A Lesson from Lance

If we claim we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth – we’re not living what we claim. (1 John 1:6, The Message).

I have never felt like I have much of a “testimony” to share. That’s not to say I don’t believe God has done anything in my life. It’s just that what God has done isn’t very exciting or dramatic. I have a story, a faith story, to be sure – but it isn’t very interesting.

The truly compelling stories, the kind of stories that show God intervening in a life and turning that life around – those are stories that have punch. They make people take notice. Among those stories is that of Chuck Colson. This guy was at the top of the Washington power structure, a key player in the Nixon administration, implicated in the Watergate mess, convicted and sentenced . . . and then converted. Now that’s a story.

I find myself wanting to add another name to that list, another story that forces the unbelieving world to deal with the reality and power of Jesus. The name is Lance Armstrong. Sadly, however, there’s no story.

Of course, there’s an incredible story of an athlete. An incredible story of overcoming a pervasive aggressive cancer. An incredible story of six Tour de France victories. As of this writing it appears that Lance is less than a week from making it a perfect seven. Unheard of. Unbelievable. An amazing story.

But Jesus isn’t in it.

My interest in this isn’t entirely pure. I guess there’s a little “wouldn’t it be great to have Lance on our side” kind of thinking. That’s not a concern for evangelism, seeing a person come to faith in Christ. That’s marketing. I guess I want to use Lance the same way Nike or Trek does. Thus ends my confession.

Mixed motives aside, it is truly amazing to me that God doesn’t figure more prominently into the Lance Armstrong story. Few lives have been as marked by the grace of God as this man’s life. It seems to me that every inch of his existence is smudged with God’s fingerprints; everything from his natural athletic ability, to the fact that he’s still alive, much less riding a bike – riding and winning. How does a story like that manage to omit God? It baffles me.

But Armstrong manages to do just that in his book, "It’s Not About the Bike." For example:

“I don’t know why I’m still alive. I can only guess. I have a tough constitution . . . I can’t help feeling that my survival was more a matter of blind luck” (p. 3).

At one point Armstrong sounds unnervingly defiant when he says

Quite simply I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person . . . if I did that . . . then I believed that should be enough. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn’t say, “but you were never a Christian, so you’re going the other way from heaven.” If so, I was going to reply, “You know what? You’re right. Fine.” (p. 117)

Lance is trusting in himself, trusting in his own best attempt to “live a true life” – whatever that means. The more I think about that, I don’t think I’m guilty of only envying Lance as a poster boy for the Christian faith. I feel a sense of sadness when I read his words. But sadder than Armstrong’s misplaced trust in his “true life” is the reason he seems to feel that way about faith and about Christianity in particular.

Early in the book Lance explains that he basically grew up without a father. Lance’s mother was 17 when Lance was born, and he never knew his birth father. At a young age, his mother married a man who adopted him and gave him the name Armstrong. Lance has little good to say about this man. Among the memories that left an enduring mark on Armstrong is this:

“Terry Armstrong was a Christian . . . but for all of his proselytizing, Terry had a bad temper, and he used to whip me, for silly things. Kid things, like being messy. . . as a result my early impressions of organized religion was that it was for hypocrites” (p. 21).

The extent to which Armstrong’s lack of faith in God can be attributed to this one person isn’t clear. What is clear is that as a child Armstrong knew a Christian who seemed to live out of his anger, not love. In Armstrong’s mind and memory this connection was never made: he was a Christian and he loved me. Terry Armstrong's life and faith didn't connect. As a Christian, he didn’t exhibit anything compelling or attractive to Lance.

There's really nothing new here. This is what pastor John seems to be writing about to his congregation, a congregation fractured by some who claim to know Christ, to be in the light – but live life stumbling around in the darkness. Their lives negate their claim. To be in the light means to live a certain kind of life. Faith is lived. Doctrine isn’t a head thing, it’s a life thing. John is succinct in making his point. “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from Lance: lessons about hope and determination, self-discipline and self confidence – and yes, lessons about grace. But hidden behind these prominent lessons is a quiet lesson about the power of lived faith and the impact it can have on another person. One person’s refusal to acknowledge God can’t be blamed entirely (or mostly?) on another person's failure to walk with God. Still, I can’t help but wonder. What if a very young Lance Armstrong had known a Christian whose love for Jesus translated clearly into love for him? What a story we might be telling right now.

And maybe even today the narrative is open-ended. The story has yet to be concluded.

These Are Serious Times

You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:56 ESV)

Here in Atlanta we’re dealing with the after-effects of Hurricane Dennis. In Georgia that means plenty of rain, some flooding and loss of power in some areas. It also means we’re relatively fortunate given what some areas along the gulf coast are left to deal with.

Relatively fortunate . . . most of us.

There’s been a news story in Atlanta that I can’t make sense of, can’t get my mind around. Part of my brain wants to wrestle with it to see if I can arrive at some suitable way to think about it. Another part of my brain wants to forget about it and pretend it didn’t really happen.

On Sunday night a 35 year old man in the Decatur area went to bed, probably with the sound of rain peppering his roof. Sometime early Monday morning a massive tree fell on his house, ripping into his bedroom and killing him. He has a wife and small children. They managed to escape. The newscasts keep saying that this man died instantly. I keep wondering how they know that and I keep praying it’s true. Perhaps we’re not supposed to ever get comfortable with stories like that. TV tries to help us. We get about 60 seconds of the tragedy and then we break to something else, often some clever and funny commercial that makes us smile again. It’s the randomness of it all that bothers me. The randomness means that no one has immunity.

So if that’s the case, what are we to do with that? How do we live and what does it mean to live well. These are the questions that have been stirred up this morning as I read through the text of Luke 12. The scripture hasn’t offered an explanation. It rarely does. But to listen to Jesus is to hear some things that need to be heard as we watch the movements of a hurricane and hear about a family robbed of a father and husband and see a mangled and charred bus on the streets of London.

It seems like the people among whom Jesus lived were very much like us. Over the past weekend I was constantly turning on the weather channel. The frequency of special weather bulletins on our local TV channels signaled the level of threat and fed our voracious appetite for radar images and information about trajectory and wind speed. This is the kind of thing Jesus confronts in Luke 12:54-56. Jesus observes that his audience is very perceptive and interested in weather patterns. They know that cloud from the west, coming from over the Mediterranean Sea, will be full of moisture. “There’ll be rain,” they say. Likewise, these folks know that a south wind, coming from the arid desert places, will be like an oven blast. “It’s gonna be a hot one,” they say.

Jesus makes his point with a question. “You know how to read the weather, but why can’t you interpret this present time?”

It’s “this present time” that deserves our attention, our efforts to discern accurately and respond wisely. The pressing question of Jesus’ day, and ours, is “what is God doing?” The people to whom Jesus spoke were good at reading the almanac, interpreting earth and sky, but they were missing the work of God present among them in Jesus.

In his book Serious Times, James Emery White shares this quote from Paul Helms:
“The whole of a person’s life is fundamentally serious, something for which he is responsible before God, and for which he will have to give an account . . . He is individually responsible to God for what he ‘makes’ of it.”[1]

White recounts a line from a letter written by John Adams to his friend Thomas Jefferson toward the end of their lives. “You and I have lived in serious times.”

This is what Jesus knew. This is what he wanted others to understand. This is what we need to understand as well. These are serious times. This theme is woven throughout Luke 12 – in a sense, through the whole of scripture. In the voices of prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, the call is consistent. Don’t miss what matters most. Don’t be distracted by the dramatic and thus miss the truly urgent.

We respond to the randomness of a fallen tree not by trying to avoid trees or by sitting up all night during storms. I heard a radio interview on Saturday with an American woman who lives in London. The interviewer asked, “will this terrorist attack cause you to come home?” The answer was no. It made me think, “why would coming back to the USA be a good response? What would that solve?”

Jesus said, “don’t fear those who can only kill your body and then do nothing else. Fear the one who holds your eternal destiny, who can throw you into hell” (Luke 12:4-5).

We don’t answer the urgency of these serious times by simply protecting ourselves against terrorists or hurricanes. We answer the urgency of these days with readiness. Jesus uses the image of a boss returning from a business trip to find workers productively engaged. Be ready, watchful, alert. “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night” (Luke 12:38).

These are serious times.

And serious times call for serious lives. This doesn’t mean sour and sober, guarded and tentative. It does mean looking deeper than wind and clouds, getting beneath the surface, interpreting the days in which we live, ready to be a part of what God is doing. This is what Jesus calls us to. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24).

[1] Quoted in James Emery White, Serious Times, p. 10.

Jesus Freedom

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips . . . (Luke 4:22)

Woe to you when all men speak well of you . . . (Luke 6:26)

The assigned text in my Bible reading plan nearly fell on Independence Day, but not quite. July 4 and Luke 4 were separated by a day or so, but I’ve been holding them together in my head. The link is freedom and the way we celebrate it and the way we define it.

