Setting the melting pot to boil over.

Forcing our pagan neighbors to live in our version of a Judeo-Christian society is not the same thing as bringing the gospel of Jesus to a hurting and broken world.

While not opposed to the creation of just laws--quite the opposite actually--it seems to me we have traded the messy and time consuming business of loving and serving our neighbor with trampling over them and ignoring them and circumventing them to politically lord it over them.

This strategy is not only lazy, born of anger, unloving; it not only opposes the message of the Gospel, of the Savior who loves them and emptied himself of all power and authority over them in order to serve them by dying for them, i fear that it will create instead the very backlash of rage that will lead to our undoing. At least in the manner of living we've come to take for granted.

The church will stand until Christ's return, that is a given promise, sure and unshakeable, but under what dire circumstances may she have to exist? And how many of those will be easily traceable to our own failure to follow our Savior's lead?

(almost too many reference scriptures to put here, just read your Bible but how many can you think of?)

"Rest before serving." (a quote from a recipe)

Thanksgiving.

A sabbath of rest becomes a day of frantic toil.

A celebration of life becomes an obligation of duty.

Joy becomes anger.

Family becomes conflict.

Gratitude for what we have, what we have been given

becomes anxiety;

questions;

 over what we do not have;

where will the money come from;

you only 'worked' two days this week;

will the turkey be done on time.

Together becomes strife,

three people-

three different rooms.

A favorite holiday

becomes a source of pain.

i want to cry.

i want to scream.

i want to complain

on this day of Thanks.

i want to lament.

i want to be angry,

violently,

righteously,

angry.

It is stupid!

It is unfair!

It is a waste of the gifts we have been given!

It is poor use of the time we have been given!

It is unfaithful stewardship of the lives we have been given!

Gifts!

Given.

Thanks-giving.

You are the gift giver.

You are the covenant God.

Who made us your family.

Who married yourself to a people,

a bitter,

angry,

fearful,

ungrateful

people.

It makes me want to speak!

To sing!

To praise!

I want to give thanks to you, O God!

I want to be grateful!

i am too small for this test.

But where i am weak

You are stronger still.

Where hopelessness abounds,

Your grace is more.

When i lose faith

You are the greatest,

surest,

most faithful,

reliable,

hopeful hope!

Your promise is everlasting to everlasting!

Unbreakable.

Unshakeable.

Unfaked.

Fully baked.

Ready at the perfect time.

More than enough.

Overflowing.

Pressed down.

Settled.

Rested.

Joyous.

Sweet.

Salted with tears wept for me.

You have grieved over us.

You have danced over us.

You have sang over us.

You have died for us.

You live for us.

You love us.

Thank you!

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

The unmowed lawn.

(Warning: this might be poetry.  i'm not real sure.  For the record, i don't even have a lawn.)

Father, forgive me, i know not what to do.

i’m surrounded by work that needs to be done.  

There’s a gathering tsunami of work coming.

i hate what i do.

i want to do something else.

What should i work on?

i’m not an artist.

i’m not an illustrator.

i’m not a writer.

i won’t be a carpenter for much longer.

i won’t be much longer.  Maybe i’m half way through?  

i don’t know.  

Do you care what i do?

Do you care about me?

i know you love me.

i have all the proof i need in Jesus.

i know you know me, i have all the proof i need in your word.

So who am i to you?  What am i to you?

The breeze stirs the trees.  The leaves whisper but not in words.

i’m certainly not a poet.

Is it enough to just seek my next meal?  To delight in my toil and thank you?

What will i measure?  The day you set me on your scales?  What will my life weigh?  

When will i do all the things i have to do?

i think i’ll take out the garbage.

After i finish my tea.

What is a day worth?  How much time is wasted?

Is there time to spend an afternoon in thought?

How much is a thought worth?

If on one side there was a thought or a poem or a song

and on the other side of the scale, there was a mowed lawn

which would be heavier?

Which is greater?  Sweat or thought?

What if it’s a riding mower?  Is it worth more or less?

Which is the greater travesty?  And unwritten blogpost?  Or an unmown lawn?

What if the most noble thing i do today

is take the trash cans to the curb?

The tea’s gone.

The day’s gone.

The thoughts roll on.

A riddle revealed

The riddle of Samson to me is this, if Christ Jesus and Samson were in the same party, to which would we gravitate?  Who would we want to be more like?  Who’s attention would we want?  Samson was an apparent demi-god.  Jesus had no beauty that we may behold.  Both men could attract a crowd.  Both men could dispel one too.  i think Samson might exist to show us that even at our best, and more than our best, the best we could do is bring more death.  Samson couldn’t change his own heart much less ours.

“Out of the eater

something to eat.

From the strong

came something sweet.”

Samson carved out his own path.  He sought his own vengeance.  He didn’t purposely seek his own glory.  Contrary to popular opinion, an alpha male doesn’t have any need to push himself to the fore.  To gain reputation.  They are alpha males precisely because they are already fully assured of their own reputations and greatness.  They have looked around and judged themselves, rightly or wrongly, as superior to what they see.  So they need not listen to inferiors.  They have no equals.  They see no reason to do things to impress the lesser men because lesser men’s opinions do not matter to them.  No, the glory of hoi polloi could not give anything to him so why seek it?  Samson simply did what he wanted.  

But for all his greatness, this paragon of man, this tragic superhero, all his vaunted strength, all his cleverness, he could not beat death, the eater of all life, and he could not find love, the very sweetness and joy of living.  A superhero couldn’t save us.  A prophet who could call down fire from heaven could not save us.  A king after God’s own heart could not save us.  A law, a tabernacle, a temple, a priesthood could not save us.  “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Rom 7

“What is stronger than Death?

What is sweeter than Love?”

