Everett and Jackson

The other night our Christmas Eve "crowd" included a couple of families with little guys.  In one family, Dad was holding Jackson (who's maybe about 3 years old) on one knee and a lit candle on the other while Jackson was sobbing because he wasn't being allowed to hold the candle - until he sobbed just hard enough to blow out the candle, which startled him into stunned silence!  Mom and Dad relit the candle, and all was fine.

Then there was Everett, just a year old, who knows how to say "OH-oh!" and was saying it at the end of every hymn and carol.  Well, he doesn't know "Amen" yet, but "out of the mouths of babes will come praise" and I think he just wanted us to know he didn't want us to stop!  In the meantime, he was saying "Oh-oh" loud enough for everyone to hear, and everyone took it in stride with grins and chuckles all throughout.  

I love it when even the littlest ones are paying attention in worship!  That's life in the family of God at it's most fun.

Our "Grief-Illiterate Culture"

In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Maria Shriver made a comment about our "grief-illiterate culture" that gave us pause.  My wife and I thought that was an interesting and pretty accurate observation.  While there are still some pockets in our society that seem to know what to do about grief and mourning, most of our 21st century American culture seems to be a vast wasteland when it comes to dealing with grief and loss.

We don't know how to deal with the emotions that come with grief.  We're taught to buck up, to shake it off, that big girls don't cry and that boys certainly don't.  When we see a person at a time of intense grief who is not crying, we say "he's holding up well"; when they cry we say "she broke down."

We think reason fixes everything.  So we come with lame explanations,  pitiful comments, measly excuses for comfort that do no good.  In truth, nothing can fix the loss or cure the grief.  It will likely always be there for the person whose loss it is, but over time they will discover their own ways to look at it, to come to terms with it, and perhaps even to embrace it.

It's not our grief, so we move on quickly.  Like driving past a man standing on the roadside with a cardboard sign "Homeless Vet," we may feel a twinge of pity for him for a moment but our own plans and commitments quickly put him in our rearview mirror.  We attend the wake or the funeral and quickly move on, expecting the grieving person to do the same and are surprised when they don't.

I think we respond to grief this way because we don't understand that grief is a holy place, a sacred space.  It is a place where people meet God, or they don't meet Him.  It is a place where they are angry with Him, or they are comforted by Him.  It is a place where they hate Him, or they know His love for them.  It is a place where they wrestle with Him, or they nestle into Him.  Grief is the Jabbok River to which each of us comes eventually (Genesis 32), and some fear crossing it more than they do crossing the Jordan.

But whether in our anger, our hate, our wrestling; our being comforted, our being loved, our being nestled; our meeting God or our not meeting God, grief is still a prime place where all this happens.  Certainly we can encounter God in other places and at other times; but when our defenses are down, our props are washed away, our self-structure is shattered, our composure has decomposed - these are the places where God comes to meet us.  These are the most sacred spaces of life for those who are in them.

The Great Lie

My Message from our Prayer Vigil this evening

In days like these, following terrible and unfathomable tragedies like this shooting in Connecticut, one of the things we try to do is to understand a bit of what has happened.  Hundreds of news clips, sound bites, interviews, articles, and special reports break in at all hours and on all media to bring us the latest in somebody’s effort to make sense out of the senseless.  Eventually, Christian and non-Christian alike are confronted by the question (often asked in anger, without any real desire for clarity), How could God let something so terrible happen?

There are certain background assumptions behind this question, assumed by both Christians and non-Christians (although Christians take them to be true, while non-Christians take them to be false and just assume them to be true for the sake of argument).  These assumptions are:

1.       The world is basically a decent place.

2.       People are basically good.

3.       God is basically good.

4.       God is Sovereign (which means, He rules the whole world).

Now, when any evil thing happens (like the shootings this weekend), there are a number of possibilities.  Let’s consider them by number:

1a.     The world is basically a rotten place.  We should not be surprised when bad things happen, but rather when good things happen.

2a.     People are basically evil.  I’ve often said you have to teach kids how to be good, but they know how to be bad all by themselves. 

However, in general people don’t want to buy into either of these statements.  They prefer them in their original form, because life is a lot less scary and a lot more comfortable that way.  They also like 3 and 4, but modified a bit in these ways:

3a.     God is basically a good God; He just has trouble keeping track of things (particularly the evil ones).

4a.     God is basically a Sovereign God; therefore, “everything happens for a reason” that He hasn’t told us yet.

