mercy tends to lead back to the wisdom of His commands.

Examples of God’s loving-kindness, and belief – maybe sometimes a blind trust – in episodes of mercy in the Bible, can lead Christians astray. Closer reading of many acts of God’s mercy should teach us that. Nothing is in a vacuum in the life granted to us.

We can think of times when people yearn for “revival.” Consider the French Revolution vs the American Revolution. The French rebels (to grant some of their higher motives) saw 1800 years of Christianity as having led to corruption and oppression bereft of spiritual purpose; and they followed their desperate hearts.

The American Revolution, also considering its higher motives, trusted the brains and maturity of its rebels: enlightened self-interest. A nation built self-consciously on Biblical principles (also as if by blueprint, harkening to the Old Testament) trusted an educated citizenry that would always make rational choices. Human nature finally had its unfettered path to heaven on earth.

Instead, each system allowed human nature to prevail – the French to passions, the Americans to rationalism – with different results. Each generally opposed and sublimated rules and orders and arbitrary laws, but in my view each led to the worst aspects of human nature’s dark sides. The French Revolution merely arrived at that state after several short years and much misery; and then demanded an Emperor.

The United States took centuries to slide into moral decay, and has virtually demanded dictators, masquerading as crony capitalism, a corrupt political system, subversion of the educational culture, hostility to religion, a media oligarchy, and the epidemic of drugs and illegitimacy and abortion and crime and the dissolution of the family unit. Human nature, triumphant.

Christians (some Christians) more than other groups recognize this slide. They have clarity about the slippery slope down which we have slid. They recognize that God is the source of our deliverance. But too many of us, I am sorry to say, stop short of spiritual consistency and the proper Biblical responses God clearly requires of us.

Many times have I heard Christians pray, “Lord, send a revival to this land.”

In similar (micro-version) pleadings, I have heard Christians pray, “Lord, bring my [son, daughter, spouse] to faith in You.”

I have heard Christians pray, “Lord, hear our prayers for world peace.”

… and a thousand similar prayers. “Lord, hear our prayers.” I know such prayers because I occasionally have prayed them myself. And I remind you that I stipulated at the beginning that I know God is sovereign. He can do anything. But so can we do things!

Even the examples in the Bible where God spared a people, or a city, or an individual, it never came without a “lesson” for then and for us, now – punishment, banishment, exile, scars like thorns in the flesh or a lame leg, scattered diaspora, rejection by friends. Forgiven, yes; but seldom what we would call a “pass.” Should God reward our sins?

Do you want revival in this nation? Pray for it… and work for it.

Do you want a loved one come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ? Pray for it… and work for it.

Do you want world peace? Pray for it… and work for it.

Prayer is not a magic incantation. God hears what we want, but what we need is a different matter. God does not stand up straight and salute, in response to our orders. It should be rather the opposite.

There is a middle ground between Mercy and Vengeance – in humanity’s actions, not only God’s responses. That middle ground is Justice. And God’s Justice, especially in America at this time in our history, is something we should fear!

The only “pass” we can ever receive from a Just and Merciful God is the forgiveness forged at Calvary. Even that was not free – technically not a “pass” – because it was purchased at a fearful price, the death and resurrection of the Messiah. By that pattern, everything we pray for, everything, must be subject to the Will of God, not presuming to write the script for God’s response.

We play a role, after all, in the desires of our own hearts. It is a matter of Justice that we exercise that role; and we should expect Justice, never whining for a “free pass,” from the Lord in response.

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Click: To God Be the Glory: My Tribute

6-17-19

Let’s get a couple things straight.

God is a sovereign God. He is all-powerful; omni-present; omniscient (all-knowing). He is the Creator of all things, the Great “I Am” – present in time before there was time. Regarding things we cannot understand, that’s OK. He understands. That’s part of Him being God, us being mortal, and a perspective-point of our proper relationship with Him.

