The Sparrow At My Window

Once again today I was in my office and heard the chirping of a sparrow right outside my window.  As it sat on the window ledge, I had the opportunity to observe the bird, to see its alertness, its vigilance.  If I looked closely, I almost believed I could see the beating of its heart as it rested from its flight.

I have no ideas what sparrows think about or what they do besides make nests and empty bird feeders.  Though I never thought a sparrow was exceptionally beautiful as far as birds go, the little creature has a beauty of its own.  When it took off I followed it with my eyes as long as I could, and then I whispered, “Only the Father knows where the sparrow is now.”

I find it intriguing that Jesus used the example of the Father’s knowledge of sparrows as an encouragement to trust and fearless living.  Jesus focuses on our frightened reactions to those who might harm us in Matthew 10, but the wider application is to anything that might threaten us or instill within us fear.  Perhaps the greatest fear is to be overlooked by God, forgotten, out of His sight.  Frequently I speak to those who believe their lives are lived largely without the awareness of the Father.  It is a fearful thing indeed, to fall through the cracks, to be overlooked or forgotten by the Almighty.

But Jesus insists such is not the case.  A sparrow can’t fall to the ground without the Father’s knowledge and involvement, Matthew 10:29 tells us.  That makes God a great bird-watcher, but does that fact relate to us?  Yes, indeed, of course it does – Jesus goes on to say in Matthew 10:30, “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid, you are worth more than many sparrows.”  

What’s the point?

As large as God may be as the Creator and Sustainer of all that is, He notes the distress of even the smallest of creatures.  Not only does He know about the sparrow, He has an accurate count of the hair on our heads, seemingly useless and insignificant information – except it tells us how attentive God is to us.  As one writer put it, for God to know that kind of information is a way of saying God is engrossed with His people.  I like that image – engrossed.  Absorbed.  Immersed.  The way we are to be with Him, and the way He really is with us.

Don’t be afraid, Jesus says – to God you are worth more than many sparrows.  Whatever we face in life, whether it be difficult times, disappointing circumstances, troubling relationships, broken health or hearts, we don’t have to face that alone.  The One who has His eye on the sparrow has His eye on us.  The One who doesn’t miss a hair on our heads doesn’t miss a moment of our lives.

And He wants to do more than just watch us – His longing is to walk with us through that which creates fear, to still our hearts and calm our souls and assure us that He is at work.

His eye is on the sparrow – but more important, His eye is on you and me.

Our Father In Heaven

I have to admit that the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven”, bothered me for a long time.  As a child I remember watching a sci-fi movie where the leading character is able to see into the depths of space, to the end of the universe.  It began simply, with being able to see through walls, but as his vision increased, he peered into space.  My childhood take was that if he looked far enough, he would finally see God, watching from the distance of billions of light years away. 

So where is God?  So far away that I can not even begin to comprehend it – that is how things came together in my childish mind.  And as I grew, I’m not sure I put away childish things very quickly.  Others don't either -- as a pastor I have people tell me that their prayers don’t make it up to God, that at times they don’t even make it past the ceiling.  They see God as one who is up there and out there, so far removed that we may have to speak up for Him to hear us, or speak long to get His attention.

In the last blog I spoke with great gratitude about Jesus directing us to call God “Father.”  That phrase speaks of such intimacy, closeness, and love. A tremendous privilege, to call God "Father."  Is Jesus now trying to correct our misunderstanding  – “Yes, God does want you to think of Him as Father, but don’t jump to conclusions – He is so far from you that you can’t even comprehend it” – have we misinterpreted what Jesus was getting at?

No, not at all – in fact, Jesus is helping us understand what kind of Father God is. 

For one thing, He is our heavenly Father.  Whatever our relationship with our earthly fathers might be, God is so far beyond that.  I can use this example – my Dad was almost completely deaf.  From my earliest recollections I had to yell to get his attention, and I became increasingly aware of the fact that his hearing aid did very little good.  He mostly read lips.  Carrying on a conversation with Dad was extremely difficult.  When I was in college Dad had a device which was suppose to enable him to hear me on the phone.  I would call home and try to talk to him – and you could hear the sadness in his voice when he would say, “I’m sorry Robert, I can’t hear what you are saying – here’s your mother.” 

My earthly father had trouble hearing me and carried on very few conversations throughout our times together – our Heavenly Father has no such problem.  He hears our shouts and our whispers, and He is always eager to carry on a conversation night or day.

Our Father in heaven – if I think of that phrase in distance terms, I don’t think of God being far removed but of God having an exceptional vantage point from which to see.  My daughter says there is a mountain you can climb in Arizona and see the whole city of Phoenix laid out before you.  We are so near-sighted in the living of our lives, but our Father in heaven has the vantage point of expanded vision.  He misses nothing.  He takes it all in.  We are never lost from His sight.  He doesn’t go around scratching His head wondering what’s going to happen next.  To say God is in heaven is to say He sees all.  Everyone of us.  Personally.

Our Father in heaven – I believe that also emphasizes His closeness.  Scholar N. T. Wright emphasizes that earth is our sphere of life and God is hidden from us for the time being in the spiritual sphere of life.  He is not distant – He is closer than we can imagine.  I think of the scene in 2 Kings 6 when Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the enemy.  The servant was terrified, but Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened.  When they were, he suddenly saw the hills full of chariots of fire, the army of God.  They were there all the time – Elisha knew it, but his servant didn’t. 

When I dwell on the opening phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, using it as a pattern and a starter for my own prayer, my heart and soul goes in these kinds of directions.  I spend time with the Father knowing that He hears.  I relax in His superior vantage point, knowing that He knows what is going on and will direct me as I trust in Him.  And I ask Him to help me live with the awareness that I am never separated from His presence, that I don’t have to worry about my prayers making it beyond the ceiling.  I pray that I might have eyes to see His presence with me always through His Son Jesus.