Here’s where all of these fall down – none of them account for the fact that there are more players on this field than you and God!  Yet when something bad happens, we try to figure it all out based on our own ideas while ignoring some basic Biblical thoughts, like these:

5.       Satan is a major player in this game, too.

6.       In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s promise to Adam and Eve was that if they ate the fruit of the tree they would “be like gods, knowing good and evil.”

7.       Since that time, all humanity has been infected by sin in general and this one in particular – that we like to think we are like God in this one respect, that we now “know good and evil.”

8.       To put it more specifically, when a tragedy happens, we want to claim this promise that because we are now like God we should get to know, to understand, where the good and the evil are in it.

9.       What we consistently fail to realize is that the promise to “be like God” and to “know good and evil” is the promise of Satan, not God!  We also know from the Bible that Satan is the father of lies, and therefore cannot be trusted to keep his promises the way we expect they should be kept.  And so, the result is that

10.     When a tragedy happens and we want to understand, we have fallen right into Satan’s trap of lies!

The better option is this:  get out while you can!  Forget understanding!  Hang on to grief, even to anger if you need to – but hang on to Christ even more closely.  Hang onto His cross, where He bore our pain and sorrow, our wounds and stripes.  Hang onto His nail-pierced hands and feet, no matter what happens!  Forget understanding – “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but Blessed be the Name of the Lord” – and just cling to Him in worship.  Thy Kingdom come!

Jesus Christ, My Coping Mechanism?

My wife and I saw "Flight" last night.  R-rated for a multitude of reasons (actually, only two - one right away, and then the second one repeated a multitude of times throughout the movie by multiple characters, if you get my drift), so I'm not recommending it from the pulpit.  However, there were lots of interesting scenes in this movie, like this one:

After the plane crash, the co-pilot is in a medically-induced coma for several days.  His legs were crushed in the crash, his pelvis was shattered, and he may never walk again, let alone fly.  After he's been out of the coma a day or two, the older pilot comes to visit him in the hospital.  At first the young co-pilot sounds angry at all that has happened to him, but then his face changes and brightens and he says "but God preordained all this."  He talks glowingly about how this was God's plan, and he knows that God will make everything to be good for those who love Him.  Meanwhile, at his bedside his young wife can be heard saying "Praise Jesus" now and again.  What a nice Christian couple!

And yet there's something incredibly phony about the two of them.  I began to suspect it with his conversation, but she nailed it for me.  Here it is:  Jesus is not the Savior of this "nice Christian couple" so much as He is their Coping Mechanism.  You can tell this by the tone in her voice and the expression on her face when she says "Praise Jesus."  The tone is anything but praiseful and hopeful; the expression holds nothing but grim determination and anger.  She's almost choking out the words "Praise Jesus."  

Her husband's explanation that his injuries were part of God's grand design comes after we see a glimpse of his anger at them.  It's almost as if he vents for a bit, then tries to push that anger back inside and whitewash it with this pious makeover.  

Most of the movie is about alcoholism and addiction in other characters; but in this little scene it struck me that this couple uses Jesus like the others use alcohol or drugs.  They use Him so they don't have to deal with the difficulties of life.  They cover up the anger they're ashamed of with false praise.  They sidestep the painful certainty that the husband's injuries would cause almost anyone else to cry out "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" by numbing it with the dogmatic explanation that "this was God's plan."  

I just have this feeling that while this couple may have seen Jesus on the cross from across the valley, they never actually made it to Calvary.  I doubt that they've smelled the sweat, heard the blood as it dropped to the ground or the harsh breathing from His dried-out mouth;  I doubt that they've touched the cross or the whip or the nail or heard Him really cry out "Why has Thou forsaken me?"  Perhaps if they had they would not be so quick to gloss over their troubles with the paintbrush of "God had this planned."  Perhaps they would instead cry and rage and scream and feel as abandoned as Jesus on the cross, and then like the thief on Calvary look up, see Him next to them, and say "Lord, remember me in Your kingdom."  It's His promise "Today you will be with me in Paradise" that they really need, not "this is all according to plan."  

By the way, a bit earlier in the movie, when the airplane crashes in a field just beyond a small country church where the believers are gathered to worship, after a moment of stunned silence and terror we can see them rushing into the burning wreckage, wearing their white choir robes and all, and pulling out passenger after injured passenger and leading them to safety on the green pasture around them.  Apparently no lectures from these Christians about "the plan of God"; just the Christian actions that said "these people will perish if we don't go get them."  That's the kind of Savior Jesus is.