July 4 is all about freedom: fireworks, flags, parades, food, certain songs played by military bands. It’s a blend of history and politics. It’s about patriotism and pride. We remember and celebrate the birth of our democracy. We celebrate the kind of freedom that tells us we can do anything we dream about doing. We revel in our identity as the land of opportunity.

Luke 4 is also about freedom – but freedom of a very different kind. This chapter shows us a Jesus kind of freedom. It opens with the wilderness temptations. As Luke tells it Jesus was tempted for 40 days. Mark makes it sound like 40 days of prayer and fasting with the temptations coming at the end of that period. Either way, Jesus is free. Hungry, but free not to eat. Wanting to make an impact, but free not to dazzle people. He is free to say no.

The chapter also says alot about the way people responded to Jesus – the way crowds gathered around him. His freedom is seen in his indifference to them. That’s not to say he didn’t care about people or love people. It is clear that he does – but he doesn’t need their approval or applause or admiration. The center of the chapter tells about Jesus’ inaugural sermon. He took Isaiah 61 as his text and after the reading jumped immediately to his application: today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This didn’t go over so well. At first there had been a sense of hometown-boy-made-good. But the more Jesus talked, the less delight his neighbors felt in his first sermon. By the time Jesus wraps it up, they’re furious with him.

His freedom is an odd mix of love for people and indifference to them. His freedom shows me that I’m not as free as I’d like to be. Jesus heals many, but he never plays to the crowd. Many are amazed at his teaching. Many are offended at his teaching. It doesn’t matter. He’s free of the need to be spoken well of. He’s free of the fear of not being highly esteemed.

Jesus freedom means not living or acting in order to determine what others think or evoke a favorable response. It means not living or acting in order to avoid a negative response. Jesus freedom is found in a clear sense of identity and calling. That’s why the admiring crowd in Capernaum couldn’t hold Jesus for very long. “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43).

I’d like to be free – not just free to attend any church and to cast a vote and go to school and start a business and wave a protest sign and write my congressman. I’m grateful for those things, and too often guilty of taking them for granted. But I’d like to be free with a Jesus kind of freedom. Free to give myself heart and soul to what God is doing, what God is calling me to do. Free to do so without practicing impression management.

This is the truest meaning of religious freedom.

Worthy of Imitation: Simeon

Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts (Luke 2:27)

I can imagine that for a moment he thought about not going. Missing this one day wouldn’t really matter. The place was large and busy. No one would miss him. And besides, he was feeling how the years had settled on his bones like rust. The familiar ache associated with getting up every morning was much sharper on this day, stabbing his joints and pushing the blade a little deeper with every slow move he made. For a moment it seemed like this would be a day to stay at home and be still.

I imagine him alone in his house. His wife has been dead for years. He’s seen most of his friends leave this life, and he wonders from time to time why he hasn’t been allowed to join them, why he’s still here.

But those thoughts never linger for long. He knows why he’s here. And he knows why, once he’s been up and moving for a while, he’ll walk yet again to the temple for a time of prayer. The Holy Spirit has revealed to Simeon that he will not die until he sees the Lord’s Christ (Luke 2:26). This is what Simeon lives for. This is what gets him up every morning and braces him against the pain of old age.

This is why Simeon knows he will not stay home today.

I’m not exactly sure what it means to be a “spiritual” person, but there’s considerable interest in the question today. Within the pages of scripture Simeon stands out as someone worth paying attention to. We really don’t know much about Simeon. We don’t know anything about his family. We don’t even know if he’s old. What we do know is that he has been “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” How long has he been waiting? We don’t know that either, but to me the waiting implies a lengthy period of time.

There are some obvious reasons why Simeon should inform our understanding of spirituality: Luke’s text – the only text that tells us anything about Simeon – states plainly that Simeon was righteous and devout, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. This is about a close as scripture comes to saying “he was a spiritual person.”

But what strikes me is the balance that characterizes Simeon’s life before God. He is grounded, persistent, patient – but not dry or lifeless. The balance is captured in a brief phrase from Luke 2:27. “Moved by the Spirit, he went into the Temple courts.”

Simeon’s life embodies two aspects of spirituality that are too often separated: an alertness to God's Spirit in familiar set patterns of worship. Here is a man who is deeply rooted in the practice of his faith. It is hard to imagine that going to the temple was a novelty for Simeon. This man is “righteous” which means he has regard for the law of God. He knows it well and follows it carefully. Going to the temple is simply what he does. He’s done it countless times before. His life before God is shaped by the familiar patterns of temple worship.

But there is nothing rote or mechanical about this. The often walked route to the temple is a Spirit led trip. This man embraces the familiar patterns and practices of worship with expectancy, even with yearning. His heart is fully alive to God. He isn’t going through the motions, worshiping on autopilot. Any suggestion that genuine spirituality requires something spontaneous and new won’t find support in Simeon. He is rooted in the tradition, and sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.

On the day Luke tells us about, Simeon was (again) ready and expectant. He was poised to see what others missed. In the midst of his practiced routine of prayer, he was able to notice the young couple with their baby. Again, the imagination can’t help but kick in here. How many others were bustling around the temple courts that day? How many had hurried to make the hour of prayer. How many others, like Mary and Joseph, were there in obedience to the Law?

Simeon makes his way to the couple and extends his wrinkled hands, gently cradling the infant Jesus. And then he prays. He has seen the salvation of God. In his arms he holds the weight of a nations dreams and a lifetime of waiting. This child – a light for the Gentiles and the glory of Israel. The aim of Simeon’s life has been realized. He’s ready to die, to be dismissed.

I go to church every week, and I have for most of my life. I took a couple of years off in college, but sleeping in is fun for only so long. I started going back. In my life, going to church is simply something people do. I look at Simeon and I have some hope that maybe going back to church was Spirit led. Such a thought never occurred to me at the time. As I got older I knew I wanted to be involved in helping others make their way, or way back, to God. I became a pastor.

The challenge (and the fun!) today is helping people forge a Simeon-like spirituality. By this I mean a life before God that is deeply rooted and yet spiritually alert - holding to the shared practices of believers through the ages, and yet anticipating the work of God in fresh ways in our midst today. There are too many Christians who hold doggedly to the familiar practices of worship, but do so without the slightest expectation that God is doing anything in them or around them. And there are just as many who are convinced that God is at work, but to see it will require scrubbing away the barnacles of familiarity and tradition.

So for me Simeon is a model, a kind of hero: patient, prayerful, persistent. Making his way day after day to the temple, and yet expectant and alert to God - just as we manage to get up every Sunday and pile into the van and make our way to Peachtree Church, a place where God is working, where salvation is happening in the lives of people. I want to show up every week looking for it and expecting it. It’s easy to miss, but it’s there. Simeon teaches us to see it.

Worship: A Wild Thing

. . . let us be thankful, and so worship God with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29 NIV).

About eleven years ago I made my first (and so far only) trip to Alaska. I spent two weeks there, feeling small in the vastness of the place, marveling at sights massive and expansive, enjoying daylight that lasted past midnight and never went away entirely. In the middle of that trip my hosts took me to the mountains. The journey required the services of a bush pilot. No roads could get to where we were going. He landed on a grass runway not far from some small hunting sheds (the word “cabin” suggests something more substantial than what was there). He helped us unload our gear and supplies and said, “I’ll be back for you Wednesday.”

There we were. No electricity. No plumbing. No radio, TV or DVD players. No stores to run to. Nothing but wild. Our two day stay in the mountains would involve walking from one cluster of hunting sheds to another cluster, and then hiking back again. At one point during this trek I heard a distant howling. “What’s that,” I asked. “Wolves” I was told matter of factly.

I remember that trip now, and what strikes me about it isn’t what I saw or did there. What I recall above all of that is simply this: Never once was I bored. I could use any number of words to try and capture what that experience was like. I was awed, thrilled, at times scared, grateful, occasionally hungry, tired – but never bored.

Why is it that the most common criticism of church is the word “boring.” There are other criticisms to be sure, some more pointed and scathing than the accusation of dullness, but “boredom” seems to head the list of negative impressions associated with church in general and worship in particular. Boring worship. How did we ever get there?

A couple of weeks ago the California Supreme Court handed down a decision about the liability of amusement parks relative to roller-coasters and other rides. The technical legal question had to do with whether such rides are public carriers, or something like that. I don’t know the details of what the court was trying to decide. However, what caught my attention was the commentary of a legal analyst on one of the cable news channels. He basically summarized the court’s opinion in simple terms. The minority of the court argued that when a person rides a roller-coaster they know there is an element of risk or danger involved and they willingly assume such risks by getting on the ride. In fact, the element of danger is part of the reason for getting on the ride to begin with.

But the majority disagreed. They said that amusement park patrons want the experience of danger the ride provides, but they want it with the assurance of safety.