Our Father in heaven.

Father

My wife and I recently had the joy of visiting our children. Our daughter Alyssa and her husband Paul live in Arizona, and our son Chad and his wife Becki live in Kansas. The time in Arizona was vacation time, tolerating what Alyssa seemed to think was “cool” weather (85-90 degrees) but immensely enjoying our all-too-brief time together. Our stay at Chad and Becki’s house was for a different reason, a much needed study break while Chad and Becki were at work. I still remember the shocked look on Becki’s face when she came home from work, saw all the chairs removed from around the dining room table, and my books and papers strewn all over the place. “Oh my!” were her only words. I wonder what she was thinking?

It was during that study time and as a result of a word I heard several times that this blog (or maybe a series of blogs) came to mind. The word was “Father.” Most often “Dad,” a time or two “Pops,” even a “Daddy” – but also the word “Father.”

I was taught what is called “The Lord’s Prayer” at an early age – my most distant memories include praying that prayer as it is written and has been prayed through the centuries. I have to confess I largely prayed it without comprehending what I was saying. They were only words that tumbled off my lips, filled with the faint hope that God might be moved by this magical incantation.

When I became a Christian in truth and not just in description, I turned from the formal prayers I had memorized to more personal, spontaneous prayers. The Lord’s Prayer became something seldom repeated, on special occasions or in community services.

And then one day I discovered the prayer again.

I was preaching a series on the Sermon on the Mount, and I stared at the words of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 and wondered what I would do with them. It was in that process that I realized that they were not so much words to be repeated as a pattern or structure to help us in our praying. I immersed myself in each word, spending time in prayer dwelling on the meaning of each phrase. I discovered that the prayer was of immense help, guiding me in a conversation with the One who, through His Son Jesus, wanted me to call Him Father.

Think about that for a moment.

Everyone on the face of this earth who knows me calls me by my name or title – Bob or Robert or Dr. Johnston or Pastor or whatever. But from the billions of people in this world there are only two people (or four if their spouses so choose) who have the right to call me “father.”  So few among so many.

This is how Jesus instructed us to address God. He could have given us many other titles or names – they are all found in the Bible. But I find myself deeply moved and eternally grateful that God wants us to think of Him as “Father”. I recognize that some, based on their relationships with their physical fathers, may find that difficult, depending on how their fathers treated or mistreated them. But stripped of all the limitations we earthly dads have, to call God “Father” speaks of tremendous love, extravagant grace, enduring compassion, and eternal relationship.

Jesus told a story about a foolhardy kid who turned his back on all the good things his father had taught him. We dads worry about that, and we are deeply concerned when our children seem to forget what our best gifts to them have been. In the story Jesus told, the child took off on his own for who knows how long, wasted everything he had, and finally came to his senses. He determined he would go home, not as a son but a servant. While he journeyed home rehearsing his speech, his father, who evidently had been on the look out, saw him in the distance. It was then that this father did a rather undignified thing in his day – he ran. With all his heart and strength, he raced to his young prodigal. His son started his speech but was stopped short – his father embraced him, gave him the symbols of sonship, and poured out on him prodigal love.

I think of that passage when, upon the nudging of the Lord’s Prayer, I call God “Father”.  I think of the extravagant gracefulness of that father, and realize that Jesus wants us to think of God in this way, as one who is absolutely delighted to have us come to Him in prayer. That invitation changes absolutely everything about prayer – and for that I thank our Father.

Words

It has been a while since I have written a blog. There are lots of reasons – a busy schedule, days that rushed by, distractions and preoccupations, stress, two sermons and a Bible study every week, fatigue. But the most honest reason – I lacked the words.

I am in Arizona visiting my daughter and son-in-law, taking a vacation, goofing off.

And thinking about words.

A lot of a pastor's life revolves around words. Every Sunday I stand in the pulpit of the church I pastor and speak words. But they are not just any words – they are careful words, thoughtful words saturated with prayer, Bible words, hopefully Spirit-led and Spirit-filled words.

Scholar Thomas Long says sometimes words are just words. I can get up and say all sorts of things, about my love for my children and how I adore my wife and how grateful I am for my church family – but all those things could be just words, Long says. No meaning. No truth. No depth.

Words.

I am reading Eugene Peterson's book Tell It Slant and he observes that though Jesus spoke words, He never wrote words, at least any that have been preserved. The words He wrote using His finger as a pencil in the Jerusalem dirt the day religious leaders tried to trap Him (John 8) were gone when the dust settled. Jesus didn't write any words – He left it to His followers to write the blogs, the Gospels, the accounts of what Jesus did and how He changed their lives and eternities. Words, yes – but words with power and meaning from the One who was the Word become flesh and who was and is God's ultimate Word to us.

When words are spoken honestly and with heart, they expose our hearts, tell the truth, impact others. That is why words must be chosen carefully. That is why our words must reflect who we are and Whose we are. I just happen to say a lot of words that people hear, twenty or thirty minutes of them on a Sunday morning, a lot more on an evening Bible study, and who knows how many in the conversations I have.

I hope I say them well – I pray my words will ultimately be words from God Himself.

I realize that words are not just Sunday things for me or you, they are everyday things, and for the person who follows Jesus, our words must never cease to reflect the One who has changed our lives and eternities. Whether our words be many or few, our conversations long or short, something of the grace of God, the love of Jesus, the presence of the Holy Spirit needs to slip through.

When that happens, don't our words become more than just words?

Eugene Peterson observes that though Jesus both preached and taught, He also engaged in lots of conversations about subject matter which at first might not seem spiritually important. He told stories about farmers and judges and victims, about coins and sheep, prodigal sons and heart-broken fathers, wedding banquets and going to war, midnight awakenings and begging for bread, about cooks and beggars and manure. The stuff of life, in other words. The many things that occupy our time and fuel our words. Conversations that are pregnant with opportunities to say more than just words.