Jesus, the prophesied one who would deliver God’s people from the hand of Death, the chosen one of God, begotten, not created, who was with God and was God from before the beginning, everlasting to everlasting, chose to intermingle with his enemies.  On his way to arrange his marriage, the evil one attacks him and he repels him with nothing but the Word of God.  The strong man tied up he proceeds to do what His Father wanted and nothing else.  This alpha male didn’t need anyone to tell him who he was.  He knew what was in man’s heart.  He does not seek the adoration and praise of men, though it is his due.  Nor did he have to shy away from it when it was truly given, because it is his due.  He did not consider himself greater than anyone but made himself instead a slave to all.  Doing for them what they could not do for themselves.  He used all his power and his strength to obey his Father and save his people.  Those the Father had given to him.  He became Prophet, Priest, King and Superhero.  For he answered the riddle once and for all.  

Out of death, the eater of life,

something to eat, 

“This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that someone may eat from it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever.  And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  John 6

From the strong, and what is stronger than God?

came something sweet.

“…that he may grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (you having been firmly rooted and established in love), in order that you may be strong enough to grasp together with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, in order that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  Eph 3

“For while we were still helpless, yet at the proper time Christ died for the ungodly. For only rarely will someone die on behalf of a righteous person (for on behalf of a good person possibly someone might even dare to die), but God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, by much more, because we have been declared righteous now by his blood, we will be saved through him from the wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, by much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved by his life. And not only this, but also we are boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” Rom 5

Love came and love brought life.  And life everlasting.  Life abundant.  Life that flies in the face of Ecclesiastes.  Life above the sun.  If we live forever in Christ, then nothing we do for him is meaningless!  Death alone is meaningless for we are the resurrected.  God restores and adds to all we “lost”.  “For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us.” Rom 8  This alpha male is worth following.  This is the one we’ve been waiting for.  This is the one we are waiting for.  He wasn’t the hero we deserved.  He’s not even the hero we wanted, Thank God!  He’s the hero we need.  Place your hope in Him.

A riddle

Samson, the prophesied one who would begin to deliver God’s people from the hand of the Philistines, found a young lady among the Philistines he wanted to marry.  The chosen one of God, dedicated to Him from birth, chose to intermingle with his people’s enemies.  On his way to arrange the wedding, a lion attacks him and he kills it with his bare hands.  He tells no one.  This isn’t really a big deal to him.  A little while later when he travels the same road to his wedding feast, he turns aside to see the lion’s body.  To gloat over his past kills perhaps?  To relive the excitement?  Curiosity?  What he finds is bees have made a nest in the rotting carcass, in a dry and arid environment, after the scavengers have eaten it out, the skin probably made a pretty good tent for the industrious little stingers.  Without mention of smoker or protective clothing, Samson reaches in and scoops out some honey and goes along his merry way enjoying the unforeseen fruits of his God-given strength.  And it gives him an idea.  He makes a wager with his groomsmen, his party-goers on the first day of his seven day feast.  Solve my riddle and i’ll give you all new clothes.  Do not solve it, and you gotta get me a month’s worth of new clothes.  A princely closet that would be in an age when most folk probably had one outfit and one Sunday-go-to-meeting’s.  

The riddle:

Out of the eater

something to eat.

From the strong

comes something sweet.

For six days they try and fail.  Then they threaten to burn down Samson’s fiancé in her father’s house and she pesters Sammy into telling her the answer.  The next day, with what i can only imagine are the smuggest sneers of feigned innocence, the Philistine guests propose…

What is sweeter than honey?

What is stronger than a lion?

To say Samson is incensed is fair.  After a crude reference to their cheating and calling his fiancé a cow, he kills thirty Philistines (different ones) and takes their clothes and gives them to his former guests.  At least he honored the bet, i suppose.  Samson himself is a bit of a riddle to me.  He’s comic book material.  His is the kind of story that makes the Bible sound like myth.  He’s uncomfortable to our theology: a Nazirite of God from birth, who drinks (we assume) touches dead animals and even eats out of them, who holds God in his debt, arrogant, swaggering, disdainful, a carouser with foreign women and prostitutes, essentially the worst stereotype of Alpha Male Jock and yet God miraculously blesses him.  Why?  What’s going on here?  Is it as a demotivational poster Matt Colflesh shared with me has said, “It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”?  A morality play then?  

i highly doubt it and here’s why, it has the opposite effect.  When i said that Samson is uncomfortable to our theology, that’s pretty much the only people he offends, well, other than Philistines, is theologians.  Otherwise, he’s the guy we wish we could be, the jerk the girls want to be with, the guy who without boasting or hyperbole, simply knows he can take anybody and everybody in the room.  Not just a pretty face and rippling pectorals, he’s often the smartest guy in the room too.  He’s living life on his terms, bowing to nothing and no one.  He’s everything Fakebook tells us we should be, inwardly mocking all the lesser mortals when he deigns to think about them at all.  Even his death brings the house down!  “And the dead whom he killed in his death were more than he killed in his life.”  Epic!  Why aren’t there more movies about this guy?  He’s a marvel superhero!  Flawed, powerful, tragic, heroic and lucratively larger-than-cgi cinematic!

And that is the point.  What is stronger than a lion?  Samson was.  What is stronger than Samson?  Death.  For all his muscles, for all his cleverness, for all his independence, this apex of masculinity could not beat death.  

What is sweeter than honey?  How about love?  For all his muscles, for all his cleverness, for all his independence, what he kept searching for and never finding was love, loyal, lasting and true.  Everyone feared Samson, no one cared for him.  He “knew” many women, but none knew him.  

Seriously, why isn’t there more movies about him?  Isn’t this the human condition?  No matter what we achieve, no matter how great we become, no matter what glories we garner, battles we win, vengeance we strangle out with our own two bloody hands, we can not beat death, we cannot find true love.  Even his death did not free the Israelites from the Philistines.  They would come back, eventually even killing Israel’s first King, Saul and his sons.  So what was the point?  What did this pinnacle of human virility accomplish?