Uncomfortable Companions

I just happened to notice that "Inherit the Wind" was on TV yesterday afternoon, so I stopped to watch it for a while.  Besides being a great classic movie, it's got awesome performances by Spencer Tracey and Frederic March and even an awesomely uncharacteristically greasy and weaselly performance by Gene Kelly.  Here's the scene I caught:

On a certain level, this film is about people of faith being confronted by something they perceive as a threat not only to their belief system but to their way of life.  They respond with fear; they pass laws against the threat; they get whole communities worked up about it.  The premise is, I guess, that if they let this threat continue it will likely destroy them.

Which now brings up some other questions.  Are they not confident that their beliefs are strong enough to survive such attacks?  Are they afraid because they've never been tested?  (How would the Three Little Pigs have known if their houses were wind-worthy if the Big Bad Wolf had never come along?)  Are they afraid of what might happen to them if it turns out their beliefs are not quite what they thought they might be?

Yes, people of faith need to be on guard.  Yes, Christians need to watch out for false teachers and unclean spirits.  But not every teacher who brings something new out of his storehouse is a false teacher, and not every teacher whose work is accompanied by an unfamiliar spirit is in league with Beelzebub.  Just ask Jesus!

Purity is good, and ought to be pursued.  And yet - pure iron is strong, but iron alloyed with carbon is stronger (it's steel!). I don't think it would be amiss for people of faith to take careful, faith-filled looks at some ideas that might be out of their "comfort zone" and ask "if I accept this idea, how might that make my faith stronger?"  

Not all companions on the journey are the most comforting.  Sometimes they are the ones that make us uncomfortable, but stronger because of it.

Praying for All the Saints

Please take a look at Dr. John Byron's post over at The Biblical World on Pray Continually, then please read on.

The Biblical World: Pray Continually: Thoughts on Praying with the Chu...: I noted yesterday that I was posting some of the application material from my commentary on 1 & 2 Thessalonians. I am doing this to get ...

I just today was preaching on Ephesians 6:10-20 ("put on the full armor of God") and noted that there are really only two things that Saint Paul tells us to do once we have all that armor on.  One is to "take your stand."  The other is to "pray for all the saints (and, oh yes, for Paul, too)."

He doesn't ask us to commit portions of our time, treasure, or talent for the work of the church.

He doesn't ask us to go out and knock on doors, walk across a room, ask two questions of our neighbors.

He doesn't ask us to do miracles, to hold potlucks, to have fellowship events, to conduct VBS.

He says that with that armor on we can / should do two things "take your stand" and "pray for all the saints."

But why is praying for all the saints so hard?  Why is that last on the list of what churches do?  Why is that never on the Strategic Plan or the Mission Statement?

Is it really because it's too hard?  Or is it because it just doesn't seem like we're doing much, just sitting there with our hands folded and our eyes closed and our heads bowed?  Does it seem like we haven't accomplished anything by the time we're done, like we have nothing to show for the hour we spend in prayer?

Is the reason why it is so hard for us to "pray for all the saints" that we're just too busy trying to bring order to our own corner of the universe that we can't be bothered with someone else's - even the one who invites us to call Him "Father"?

Is it because we really don't care about the other saints after all?  

Or is it just because we're all overstimulated, hyper-aroused, and attention-deficient from everything in life to do something like pray?

I don't know the answers to any of these; I just wonder.

A Christian Faces Death

We had just moved to Lodi when word came of the death of Joseph Cardinal Berardin of Chicago from cancer. In his last days and in our last days in Chicago those who had ears to hear learned much from him about how a Christian might face death.  Now we have another such opportunity, which I pass on to you here (click on this link):

Cardinal George looks to God as second cancer fight begins :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Spiritual Shopping

In a guest column in our local paper last week, the author quite rightly was bringing to the attention of the churches a neglected close-to-home ministry field - residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities.  She was on target in pointing out that foreign mission trips, servant events, and other exotic service projects like working at food banks sparkle in the eyes of many Christians looking for ways to serve others, but we tend to overlook the folks who live in the nursing home down the street who need our love, our care, and our serving just as much.  I thank her for bringing these folks to our attention once again.