I don’t know the legal implications of that opinion, but I think the majority was right. We want the exhilaration without the risk. We want an experience that won’t cost us too much. And what’s more, what the California Supreme court said about amusement park patrons might well be said about many who attend church worship services. There’s an appetite for spirituality that’s exhilarating or comforting, a Christianity that that buttresses our pursuit of the American dream and strengthens us as we accumulate comforts - and it does all of this without disturbing us.

But this is exactly what soon becomes boring. There’s nothing vast or expansive or the least bit threatening about this kind of spirituality. The reason I was never bored in the mountains of Alaska was because I knew that the place could kill me. Being in the middle of the Alaskan mountain range is very different from standing at a distance and taking pictures. Taking pictures of mountains is what tourists do. Hiking those mountains within earshot of wolves pushes one beyond mere observation. The sights are still beautiful, but something is at stake.

The Hebrew prophets couldn’t tolerate religious tourism, worship with the illusion of safety. To draw near to God was to be immersed in something entirely overwhelming, threatening, awesome. The prophet Malachi gave assurances that God would one day come to his temple, but he added a caution. “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap” (Malachi 3:2). Jeremiah stood in the temple gates and confronted those who came with empty words, repeating over and over in some kind of mantra, “this is the temple of the Lord, this is the temple of the Lord” (Jeremiah 7:4). They came with words, living any way they wanted, thinking that the mantra would make them safe. Isaiah’s temple vision showed him the truth about himself and left him fearing for his life (Isaiah 6:5).

There’s no way worship should ever be boring. And worship that tries to deliver a spiritual experience at little or no cost will inevitably become boring. To enter the sanctuary is to watch the pilot leave you in the wild. This memory of Alaska gives me a new way of looking at what it means to lead people in worship. It’s taking them to vast country of God and God’s ways, both merciful and terrible, and leaving them there to deal with what they find or what finds them. You can make it out alive, but not unchanged.

The Beach, Billy Graham, and the Check-Out Line at Kroger

"You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake" (1 Thess. 1:5b).

For me, being at the beach is a balancing act - a negotiation between time spent with children in the ocean or the pool and time by the ocean or the pool reading. Actually, there isn’t much balancing to be done. I read until my kids plead with me to “get in.” I know that pretty soon we’ll go to the beach and they won’t want me anywhere around, so they never have to plead too long. Once I’m “in” I throw them around until they (and I) have had enough, then back to my chair and my book until the next invitation.

For the past five days we’ve been enjoying the Atlantic coast near Charleston, S.C., and when I’ve been able to sit in a chair on the beach or by the pool I’ve been making my way through Donald Miller’s Searching For God Knows What. So far Miller’s message boils down to this: Christianity is not a formula. You don’t become a Christian by following a formula, and you don’t live the Christian life by following a formula or doing certain Christian things. Miller says that we’ve tried to make Christianity formulaic and this presentation of the faith is simply no longer compelling. The formulas don’t make people want to become Christians. To say “believe these things in this order” and then instruct people to “behave this way and do these things” just doesn’t get it. Miller still has a firm grasp on the doctrines we believe and the kind of life we are called to live, but he insists on a relational context for all these things. The neglected relational dynamic of Christianity needs to be recovered. That’s what I understand this book to be about.

He’s not had to work too hard to convince me. As a seminary student I was required to take a course in personal evangelism. The course rightly required students to actually go out and share their faith with another person and then report on the encounter. The church I attended at the time had a Sunday afternoon evangelism ministry whereby people were trained to share the gospel and then sent out along Hemphill Ave. in Fort Worth to do just that. I signed up and for several weeks walked up and down Hemphill Ave. trying to initiate conversations that would eventually allow me to “witness.”

What I noticed on these Sunday afternoons was that directly across the street from the church was a park where large crowds of people – mostly Hispanic – gathered every week to play soccer. Oddly, none of us who had been trained to “witness” ever went over to the park to play soccer. Sure, there might have been a language barrier. But the larger barrier was a relational chasm. We shared the faith by laying out a formula, an explanation of ideas. We didn’t share the faith by playing soccer. Miller is trying to tell us to do less explaining and play more soccer.

With these ideas in my head we left Charleston yesterday and made the five hour drive home. On the way back my wife and I listened to a radio talk show from Flushing Meadows, New York - the site this weekend of what may well be Billy Graham’s last crusade here in the U.S. Billy Graham is 86 years old and still preaching. With the Milleresque take on the Christian faith fresh on my mind I listened to the talk show host interview Franklin Graham about his father’s ministry. It occurred to me that when Billy Graham preaches, the heart of his message seems to be what Miller calls a “formula.” He often describes life apart from Christ, then moves to what life can be like with Christ, then tells people how to move from one condition to the other, which is to say from “life without” to “life with.” Tens of millions of people have heard him preach and no doubt thousands have had their lives impacted by his message.

And yet now, when interviewers talk to him or talk about him, what seems to captivate them is the man’s life. Not a formula. A life.

Fast forward a few hours. We’ve made it home, I’ve unloaded the van, and it seems we need milk. One thing you’re sure to need after being away for a week of vacation is fresh milk. So off I go to make a Kroger run. I quickly get milk and a couple of other impulse items and get to a check-out line behind someone else who had only come in for a few items. Pleased with my luck at finding a fast moving check-out line, I place my items on the conveyor belt, barely noticing the lady who has gotten in line behind me. I pay my $13.00 and change, take my receipt from the cashier, and just as I’m about to bolt for the car I hear, “God bless you sir.” I turn and the lady behind me hands me a tract – bold red with white and black lettering. The front of the tract reads “Is Jesus Christ your Savior?” I say “thanks” and head for the car.

No conversation with her. No real connection. Her style was more hit-and-run. Only I was the one on the run. I don’t doubt that this is well intended by her. She may know that people don’t like to talk to strangers about religion. So she just does the quick hit with a tract and lets it go at that. She thinks of it as planting a seed. Again, freshly Miller-minded about such things I thought of the “formula.” The tract told me what I need to believe for Jesus to be my savior and for me to go to heaven. As far as I can tell from a hurried glance, every word of it looks true. But this truth came to me void of the relational context Miller writes about.

After a few days at the beach, the drive home listening to the radio talk show, and the run to Kroger, I’m aware again of how critical it is that doctrine be lived. Doctrinal truth shows itself in a life. The absence of a life doesn’t render the doctrine untrue – but it does seem to render it weak, even boring.

Billy Graham is effective with his formula because of his life. A piece of folded paper is less effective because a life is absent. The paper is no less true. By the Spirit, it can change a life – but the Spirit most often seems to work through other lives.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he says to them, “you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.” This statement comes right on the heels of his summary of how the gospel message came to them – not only in word but in the power of the spirit and with full conviction. Their message was backed up by their life.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m back at church, doing things pastors do: Teaching the bible, helping lead worship. But this isn’t a day for me to “go back to work.” I want to get back at it tomorrow simply living a life. That’s fairly obvious and quite simple – but not always easy.

With some help from Donald Miller, I’m trying to come back from vacation but not go back to a “job.”

"My Whole Life Has Been a Waste"

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for sake of the gospel will save it (Mark 8:35 TNIV).

I’ll confess, I’ve pretty much written him off.

Say the name “Mike Tyson” and the words and images that come to my mind are void of grace. I say it to my shame, but it’s the truth. Rapist, convict, wife beater, ear biter, animal -that about sums it up. Still, I was troubled when I saw the front page of the June 3-5 issue of USA Today. An article on Tyson ran under this headline: “My Whole Life Has Been a Waste.” Those are Tyson’s own words. He continues:

“I’ll never be happy. I believe I’ll die alone. I would want it that way. I’ve been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I’m really lost but I’m trying to find myself. I’m really a sad, pathetic case.”

I’ve got alot to learn about showing grace and loving like Jesus loved – but I know this much with certainty: no one should ever have to feel that way about their life, at least not in a conclusive, final way. Sure, there are days, seasons and circumstances when anyone could say the same thing – but Tyson’s words should never stand as the final verdict.

Tyson’s words raise a question: what is a “wasted life?” Further, what's the connection between a “wasted life” and a poorly lived life? Does "wasted" require disastrous mistakes or choices? As heart-wrenching as Tyson’s assessment of his life is, there is something yet more tragic. Far too many people are wasting their lives and don’t know it. They’ve not left a trail of wreckage behind them that screams “wasted life.” In fact, to most observers their lives look enviable. Good jobs, nice homes, good looking family, ski trips in winter and beach trips in summer. That’s the life.

But even a life that’s comfortable and attractive can be wasted. And it is wasted because it is spent entirely in the pursuit of something that isn’t worthy of the gift that life is. We’ve all got one life, one shot. What will we do? How will we live it? How will we invest our energies? To whom and to what will we give our best self?