A fitting epitaph on his stone could have been Solomon’s, “Vanity, vapor, a chasing after of the wind.”  Or perhaps, “Mene, Mene. Tekel. Upharsin.”  

But God…

Why do you need?

“May he give to you your heart’s desire,

and your every plan may he fulfill.”  Psalm 20

Yesterday’s post may seem to say that God does not care about our physical needs, or perhaps a better term would be our temporal needs: emotional, physical, familial, financial needs which we accrue every day regardless of yesterday’s credits or debits but are completely cancelled out upon the day we lay our ledgers down and don’t get back up again.  Someone might level the accusation at me that, at least in my writing, i can be so spiritually minded as to be no earthly good.  How does knowing i need a savior help me with my anxiety?  What good is it to know God if i am locked in a struggle with management at work?  Where is the use in believing in my full pardon and peace with God if my home life is a warzone?  i am full of fightings within and without, where is my God?  Why has He forsaken me?  If God loves me so much, why am i going to bed hungry?  Why is cancer chewing up my child’s insides?  Why can’t i find work?  Why does nothing seem to ever work out for me?

Psalm 88, Job, Lamentations—our Scriptures, our Word of God, our Word from God to us about Him—are full of, filled on purpose with, heavy hitters of pain and woe and sorrow and shame and guilt and questions about why.  Why.  Why?  Why does God, who is so filled with compassion for us that He would become us and die our death for us to cancel all our debts to Him, then turn around and orchestrate, ordain and order our lives with so much misery, confusion and chaos?  So much empty space, silent dark halls connecting the all-too-few bright chambers of worship, celebration and joy?  For that matter, why is life purposely set up to be one long need?  We must breathe every minute, drink every few hours, eat every day, without shelter the earth itself will kill us, we must have human contact or we go mad, we must have work and not just any work but meaningful work or we lose all sense of worth and purpose, without trying or decision or ability to counteract we know all sorts of lack, holes form in our hearts when we do not have true friends, a family, hope for the future.  If our only true need is God, why would he create us as such obsessive bundles of need?

i don’t know.

But i think i can think of two reasons.  One, as inveterate, unaware and often incorrigible rebels to our Father in Heaven who loves us so well, we truly need a truly obvious and truly painful reminder of, well, our need.

Pride, pride is the foremost sin.  It is the sin under all sin.  Not God’s will, but mine.  Did God really say…?  Do I really need to listen to him?  Why must I listen to him?  What does he know?  Does he even exist?  Why shouldn’t I do as I please?  Our wills are indomitable.  You can cut it down and it grows right back.  Our hearts are idol factories, destroy one and we’ll quickly make another if we didn’t already have a back up on the shelf.  We are the eternal toddlers shaking our meaty little fists at our Father and yelling will all our primal fury, “NO!”  It is only pride that makes us think we do not need a guardian over our pride.  That unless God didn’t create in us built-in needs, failsafes, circuit-breakers, we would all be out there building the Tower of Babel, empires and temples to our own greatness and warring with each other's dominions when they encroached on ours.  Pride either says I have no need or everything, including God, should exist to serve MY needs!  But try as I might, build all the walls I can, as high and as deep and as strong as I will, I will never escape my needs.  I cannot be God.  Need is the sledgehammer at the base of my tower.

But if that’s the negative aspect, i also see a positive side to this cycle of perpetual human desire we have been created with: love.  

God loves.  God is love.  And God has loved us so much, He has created a world in which, if we humble ourselves to His plan (oh what a need!), we can learn to love as He does—and in the process, learn so much about how He loves us!—by loving others enough to meet.  Their.  Needs.  Need provides us with opportunity!  God needs nothing from us, how could He?  But He delights in us when we use the gifts He gives to love each other!  To meet the endless needs around us!  To help each other along the way, to encourage each other through the dark halls to the chambers and sanctuaries of celebration, to walk with each other as He walks with us!  God can act on His own behalf without any help from us whatsoever but His perfect and glorious will has always been to share His perfect glory with us!  To act through us!  For us to be his sons and daughters with Him!

For in reality, in the final analysis, if God seem silent and distant, it is most likely because we are.

What do you need?

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?,’ for the pagans seek after all these things. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matt 6

“And my God will fulfill your every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4

Psalm 91, yeah, the whole thing.

i feel i need to talk a bit about need.  It has become very vogue to quote Second Opinions, “God may not always give you what you want, but he always gives you what you need.”  (A paraphrase of the psalms of Jagger.) and standing alone like this, the quote is just fine and can stand tall and proud and while it may not be Scripture, Scriptures certainly supports it.  

IF you know what God means by ‘need.’  

Maybe take a minute to write down a list of all of your needs.  Go.  

No, seriously, do it.

Okay, all done?  Let’s take a look.  Depending on how pedantic you are, i’m guessing the big three are on there: Air, Water, Food, after that Maslow would add, Shelter, Community, then we get into First World concerns like Education, Fulfilling Work, Purpose, Happiness, Successful Children, a Boat, a She-shed, a Beach House, a Republican controlled congress or a serious Democratic contender for 2020, a Pony, more Money in the retirement account.  Nice list.  Maybe you're sick and need healing?  Or your wife to love you?  Or your child to come home?  Who would not call these 'needs'?  Were there any theology students out there?  Did anyone write down, “Forgiveness of Sins”?  “Peace with God”?  “A Savior”?