And yet . . . well, here is her first paragraph, verbatim:

I awoke to a bright sunny Sunday morning, feeling good about myself and looking forward to honoring my God at one of the many churches in Brunswick.  I say many because in the 10 years I have lived in Brunswick, I have yet to settle on one particular church.  Each of the six churches I frequent offer something that feeds a part of my soul but not any one can offer everything.

Hmmmm, I thought as I read this.  Here is a consummate comparison consumer.  Apparently she attends one church to meet one segment of her needs, another to meet another segment, etc.   I wonder - is there a particular church she attends when she's "feeling good about herself" and another she attends when she's "not feeling so good about herself"?



And the more I thought about her column, the more I wondered some other things - 

• How many people in our society use churches this same way, the way we choose between WalMart and KMart and StuffMart, depending on who has the best deals that week?

• How many Christian people have gone beyond a personal relationship with God to privatizing that relationship?  How many Christian people call Him "my" God with a sense of exclusiveness, even pride of ownership?

• How many Christian people can't see, or don't want to see, the body of Christ assembled in any particular place, worshiping and honoring the Triune God (not just "my" God) but also receiving from Him grace and mercy and love and forgiveness?  How many pass right by the body as it struggles and grieves and mourns, like the priest and the Levite on the road to Jericho, because they do not want to recognize the body?  How many deprive themselves of the comfort of the Sacraments (especially the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper) because they do not, as Saint Paul said, "recognize the body" not only in the Bread, but the Body gathered to eat the bread?

• How many Christian people call the church to task for its shortcomings from a position of smugness rather than a position of humility?

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I suspect that an answer to each one of them is "more than a handful."  But my charge as pastor of the church that I serve is to care for the Christians who are here - who recognize the body, who don't always feel good about themselves, who share the God who loves them and share His love with each other, who crave the comfort of the Sacrament and its forgiveness, who commit themselves not only to an hour on Sunday morning every so often but to repeating that hour week after week, season after season, and building relationships within the church in so many other ways.

If the author of the above article were to visit our church, we'd welcome her.  If she chooses ours to be one of the six or seven she shops at, we'd still love her.  But we'd know that even while she's shopping to find just what she thinks her soul wants, she's starving that same soul of everything our blessed Jesus has to give her.

Allan R. Bevere: Some Thoughts on the Chick-Fil-A Food Fight

Allan Bevere is on the faculty at Ashland Theological Seminary.  His thoughts from his blog offer a worthwhile thinking-point.

Allan R. Bevere: Some Thoughts on the Chick-Fil-A Food Fight: There was Chick-fil-A appreciation day yesterday in support of the restaurant and traditional marriage, and tomorrow there will be gay an...

I Must Have Missed It . . .

. . .  so the week has gone by without me either eating or not-eating a chicken sandwich.  Neither was I paying much attention to the Olympics, nor to trying to explain the unexplainable evil in Colorado, nor to ever-present political commercials in our lovely swing state of Ohio.  Instead, . . . 

. . . I was contemplating a sermon for this coming Sunday on how Saint Paul can have the nerve to put pen to paper and write to the Ephesians "there is only one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all" and intend it for us, too, as my congregation comes together as individuals this Sunday and is melded into One by the Holy Spirit . . . 

. . . I was rejoicing over last weekend's Vacation Bible School when our kids and adults, oblivious to anything else in the news, came together for the weekend to enjoy one another's company, learn something about Jesus, and play hide-and-seek with Him . . . 

. . .  I was having a heart-wrenching conversation with a father who's wrestling with how he can help his adult son overcome his addictions . . . 

. . . I was having more conversations about a new grandma whose newborn grandson is in NewBorn Intensive Care with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (withdrawal from his mother's drug abuse) . . .

. . . I was having yet another conversation with a local counselor about how we can work together to help individuals in our area . . . 

. . . I was having still another conversation with other counselors and  Formational Prayer Caregivers about how we can help others learn to pray for healing for many . . . 

. . . I was refinishing a small crucifix I had found at a little antique mall . . . 

. . . I was doing a lot of other stuff, too, that had no political nor professional ramifications.

So I must have missed it - whatever it was that people were supposed to be celebrating or protesting, standing up for or shouting out against the other day.  I must have missed it.  So please just let me ask this one question:

"How are things between you and Jesus these days?"

Hide and Seek and Gummi Fish

This is Mimi.  She's making a fishy-face for our Vacation Bible School "Rocky-Point Lighthouse."  Normally she pretends to be pretty shy when she's at church, but she loosened up at VBS.