It occurs to me that with all the talking we do, we need to be aware that God wants to say some pretty important things through us. Some of those things happen when a pastor gets up to speak on a Sunday, but they also happen every day of the week in all our conversations. As Christ-followers, we reflect our Lord, and when we converse about all the mundane things of life, we need to remember that our words say something not just about us, but about Him as well.

No wonder James advises us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Maybe then our words will be more than just words.

The Journey With Jesus

I decided back in January to spend a year with Jesus. Reading a chapter a day in the Gospels, I could read all four Gospels four times in one year – actually, 356 days if I don’t miss any. I am on my second pass through and it has been an interesting journey.

First and foremost, I have found it difficult to read just one chapter a day. Some days I get so caught up in other things I miss reading a chapter – other times I start reading, and I can’t stop, I want to see what happens next. But all in all, as I said, I am on track – I finished my first pass through before the end of March.

Second, because I spent 2009 preaching through Mark’s Gospel, my journey has actually been a bit jarring. I got to know Mark really well in 2009, preaching close to fifty messages from the book. I knew something of the rhythm of the book, the journey with the Lord, and so when I began to read the other Gospels as an attempt to continue the journey, I noticed something striking. Each Gospel gets at Jesus in a different way. It is like four different pictures of the same person, taken from different angles. You begin to notice things. Matthew is so orderly, and he waits until chapter 8 to give the miracles Mark gives in chapter 1. Luke has the rich parables that speak of the Father’s love for us. John knows we have read the story before, so he lets us see things from a different perspective, catching us off guard, including things not told elsewhere, like the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Four different angles to understand and appreciate Jesus more.

Third, I have been amazed at how respectful Jesus is of the decisions others make. He is content to share the good news of the Kingdom and then let us decide. He believes fully that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and converts, something I need to remember. He looks with love as a rich young ruler chooses to walk away, but he doesn’t go running after him and say, “Wait a minute, maybe I can make it easier for you, how about you sell just half of what you have?” He lets us make our own decisions, even if those decisions have dire consequences. I have been encouraged to trust God’s work more, and to love others more deeply with no strings attached.

At times my reading is more disciplined – I read through four chapters in Joshua for my Wednesday Bible study, I pour over a half dozen passage in preparation for Sunday night, I print out and pray over the text for Sunday morning... oh yeah, I have to get that Gospel chapter in! Those are the days I wonder if it does any good – except the Lord has an amazing ability to bring to my attention some passage, some verse, some word. Sometimes I think it is like the meals we eat – we may devour some meal mindlessly, preoccupied with something else – but at least our bodies have been nourished. I have learned that God can take what we expose ourselves to and do amazing things.

Isn’t that just like God?

The first pass through I read from the New International Version. This quarter I am in The Message. It is one of my favorites for devotional reading of Scripture – in many ways, it is like a Bible and a commentary rolled into one. I recommend it highly.

This morning I read these verses from Matthew 6: “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

And so I did.

Christ the Victor

John 13:1 declares, “... Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.”

The full extent – the breadth, the length, the height, the depth.

Literally John says, as the New American Standard words it, “He loved them to the end.” To the point of completion. To the very end of His strength, His heart, His soul.

To the wondrous cross.

How can we get at such extravagant love? It always exceeds our ability to comprehend or fully understand, and so all we can do is give an example, an approximation, an image.

There is a classic image of the cross that has always intrigued me. As Good Friday approaches, maybe it will enrich your meditations on the tremendous sacrifice of our Lord.

Through the years the image of what Jesus accomplished on the cross has been called Christ the Victor. There on the cross Jesus struck the deathblow to evil and sin.

Like a warrior He went to battle – only this was a battle unlike any the world has seen.

Typically a warrior sought to defeat his opponent by inflicting a wound so severe that it renders a response impossible. That is not what we see on the cross – it looks just the opposite.

But there is another way to defeat an opponent. Instead of hammering an opponent into submission, a warrior could choose to stand still and take his enemy’s best blow – to absorb all the blows, one after another, until the enemy literally exhausts his power and collapses.

That is what Jesus did on the cross. He suffered the worst that evil could hurl at Him.

Rejection by His own people in the streets of their capital city.

Hatred from all the experts in His own religion.

Injustice at the hands of the Roman court.

Disloyalty and betrayal by two of His closest associates, Peter and Judas.

Abandonment by His followers.

Public shame at being stripped naked and ridiculed as an impostor, “King of the Jews.”

The agony of the torture of crucifixion.

And in it all, the constant pressure of temptation to give it all up, to smash these ungrateful creatures with thunderbolts from heaven.

Jesus just stood there and took it -- taking on Himself the sins of the world, holding Himself in place – it wasn’t nails that held Him there, He chose to stay there. He took all that was thrown at Him, suffering to the end, taking every sin that could be thrown at Him -- and finally dying.

Had sin won? Was it left standing? Who would get up?

We know.

“Jesus, my redeemer, name above all names;
Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Hope for sinner’s slain.
Thank You, O my Father, for giving us Your Son,
and leaving Your Spirit till the work on earth is done.”

Grotesque Display

I have been preaching a series of reflections on the cross in the church I pastor, a series entitled How Deep The Father’s Love For Us. The title comes from a beautifully written and reflective musical piece by Stuart Townend. The words of this modern-day hymn have often been in my mind these past few weeks. The first couple of stanzas go like this:

How deep the Father’s love for us,
how vast beyond all measure
that He should give His only Son
to make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One
Bring many sons to glory

Behold the Man upon the cross,
my sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life;
I know that it is finished.

I look for every way possible to grasp more completely what our Lord accomplished on the cross. I have come to the conclusion that we could never grasp the enormity of the pain we cause God if not for the cross.

Writer Henri Nouwen tells the story of a family he knew in Paraguay. The father was a doctor and he spoke out against the military regime of the country and their human rights abuses. In retaliation, the local police took revenge by arresting the doctor’s teenage son and torturing him to death.