Jesus told a story to make this very point. A certain man was quite savvy and lucky in the conduct of his farming business. His acreage yielded a rich harvest and he found himself with more crops than he could handle. His plan was good business, but not-so-good living. “I’ll expand the business. I’ll build larger barns. I’ll store the surplus and then take early retirement.” That was the business strategy. As for his life, the plan was simple: take life easy, eat, drink and be merry (Luke 12:16-21).

God called this man a fool. He was a fool because on day one of the “be merry” plan he was required to give an accounting of his life. The story says it happened that very night, suggesting to my imagination a sudden and quiet death in his sleep. In an instant his soul was required of him. All he could show was stored crops – and who would get that now?

In his book, Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper tells of two elderly missionaries, both single women, who were killed overseas in an auto collision. Piper asks, “was that a tragedy?” His answer: no, that was not a tragedy. He then shares a story from Reader’s Digest about a couple who has taken early retirement in Florida. They spend their days boating, playing softball, and collecting sea shells. This, says Piper, is a tragedy. To spend the closing years of your one life collecting shells and playing softball is a tragedy. I don’t take this as a wholesale condemnation of recreation or retirement – but the point is well taken. We’ve got one shot. What will we do? What is worthy of the gift?

Again, the words of Jesus: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). To waste life is to spend our days and our best energy grasping at the good life as our culture defines it, or as we define it in terms of our own cravings and dreams. To yield life, to give it up as a kind of sacrifice for God to use – this is what it means to live and live well.

Interestingly, Mike Tyson has also spoken words that echo this good news, this gospel. Following his recent loss in the ring, Tyson was quoted as saying, “when I was younger, I felt life was about acquiring things. But as I get older, I know life is totally about losing everything.”

Tyson may be closer to redemption than any of us think. Much closer than others whose lives appear to be so much more “together.” Wasted life? Perhaps not. The verdict is still out.

(Suggested summer reading: John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life, Crossway Books, 2003)

A Prophet and a Shower Door

“These people say, ‘the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’” (Haggai 1:2)

Last Saturday I felt like Ty Pennington, host of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” I felt handy, like a real pro, like a guy who knows how to fix things. The occasion for my new-found confidence with the tool box was the successful repair of a sliding glass door on my bathtub – a job that took less than 30 minutes and cost less than $5.00. Nothing was made over, and nothing about this project was extreme. But the door was repaired and I had a hand in repairing it. Honestly, that the job required so little is the source of some embarrassment for me. Here’s why.

The door had been broken for months. Many months. Not enough months to qualify as a year – but enough months to get uncomfortably close. The sliding door that acts as a “shower curtain” on our tub lost a small wheel. This wheel allows the door to move smoothly and easily along a metal track. Without the wheel, the door is stuck. Luckily, the other half of the sliding glass door still moved easily, allowing us to step in and out of the shower without trouble.

“I’ll need to fix that,” I mused. My declaration was notably noncommittal.

“That wheel on the shower door needs to be fixed,” my wife patiently observed (as the weeks passed). “Yes, you’re right,” I agreed.

But every day half of the door worked just fine, and the fact that the other half of the door was broken bothered me less and less – until after some weeks or months I hardly noticed it at all. Next thing you know it’s early June, and finally we had an open Saturday. My wife drew up a project list for the day, and the sliding glass door on the tub topped the list.

Around the year 520 B.C. God raised up a prophet in Jerusalem. His message was simple. The people there had come home after decades in exile. They had been given permission to rebuild the temple, but after roughly 15 years of being back in their hometown, the temple was not rebuilt. Some years earlier a start had been made, but the job was abandoned for a variety of reasons.

Maybe at first this troubled the residents of Jerusalem – they could see the foundations and knew the job needed to be finished. But years passed. The temple remained in ruins. The people were busy scratching out a living, trying to grow food, trying to survive. After a while the ravaged temple site became part of the Jerusalem landscape.

So God gave a message to Haggai. “The time is now. You’ve tended to your own homes. You’ve invested energy in making yourselves comfortable here. It’s time to get things in order and put first things first; time to build the Temple.”

For many people who claim a relationship with God, the most formidable challenges in the life of faith are not the big issues like “doubting the existence of God” or “renouncing the faith” or “rejecting the church.” These faith crises are certainly real – but far more often faithful people simply confuse life’s priorities. Belief in God is maintained, church attendance and other religious practices continue, but other things take the place of our highest affections and our best energies. The problem isn’t disordered thinking as much as disordered living.

For some, though they hold sound beliefs, their walk with God is in disrepair, perhaps a state of ruin. But we have a remarkable capacity for tolerating this kind of thing. It doesn’t take long for prayerlessness to feel “normal.” Hang around a church long enough and you’ll see what enormous effort it takes for people to establish a habit of weekly worship, and how easily the same habit can be abandoned.

We need to hear the words of this prophet. Direct, blunt, in your face truth about our capacity for neglecting what is central to life. Haggai’s answer to the apathy of the people isn’t complicated – go gather wood and supplies and do the work. We tell ourselves the same lie that the people of Jerusalem bought into: that there will be a better time. But there won’t be a better time than right now. Don’t wait for things to slow down at work. Don’t wait for the kids to get a little older. Don’t wait. The time is now.

Thirty minutes and five dollars fixed my shower door. What might God do with our modest efforts to put first things first?

The Incredibles (wrap up)

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (2 Timothy 1:7).

. . . train yourself to be godly (1 Timothy 4:7).

When I was in seminary a pastor whom I very much admired tanked his ministry. Paul uses the term “shipwrecked.” I don’t know what happened – but he resigned his church, left his wife, and began selling funeral plans door to door.

My guess is that somehow, very gradually, he had started living Bob Parr’s life. He was getting by, moving from day to day cramped into a tiny little vehicle. The make and model of these suffocating boxes may vary widely. For this gifted preacher, the make and model that folded him up was called “pastor.” That, to me, is particularly sad.

I wonder if there was another way. Is it possible that this man could have salvaged something of his vocation and his family? Tragically, when we feel ourselves cramped and depleted by the lives we live, we often reason (or rationalize) our way to some wrong conclusions. We’re tempted to conclude that, in order to live with “power” and become our truest self, we must throw off every vestige of the confining life we’ve been living. But this isn’t the power or love or self discipline Paul spoke of to Timothy. Seeking this kind of power ironically leaves destruction in its trail – ruined careers, fractured families, disillusioned friends, scarred congregations.

My quest for gospel in The Incredibles begins to break down at this point. Bob Parr finally throws his irritating little boss through five or six walls. This necessitates a new career path of some kind, superhero or no. But the kind of abundance I’m interested in as a follower of Jesus isn’t obtained by stealing abundance from someone else. I return to the closing questions of my last post: what does it mean for us to live with power? How do we become the people God intends for us to be in the lives he’s given us right now? How do you live with power in the job your have today, among co-workers you’ll see again tomorrow, with family members who will be there when you wake up in the morning?

Holding Pixar’s brilliant movie up to the light of scripture, I find these answers.

First, we’ve got to know that there is an enemy and the stakes are high. Bob Parr did not re-discover his identity as Mr. Incredible simply because he was bored. There enters into the story a threat of horrible destruction, a spirit of malice, a figure who craves power but gives no thought to how it is used. This nemesis calls forth a person, a family, capable of putting up a fight. In the life of faith this is commonly called spiritual warfare. Too many Christians don’t take this seriously. It hasn’t occurred to them that there is an enemy actively seeking the destruction of their faith (1 Peter 5:8). What power they have lies dormant – a “super-suit” tucked away in the back of the closet.

Second, there is a need for rigorous training. One of the most amusing scenes in The Incredibles is the moment when Bob tries to fit into his super-suit after years of living a normal average guy life. He looks awful – flabby, bulging. Not the buff figure he once was. It isn’t enough to pull the suit out of the closet and put it on. We’ve got to be able to wear it well. And this requires training. Bob goes to work. Motivated by a need and a challenge, he lifts boxcars to get back in shape. Dallas Willard is dead-on when he says that living like Jesus isn’t something we simply choose to do in a moment of crisis. It’s something we are because of an overall way of life we’ve adopted. Athletes call this way of life “training.” Christians train by shaping life around the classic disciplines: prayer, worship, study, giving, etc. There is no power apart from training.

Third, we need to identify our particular gift, our God-given “power,” and put it to regular use. The Parr daughter, Violet, in her first battle experience, cannot generate an adequate force field to protect her family. After more engagement with the enemy, that changes. She becomes confident in her ability. Paul reminded Timothy to “fan into flame” the gift that had been imparted through the laying on of hands.

This leads to the fourth element of a powerful life of faith: a family. Mr. Incredible could not have prevailed against his enemy (“Syndrome”) alone. His particular gift – sheer physical strength – wasn’t enough. He needed every member of his family, including the youngest and seemingly weakest. They each had a gift that they brought to the fight. God gives us a gift and calls us to use it with in the context of a family, a community of faith. With every member using their God-given power, the gates of hell cannot prevail against God’s purpose and his ultimate victory in the world.