Last year in May I was blogging about Mimi's tendency to call me "Jesus" and how I was kind of awed by that, wondering how I could fill those shoes.  This year I think Jesus and I are in a better place with our relationship:


While the other kids were playing kickball in the field, Mimi came up to me, put her little hand in mine and said, "Come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!"  I smiled a big smile, and next thing you know I was counting to ten by a big tree while she was running off in delight to hide behind another tree in the yard.  (Pretty soon there were about a half-dozen other giggling kids hiding while I was counting and seeking them - behind the trees, in the trees, behind the shrubs.)  But when Mimi said this to me, my immediate thought was, "Wouldn't Jesus love it when a child comes up to him and just simply says, 'come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!'  I bet he'd be smiling from ear to ear while he finds a tree to count by."


Later, during snack time, Mimi gave me a couple of her gummi fish.  This was a big deal for her and me, because it was the first time she spontaneously shared anything with me.  Cool, I thought.  These are yummy gummies.  But later, when our Director was asking the kids during one of the program segments if they had done anything to "Shine God's Light" with somebody else that day, Mimi said "I shared my gummi fish with Jesus."  Again, a huge smile on my face as I thought, "Wouldn't Jesus be delighted with a child who shares her gummi fish with him?"  In fact, we jump so quickly to the miracle of dividing a few small fish and some loaves of bread among five thousand people - but what if the part that the adults leave out of the narrative is the smile and the joy of Jesus that the child would share their (gummi) fish with him?


And what if Jesus is just waiting for you (or me) to come up to Him and say "come on, Jesus, let's play hide and seek!" or "Here, Jesus, have some of my gummi fish"?  Nothing more - but nothing less!  - than that.  What if?


Of such is the Kingdom of God.

No such thing as a coincidence?

Today our organist at Christ the King and I were meeting to plan worship for the next several months. In a few weeks the assigned Epistle lesson for the lectionary series we're using will be from Ephesians 5, "wives, submit yourselves to your husbands . . . husbands, love your wives."  As we looked at hymn possibilities to go with this text, I called up a worship resource from the Lutheran Church of Australia that I consult frequently because they have good suggestions and ideas.  For some of the Sundays in July and August, though, their lectionary is a week off from ours, so the week we're reading Ephesians 5 they're reading Ephesians 6 ("put on the whole armor of God").


Of course, the good old Lutheran hymn that was suggested first on their list was "Fight the Good Fight with All Thy Might."  Think we'll sing that with Ephesians 5, too.

A letter to my friends

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,


This past weekend I was at the convention of our SELC District of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod along with other pastors, lay delegates, and friends.  We all appreciated the opportunity to connect with other folks in our part of the Body of Christ in fellowship and love, and to work on the mission of the church together – and to have fun together!


For the past 15 years I have been privileged to serve as the Second Vice-President of our District.  In that office I’ve been to board meetings, conventions and conferences.  I’ve made some presentations and written a few papers.  I’ve met with pastors and congregations in a variety of circumstances.  In these experiences I hope I have grown personally and professionally.


However, this year I decided not to allow my name to stand for nomination for any of the offices of our District.  It’s a decision that has been several years in the making, but it is the right one.  Over the last several years I find my heart drawn more and more to the needs of pastors in our District, and my growing desire to minister to them more directly than I could as an officer of the District.  For example, two pastors very near to us lost their mothers in this past year, and both these single men were sole caregivers for them – one of these pastors was an only child besides.  While they have some support systems around them, they also need the friendship of other pastors.  That’s the kind of ministry I’m talking about.


So although I will not be serving our District in any official capacity at this time, I plan to work more closely and intently with our pastors.  I am already doing so with some other folks through the ministry of the Institute for Formational Prayer at Ashland Seminary, and this step will make this ministry to the pastors of our District more intentional.


In the Name of Jesus and in His service,


Chris Cahill

Holy Spirit

As we get close to Pentecost this coming Sunday, here's a little story of how the Holy Spirit works in my life - gently, and over a long period of time!


A week ago I signed up for Wycliffe Bible Translators' Bibleless People's Prayer Project, in which I agreed to pray for a specific people group that does not yet have God's Word in their own language.  Wycliffe will send email updates, etc., to let me know how the translation work is going, and I will pray for the people, translators, and everyone involved.  Pretty cool!  