The people in the town were outraged and wanted to turn the boy’s funeral into a protest march, but the doctor chose another way of expression.

At the funeral, the father displayed his son’s body as he had found it in the jail -- naked, scarred from the electric shocks and cigarette burns and beatings. All the villagers filed past the corpse, which lay not in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the prison.

It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put the great injustice and the horrifying wrong on grotesque display.

That is what God did at Calvary – He put His Son on grotesque display. We see Him there, with the blood and the bruises and the torture – and as we pass by, we are confronted with the fact that we are the ones who put those nails in His hands. We are the ones who, through our sins, beat him and bruised him and tortured him.

The prophet Isaiah exclaimed in Isaiah 53:4-5, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.”

How would we ever grasp the pain we have caused God except for the cross? How deep the Father’s love indeed!

Snickers Bars and Lent

I grew up in a tradition of Christianity that practiced Lent, the forty days leading up to Easter. I have to admit that as a child, I didn’t really understand or appreciate Lent – it was that time of year when I was supposed to give up something that had some value to me and I was supposed to learn something. I normally chose Snickers bars. I really love Snickers bars, especially if they are frozen. It was tough to set aside my habit for forty days. Of course, I would never give up Butterfinger bars – that was my true favorite in those days. I would crunch them up and put them on ice cream. Every day after school. For forty days. But I did give up Snickers bars.

When I became a Baptist I gave up many of my childish ways, which included the practice of Lent. No church I have been a part of these last forty years has practiced any form of Lent, and it only enters my mind when I see it is time for Lent on the Christian calendar and many of us Baptists (not all) wonder what it is all about and skip it.

I must admit that I have thought about Lent more this year.

Part of the reason is that I have had some conversations about Lent with some of my church congregation. They have wondered what it is about, if it is a good idea or not.

The other reason is my Wednesday evening Bible study where we have spent time surveying the Old Testament, and we have come across these predictions in Deuteronomy that once the children of Israel got fat and prosperous in Canaan, they would forget all about God. As long as things were tough in the wilderness and they had to rely daily on God’s provision of manna and water, they maintained at least some level of dependency on Him. But once they got into the land of promise, the milk and honey was too much for them. As Moses predicted, they forgot about God.

The observance of Lent is never mentioned in the Bible nor found in a Bible dictionary, which is one reason many Christians do not observe Lent. As I understand the history of Lent, it came into existence when Christians became fat and prosperous, when it was no longer dangerous to be a Christian and we began to enjoy a life of ease like other people in the world. As one writer put it, we began to enjoy our soft couches and our leg of lamb. The pattern of the Old Testament was repeated with people forgetting about God, at least in practice. Lent was a period of time to reflect, to do without so that we might become attuned once again to how dependent we have become on things. It is not about Snickers bars or Butterfingers, but about what our treasure is and where our hearts are. My childhood practice really never cost me much, which is why Lent did me little good. It never struck at the heart of my addictions, of what was truly important to me, what I craved or yearned for or felt life would be over if I lost. If my belly cried out, “I can’t live without a Snickers bar,” my mind would say, “Buy a Butterfingers – this will all be over in forty days.”

I read recently that Lent is like practicing dying – by spending time in reflection on what God has done, marking forty days with true self-denial in some form, we learn the depth (or superficiality) of our Christian faith while at the same time gaining some freedom. We die in order to live – we loosen the grip of whatever it is that tends to control us, and in the process we discover new life.

That sounds a lot like Jesus – “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul?” “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me?” “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be.”

I have some Christian friends who practice Lent, some in their congregations and others personally. Forty days of self-denial in the wilderness enabled our Lord to have a sharp focus – we don’t live by bread alone, nor to simply please others, or to sell our souls for whatever kingdom we might desire. Maybe forty days of giving up something that is truly important to us, of limiting the influence of that which we feel we have to have, might bring a sharper focus in our lives. What’s more, if we can change our practice of faith for forty days, maybe it will be effective for a lifetime.

We don’t have to wait until next year for Lent to come around. You don’t have to say, “Too bad, Lent is almost over, I will do it next year.” No, that is the marvelous thing about being a Christ-follower – any day is a good day to start some self-denial. To give up something. To substitute something better, like giving yourself for the sake of others instead of gratifying yourself.

I let my wife read this blog before I printed it, just to make sure it wasn’t a bunch of nonsense. She said she liked it. Then I mentioned to her that maybe she could give up chocolate chip cookies for 40 days.

She looked at me in horror and decided this wasn’t a very good blog after all. A bunch of nonsense.

Maybe I hit a sore spot – but then, what was I doing telling her what she should give up? What about me?

Twenty Years

Last week the church I pastor celebrated the fact I had been their pastor for twenty years. Twenty years – that is a long time by anybody’s measurement. The church threw a great party for me. I was excited and nervous and proud and humbled, all at the same time. They were still glad I was their pastor – and I was glad too. The party was wonderful.

Twenty years. I got married when I was twenty years old. After twenty years of marriage, I sort of knew what I was doing. I’m sure my wife thought I needed at least another twenty, which means I’m not there yet.

When I came to First Baptist of Rolla, I had no idea my wife and I would stay for twenty years. At that time our kids were still in elementary school, and I figured we would be around ten or twelve years. There were opportunities to move to new places of service, but that never happened. I would continue to look at First Baptist and feel that there was so much unfinished business and I didn’t want to leave things half-way done.

There have been times I wondered if God had forgotten me. Tough times when things weren’t going the way I thought they should. Paul encourages young Timothy to preach in season and out of season, and I have to admit there have been lots of out-of-season times. But there have been many good times and some truly wonderful times and I have always felt the tug of the Holy Spirit back to this place. I decided God hadn’t forgotten me after all.