Jesus did, “And Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are healthy do not have need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”  Luke 5

“And behold, they brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher, and when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Have courage, child, your sins are forgiven.”  Matt 9

“Jesus replied to him, “Unless I wash you, you do not have a share with me.”” John 13

“I have said these things to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have affliction, but have courage! I have conquered the world.”  John 16

Everyone who has ever died, even Christians, has needed life.  Everyone who was ever starving, even Christians, needed food.  Everyone who was ever dehydrated, even Christians, needed water.  Everyone who was ever drowning, yep, even Christians, needed air.  The paralytic needed healing and yes, Jesus healed many people.  And yes, Jesus fed many people.  And yes, Jesus, as the rock in the desert, gave water to many people.  And yes, Jesus even raised people from the dead.  But every one of those people died.  They were thirsty again.  They were hungry again.  They got sick again.  It’s not that Jesus couldn’t fix these things permanently, he is God, of course he can.  He chose not to.  That was not the point of the miracles.  Jesus didn’t come to meet or abolish all physical “needs,” he came to deal with our real need.  The same need we’ve had since the Garden.  Adam and Eve weren’t going to live forever because their bodies were perfect, they needed to eat to live just the same as you or i.  

“And Yahweh God said, “Look—the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil. What if he stretches out his hand and takes also from the tree of life and eats, and lives forever?”  Gen 3

Adam and Eve would live forever because the Tree of Life was there!  The Tree which does what all miracles do, point to Jesus, the true Tree of Life!  It is only connected to Jesus that we can live!  It is only through him that we can know what life is!  It is only in him that we can be right with God!  The only thing we really need, the only need we have, is God!  A right relationship with the Father and the only way to have that is through the Son!  If you have the Son, you have the Father and you literally, have no other true Needs!  You can have lots of desires and that’s fine, bring them to the Father, he loves you but bring them with a grateful heart!  Rejoice!  Give thanks!  Your God has supplied all your needs!

Good Friday '19

“Then the earth shook and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains trembled,
and they staggered because he was angry.
Smoke went forth from his nose,
and fire from his mouth consumed.
Burning coals blazed from him.
So he bowed the heavens and came down
with a thick cloud under his feet.
And he mounted a cherub and flew,
and he swooped down on wings of wind.
He made darkness his hiding place;
all about him his covering
was a darkness of waters, thick clouds.
From the brightness before him
his clouds passed over
with hail and coals of fire.
And YHWH thundered from the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice
with hail and coals of fire.
And he shot his arrows and scattered them,
and many lightning bolts and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea became visible,
and the foundations of the world were uncovered
by your rebuke, O YHWH,
by the blast of the wind of your nose.
He reached from on high; he seized me.”
(Psalm 18)

Yes, beatings, yes mockery, yes scorn and scourging, yes nails, yes suffocation, all these things Jesus experienced in the death of his body.
But THIS, this is what he began to experience in the Garden when His Father placed upon Him the sins of the world! This is what He got in our place! The full, just wrath of God against our sin! This is a taste of what he experienced in the death of his soul.

Adore Him.

ACTS.

Adoration.

Confession.

Thanksgiving.

Supplication.

To Adore Him.  To accurately express who He is.  To marvel.  To worship.  To recenter and refocus.  If we saw Him as he actually was, it would naturally lead us to realize what we are…

“Indeed, how can a human being be righteous before God?

And how will he who is born of a woman be pure?

Look, even the moon is not bright,

and the stars are not pure in his sight.

How much less for a human being who is a maggot,

and a human who is a worm?”  Job 25

And then if we are faithful to confess our sins and our shortcomings before Him and we remember the Gospel, how can that not lead us into Thanksgiving?  And as we remember all we’re thankful for, we know we must be thankful too for our sufferings which are from Him for our good even as we ask him to concern himself with them, to heal us, to bind us, to redeem what’s broken.  

And it all starts with Adoration. 

i struggle with pure adoration.  As i was driving home last night i wondered…Do i really know Him well enough to adore Him?  When i begin to pray, do i just repeat lines i’ve read in the psalms?  Lyrics to songs?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Psalms came readily to Jesus’ lips as they should to ours!  We should be steeped and deeply marinated in the psalms as we should the prophets and the law and the epistles, there are wonderful ways to express worship in all of Scripture.  

i’m not asking though do i know Scripture as well as i should, i’m asking do i know HIM as well as i should?  When i contemplate my Creator without the benefit of some amazing vista, some sanguine sunset, some staggering starscape, some infant’s newborn cry, someone’s unexpected act of love, some surprising good fortune, some heartbreak, some close brush with death, some whispered interruption of the divine in my daily grind, when i just stop, on my own, to pray, do i know this God to whom i pray enough to adore him without rote, without prompt, without muse, from the punt, from the gate, has my heart been so filled with Him from time spent with Him, seeking Him in all the ways He has given us to find Him: in His Word; in the Communion of the Saints; in His creation; in His faithfulness and good deeds; and in the seeking itself?  Am i amazed?  Am i stunned?  Am i still bowled over by Him?  Am i driven to my knees?  Am i lifted up?  Will the rocks cry out, the trees clap their hands and the oceans roar because i am dumb, mute and silent in my ignorance?  Do i know Him?  Do i love Him enough to get to know Him?

“Jesus said to him, “Am I with you so long a time and you have not known me, [my name here]? The one who has seen me has seen the Father!”  John 14

Sabbath

The angel of Yahweh appeared a second time and touched him and said, “Get up, eat, for the journey is greater than you.”  1 Kings 19: 7

That could be my life verse.  All of life has felt too great for me.  Every decision.  Every day.  Every gosh. Darn. Day.

And it hasn’t gotten better as i’ve gotten older.  The responsibilities have piled on with the consequences of all the decisions i did make along the way so that each morning feels like the day after the camel’s back broke and mercilessly, still, someone is beating him awake and telling him to get his lazy (buttocks) to work!  i seek and relish moments where no one can ask me why i’m not doing something else.  As i write this, i’m cooking dinner.  i like to cook.  Cooking was a love language in my dysfunctional family.  To cook for someone is to love them.  But i also like that its not questioned.  What i make is often questioned!  How i make it is picked apart careless of the care that was put into it.  But no one asks why i’m doing it.  