Part of the deal was that WBT would assign a particular people group to me, without any choice or preference on my part.  That's OK with me - I'm willing to pray for whomever the Holy Spirit guides them to assign to me.  Today I received notice that I have been asked to be praying for the Gusan people of Papua New Guinea (PNG), a people group in the mountains of central New Guinea, and I am delighted to do that.



Now for the Holy Spirit.  When I was a seminary student almost 35 years ago my wife and I went through a season of exploring whether or not we should head for parish ministry or for a mission field.  We had some conversations with some missionaries and the Missions Department at the headquarters of The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, but ultimately decided that because of our children we would stay here in the US.  That was OK, and we have had no regrets or second-guesses about that decision, BUT - for whatever reason (the Holy Spirit?), when asked about the mission field we might like to enter my heart and mind were drawn toward Papua New Guinea!  Though we've never gone there, there's always been a bit of a tug in my heart and spirit for the people of PNG and the Gospel in that land.


Now I see that the Holy Spirit has been in this for all these years, and has not entirely let me go.  I still don't know whether I'll ever get to PNG in person, but that I can pray for a remote people and language group there - that can only be His work!


Thanks be to God!

And then there are Heroes . . .

Time for me to weigh in on The Avengers, I guess.  


In case you didn't know, the evil threatening the world this time comes in the person of Loki, brother of Thor of Asgard, who wants to rule everything (sound familiar?).  So a secret government agency assembles a team of heroes with no particular superpowers (except for one) to stop Loki and save the world (with me so far?).  The team is Captain America, a guy with enhanced physical capabilities and dressed in red, white and blue; Iron Man, just another guy but also a technological genius who has invented a suit in which he can fly around and shoot things; Hawkeye, another guy with exceptional eyesight and a high-tech bow and arrow; the Black Widow, a ramped-up female James Bond; the above-mentioned Thor (who does have some "super powers"); and, oh yes, the Hulk.  And a guy with an eyepatch who brings them all together to fight the evil Loki.  And guess what?  after lots of flying about and smashing things (including each other), our heroes actually defeat the evil Loki while leaving the door open for the next Avengers movie.


So who's my favorite character in this hero-ridden adventure?  None of the above.  I nominate the following:  Agent Phil Coulson, just a guy with no particular powers or exceptional abilities at all, except that he believes that fighting evil to save the world is worth giving everything for, even his life; and the nameless old German man in the town square who refuses to kneel at the command of the evil Loki because he remembers what happened when the German people knelt to a previous evil.  Another guy with no particular powers, exceptional abilities, exciting fight scenes; a guy who isn't killed on the spot because the Avengers save him in the nick of time; a guy who's kind of old and not very attractive and doesn't even have a name.  But this is a guy who knows that freedom means NOT bending the knee to evil, even in the face of death.  That guy is my favorite character of this movie, and a real hero as far as I'm concerned.

Paul's thorn in the Flesh Revealed!!

With a great many more thanks to John Byron and Jonathan Robinson!  (See John Byron's blog on my blog list, to the right)

Holy Spirit (again)

 Last year (see "Highlight", March 24, 2011) I posted a note about a chickadee that came right up to me while I was filling the birdfeeder and just watched me with interest and curiosity for a while.  At that time I commented on the possibility that somehow the Holy Spirit was present in that moment, and I still associate chickadees with Him.

This spring we've had a number of chickadees around the feeders, of course, but one in particular is a frequent visitor.  He tends to flutter around our big patio door, tapping on it with his beak and beating on it with his wings.  He sure wants to get into our house, but there's no way I'm going to let him in because that would definitely not be good for either him or for us.

But that's the chickadee I'm talking about.  This little drama, repeated again and again for weeks, is causing me to think about my own relationship with the Holy Spirit.  Is there a place in my life where He's knocking to get in, and I'm not opening to let Him in?  Is it because I think it wouldn't be good for either of us if He got into that place in my life?  I hope that I'm at the point where I know that it would really be great if I opened all the windows of my life and let the Holy Spirit come into any one He wants, at any time He wants, and do what He wants when He comes in; but I also realize that there are probably places I haven't yet opened up to Him, places where He's still knocking and I've been ignoring Him or worse, watching Him from the inside without doing anything.

Holy Spirit, show me where you are knocking, and give me the courage to open the windows and let you in!

I'm not sure what to make of this, . . .

. . . so I'll leave it up to you.  Thanks to oldest son Nate for passing this one along!

Overheard

I overheard this comment from Beth Moore as our ladies were working through one of her Bible studies in the room just outside my office today - "we tend to want to withhold forgiveness from somebody until we get what we want out of them." 