I had a friend tell me that when you have been in a church as long as I have, people begin to treat you like an old piece of furniture. They just take it for granted you are there, and they don’t see the richness of the grain or the comfortable fit or the continued usefulness. I suspect the same can be said for pastors looking at their congregations – it is easy to freeze people to what they once were, to not grant the possibility that God may do a new work in a person’s life. I pray all the time that God would grant me the ability to see others through His eyes, to see what He is up to and how His work of transformation continues. I want to see other’s giftedness, their value to God, their worth to the Kingdom. Dear God, don’t let twenty years blind me to what You are up to in the lives of those I have devoted myself to serve.

I have always feared failure – that is probably something most of us fear to one degree or another. However, I tend to see success and failure in terms of Jesus’ parable of the talents. You remember, a series of talents were given, amounts of money that could be used or saved or squandered, and after a season the master came back to see what had been done. A couple of servants used their talents well, winning them the “well done” of the Master. One had a jaundiced view of the Master, negative and hostile and fearful. “I buried what you gave me,” he said – “here, you can have it back.” The master did not say well done.

I would lie if I claimed I never had those urges to say, “Here Lord, you can have this congregation back, I can't lead them. I don’t have a clue what I am doing or what you are up to – have what is yours.” But those urges are eclipsed by other prayers, “Lord, I don’t have a clue what I am doing or how to be the leader and servant you want me to be – so help me, train me, compel me to grow if you must, use the gifts You have given to me – and in the end, may your work flourish and may I be successful in Your eyes and may I hear your well done.”

I believe God is doing a good work in this church. We are doing things we haven’t done in a long time, if ever. Our focus is more outward, the church is leaving the building (if reluctantly at times), we are paying more attention to the community in which we live. We are looking less and less like a cookie-cutter church and more and more like a dynamic church shaped to meet the needs of those around and to share Christ in that context. It can be messy and confusing at times, and even frustrating, but also exciting and invigorating. Not long ago I had a friend ask if he could submit my name to a prestigious church. I looked at the church’s website and was bored by what I saw. It seemed so neat and tidy and dead. Of course I would go wherever God would want me to go – but all the Holy Spirit did was tug me back here. I was grateful.

At the wonderful party the church had in our honor there were several people who said they hoped I would stay another twenty years. That was nice of them. I smiled and thanked them – but do you realize how old I would be if I stayed another twenty years?

However long the Lord permits me to stay, I am grateful. I serve at the Lord’s pleasure. I hope you do too.

Midnight Closeness

I shared a favorite story with our Sunday night Bible study group this past week. We are in the midst of trying to bring some light into the darkness that surrounds the existence of evil and suffering in this world. I made the point from the book of Job that we are largely unaware of the vastness of God’s care for us – and then I shared the story Keith Miller told in his book Habitation of Dragons.

Miller speaks of a tender scene in his own life. In the middle of a winter’s night his daughter cried out in the darkness, “Daaady!”

You can imagine his surprise, for his children normally called out for their mother. The moment she called he got up, stumbled into her room, and carried her into the bathroom.

The only light was a soft red glow shining on her face from the gas wall heater. He sat her on the little potty chair and bent over to hold her so she wouldn’t fall. Her head lolled gently to one side and then she would catch herself, but never quite awaken. He would steady her, protecting her, holding her.

As Miller gazed at his daughter, he was filled with the most amazing sense of gratitude and love. He tousled her long blond hair, kissed her gently on the nose, and thought, “Some day you and I will remember this as a time of great closeness.” He pictured talking about this night when she was a grown girl, how they both would smile and laugh and remember.

But then he realized -- she would never remember this midnight closeness -- because she had been asleep the entire time he was holding her. She would not remember, for she was not even aware.

And neither are we!

We are not aware of how God cares for us during those long nights of doubt, those times when we are spiritually asleep, suffering loss, immersed in pain or fear, oblivious to His presence. We are not aware of even a fraction of what God does for us, how in His care He sustains us and walks with us and picks us up and loves us.

Job’s last words are those of amazement. Job 42:5, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” What Job sees is the fact that there was never even one moment when God averted His gaze from his life.

Remember that the next time your life is plunged into darkness for whatever reason. When you are tempted to panic, when you feel the wintry blast of fear, remember our Lord’s promise to be with us always. He hasn’t abandoned you or gotten distracted. As Psalm 139 declares, He is intimately acquainted with all our ways.

Even when you forget all that, take courage in the fact that He has not forgotten you. You may sleep through those moments of midnight closeness, but He never does.

Wicked Wednesdays and Sinister Sundays

The first church I pastored was a rural church in west Tennessee. You turned off the main road, traveled about three miles and wound up at Latham's Chapel Baptist Church. It was a great church to begin one’s ministry, and I was blessed with a gracious church family. Every Sunday they would say to me, “Pastor, you just keep preaching better and better.” I thought it was a huge compliment – looking back at the notes from those early sermons, I now know the truth. I couldn’t have gotten any worse.

Being removed from the main road made things difficult in the winter. A little bit of snow stopped all traffic in its tracks in rural Tennessee. Most winters not much snow fell, but one winter was extraordinary, a bit like this winter. For seven or eight weeks (I forget exactly which) we had snow every Wednesday and Saturday. A few of those Wednesdays we just canceled church, but after three or four, we moved into town where the roads got cleared off. The Saturdays were more difficult. The snow would wait to come when it was dark on Saturday night, and we would wake up to a few inches of snow on the road in the morning. We canceled every Sunday night during those weeks and half the Sunday mornings. We started calling the days wicked Wednesdays and sinister Sundays.

What is a pastor to do when he doesn’t preach? There were lots of other things to do – we still had funerals, risking our own lives in the process. There were hospital visits to make and counseling needed. I was attending Union University some twenty miles away, and I made it to most classes. Best of all, I found lots of time to study, reflect, and pray. I finally had time to prepare some of my sermons in advance, seek God’s leadership for the journey ahead, read some books, and truly improve my preaching skills. Honestly, I got to the place where I enjoyed those snow-filled Wednesdays and Sundays.