It’s not that i hate work.  i don’t.  i hate purposeless work.  i hate meaningless work.  i hate the idea of spending minutes, hours, days, a life, doing the wrong work.  Of not living up to my potential.  Of not doing what i was meant to do.

Of not hearing the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And then comes the Lord of the Sabbath, the one who knows the purpose of all things.  The Son of God who came from God to become the Servant of God so that we servants might become sons.  The One who was greater than the journey gave us His body, his life, to eat; his good work and faithful obedience to take as our own, undeserved, unwarranted, unearned, without picking it apart, without complaint or question, without trying to add ingredients of our own, but just to sit, and gratefully enjoy because the journey and its demands are too great for us and all the work which need be done, is finished.

Tomorrow is Monday and i’ll have to, if i haven’t by then, decide what to do with it, what the world expects of me, what my God is doing and what i can join Him in, what work is good and what is meaningful, how i can use this life to bring glory to this God who would do this for me but today, today is the Sabbath.

Today i just rest in Him alone.

From Wells to Wastelands

“From there they went to Beer (it means ‘Well’, not beer), which is the water well where Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Gather the people, that I may give them water.” Then Israel sang this song, “Arise, well water! Sing to it! Well water that the princes dug, that the leaders of the people dug, with a staff and with their rods.” And from the desert they continued to Mattanah, and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth; and from Bamoth to the valley that is in the territory of Moab, by the top of Pisgah, which overlooks the surface of the wasteland.”  Num 21

Forty years to follow, literally, like the literal meaning of literally, God around the desert to finally, finally enter into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.  Forty years of being sojourners in a land not their own to finally enter into their own land and to join God’s work of judging nations and building a kingdom at rest, a kingdom for His glory and honor, a kingdom with God Himself in its midst.  Forty years of being attacked, of deprivation, hunger, thirst, possibly boredom (not much agriculture and masonry to do when one is on the move constantly).  Desert nomads.  Rootless.  Landless.  But not Godless.  God is there, a pillar of cloud during the day, a pillar of fire at night, His voice and His glory emanating from between the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, the proof of the promise He had made to them to be their God and lead them like a Father, like a shepherd, with His Staff of Kindness and Rod of Unity, he showers bread upon them every morning, quail some nights.  He opens the rock and gives them fresh water to drink, no trickle this, six hundred thousand people require a lot of water for themselves and their livestock.  When they rebel against Him fire, serpents and the earth itself disciplines them, purifies them, purges them of their sin.  Not because He hates them but because of His faithful promise to them to make them a holy people.  Because he loves them, he chastens them and grows them and prunes them and leads them into the wilderness to be alone with Him.  He is giving them the greatest gift of all, Himself.  His undivided attention and love.  What child has ever asked more from their father?  And what does He ask in return?  That they trust Him and obey Him.  The two are inextricably tied together.  To obey what you do not trust would be foolishness.  To not obey what you do trust is hatred to the point of idiocy.  And it is not blind faith He is asking, it is rational faith!  They saw with their own eyes the proof of who He is and what he is doing from the moment Moses came to them out of this very desert where God tested him for forty years.

Forty days to sojourn with and seek God.  Forty days to give up whatever He calls us to give up.  Whatever is holding us back.  Whatever is grieving Him.  Whatever we have turned to instead of Him and as a result lost who we are, who He is making us to be, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, sons of the Living God through Christ, who will one day walk from this wasteland to the true land of milk and honey that flows from the Rock of our Salvation, the cleft of which we hide in on Good Friday when God purges all that is unholy from the earth and heaven, the Rock which sojourns with us, which was split for us and spilt for us.  And it is our privilege as sons when we thirst to no longer need strike it.  It answers to whomever falls upon it and speaks to it.  Or better yet, sings to it…

Arise,

living water!

Grace to it!

Well water that the Prince of Peace dug, 

that the King of Kings dug,

with His staff and His rod.

Ambiva-Lent

Why Lent?  Why this attention to one day over another?  Aren't all days the same, holy and good and gifts from God?  Isn't this a Catholic thing?  Rites and rituals make us Presbys nervous and maybe just a little sanctimonious.  We're enlightened.  Literally.  We are not burdened with such nonsense and Papist mummery.  We have freedom in Christ who did not command us to keep a holy time of fasting and prayer before his second birthday.  Jesus didn't say it, I believe it, that settles it (or did he?  Matt 6:16-19, Matt 9:15).  And you'd be perfectly justified to hold that opinion and if any man of us does, as i once myself did, let no one judge him for he believes this to the honor of God.  Amen.

But he may want to stop reading now.  Because i'm either going to confuse him or annoy the sanctimony out of him.

For those who don't remember we were all one church once, katholikos: universal, embracing all that was holy and true.  So whether you like it or not, the Presbyterian bloodlines run back through the Catholic church, for they are Christ's bloodlines.  Christ is not divided.  He still has but one Body.  He didn't put down the church for a thousand years and then pick it back up again when Luther nailed his thesis to the Wittenburg church.  He has been bringing it up like his son whom He loves.  And that son has been setting aside forty days before Resurrection Sunday since before the time of Irenaeus, only two hundred years after the first birth of Christ and two hundred years before the council Nicaea nailed down our credal doctrines, the hills the church would die for and upon.  For those inclined to disagreement, Lent is not one of those hills and so we can be katholikos, unified even with two ideas about it in one church.  Jesus is big enough. 