God’s Word and God’s Will are immutable. That means that His nature is such that He will not, cannot, change His Word. The Bible, therefore, cannot contradict itself. His promises, ordinances – and warnings, threats – are eternal. What about mercy? Mercy never vitiates God’s standards, but rather affirms His love. And His justice. Mercy tends to lead back to the wisdom of His commands.

Examples of God’s loving-kindness, and belief – maybe sometimes a blind trust – in episodes of mercy in the Bible, can lead Christians astray. Closer reading of many acts of God’s mercy should teach us that. Nothing is in a vacuum in the life grants to us.

We can think of a time when people yearned for “revival.” Consider the French Revolution vs the American Revolution. The French rebels (to grant some of their higher motives) saw 1800 years of Christianity as having led to corruption and oppression bereft of spiritual purpose; and they followed their desperate hearts.

The American Revolution, also considering its higher motives, trusted the brains and maturity of the rebels: enlightened self-interest. A nation built self-consciously on Biblical principles (also as if by blueprint, harkening to the Old Testament) trusted an educated citizenry that would always make rational choices. Human nature finally had its unfettered path to heaven on earth.

Instead, each system allowed human nature to prevail – the French to passions, the Americans to rationalism – with different results. Each generally opposed and sublimated rules and orders and arbitrary laws, but in my view each led to the worst aspects of human nature’s dark sides. The French Revolution merely arrived at that state after several short years and much misery; and then demanded an Emperor.

The United States took centuries to slide into moral decay, and has virtually demanded dictators, masquerading as crony capitalism, a corrupt political system, subversion of the educational culture, hostility to religion, a media oligarchy, and the epidemic of drugs and illegitimacy and abortion and crime and the dissolution of the family unit.

Christians (some Christians) more than other groups recognize this slide. They have clarity about the slippery slope down which we have slid. They recognize that God is the source of our deliverance. But too many of us, I am sorry to say, stop short of spiritual consistency and the proper Biblical responses God clearly requires of us.

Many times have I heard Christians pray, “Lord, send a revival to this land.”

In similar (micro-version) pleadings, I have heard Christians pray, “Lord, bring my [son, daughter, spouse] to faith in You.”

I have heard Christians pray, “Lord, hear our prayers for world peace.”

… and a thousand similar prayers. “Lord, hear our prayers.” I know such prayers because I occasionally have prayed them myself. And I remind you that I stipulated at the beginning that I know God is sovereign. He can do anything. But so can we do things!

Even the examples in the Bible where God spared a people, or a city, or an individual, it never came without a “lesson” for then and for now – punishment, banishment, exile, scars like thorns in the flesh or a lame leg, scattered diaspora, rejection by friends. Forgiven, yes; but seldom what we would call a “pass.” Should God reward our sins?

Do you want revival in this nation? Pray for it… but work for it.

Do you want a loved one come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ? Pray for it… but work for it.

Do you want world peace? Pray for it… but work for it.

Prayer is not a magic incantation. God hears what we want, but what we need is a different matter. God does not stand up straight and salute, in response to our orders. It should be rather the opposite.

There is a middle ground between Mercy and Vengeance – in humanity’s actions, not only God’s responses. It is Justice. And God’s Justice, especially in America at this time in our history, is something we should fear!

The only “pass” we can ever receive from a Just and Merciful God, is the forgiveness forged at Calvary. Even that was not free – technically not a “pass” – because it was purchased at a fearful price, the death and resurrection of the Messiah. By that pattern, everything we pray for, everything, must be subject to the Will of God, not presuming to write the script for His response.

We have a role, after all, in the desires of our own hearts. It is a matter of Justice that we exercise that role; and we should expect Justice, never whining for a “free pass,” from the Lord in response.

+ + +

Click: To God Be the Glory: My Tribute

6-10-19

It is hard to hear the voice of God when we are stressed.

This is something most of us know, especially in these days when stress is blamed – probably correctly – for myriad ills from emotional problems to actual physical afflictions. It is the epidemic of contemporary life in many societies.