I looked up snow in the Bible and read this verse from Job 38:22, God’s response to Job’s demand that God give him the meaning of all his suffering: “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” I thought that was a strange verse and a strange response – what kind of battle does God fight with snow and hail? In the context God is simply saying to Job, “You can’t understand most of what I do, how do you think you could understand why suffering comes?” But the reference to snow and hail – I decided to preach a sermon about it during that snowy winter. I entitled the sermon “Snow and God’s Providence.” I indicated the biggest battle God fought with snow was one against human arrogance. I talked about how God used a little thing like a snowflake to stop cars and trucks in their tracks and bring everything to a halt. However strong and mighty we might think we are, a few tiny snow flakes exposed our weakness.

I thought it was a pretty good sermon. The folks at the church said I was getting better and better. To this day I see snow as God battling our arrogance.

Wicked Wednesdays and sinister Sundays – maybe they will do us some good if we pay a little prayerful attention.

Rare Form

After a long day my wife and I were getting ready to watch a little TV before bed when she said to me, “You’re in rare form tonight!”

I can’t tell you exactly what I did to bring that comment from her. I had just made a very sarcastic joke – was that what she reacted to? It was a Monday and Monday’s are not always a pastor’s best day of the week – was it showing? Recently it seems like I have had more plates spinning in the air than I can keep going (you remember that old trick, don’t you) – was my panic showing? Maybe I was jittery because I had too much coffee – I don’t know.

You are in rare form – I can’t even tell you if that was a compliment or a judgment, but as I played with the phrase, it occurred to me that the world around us ought to be able to say that about Christians. “You are in rare form” – meaning that what others see in us is not what you see in everybody.

When I first became a Christian I had a co-worker named Scott. Scott’s language rose from the gutter and so did his personal ethics. Even so, Scott was a likable guy and after awhile he asked me a question: “Are you religious or something? I notice you aren’t like the rest of us – what gives?” I was most pleased that he could tell the difference, even though I was a irritated that it took his nudging to share my faith. Scott didn’t embrace Christ, preferring to, as he put it, "take his chances." Perhaps later on he did – I am just grateful that I was in rare form before Scott.

I think Anne Graham Lotz describes what rare form ought to be manifested in the life of a Christ follower in her book My Heart’s Cry. I want more of Jesus, she says – but what does that mean? Her chapter headings give us insight: I want more of His voice in my ear, more of His tears on my face, more of His praise on my lips, more of His death in my life, more of His dirt on my hands, more of His fruit in my service – you get the idea. More of Jesus in every area of our lives.

My prayer is that these things would not be occasional or fleeting, rare indeed, but normal, natural, a daily thing. Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Simple translation: more of Christ in every area of my life more of the time.

Definitely not rare form.

We are reminded in 2 Corinthians 4:7 that we have the treasure of Christ in jars of clay. My fear is always that what people see the most is the jar of clay. My heart’s desire is that they see the treasure shining forth. My prayer for myself and those Christ followers I journey with is that such a thing would not be rare form but our typical way of life. We will, of course, need God’s surpassing power to pull that off.

Rare form – I wonder what my wife was referring to?

Random

I gave a book to my daughter Alyssa this past Christmas that I got for myself. I did it on purpose – I was interested in the book and thought my daughter might enjoy it. Beyond that, I thought we could talk about our reactions and reflections on what we read. Last year my son Chad did the same for me – he gave me the space trilogy by C. S. Lewis and for the next four months we talked about it. A highlight of the year for me, and I hope for him as well.

Anyway, I gave this book to Alyssa by Don Miller entitled A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. I had read an earlier book by Miller and thought this one might be interesting though I know Miller is not for everyone. I thought the book might be a good read and good discussion for us.

Alyssa and I do not have much experience reading and talking about books together. A few years ago she urged me to read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book The Brother’s Karamazov. I trudged through the book with great effort and then called her to talk about it (about four months later, as I recall). Looking back, I don’t think she believed I would read the Russian novel in the first place. When I finished it and wanted to talk about it, she confessed that it had been years since she read it, that she had read it in a hurry, and she didn’t remember the parts I was asking her about. We talked about her skimming the book again (Ha!) and then we would talk about it. That was three or four years ago now. No discussion yet.

Back to Miller’s book – he starts out with a series of random reflections on life, a bit like this blog. He talks about a friend who wrote down every experience he could remember and came up with five hundred pages of memories. Miller confesses that the narrative of his life would not be near so long – in fact, he even wonders what to make of all the experiences of life. They seem so random, some highs and lows and all sorts of things in-between. The question is, what story do they tell? Where is life going with all of these disconnected experiences?

That idea speaks to me because each day can be somewhat random for me. The one sure thing I face each week is the relentless return of the Sabbath with its sermon preparation, but other than that, any given day can be a smorgasbord of unexpected experiences. It can be so random, and most days I don’t mind it at all. I have learned that ministry takes place in those random moments as much or more than the planned moments, and that God speaks at unexpected times in unusual ways. At the same time, I have to admit that there are moments I look back and realize that I can’t get all the random events to hang together – I am not always sure what story they tell. Miller feels the same and hopes that some day in eternity he might tell God about all his experiences and God will let him in on what it all meant.

What a random blog – is there a point? Yes, of course!

I often return to the narrative in Genesis 37-50 about Joseph precisely because his life was so random and unexpected. You remember, as a teenager he had some pretty brazen dreams and he dared boast about them to his brothers. They hated him for it and did their best to destroy his dreams, which they did for a number of years. And then more than twenty years later it all makes sense – he tells his brothers that, though what they did was a random act of violence, God was at work using whatever randomly came into his life to bring him to the place where he, Joseph, could be the savior of his family.