Wow.  How true!  Whether it's major crimes or little errors, isn't that the way it is with us?  Admit it - forgiveness delayed isn't really for the edification of the offender, it's for our own satisfaction.  Yes, sometimes the sting of the offense is still so sharp that it will take a little time to heal enough to forgive - but that is not this.  This is delaying forgiveness so you can watch the offender squirm.  This is so you can have some control over them.  This is so you can feel that your hurt feelings are justified.  This is so you can make him beg.


And this is not how God deals with us.  In fact, when we withhold forgiveness it's like we've stuck a scarlet letter on them, big and bold for all to see.  Except God doesn't see that scarlet letter when He looks at them.  And if you try to point it out to Him, He'll just say, "Oh, that letter.  That's over here - on the cross where Jesus nailed it - and there it will stay forever."

Roses

Here's Ed Crankshaft and his daughter Pam talking about her mother-in-law Rose, who looked at the addition Pam and her husband are building onto their house for Rose to live in and said, "So how's my prison coming?"  Pam has been in a funk over this for several days, and here's Ed's comment.


People like Rose are often the most difficult ones to minister to.  There doesn't seem to be any room for hope in their lives.  No matter what you say or how you pray, there's always a reason it won't work.  No matter how much you say that God loves them, they'll insist that you can't be talking about them.  They'll amass all kinds of evidence and reasons why it can't be true, and why you're wasting your time trying.  


Sometimes you feel like giving up.  Sometimes you figure it's just not worth your time and effort.  Sometimes you want to say "Even Jesus said there are times you shake the dust off your feet and move on."  And sometimes, like Ed Crankshaft here, you just learn to live with them and not take it personally.


And sometimes, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, you keep going.  By the gift of the Holy Spirit, you keep loving them.  You keep inviting, you keep welcoming, you keep opening your arms.  Like the Prodigal Father, you run out to the road multiple times everyday to look for them so you can welcome them home.  And even though some of these Roses are only across the road and not completely out of sight, "across the road" is still a world away for them.  You call and invite and plead, and they still don't come.  It breaks your heart, you Prodigal Father, but you do it anyway because that's who you are called to be - that's who Jesus has made you to be.  


And you keep doing it because when they do cross the road and come home, you know why the angels are rejoicing.

Comes Praise

I'm telling the following story without permission, but . . . 

Two-year-old Cammie is one of the youngest members of our church.  She's in the front row every Sunday with her parents, and has been pretty much since the day she was born.  She munches her cereal, plays peek-a-boo with the people behind them, watches me walk around in the chancel.  Her parents bring her to the Communion rail for a blessing when Communion time comes.  Everybody in our church knows Cammie.

At Gramma's house for New Year's Dinner, Cammie passed the bowl of applesauce to Gramma and solemnly intoned, "Gramma, take and eat!"  When Gramma and the rest of the family asked where she heard that from, Cammie simply said, "Pastor."

 As far as I'm concerned, Cammie can keep coming to the Communion rail, she can keep sitting in the front row, she can keep playing peek-a-boo, she can keep watching me walk around in the chancel.  As Moses once said, "Oh, that all of God's people could prophesy!"

Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the Kingdom of God. - Jesus

In The Lord's Year 2012

This day that the rest of the world calls New Year's Day is also the Eighth Day of Christmas (cue Maids a-Milking).  On this day, the eighth day of the human life of God's Son, his parents took Him to the Temple to be circumcised and to be named Jesus, the name the angel commanded them to give Him before He had been conceived (Luke 2:21).

Although this important occasion in the life and ministry of Jesus is mostly obscured by other celebrations, resolutions, parades, and football games, there is something wondrous about this New Year's Day being Jesus' Name Day, something interesting about it falling on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, this year.

I'd like to suggest that this presents an opportunity to forget about silly resolutions and go with something completely different:  as Jesus received His Name on this day, and as we begin the year 2012 with His Name-Day on this Lord's Day, let us resolve to spend the year a little old-school and remember that the years were once designated with the initials A.D., meaning in the Lord's year.  How about a resolution that 2012 will be The Lord's Year in everything?  In all that we say or do, wherever we go and wherever we are, let this be The Lord's Year.  Let all our waking and sleeping, all our conversation, every day and night and week and month all be done with the knowledge that this is The Lord's Year 2012.

And let's see what the Lord does for us in this Year of His.