My son-in-law Norman McCorkell recently delivered a sermon on this message. At moments of high stress, we can not only miss the wisdom of God, but the words of those around us, and even that “still, small voice” of our own convictions. Stress can be like the moon in a full eclipse, blotting out the sun.

There is a frequent reaction among the faithful who occasionally feel abandoned that God has grown distant. Well, He does not grow distant – we move; He doesn’t – but when stress somehow keeps us from hearing God, the problem is not God’s voice, and maybe not even our internal “ears”… but our eyes.

We can seek God, not only in prayer, but by reading His Word.

It is human nature (which we must try to fight) that we seek God less when things are going well. When challenges, problems, crises – stress – comes, then we despair. Do we blame God? We pray and seek Him in those times.

If that is true, then short of physical sickness, should we not think, or fear, that God might allow those things, even stress, to cross our path… if that is a trigger for us getting closer to Him? It should make us shiver.

My late wife Nancy used to say that the devil is not really after our minds. After all, through life we believe this and that, learn and forget things, follow old or new theories. But the devil is after our hearts. He hates us not because we have pulses, but according to the amount of Jesus that exists in our hearts.

Head-knowledge is nothing when compared to heart-belief.

When your heart is serene, you will find that frustration over “hearing” the voice of God, or of friends, or of your own feelings, is less demanding.

And. Less. Stressful.

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Click: Till the Storm Passes By

6-3-19

You have heard the question a hundred times in your life, asked by anguished parents or victims, from wise-guy atheists to anti-religious bigots.

Maybe you have asked it yourself at times.

The quick answer is that mankind has chosen sin and rebellion – distilled as evil. Whether you believe in the literal account of the Garden, and Adam and Eve; or people’s individual free will and exercise of liberty in our daily lives, every human being commits evil. To a greater or lesser extent? Surely, but… we permit evil in the world, because we all exercise it.

The deeper – but just as profound – response is that God is not the culprit. He is the answer, but not the source. None of us is God, so we should stop drawing up a to-do list for Him, or scribble out a better Job Description.

If He gives His children free will; and we, His children, choose to transgress… that is why there is sin, and evil, in the world.

You think He should create a place where sin and evil do not exist? He has created such a place: Heaven. In the meantime we live on earth, and our job descriptions include serving God by serving our fellow men and women. By avoiding sin and evil, sharing God’s love, and telling of forgiveness in Christ.

Perhaps you are impatient, or virtually so, waiting for Heaven. Do you realize that we are slightly above the angels? Angels cannot experience redemption, or forgiveness, or the glories of a born-again life. No angel can know what it means to sing “Amazing Grace.”

There is a more logical question – more pertinent, more pressing – than How can God permit evil in the world?

I suggest to you that asking this question frames the spiritual challenge in the clearest terms:

How can My children, with all things I do permit and gift them with – the sacrificial death of My Son; forgiveness; fellowship divine; My promise of eternal paradise – how is that My children still sin and rebel and reject Me every day?

Questions, questions. But that is one question to which we all have the answer.

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Click: Amazing Grace

5-6-19
There is a particular pitfall in Christianity, or rather the “walk,” the life, of Christians. Even sincere and fervent Christians – I would say maybe more so with dedicated believers.

It is a type of presumption, and is totally natural: our human nature. I am not talking about rebellion or faulty belief. Perhaps we can characterize it as total faith but imperfect understanding. Believers, acting by their human natures, sometimes tend to assume, or presume, to know what pleases God.

Is this a good thing? Usually. To address this pitfall has pitfalls itself, I know. Bear with me. I will paint an exaggerated picture; but I know it is true because I have fallen into this pit myself during my Christian walk.

Of course we want to please God. And He knows when we are in the Word; and not. He hears us when we pray; and when we don’t. He knows the burdens of our hearts; when we grieve and cannot pray well – we tell ourselves – the Bible assures us that the Holy Spirit groans in Heavenly languages before the Throne. Yet we pray, and we should, fervently, and we are promised in all these things that God hears the prayers of the righteous.