I like Joseph’s story because it makes me realize God really is able to pull together all these seemingly random moments of life, the good and the bad and the in-between, and accomplish something far greater than we might realize. In my better moments I tell God that I am okay with that, that I don’t need to know the story line yet, that I will simply trust Him on the journey.

And then there are those times when I stare at some random moment and say, “Father, what is that about? Where does that fit in?”

Are you going to try and tell me you don’t do the same thing?

Prayer As Showing Up

Through the years as a pastor I have had people ask me more questions about prayer than about anything else. My observation is that most of us feel that we pray badly – that we don’t spend enough time or say things the right way or know best how to approach the Father. Our troubles are intensified when we have in mind what we believe God ought to do, and then He doesn’t follow our prayerful advice. It is so maddening, who does He think He is – God?

Even with all the questions, most people would just like to know how to pray better. It is with that in mind that I recommend the advice Philip Yancey gives in his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? He suggests that the most significant thing we can do in prayer is to just show up. “The writer Nancy Mairs says she attends church in the same spirit in which a writer goes to her desk every morning, so that if an idea comes along she’ll be there to receive it. I approach prayer the same way. Many days I would be hard-pressed to describe a direct benefit. I keep on, though, whether it feels like I am profiting or not. I show up in hopes of getting to know God better, and perhaps hearing from God in ways accessible only through quiet and solitude.”

Showing up – may not sound super spiritual, but it is something I seek to do each day. Whether I am reading Scripture or the words of one of my mentors in writing (like Philip Yancey), I show up most days ready for whatever God may have. Yancey refers to it as the discipline of regularity – those regular, consistent times we enter into God’s presence with our hearts open. I must say, there are times I receive something quite significant – I read a few verses, or a phrase, or a quote, or even a word, and I am plunged into a conversation with God over whatever it is that confronts, challenges, comforts or calls me. Most of the time it is more subtle than that – I spend time quietly in the presence of the Lord, sensing nothing that significant but speaking my heart nonetheless, and then I go on. Showing up.

Of course, that's not the end of it. God is not confined to a single conversation or a structured time of the day. Even when He is the quiet partner in prayer, I discover His amazing ability to bring to my mind some Scripture passage, image, quote, or whatever else is needed for an unforeseen event of the day. He honors my showing up by responding to prayer in His own time and way.

Makes sense. He can do that, you know – He is God!

My advice for the week – why don’t you try showing up for prayer?

Children

We had the joy of having both our children and their spouses home for Christmas a few weeks ago. It was a first for us – our daughter Alyssa and her husband Paul will celebrate their fifth anniversary this year, and our son Chad and his wife Becki their first. This was the first Christmas where we were all family together. I loved it – and the time slipped by so fast. It was as if they got there one day, and were gone the next. The house seemed empty and too quiet.

It is a strange thing – you pray for your children, that God will bless them and keep them close to Him, that they will grow and enjoy God’s good gifts and find a spouse that is as a gift from God. And then as those things take place, you realize that their lives take a different path than yours. You pray they always remember the things you taught them. You ask God to keep them close to Him. As son-in-laws and daughter-in-laws enter the scene, you find yourself praying for them just as you do your own children. You realize, in my case, that where only two people on the face of the earth had the right to call me “father,” now there are four.

You rejoice in their successes, agonize over their hurts, ask the Heavenly Father to direct them, and pray that the choices they make, the paths they travel, will be God-honoring. And you trust them to that Father who is so much greater than any parent can be.

As young newlyweds, Holly and I took off to Tennessee, some twelve hours from my parents. Because of college and work demands, I didn’t get to see my parents but once a year. I tried to call when I could, which wasn’t enough (my kids do much better). One day we were leaving my folks after a visit of about a week. I took one last glance at my parents as we drove off – they were standing outside watching, my Dad holding my Mom in his arms, and I suddenly realized my Mom was crying. I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me before – my leaving caused her pain. She was grateful for all God was doing in our lives, thankful that I had “turned out alright,” but still – things would never be the same.

We have tools my parents never had. We can Skype with our kids, see their faces, hear their voices, enjoy time with them even though they may be hundreds of miles away. But it can never be the same as seeing their faces in the flesh, feeling their hug, enjoying just being with them.

My children are far more attentive to my wife and I than I was to my parents. It saddens me that I didn’t get it – that I didn’t realize that, though the years bring change, they do not minimize the love or lessen the prayers. Twenty years ago I came to First Baptist Church of Rolla, and I remember the conversation I had with my Mom before I decided God was in that move. She wanted to make sure I would be happy, that I would be cared for, that it was the right thing to do. And then she said, “I’ll be praying for you.”

To my knowledge my Mom prayed for me every day from the day I was born – I do my best to follow her example, praying for my children.

See the picture – aren’t they a fine bunch!

Putting Yourself Aside

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Philippians 2:1-11. As far as I am concerned, it is one of the most majestic passages in the New Testament. Theologically it is a great hymn of praise for the work of Christ, a profound glimpse into the mystery of the incarnation, of God taking on flesh in the person of His Son, of the way God became Immanuel, God with us. A wordy sentence, yes, but how do you describe what all of this means in just a few words!

Of course, the passage has a practical purpose – it is part of Paul’s plea to the Philippians to maintain unity, to strive for a greater love for each other, and to have the shared purpose of exalting Christ. It is a call to follow the pattern of Jesus by putting others before ourselves, being a servant, setting aside self-interest. This is where this tremendous passage nails me.

I read this passage as the text for a deacon ordination service in the church I pastor this past Sunday. It is a great passage for service, calling us to have the same attitude which was also in Christ Jesus – to take upon ourselves, as one version puts it, the mind of Christ.

But I have a problem with that.

It’s not that I think the idea is wrong; on the contrary, it is so right. If we are truly Christ-followers, then of course we will seek to pattern our lives after Jesus.