Finally, this power in which we are invited to live as followers of Jesus is really not our own. The fight isn’t ours either. The battle is the Lord’s, and somehow he sees fit to use us. He works through us in our weaknesses. In fact, when we are weak, he is strong. We know power as we decrease and allow him to increase. We don’t get to be the heroes. But we do get to participate in what God is doing.

And this is truly incredible.

The Incredibles

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV)

It’s been a wet week in Atlanta. Almost every day I drive by the neighborhood pool and tennis courts. Even when the pool has been open this week, the lifeguard has been a solitary figure – getting paid to listen to the radio. The cloudy skies and uncommonly cool air have not motivated folks to seek out water.

Sadly, this wet week included Monday – the Memorial Day holiday, and the first Monday of “no school” for my kids. At mid-morning their capacity for creative play hit a lull. I’m not proud to admit it, but I did what many please-let-me-rest parents do. I put in a movie. But it wasn’t just for my kids. I love this movie. This movie looks like it was made for the kiddies, but it wasn’t. Sure, kids love it, but grown ups have good reason to love it too. I’m talking about The Incredibles.

The Incredibles is about a family of super heroes living in a kind of exile. Public opinion has taken a peculiar turn, and “supers” are no longer esteemed and loved. Their exploits on behalf of the common good are no longer regarded as honorable. They are considered to be a nuisance, a threat to the public welfare. “Supers” are forced to go underground, to assume “normal” lives and conceal their powers.

Among these many exiled “supers” is a family of five, the Parr family. We don’t learn until late in the movie of the baby’s special gift or power, but the rest of the family can’t contain themselves, try as they might. Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) is a hulking man of enormous physical strength. His wife Helen (Elastigirl) can stretch and contort to almost any shape. Their daughter Violet makes herself invisible and radiates force fields at will. The middle child is Dash who, true to his name, moves with lightning speed.

I don’t want to spiritualize The Incredibles by finding some “hidden” meaning where none exists. Still, while there may be no theology to speak of in the movie, there is gospel – good news. And the good news in this movie is about power and identity; themes shared in common with our scriptures and with our faith. The Parrs are a family trying hard to conceal who they are. They possess power that they won’t use. But as long as they are living this way, their lives are constricted and flat. It isn't until the Parrs begin using their powers in a large and worthy cause that they become their truest selves.

The picture that is lodged in my mind is the image of Bob Parr – Mr. Incredible – driving home from work. His massive frame is shoved into a tiny little car, his body wrapped around the steering wheel. That image of Bob Parr bulging in the confines of his little car has come to reflect for me the way many of us live our life in Christ. We don’t live with a sense of power. There are moments, even if fleeting, when we sense that the life we’re living isn’t the abundant life Jesus came to give us. Our lives seem constricted, ordinary and routine. We too move about shoved into tiny boxes of day to day just-getting-by patterns of life.

Bob Parr, hiding in his cubicle and his little car, was a frustrated, disengaged, bored man. The good news, the gospel, comes to him as an invitation to once again be Mr. Incredible. The outfit he used to wear has been hidden away, hung like an artifact in a museum. But a moment comes when he clothes himself in the outfit of a “super.” He is re-born.

Paul reminded his protégé Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, “but of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7 ). His words sound like a call or challenge to Timothy to embrace who God had called him to be, an invitation to his true self.

What would it mean for us live with power, love and self-discipline? What would it mean for us to open the closet where our truest self had been safely tucked away, and become the people God has called us to be?

You're Qualified

May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus. (2 Timothy 1:16-18 NIV)

The word “community” is being thrown around with great frequency these days. It’s what every church strives to create, and with good reason. Both Old and New Testaments reveal a God who calls into being a people for himself: Israel and Church. Our God is intent on forming a peculiar community that reflects his nature and brings honor to his name. The theological implications of this are many, but beneath all the theology is a simple truth. The life of faith is hard and we will not live it well if left to ourselves. To walk faithfully with Jesus we will need others around us. We need the gift of encouragement that comes from a community of believers.

Encouragement is something that everybody needs and anybody can give. Our need for encouragement is not something that we’re consciously aware of on a daily basis. We may go long stretches without a specific word of affirmation or act of support from others. But eventually we’ll find ourselves up against something that we can’t do by ourselves. Even when it’s something that no one else can do for us, we know we can’t make it alone. When a person is grieving, no one else can do that for them. But no grieving person can endure the season of grief in isolation. They may not want others trying to relieve them of their grief, but they will surely accept a word or gesture of encouragement, some simple assurance that they are not alone, not forgotten.

The power of encouragement is seen in the experience of the apostle Paul. The mighty missionary-preacher-church planter spoke tender words of blessing for a man barely known or mentioned in the New Testament.

Onesiphorous is mentioned only one other time in scripture. Still, this obscure individual is spoken of as the source of great encouragement to the apostle. Nothing is said of his credentials, no explanation offered as to his qualifications for such a ministry. What Paul reports to us isn’t a spectacular deed, but ordinary friendship. Onesiphorus was not ashamed of Paul’s chains. He was not at all hesitant to associate himself with the prisoner or the prisoner’s faith. He refreshed Paul, he sought him out diligently in Rome, he rendered service to Paul in Ephesus. Even the powerful Paul needed encouragement, and the no-name Onesiphorous was the one who gave it.

If you’ll pay attention, there is surely someone around you today who needs encouragement. You may have to look or listen closely, for those who need it may go to great lengths to disguise the need. Still, they are there – in the place where you work, where you buy groceries, where you get you hair cut, where you workout. In each of these places, someone is craving the slightest word of encouragement or act of kindness.

And the person who can give it is you. You’re qualified.

Climbing the Crane

I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant . . . (Psalm 119:176)

About a mile down the road from our church is a construction site that yesterday became the scene of a high stress, high drama, high profile stand-off. Carl Roland, on the run from police in Florida, climbed the 18 story crane on the construction site late yesterday. As of this writing he’s still there. It’s been more than 20 hours. A densely traveled part of Peachtree Road has been closed, engendering very little sympathy for Mr. Roland.

Watching the T.V. news footage, I’m not surprised that Mr. Roland is up there. I’m surprised that he was able to get up there – but he’s a desperate man. The fact that he’s 18 stories above the ground, threatening to take his own life, that doesn’t surprise me. What I find remarkable is the fact that he’s not the only one up there. Not far from him is a police negotiator, a person who was doing his job, got a call and found himself going up the 18 story crane, sitting up there at significant risk, trying to bring Mr. Roland safely down.

I ask myself: would I go up there to do that? I know the answer: not likely. Of course, I’m not a professional police negotiator – but that’s no excuse. I am a pastor. And if anyone should be willing to go to great lengths to retrieve and bring back a lost soul, surely it should be a shepherd, one who follows the great shepherd Jesus.

Grace means Jesus seeking us. We’re the desperate ones, trying to get to something that will save us or trying to escape a past that threatens and accuses us. Our running isn’t nearly as dramatic as Mr. Roland’s crane climb – but there we are nonetheless. Like Carl Roland, so many are simply stuck, immobilized. And Jesus comes to us.

Jesus lived his life to show us that this is God’s heartbeat toward us. Jesus didn’t set up shop and wait for folks to find him. He didn’t teach only those who managed to get to where he was. Jesus went seeking. He told stories to make this clear to us; lost sheep, lost coin, lost son. He made a plain statement of his purpose: “the son of man came to seek and save that which was lost.”

I’m not nearly as much like Jesus as I’d like to be. And I’m more like Carl Roland than I care to admit. That fact alone reminds me how much I need grace. I need Jesus to come to me. I need compassion and mercy, especially when I don't deserve it.

The final verse of Psalm 119 is a peculiar conclusion to a (very) long meditation on God’s word. This Psalm is written by one who loves God’s law, who is committed to living as the law instructs. These are the words of one who has memorized and pondered and applied the teachings of Torah. And yet, at the end of this lengthy exaltation of God’s law, the Psalmist ends with confession. “I have strayed.” This confession leads to a request. “Seek your servant.” In other words, though we love God’s law and do our best to live it, we stray and wander. Unless God seeks us and brings us back to himself, we’re lost.

We need grace. Perched high on cranes of our own making, we are sought and found. Jesus finds us, sits patiently with us. I want to be more like him. I’ll start here on the ground, and maybe (by grace) work my way up those 18 stories.

"But You"

But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever (Psalm 102:12)

Speaking the word “but” is like highlighting everything that came before it and hitting “delete.” Chances are your experience verifies the eraser-like power of the word. Maybe the words have been spoken to you – usually some kind of affirmation, followed by the word “but” which renders all that was previously spoken null and void. And maybe you’ve spoken the word yourself, trying to come across as supportive, trying to come across as the good guy, only to utter “but” and torpedo everything you said along with your supportive good guy persona.

In our conversations, “but” diminishes, takes away, makes less or puts down. Not so in Psalm 102.