But why do it at all?  Tradition is not a good enough reason, on this i agree with the Repel-Lent crowd.  To do something simply because it's what we do is not worshiping the Father in spirit and truth.  It is works based religion and that simply will not do.  You can not do this to please God.  You can, of yourself, do absolutely nothing to please God.  All of your religion, whether it includes Lent or vehemently opposes it, is nothing but menstrual soaked rags.  (Isaiah 64:6 and while we're at it, Isaiah 1)

But it pleased God to do all that was necessary to bring you into His Holy Presence through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  And that is something worth celebrating!  And that is what Easter's all about Charlie Brown!  Second birth!  Resurrection!  Death defeated!  Sin defeated!  The veil torn in two!  The Holy of Holies our new true home which Easter says loud and clear a day is coming when we leave behind this temporal kingdom and march singing and praising into that one!  Why would we NOT want to start that journey now?  Why would we not prepare our hearts to meet His?  Why would we not leave behind the things of this world, even temporarily (fasting), to focus the eyes of our minds, our hearts and even to discipline our bodies which can either bear us along or hold us back and distract us from the narrow path that leads through the constricted but oh-so-generously-open gate of Jesus!

Well, why would we not?  What's holding us back?

Author's/Artist's bio i wroted for something else but seemed to fit here too...

Washed ashore in the macadam deserts and aluminum wastes suburban desertification had taken from the Great Dismal Swamp in the commonwealth of Virginia, the child that would later be known as Shane Cooper wasn’t so much raised as babysat in oppressively Machiavellian soap opera filled or library-silent-but-for-the-single-ticking-clock extra rooms of apathetic hausfraus.  One way he found to survive was to draw.  It was quiet, which pleased the hausfraus and it allowed him to imagine better stories than the one he was living.  

In the days when King Michael ruled Pop and Reagan governed America, Shane came to the verdant forests and pastoral farmlands that had been scraped away in suburban desertification to make way for the macadam deserts and vinyl wastes of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.   There he was taught that people who like to draw silly cartoons and comic book characters might be able to make a living as architects.  So instead he got married, had kids, settled down in a moldy, dilapidated, uninsulated former summer cottage and learned to build, repair and renovate the McMansions that make up the suburban wastes.  But when time permits, he still likes to draw and write stories and he’s desperately trying to learn to love the story he’s living.

Shh, can you hear that?

"Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling."

"Each one in the calling in which he was called--in this he should remain.  Were you called while a slave?  Do not let it be a concern to you.  But if indeed you are able to become free, rather make use of it.  For the one who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freed person.  Likewise the one who is called while free is s slave of Christ.  You were bought at a price; do not becomes slaves of men.  Each one in the situation in which he was called, brothers--in this he should remain with God."  1 Cor 7

So we were called to die with Christ, be buried with him and rise again as the Lord's freed persons from sin and as the Lord's slaves in the His new kingdom which He is bringing.  Amen!

So how do we do it?  We covered so much last night and it was good and i loved Tom's pointed questions: So what does that look like in our day to day?  How do we do that?  How do we be honest and humble in the places we are?  When i think about what all this means, how life changingly important it is that God himself died for me(!) and chose me specifically even before i was born(!!), it is so tempting for me to think that i should therefore also see some sort of equally bloody revolution in my life, some Damascus road moment that knocks me off my ass (it's biblical, look it up), turns me from my intended destinations and sends me careening off into seven year missionary journeys where i learn six new languages and dialects in order to bring the gospel to unreached people groups wearing loincloths in disease ridden jungles, or that i need to sell all i own and go live with the homeless, caring for them and bringing them new cardboard for their concrete jungle sukhots with Bible verses printed on them, or that's it's time to chuck it all, buy a guitar and become a traveling gospel minstrel, oh, and maybe learn to play the guitar.  Or we go home depressed because somehow we have this notion that this life with Jesus is supposed to be like all of that and we know ours will never be.  Or we take our plans home only to find our lives waiting for us there with all of our very real but very mundane problems ready for us and Tuesday follows Monday and then it's Thursday before we know it and if we think about this at all it's with tinges of despair around the edges.  And we want to cry out, "Isn't it supposed to be different?  Aren't we supposed to DO something?"

But is that how it's supposed to be?  Is that the abundant life Jesus has called us to?  Is that freedom we have found in Christ who has done all things for us and done them well?  Is that faith in His finished work?  Shouldn't that bring peace?  Not existential angst?  Is that what Paul was saying to the Corinthians?  Paul who had the Road to Damascus moment?

Well, let's look at that real quick.  What in Paul's life was changed?  He was already employed as a form of evangelizing clergy as a Pharisee.  Scriptural purity was his job.  He was already so zealous for it that he was taking his little heretic-bashing show on the road from town to town.  He was already so on fire for YHWH that he was willing to kill for Him.  Jesus didn't have to remake Saul as much as we think.  He just had to free him and tweak his theology a bit... like a lot.. like, knock him off his high-ass and get him off the throne of his own life so that Jesus could sit down on it.  But then Jesus looked around and said, 'yeah, I can work with this.'  Paul stayed true to what God had designed him to be: a man on fire for God, only now he actually KNEW him, the true God.  He had been a slave to his own self-salvation plan, his rigid, religiosity and narrow view of Scripture and thus his squinty view of an angry God and now Christ freed him from that and thus Paul willingly became Jesus' slave, joyfully became Jesus' servant, zealously took his evangelizing show on the road from town to town to spread the good news that the Scriptures had been fulfilled in Jesus!  Was so on fire for Jesus that he was willing to die for Him!  Paul stayed in many ways, exactly what he was when he was called, he just did it now for the right King in the right way for the right reasons.  Paul's job description never really changed.  He was a traveling cleric devoted to Scriptural purity and the right worship of God when Jesus slapped him blind (or revealed his blindness, but that is a post for another day) and he was a a traveling cleric devoted to Scriptural purity and the right worship of God when Jesus opened his eyes.  Heck, he even was a tent maker both before and after, only now he had a new crew to make them with and a new purpose in making them!  He was on mission--making tents!