But I find that easier said than done.

C. S. Lewis highlights the struggle I have – is it yours as well? He writes:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all my friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek –
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

That is how Lewis puts it with his lofty prose – Don Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz puts it more crassly, and more to the point – “Six billion people live in the world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.”

I don’t like that fact about myself, and I tend to believe I am not alone. We can talk a good game, speak of things like love and service and putting others first – but frankly, that doesn’t happen easily. That is why I keep coming back to Philippians 2. Eugene Peterson puts it in the same frank way Miller does in The Message – “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made a difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care – then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”

I keep coming back to these words because I must. Vain conceit and selfish ambition are just natural for me – isn’t it for you as well? And so day by day we keep coming back to the admonition to put on the mind of Christ, and we keep coming back to the example of Jesus and the attitude displayed by His great act of self-emptying. We come back with the prayer, “Lord, make me more like you.”

It’s a cinch I can’t pull it off on my own.

Worship Good And Bad

Well, I decided to take up my own challenge and spend a year with Jesus. A chapter a day out of a Gospel will take me through all four Gospels four times in 356 days. I’ve printed the text out with a wide margin for notes and thoughts and a chronicle of my journey. I don’t intent to blog it here, but there will probably be times when something strikes me.

Like today.

Matthew chapter two is a chapter on worship good and bad. It is a familiar passage, one we hear during the Christmas season, our embellished story of three Wise Men from the Far East bringing their costly and symbolic gifts to the baby Jesus. You’ve heard the sermons – I won’t preach one here.

No, what caught my attention was the frequent reference to worship. The Magi come before Herod in their search and indicate they have come to worship this one who has been born King of the Jews. Herod is disturbed, but he uses worship language as well – “As soon as you find him, report to me, so I too may go and worship him.” Sure Herod – we know worship is the farthest thing from your mind!

When the Magi finally reach their destination, they worship. They do things like bowing down, opening their treasures, and presenting their gifts. And when they don’t return to tell Herod where the newborn King is, Herod responds with his own brand of self-worship, seeking to eliminate the opposition with the murder of the innocents.

Is the worship over at this point? No, I don’t think so. Joseph has taken his family out of the country to keep them safe, and in the dead of the night he has a dream. Joseph always dreams – I wonder if he ever felt cheated that he didn’t get any angelic visitations in broad daylight but only dreams in the dark of the night. Or maybe he was relieved. Anyway, he has a dream, and he responds by taking his family back to Israel. He has another dream, and he responds again, finally taking Jesus to Nazareth.

I wonder a lot about worship – are even these thoughts prayerfully offered to whoever will read them an act of worship? What does worship mean to you or me on a personal level, and what about a collective level when we gather with brothers and sisters in Christ? Matthew tells us that the Magi bowed down and worshiped Jesus – does that mean they sang songs? Prayed prayers? Read Scripture? Actions are recorded – they opened their treasures – they presented gifts. So what is it that I treasure, good or bad, that I need to “open” for the Lord? What gifts do I need to give? And is there any Herod in you or me – he was lying about his desire to worship, he had a secret agenda. Do we ever have a secret agenda? Are we after something in our worship? Is that why we complain sometimes that we have not worshiped, because we have not gotten what we are after? A lot of questions, I know.

We uses phrases like “worship service” – in this chapter the two come together, both worship and service. Worship involves things we need like singing and praying and giving and telling God what is on our mind and in our hearts – but worship also puts us at the service of God, like the Magi and Joseph traveling and bowing and protecting and acting in response to God.

Maybe that is the test of worship for us – not what it does for us, but what we do in response.

Julie, Julia, Jesus and 356 Days

The first day of 2010 – I often think of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 at the start of a new year, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot...” – and you can read the rest and reflect on what time it is now for you, and how you will spend the time God has given you in this new year. Just remember that a lot of choices go into how we spend our time, in positive and negative ways, for our growth or our detriment.

One of the books I will be spending time with in 2010 is Philip Yancey’s Grace Notes. It contains daily heart-to-heart conversations about God, yourself, the world, and about everything else. I like this comment from the January 1 reading: “Because of Jesus we need never question God’s desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it.” Did you catch that? Jesus gave up heaven so we could have close contact and intimacy with the Father. That is so beyond my comprehension that all I want to do is get to know better this One who loves us so.

Which brings me to the title of this blog and my invitation for the new year.

A couple of weeks ago Holly and I watched the movie, Julie & Julia. It was a truth-inspired tale of Julie Powell, a disenchanted young woman who decides to enliven her uneventful life and find purpose by cooking her way through Julia Child’s classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie decides to spend 365 days working through the 524 recipes, and she delights the ever-growing readers of her blog with her steps and missteps. In the end she has done more than master the art of French cooking – she has found purpose and joy in life.

I am not suggesting that you follow Julie’s example and work yourself through a cookbook in a year. As my wife Holly and I watched the movie, I was struck at how much Julie was inspired by what she read and the person (Julia Child) she was getting to know. Writing a blog about each day helped cement things in her thoughts and soul – but I am not suggesting that either.

Inasmuch as Jesus gave up heaven by coming into our midst so we could know Him intimately, I would suggest that you give the next 365 days to a pursuit of Jesus.

Did you realize that if you simply read one chapter out of a Gospel a day, you can cover the four Gospels four times in a year – actually, in 356 days? What’s more, if you seek to apply what you read, reflect on Jesus’ character, make Jesus’ choices, live a life that mirrors His, you will find more purpose and joy than you could ever find in a cookbook, to say nothing of the greater intimacy you will discover. Blog about it if you want, journal it and you will hang on to your insights, but whatever you do, pray about what you read each day and you will find your life changed. You will not only know the Gospels in a way you never have before – with prayer, you will know Jesus as you never have before.

What a great way to spend the time God has given you in this new year!