Have you ever prayed about a crisis – a nephew on death’s door; an unsaved loved one; an issue with your marriage, job, finances – and prayed something like, “Thank You, Lord, for hearing my prayer. Thank you for restoring my spirit. Thank you for the guidance that you will speak to me.”

What I mean is, have you ever prayed, in effect, “Thank You, God! I’ll take it from here”?

If we pray for a miracle… why take half of it back, before God even acts?

I shook my fist at heaven for all the hell that I’ve been through, Now I’m begging for forgiveness and a miracle from You.

We sometimes – maybe oftentimes – have the spiritual feeling that a good Christian just needs a little boost, some prayerful reinforcement, that “just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.” And then, all our training and Bible-reading can kick in.

I suggest that this attitude might be something we design to impress God… not beseech of Him. God wants our total mind, soul, and body… but not merely up to a point. He needs our total commitment, and total surrender. Especially in times of total trouble.

I’ve tried to fight this battle by myself, But it’s a war that I can’t win without Your help…

Let us consider, among many personal challenges, the example of alcoholism and the ravages it inflicts on people and families. I suggest that it is not wrong to ask God for “help,” “strength,” “understanding,” a family’s “patience,” a boss’s “forbearance,” and God’s “forgiveness.” Fervent prayer… even hundreds of prayers.

But, as long as we have God’s ear, so to speak, how many of us pray for a miracle – beyond, say, receiving one more chance from a spouse; but the kind of miracle only God can enact. For instance, losing the desire? being freed from “those places”? waking up a New Creation? Not when you need more than a “fix”! When you need a miracle, not a break.

Once upon a time You turned the water into wine, And now, on my knees, I’m turning to You, Father: Could You help me turn the wine back into water?

Think, when you pray, to realize what is the nature of your Loving God, and all He wants for you… what He can do for you!

When you pray for miracles, be mindful not to pray for partial-miracles. You have taken it as far as you can go; He knows. Let Him take it from there!

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A song written and sung by T Graham Brown. Guest slideshow by a man who has lived this song:

Click: Help Me Turn This Wine Back Into Water

4-1-19

How do most of us prepare for Easter?

I am sorry to say that, often, in the same way we generally prepare for Christmas by buying presents and planning meals; and prepare for Thanksgiving by buying turkeys and inviting relatives. The arrival of Easter often is consumed by coloring eggs, dressing well for church, and deciding between lamb and ham.

Jesus prepared for Easter, although of course it was not called that in His day, in ways we know. Before His Incarnation, Father God prepared the way. The prophet Isaiah described it seven hundred years before Jesus’s birth:

Chapter 53: Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors….

Preparing for Easter. Seven hundred years earlier (in our own perspective, if we can imagine, that would be like two hundred years before the birth of Columbus), a Prophet of God described Jesus, even to whether He was handsome or not; His persecution and trial; and how He would die. And why.

But there was a prophecy that was closer in time to Jesus’s own day. We do not often connect it with Easter. From Luke chapter 2 –

The angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men….

There was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

And he came by the Spirit into the temple where the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, then Simeon took him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel….

Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;

Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

So. Isaiah foretold the Person of the Christ, and details of His life and death; angels announced His birth; the holy man Simeon explained the holiness and mission of the Messiah, with attendant violence and sacrifice.

But let us back up to the angels in the hills above Bethlehem. Tidings of great joy… referring to this baby who was certain to be unjustly persecuted, tortured, and executed? Tidings of great joy about a someone the Bible also calls a “Man of Great Sorrow”? Tidings of great joy about the person who will be “despised and rejected”… by God Himself?

Does this make sense at all? Especially to call it “joy”?

Praise God, it doesn’t make sense.

It is God’s way, however. He loved us so much – even when we were yet sinners – that He provided the ultimate pathway to find eternal life with Him. We cannot earn it ourselves.

We cannot earn it ourselves. Isaiah knew it; the angels knew it; Mary knew it; Simeon knew it; Jesus, of course, knew it.

Do you know it? Go thou and prepare for Easter.

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Click: Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?