So what does it look like to live simply and humbly before our God for our Savior Jesus Christ by the power of His Holy Spirit in this life?  What must we do to do the work of God?  Well, what were you doing when he called you, minus your sin of course?  It's quite possible that an All-Knowing, Pre-destining God was already preparing you before you repented of your former way of life and were baptized into the new life He had been equipping you for since before He laid the foundations of the Earth.  He's kind of efficient like that.  He could take a steel soup kettle and reshape it into a glass vase to hold flowers if he wanted, He has that kind of power, and i'm not saying He doesn't call some of us to drastically different roads than the one we thought were were on, cuz He's God and He can do what He wants according to His good will.  i'm only saying that historically and scripturally, that doesn't seem to be what He does the vast majority of the time.  Because He doesn't need to.  He's been doing something far more revolutionary: He's been crafting you from the beginning of time and crafting time to the beginning of you so that in the fullness of time you could display Jesus in your setting, in your manner, with your gifts which He gave you, in your work and your words, with the love he has shown you. 

What is your calling?  It's you, only better!  Because now it's more than you, it's Him in you, through you, for His glory which He is inviting you to share with Him forever.

But don't take my word for it, search His!  He is waiting there for you,

softly and tenderly, calling....

Floggin' the resurrected horse.

"And you, although you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all formerly lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the will of the flesh and of the mind, and we were children of wrath by nature, as also the rest of them were.

But God(!), being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, and we being dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ (by grace you are saved), and raised together and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that he might show in the coming ages the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.  For we are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we may walk in them."  Eph 2

It may feel like we're beating a dead horse here (see what i did there?) but it's only because we're trying to remind him that he isn't dead anymore.  Christ has resurrected him!  He is a new horse!  You are a new horse!  You went looking for water on your own and like that skeleton in the cowboy movies, you found the alkali flats that only look like water. 

But God! 

God has knitted you together, new flesh to bone, heart of flesh instead of stone, and he has led you to green, fertile pastures (himself) and beside still waters (himself) and he speaks tenderly to you, he leads you now and he will use bit and bridle if he must but he'd rather you knew your owner, your master, your friend, be guided by knee pressure and soft word.  That's humility.  A horse is not weak.  If it was, it wouldn't be useful.  It is strong, it is fast, it is an image of power.  Humility is not weakness.  It's meekness.  Power restrained.  Power under control.  Power for a purpose.  It is knowing your place, knowing your relationship to the master, trusting your friend.  The horse does not choose the way unless the rider gives him the reins.  And when that happens the horse thinks with it's stomach.  It goes to water, it goes to grass, it goes to the stable, it goes to comfort.  Horses don't choose noble paths, glorious paths for their riders and themselves.  The master does that.  The knight to battle, the wrangler to cattle, the jockey over the fence, round the steeple and to the finish line, as hard as we can go, hell bent for leather.

Okay, i think i've flogged that metaphor into the dust but you take my meaning.  "It is hard for you to kick against the goads."  You have been made new, you have been given a new name, a new life, a new purpose and a new Master.  Will you obey?  Will you submit?  Will you carry this King who died for you, will you bear this Master who serves you, will you love this Friend who loves you?  Yes, it may go places you don't want to go, it won't always be comfortable, there won't always be a warm stable, or enough fodder or as much water as you would like but you will have what you need, Him, He will be there with you in all of it and He guarantees as surely as He lives and by the same proof, it will be glorious!

Whose life is it anyway?

"Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may live a new way of life."  Romans 6

My life is not my own.

Actually, i died a long time ago.  i may have even been still born, i'm not sure, i don't remember life before knowing Jesus, others seem to know the exact date they were born again.  The person i would have been, the one made in the image of my father the devil died and Jesus put his own life into my body.  My breath was cut off and His, the Holy Spirit himself, came into me.  Somehow, Jesus took the satanically corrupted, sin saturated, self worshiping Scruffy Fricken and dragged him up onto his cross with him.  There God destroyed him, utterly, wholly, with divine prejudice when he destroyed his own Son.  i never even felt a thing but i know it happened because the devil has not stopped trying to take me back.  To rework me again into his image, has never ceased to mar and scratch and to claw at the image of my new, my adopted, my true Father God in heaven and yet he has never won, never taken back complete control (though i have sometimes given it to him), never succeeded, never not met fierce resistance.  That doesn't come from me; i wouldn't have done that.  i totally would have gone along with every fool notion the devil threw up for consideration.  i'm dumb like that.  But Jesus isn't.  Jesus isn't letting him have an inch.  No matter what it takes, no matter what he has to do to me to stop him, Jesus has won, is winning and will win.  It is finished.  i'm a battlefield where the outcome is assured, there's nothing left to do but finish the fighting and mop up the last pockets of resistance.  This insurgency may set off a bomb or two, it may melt back into the mountain citadels to pop back up at what it thinks is a more favorable time but General God has already factored all of that into His plan.  The enemy will only succeed in bringing about his own demise.

"And as I have watched over them to pull up, and to tear down, and to annihilate, and to destroy, and to do evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant."  Jeremiah 31
"For no one is able to lay another foundation than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ... Do you not know that you are God's temple and the Spirit of God dwells in you?"  1 Corinthians 3

My life is not my own.

My life is a house and i may have thought i invited Jesus in.  Found him outside, thought he needed a place to stay and graciously offered my own couch with promises to build him his own room, a savior-in-law suite, out back somewhere, especially if he could chip in towards it.  But he comes in and starts tearing everything down, knocking out bearing walls, exposing termites and cockroaches to the light, tears it down, bulldozes the foundation which crumbles all too easy on its sandy mud and starts laying out plans to build a completely new house, on a new foundation, on the rocky highground i didn't want to have anything to do with.  Too hard to get to.  Too much work.  He's not even building in the same styles and motifs of the neighborhood!  This life is going to stick out like a sore thumb!  People will talk.  The neighbors are going to report me to the association.  And when i ask just what the hectare he thinks he's doing, he just shows me the deed.  He bought the house.  He bought the land.  With his own blood.  With his own priceless righteousness.  Paid a fortune for it too.  Much more than it was worth.