Right in the middle of Psalm 102 there is a hinge phrase, two little words that lend strength to the prayer and embolden the one praying. Two short defiant words: “but you.” In a Psalm that is 28 verses long, this powerful little conjunctive comes at verse 12, right near the middle. It is at this point, with these words, that the prayer turns a corner.

Before the text of the Psalm begins, there is a prescript that gives us a clue as to what we’re reading and hearing. This is “a prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak and pours out a lament before the Lord.” The words of the prayer unfold the affliction with vivid imagery, describing conditions not unfamiliar to many. These are the words of a person who cannot eat and cannot sleep. They seem to be wasting away and all they see around them is ruins. They know the pain of hostility and conflict, the derision of an enemy. The tears flow freely. And to top it off, the one praying implicates God. “You have taken me up and thrown me aside.”

Then the hinge. The prayer turns a corner. After eleven verses of rehearsing the anguish and describing the affliction, the person at prayer utters two words that jerk everything into a new context, two words that move from simple description of suffering toward definition.

“But you.”

Here the affliction is coupled with affirmation. “But you, O Lord, sit enthroned forever” (v. 12). These words do not negate the affliction. There’s nothing magical here that makes the suffering go away. Nor is this denial. What “but you” does is place the affliction in a larger context. The experience of the one praying is understood in light of the presence and ultimate purposes of God. These two small words are steely, determined and defiant. The suffering is real, but it isn’t the most real thing about life. God is enthroned forever. God will arise and have compassion. God will rebuild what has been ruined. God sees what’s going on and he hears the anguished groans of those who suffer. This is real, the most real thing in the life of the one praying.

There are plenty of times when we want to pray, but don’t know how (Romans 8:26). Strangely, these are often times of affliction. It seems like suffering would push us to fervent prayer – but it doesn’t always work that way. In our distress, we bog down and lose words. Even Jesus, before his crucifixion, struggled this way. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?” (John 12:27). Psalm 102 helps us by giving us two words.

“But you.”

Faith seems to hang on these two little words. Without them, we truly become “unhinged.” Pray the Psalm, or pray like the Psalm. Rehearse the affliction, ask the questions, wrestle with the implications, don’t hold back tears – it’s all prayer.

And in it all, when other words fail, be bold in this declaration: “but you.”

(Suggested reading: Mark D. Roberts, No Holds Barred: Wrestling with God in Prayer).

Finding Troas

. . . they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas (Acts 16:7-8).

Something’s not right. That’s what we conclude when our plans don’t unfold according to our timelines and charts, or our dreams and hopes and fantasies. Plans aren’t always written and calendared. They may exist in our minds without having ever been fully articulated to another living soul. Whether on paper or held in some deep inner place, we know when they aren’t happening. And our first thought is that something has gone wrong, a deviation from the good and right and normal.

The apostle Paul knew better. Look at this episode from his second missionary journey – a journey that was reasonably planned. Paul had planted churches. Now it was time to go back and check on them. Not a bad plan. But then this:

Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7 When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8 So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." 10 After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them (Acts 16:6-10).

What’s going on here? They were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit” as they sought to enter Asia. When they tried to enter Bithynia, the “Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” Their plans are thwarted. Whatever is happening, we know that this isn’t simply bad luck or bad timing. The text is clear that the Spirit is involved in this. Suddenly the larger story begins to emerge. In a dream Paul sees the outline of a new plot, a different story. A man of Macedonia beckons Paul, “come and help us.” Now there’s a new plan. This is where the Spirit was leading all along.

What strikes me about this passage from Acts 16 is the remarkable absence of angst in the story. The events are narrated in a matter of fact way that gives no hint of frustration or regret or worry. Had I been Paul, or a member of Paul’s team, I would have lost sleep thinking about the new believers in those regions who needed to be tended to and discipled. I would have stewed for days in frustration over the failed or failing plan, perhaps trying again and again to make it work, pleading in prayer to understand what was going “wrong.” Maybe Paul or his companions did some of this too. Doesn’t sound like it though.

During my seminary years I served a small congregation in southern Oklahoma. I would drive every weekend from Fort Worth, Texas to the church field – a two hour trek up I-35W. One Saturday in early January, just after leaving the city limits of Fort Worth, an ice storm moved in, raining wet ice that started freezing to my windshield and then to the roads. By the time I had entered Oklahoma it was dark. My wipers were useless against the freezing rain. My tires weren’t holding the road so well. I’m from Georgia and Georgians have no idea how to navigate these conditions. I managed to pull off the interstate and beat the truckers to the Holiday Inn. I called a church member to let them know I wouldn’t be making it up for Sunday’s services. I should have been thankful to be safe and in a room with heat. But I wasn’t thankful. I was angry at being stuck in a hotel room. I couldn’t go where I wanted to go. I couldn’t get to my congregation. I couldn’t go back home. When I tired of feeling anger I moved on to self pity. I was alone in southern Oklahoma.

That night at the Holiday Inn I had no dream or vision, no one calling me to a new ministry on the other side of the Red River. I can’t honestly say that I ever glimpsed the larger story. I don’t claim to have some insight now into that event that I didn’t have then. Perhaps what God wanted to do with me was show me his awesome power in the storm. I think I missed the chance to worship because I was angry. Maybe the Spirit had a message for me that weekend: “You’re not the savior. They’ll be fine. It’s not your church.” I missed that too. I think I spent more time watching TV than praying.

Somehow Paul found the road to Troas. In Troas Paul was perfectly positioned to go over to Macedonia. Troas is where the outline of the larger story emerges. It is the place where we catch a glimpse of what God is doing around us, a place where we receive what God has next. The same Spirit that kept Paul from entering Asia and Bithynia was certainly leading him to Troas, preparing him for the dream and the call to Macedonia. You make your way to Troas with prayer and by grace. Those who cover their plans with “if the Lord wills” are most likely to find Troas.

So if we follow the counsel of James and cover all our plans with “if the Lord wills,” we had better pray believing. We need to believe that God will in fact do what he wills – and that means that what seems like a failure or deviation to us was in fact the plan from the beginning. We just had to get there. We had to find our way to Troas.

How To Use A Palm Pilot

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”
(Proverbs 16:9)

“We live the given life, not the planned”
(Wendell Berry, )

The small screen in my hand went blank and then displayed a message that I didn’t understand, but which I knew was bad news: “Fatal error.” There were some brief instructions about pressing a reset button. I followed those instructions carefully, but to no avail. When the little device in my hand came back on, every thing I had recorded on it was gone. It was as if my life had vanished, a kind of electronically induced amnesia. When my palm pilot went blank, I momentarily forgot everything I was planning to do that day, everything I had planned for that week. My carefully scheduled plans were erased. After my initial panic, I managed to recover most of that information by hooking up the handheld device to my computer – but the lesson had been learned. Plans can be lost in an instant.

The name says it all: “Palm Pilot.” Palm is the center of my hand. It suggests a firm hold on something. Pilot suggests one who guides, drives, controls. The “palm pilot” places the direction of my life squarely in my hand. Calendar, clock, memo pad, to do list, phone directory, it’s all right there. And it works pretty well – until the fatal error comes and exposes the fragility of our life management program and the tentativeness of our plans.

To live yielded before God does not mean refusing to own or use a palm pilot. It does mean being able to recognize the myth such a device can create – the myth of having my plans firmly in the center of my own hand. To live yielded and surrendered before the Lord is to hold our plans loosely.

There is nothing particularly “spiritual” about this. All people, regardless of their faith, know that plans can change or fall apart. We begin learning this early in life. I can remember a childhood Christmas Eve when my father (a pastor) received a call at my grandmother’s house about the impending death of a church member. The annual ritual of dinner and gift opening was interrupted for us. We made it through the meal, then we left the gifts we had brought for the clan, we loaded their gifts for us into the car, and we headed back to South Carolina.

Of course, the interruptions that disrupt what we’ve carefully planned don’t always come as fatal errors. Sometimes our agendas are altered by surprising and delightful opportunities. That might mean receiving tickets for a game at the last minute when a friend is suddenly unable to go; it might mean the offer of a new position in the company. Whether by tragedy or opportunity, the reality remains the same. Our well ordered lists and carefully crafted schedules are ever vulnerable to something beyond us. We do well to hold our plans loosely.

This is the counsel James gives in his letter to the Jerusalem church. James urges his congregation to live with constant humble awareness of the “something beyond” their plans and goals and ambitions. He calls them, in the midst of their plans, to deal with God.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.

Three quick observations:
1. Making plans isn’t the problem. The text says nothing to discourage well made plans for ordinary affairs like business and making money.

2. Even when we plan well, we have no idea what will happen tomorrow. Our life is short and so is our reach.

3. Therefore, the way to plan is to hold all things subject to the work and will of God. Go ahead, plan your work and work your plan. But hold those plans loosely.

What appears to us as a fatal error may in fact be the work of divine guidance and providence. More on this later.

Navigating By Sight

We live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7)

So what was it like to be Jim Schaeffer and Troy Martin on Wednesday afternoon of this week? There they are, comfortably seated in their Cessna 152 aircraft, making their way from Pennsylvania to an air show in North Carolina, no doubt reveling in the blue skies that canopied the eastern seaboard that day.

That revelry must have been deep. So deep, in fact, that they flew into restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. So deep, in fact, that they didn’t respond to radio contact warning them away from the area. The flare rockets being fired in their direction must have been a rude awakening. Down below, the city of Washington D.C. was slipping into 9/11 dejavu. Laura Bush and her guest, Nancy Reagan, were wisked to a special bunker. Senators and Congressmen went scrambling out of chambers. Tourists were running . . . I have no idea to where. Yes, the security measures were implemented successfully, but you can tell from the TV news clips that the freak-out factor was measurable.

And high above it all sit the baffled aviators.

After the “little plane that could” had been forced to land and investigations had been launched, Kevin Madden of the U.S. Justice Department offered a simple explanation for what had gone wrong: “They were navigating by sight and got lost.”

I don’t know the first thing about aviation, but that explanation doesn’t surprise me at all. The entire story calls to mind the words of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:7. “We live by faith, not by sight.” In scripture, navigating by sight is simply not reliable.

What is truly remarkable about Paul is that for him, the unseen world was the real world. He didn’t place too much stock in what he could see or in the way things appeared. He didn’t dismiss the seen, but everything he saw was defined and understood in light of another reality – an unseen world. Earlier in the same letter Paul gives us more insight into this and how it actually impacted his life. In 2 Corinthians 4 we read that for Paul an outward (physical) wasting away is matched by daily inner renewal. The troubles of the moment are achieving an eternal glory. For him, the seen world is temporary, fleeting, passing away. The unseen is the real deal – and that’s what determined how he lived. “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”

I’d like to learn how to live that way. Honestly, I’m more inclined to navigate by sight. Maybe you are too. The problem is, that way of living inevitably leads to an unintended destination. The destination has various names: despair, hopelessness, resigned cynicism. The seen world can’t be ignored or denied – but it can’t be fully trusted either. Paul didn’t live in denial. That man was firmly grounded. But he didn’t get his answers from the seen world alone. He fixed his eyes on what he couldn’t see. But what does this mean?

I’m not entirely sure, but I believe Paul’s understanding of the presence and work of the Holy Spirit is a large part of the answer. To have the Spirit is to have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:10-16). Having God’s spirit is different from having the spirit of the world.

If you’re navigating by sight, eventually you’ll see something that leads you to some faulty conclusions. But with the mind of Christ at work in you by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may see something far more real than meets the eye. So, with Pentecost Sunday approaching, pray for the Spirit’s work in your life. Seek the Spirit and the mind of Christ. Fix your eyes on what isn’t seen. There’s an alternative to navigating by sight.

Go Ahead . . . Jump A Wave

. . . live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear (1 Peter 1:17b NIV)

Holiness is a nearly ruined word. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote that one of Satan’s most subtle and effective tactics in waging war on faith is to take a perfectly good word and ruin the meaning of it. It works. At the top of the hit list these days is the word “marriage.” But that’s another blog for another time. Right now I’m thinking of a far more familiar word that’s becoming increasingly strange to us. Holiness.

A couple of things seem clear to me: First, like it or not, this is what God calls us to be as his people. An entire book of the Old Testament, Leviticus, addresses God’s desire for holiness with excruciating detail. Get past the peculiar instructions for bringing a variety of sacrifices, and the book boils down to one repeated theme. “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1). In the New Testament, Peter writes a letter in which he reaches back to his Hebrew scriptures, lifts that very verse, and applies it directly to Christian congregations (1 Peter 1:15). Writing to the very troubled church in Corinth, Paul reminds them that they are “called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:2). “All those everywhere” includes us. We’re called to be holy.

The second thing that seems clear to me is that holiness isn’t held up in an explicit way as the aim of our lives. It’s not that we don’t believe the scriptures. We readily acknowledge that holiness is important. We just don’t like saying it. The word is damaged. It doesn’t get us pumped. No one walks around church on Sunday asking their Christian brothers and sisters about their progress in holiness. That was fine for the Puritans, but we’ve gotten beyond that. The word suggests to us a kind of stodginess. Holiness isn’t daring or bold. It’s snug and smug. Who really wants to be holy?

I realize there are theological dimensions to holiness that need to be kept in mind – that holiness isn’t something we do or attain as much as it is something God gives to us in Jesus Christ. But discussions of imputed righteousness aside, holiness is a way of living and being in the world. It’s not a theological construct. It’s a way of raising children and driving in traffic and dealing with the bored, tattooed kid working the drive-thru window. So what does it mean to be holy? How do we recover the adrenaline of the word?

Almost two years ago Marnie and I were at a conference at Myrtle Beach. The kids were with us, and at the time the beach activity of choice was jumping waves. This meant little hops as the dying “wave” ebbed up on the shore line. Hardly dangerous activity. But my little ones were already exerting independence. They didn’t hesitate to venture out to ankle depth, then knee depth. My insistence on holding a hand was not well received. It was September and hurricane Isabelle was brewing out in the Atlantic and moving to the Carolina coast. You’d have never known that a storm like that was headed our way. The weather at Myrtle Beach was beautiful, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before things got ugly. The only question was how ugly things would get. In these conditions, “wave jumping” seemed a little riskier. My favorite part was when my kids went running out of the ocean.

There were two very flawed ways to respond to my kids wave jumping adventure. On one hand, we could have just stayed in the condo. After all, we had an excellent view of the ocean. On our balcony we could feel sunlight and breeze. We could avoid the unpleasant feel of sand collecting in especially unpleasant places. Yes, the condo balcony is a safe place to be. No waves to worry about there.

Another response would be to practice X-treme parenting. Send them out to the waves and doze in the beach chair. One good lung-full of ocean water will teach them. They’ll learn.

What we’ve done with holiness seems to err in one of these directions or the other. Some well intentioned believers think that being holy means keeping a safe distance from the threats of the world and the culture. There are plenty of Christians who have settled into their place on the condo balcony. They can see the world, but they really don’t have to deal with it in all its grittiness. They are safe and they are clean – but frankly, they aren’t having much fun. All that Psalms talk about joy and gladness doesn’t seem to faze them. They are after holiness, and they find it by staying removed. Observant, but not influential.

Other followers of Jesus have lost any real sense of what holiness means and requires. They’ve thrown themselves in to the waves of culture headlong. They don’t have the foggiest idea that there is such a thing as a rip tide. There seems to be no recognition of the ocean’s power.

A truly holy life can’t stay in the balcony, and it can’t ignore the power of tides and weather. A holy life knows how to both enjoy and respect the particular conditions found in the world. Holiness gets in the water, jumps the waves – but it knows where the dangers lie, times and places when the surf isn’t friendly. In the event of a rip tide, a holy life knows what to do. It has the strength and presence of mind to swim hard along the shore line. It doesn’t panic in the current.

This sounds like what Peter had in mind when he addressed his congregations as strangers and exiles in the world. They were not at home in the culture surrounding them, but over and over again Peter calls them to a holy life, reminds them that they are a holy people. He urges them to live exemplary lives among non-believers. This is what the Jesus was after when told us to be salt and light. This kind of holiness is powerful. It puts steel in the Christian life.

So go ahead. Jump a wave.

The Crawfish Bible

. . . they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so (Acts 17:11).

I learned how to eat a crawfish this past weekend. This was the real thing – no utensils, rolls of paper towels, mounds of crawfish dumped on a table with carrots and onion and garlic and potatoes mixed in. Protocol was simple. Stand at the table and plunge your hand into the heap, pull out a crawfish and eat it.

I was tutored in the basics: (1) Pull off the head of the crawfish (2) suck the juice from the head of the crawfish (3) Find the meat in the tail of the crawfish. Eat. Repeat. Step two was presented to me as optional. I declined to ingest anything from the head of the crawfish.

Crawfish are ugly. There’s nothing about them that makes you want to eat them. But if you can get beyond such superficialities, they’re actually tasty. I enjoyed eating crawfish. My problem with eating crawfish had nothing to do with the unfortunate ugly crustacean. My problem was me. My skill level in actually getting meat from the crawfish was such that significant labor was being invested with little reward. At the rate I was going, I would need most of the night and an entire tub full of the creatures in order to get a meal.

My lack of skill became clear to me when Virginia – one of the hostesses and a former resident of Louisiana (enough said) – demonstrated proper crawfish eating technique. She actually extracted enough meat from the tail of the crawfish to qualify as a genuine “bite” of crawfish. Her expertise left me wondering, “how’d she do that?” I had no idea how to get that much of the “good stuff.” My well intentioned efforts had not produced the same result. In my hands, the crawfish was a resistant and stingy critter, unwilling to yield its delicacies. In Virginia’s hands, the crawfish was a brittle treasure chest, easily cracked and plundered.