"I AM YHWH your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery."  Exodus 20
"Thus says YHWH, the redeemer of Israel, his holy one,
  to the one who despises life,
  to the one who abhors the nation,
  to the slave of rulers:
"Kings shall see and stand up;
  princes, and they shall bow down,
for the sake of YHWH, who is faithful,
  the holy one of Israel, and He has chosen you."  (Isaiah 49)
"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?  For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God with your body."  1 Corinthians 6

My life is not my own.

The auctioneer's gavel fell.  The money changed hands.  A king's ransom was given for me.  Yeah, for me!  i was standing, naked on the auction block, the dregs of the slave market and a king, THE King bought me as a bride for his Son.  i am a gift.  i am being scrubbed sore.  My wounds are being dressed.  My malodorous pungency, acquired from years on the streets, in the pigpens, in the robber's dens, in the prison cells, years of neglect, poor hygiene, self-loathing are being washed away and replaced with the finest beauty treatments from the most exotic places i've only dreamed of, perfumes, ointments, oils, soaps.  Robes and garments of spun gold and crimson silk and purple yarns and linen as white as snow that has yet to gently touch the earth (Did you know the process that forms snow actually purifies the water perfectly?) are being prepared for my wedding along with gemstones forged in the heat and pressure of the sufferings and troubles of my life to be used in the crowns, rings, necklaces being custom crafted to fit only me.  i am being trained, how to walk, how to talk, how to carry myself in the presence of my King, my Husband, my Master.

"Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit.  The one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world preserves it for eternal life.  If anyone serves me, he must follow me, and where I AM, there my servant will be also."  John 12

My life is not my own.  i was king of my own life and then i died.  The king is dead, long live the King of Kings!

Love it or leave it?

Disclaimer first: this is not, NOT, NOT a political post.  All in?  Lovely.  Let's proceed.

i met John Ruiz and heard about DTY (Die To Yourself for the uninitiated) on the same day.  Which is only notable because DTY did not yet exist.  It was an idea bouncing around the fertile mind of John even then.  A place where Christ loving guys, church going guys, could get together and be ...guys.  But not just guys.  REAL men.  Men who were, above all else, honest about the messiness of their lives with each other.  But not just honest, messy men wallowing in self-pity like some kinda group therapy their wives made them go to, but honest, messy men in search of a real relationship with Christ and therefore--because how could they not--be in real relationship with each other.  "Would you go to something like that?" John asked me.  Would i?  Heck yeah, i would!

And i did.  And so did many of you.  And it was revolutionary.  i don't use that word lightly.  i was ready to leave this church.  i was disgruntled and disaffected.  i didn't know half of you half as well as i would like and liked less than half of you half as well as you deserved.  It is easy for church to be about you when you don't love anyone else but yourself.  That's not to say that i wouldn't have missed many of you, i had made a few friends but i no longer had a reason to stay.

The church was not my family.  It was not a place i belonged.  It was just a church.  There are many like it.  And this one did not feel like mine.

DTY changed all that.  From its inception it was more than a Bible Study, more than a fellowship time, more than a prayer meeting, more than a vehicle for social-justice work.  It was all of them.  As much as it was born from Ruiz' dynamism and fed off his charisma as many movements do, it was obvious God was doing something through him and the other leadership, Josh, Matt, Matt, Martin, Grayter, Dave and the others, through DTY and in us and desired to do something through us: to build a family of brothers. 

To build His Church. 

Brokeness could meet healing.  Isolation could meet brotherhood.  The unknown could be known.  Needs could be met or if not met, at least prayed over.  Sins confessed.  All the things i'd read about in the Word, the people of God becoming the hands and feet and mouth and ears of Christ, all the things i'd thought a church was or should be, seemed to be coming to fruition in DTY, in this messy little group of men.  Lives being changed.  The church being changed.  When Christian men lead as Christ has commanded us to, God does some cool stuff! 

But time passes.  Things change.  Ideas become institutions.  Movements become monuments.  Fires burn out.  Church plants become generational churches.  Exciting, challenging, groups become clubs.  The life cycle goes on, Spring becomes Fall, birth-death-rebirth.  God has His plan and it is good and it is best.  But we temporal creatures still mourn a loss.  We are right to lament.  We are right to cry out to YHWH when He strikes the shepherd and the sheep are scattered.  We are right to cry out to Him when we feel the gears slipping and grinding to a slower and slower rhythm.  We are right to fight against complacency and apathy and isolationism and self-centeredness and selfishness and greed and unforgiveness and busyness and pride and all the enemies of love the devil will throw at God's work, God's church, God's people!  And trust me, the devil has come down to make war against the children of the woman, the Bride of Christ is touchable and the serpent hates us.  Hates the image we bear so much more clearly when we are obeying Christ and loving as He does and working for his Kingdom.  The mere act of standing up makes us better targets.  Much easier to hide in a pew, safely separated so one wicked grenade can't take out the whole group. 

i don't know if DTY has had its day, completed the mission it was born for and now is making way for something new or if its just going through growing pains or metamorphosis... or if it's dying a premature death.  i don't know if God will raise up another charismatic visionary to lead it.  i do know that it still has much to offer, no matter what it is and God has, is and will do great things through it.  That we are better for it having existed, for the time we've spent in it and being it.  That i know many more of you now half as much as i'd like to know you and like more than half of you half as much you deserve because of it.  That i thank God for it and for you and that i look forward to seeing you there! Because i love God and so i love his Bride, his Church, DTY, you. 

YHWH bless us and keep us.
YHWH smile upon us and be gracious to us.
YHWH turn his whole attention to us and give us peace.