It occurs to me that what I experienced with eating crawfish is not unlike what many people experience with the Bible. For some, the very sight of the bible is off-putting. The stark black leather cover with the gold embossed letters that read HOLY BIBLE doesn’t strike people as a can’t-put-it-down page turner. For others, efforts made to actually read the bible have not been well rewarded. If one happens to attempt to crack open the King James Version, the likelihood of returning for second and third helpings diminishes significantly. The “good stuff” is trapped beneath a shell of Elizabethan English. Sometimes the English is perfectly readable, but historical distance renders the Bible inaccessible.

The joy of my life is helping people learn how to feed on the scriptures. The Bible is food for the soul. The Psalmist said that God’s law was like honey on the lips. There is a Hebrew word for “meditate” that also means “to chew on.” Reading the Bible is like what a lion does as it hovers over it’s prey. God’s word is delicious.

Not enough people know this. My job as a pastor is to do for them what Virginia did for me. I love to gather folks together and plunge into the text of scripture. I enjoy helping them see what’s there, how much good meat there is to be found in these pages. And eventually, I’m hoping that they’ll no longer need me to do this for them. They’ll be able to do it for themselves, and then they’ll gather others and show them the same thing. The Bible is good food.

In order to feed well on the Bible two things are required:

First, there needs to be an appetite. Part of the reason I enjoyed eating crawfish, challenging though it was, was that I was hungry. I was ready to eat – so every little bit was good, and it was worth the effort. When it comes to the Bible, some develop a taste for it over time. Others are in a state of soul hunger that sends them to the pages of scripture with a kind of ravenous eagerness. For them, it’s like raiding the refrigerator late at night. Either way, the delicacies of scripture will not be found apart from an appetite, a hunger to hear a word from God.

The second thing needed is simply repeated exposure. I think the main reason Virginia was able to do what she did with a crawfish was that over the years she has eaten alot of crawfish. She has picked them up over and over and over again. She knows what to look for, how to hold them, how to get them open. The more you eat them, the more you know about eating them. The more you eat them, the more you discover about what’s good and what isn’t. Veteran crawfish eaters are more likely to suck the juice from the head. I want to read the Bible that way. I want to get every drop of what’s good from every book, every chapter. This is a lifelong endeavor.

Crack your Bible open and search for the good stuff. Come to it hungry and don’t get weary. Keep coming back and feeding on it until your soul is full – and then come back for more.

Why Can't Life Be Better?

He has also set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

But our citizenship is in heaven . . . (Philippians 3:20)

Two nights ago there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth when my daughter’s bath time arrived and she was sent upstairs to get ready for bed. The pain was evoked by the fact that her older brother was allowed to stay downstairs and finish his project for the science fair. Never mind the fact that he wasn’t being allowed to play and have fun. Whatever he was doing, he was not getting ready for bed, and this struck my daughter as grievously unfair.

As she cried and carried on dramatically (she knows how to work it) she voiced her protest in the form of a question that caught me by surprise. Through the tears she asked “why can’t life be better?” Talk about drama. My first impulse was to laugh. Where did this come from? From where I sit her five (almost six) year old life looks pretty good.

After a moment I responded, “Anna, that’s a really good question.” I didn’t actually attempt to answer the question, and my word of affirmation did little to alleviate my daughter’s distress. But I meant it. The question is a good one, and it’s a question that never seems to go away. Whether we’re five or eighty-five or anywhere in between, we ask that question. Why can’t life be better?

There are several possible answers. One good answer is “life isn’t as bad as you think it is right now.” Another version of that answer is simply “get a grip” or “get over it.” We need to be told that at times. A second possible answer is “life can be better when you decide to do something about it.” Abbreviated: “stop whining.” This challenges us to assume some measure of responsibility for our lives and our circumstances. We need to hear that too.

But there’s another answer to the question that helps us understand why the question never goes away. Why do we live our days with a gnawing sense that somehow life could be better? And why do we feel this even when we know we’ve got it pretty good? How do we treat this persistent low-grade discontentment?

No doubt, a short-term mission trip to a disease ridden and poverty stricken part of the world cures us for a while. We get clarity for just a moment on how silly and insipid our woes are when we place them in a global context. But that cure doesn’t last long. We get home and get back in to our lives and the dis-ease creeps in again. There’s something lacking in us. Sure, we’ve got it good – but couldn’t it be better?

The reason for our continual relapse is that we are homesick. There’s something deep inside of us that was designed for perpetual thirst in this world, in this life. It will not be fully quenched or satisfied here, and the reason is that the only thing that can quench it remains beyond us now. Our true home is heaven, our citizenship is there, and we were made to be there with the creator and lover of our souls. We were made for something else.

We can choose to live our lives in denial of this or in rebellion against it. We can keep chasing the one thing that we are certain will do it for us. That could be anything: career, marriage, money, a doctorate, a doctor, a diet. The object of our pursuit is elusive and chameleon-like. As we walk through our days in this world the target keeps changing. And when we attain what we were after, it doesn’t take long for the question to come back. Why can’t life be better? In search of the answer, we set our sights on a new target. We don’t always accurately diagnose our homesickness.

The bed-time bath-time crisis is now forgotten. But someday, for a different reason, my daughter will ask that question again. I will too. Sometimes we’ll need to just get a grip and move on. Sometimes we’ll need to stop whining and take a risk in making life better. But whatever we do in response to the question, we’ll need to recognize our homesickness and remember that God has placed eternity in our hearts. St. Augustine nailed the reason for our restlessness, and he also named the cure. We were made for God, and everything here is making us fit for our true home.

(Two good books that say it better than I could hope to: Craig Barnes, Sacred Thirst and Mark Buchanan, Things Unseen.)

Batters and Theology at Turner Field

They spoke against God saying, “Can God spread a table in the desert? When he struck the rock, water gushed out and streams flowed abundantly, but can he also give us food? Can he supply meat for his people?” (Psalm 78:19-20)

Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life . . . “(Luke 12:22).

This past Friday Marnie and I went to our first Braves game of the season. I’m indebted to my friend Brent for a number of blog-worthy ideas from that game. His insights and ideas started me thinking, and here’s what stood out in my mind:

Whenever a Braves batter comes to the plate, there is usually a snippet of music played – something like a fanfare for the athlete. I don’t know if each Braves player gets to select his own fanfare or if something is just played at random. Regardless, there were two players in particular whose music got my attention, maybe because they were next to each other in the line-up.

One player was Julio Franco. As he came to the plate the music being blasted into Turner Field was an old Twila Paris song, “God Is In Control.” The lyrics assert that God is in control and because of that “we believe that his children will not be forsaken.” The bold declaration continues. “There is no power above or beside him we know (oh-oh-oh) God is in control.” So-so music; good theology, especially for Turner Field.

The next batter was Andruw Jones. The air was then filled with a hip-hop style tune with a pounding rhythm and a repetitive lyric. Over and over the song said “Get out da way, get out da way, get out da way.” This song got the crowd ramped up. I actually enjoyed it – what little I heard of it. But the difference between the two songs was significant.

One song exalts God, the other exalts self. One assumes a posture of humility, the other assumes a posture of pride. Here, as the batters came to the plate, was the fundamental question of human life and how it is lived. One way gladly acknowledges the sovereign presence of God in the world. The other way seeks to be acknowledged and feared. C.S. Lewis rightly observed that pride is a deadly sin because it looks down on everything and everyone around it, and when you’re looking down you can’t see what’s above you.

Psalm 78 narrates the experience of God’s people in being delivered from slavery in Egypt. The drama in this Psalm is their repeated failure to remember or believe that God is in control. Even after the plagues, even after receiving water from the rock, even with a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, they keep forgetting. They panic. Sure, God came through back there, back then, but what about now? He gave us water from the rock, but what about something a little more filling? Can he spread a table in the wilderness?

And God, in his patience, answered them over and over. He gave them food. He spread a table for them. These gifts didn’t exempt God’s people from God’s discipline – but his discipline and his gifts were evidence of a single truth: God is in control. God will provide.

What often looks like pride in us is actually born out of our anxieties. We’re not sure God is control. More honestly, we say God is in control until God does something we don’t like or don’t understand. Then we say “get out da way” and we busily set about the task of making things right, taking care of the situation.

Knowing that God can and will means living with both confidence and humility, holding the two together. Those who say “God is in control” can’t be passive. Those who say “get out da way” can’t be arrogant. We’re involved, but not in charge. Jesus used the example of the farmer who works hard to sow seed, and then works hard to harvest the crop, but who doesn’t really make anything grow. The seed grows by itself in the dark of the earth whether the farmer sleeps or works (see Mark 4:26-29).

Both Franco and Jones swung their bats hard. To any observer, there was no notable difference in what they did – but maybe those songs offered a glimpse into the difference between how they did it.

So how’s your swing?