Walking on the Edge

Our dog Bear recently turned one year old.  Of course we all know that in human years he is seven, but he has been on the planet for a year.  And he has grown and will continue to grow – at this point up to roughly 75 pounds.  Seventy-five pounds of dog is heavy – actually seventy-five pounds of any animal seems heavier than if it were on a human.  You may have heard of the family that was camping out west the other day when a ninety-pound baby bear attacked a little boy.  Fortunately his father was able to fight him off with minimal scrapes to his son.  And then it took two Park Rangers to handle the adolescent animal.  So 75 pounds is big – Bear is big.

I offer this because this morning, as I took Bear for his early walk, he began to do what he has recently enjoyed doing – he walked on the curb of our property at the edge where the land is segregated from the road by concrete.  I don’t know why he does it, and frankly I don’t understand why he does most of what he does.  He takes way too long to do his ‘business’ outside, I can tell you that, and I’m constantly bewildered as to why he is so particular about it.  It is all grass!  If he thinks we are more pleased because he is picky he doesn’t get it.  But back to his curb-walking - Maybe he likes the smells of whatever invisible animal tracks he may detect off the property.  Or perhaps he recognizes some shoe scents and wonders why humans would walk on that dark surface.  Again, who knows what a dog thinks?

But there he is, walking on the curb.  It can’t be eight inches wide, but he handles it – with all four feet!  Every now and then I attempt to do the same thing with my two feet – an old pastime from childhood years.  Rarely do I successfully make it from point A to point B before one foot invariably has to step onto the grass – or the street – in order to maintain balance for the rest of my body.  Somehow it seems that two feet would do better than four on a small surface – but they don’t.

This morning, watching Bear I thought about the Faith – how what I can’t do on the curb, I also can’t do when it comes to temptation.  Every time I walk on the ‘edge’ of temptation I fall.  There is a real simple reason – deep down I want to.  I may not admit it, but I wouldn’t be tiptoeing there if I weren’t already compelled.

James reveals that there is no mystery involved.  He says that whatever I fall into comes from my “own evil desire” (James 1:13-15).  In a sense, I am dragged into sin by me!  Now I know this is true – and if you dig deeply enough into your own heart and motives, you know that the same applies to your life.

The Gospel liberates us.  Rather than fein strength, we find Grace to live by admitting weakness.  John Calvin, in his commentary on 1 John 5:5, wrote, “We conquer by faith because we borrow strength from Christ.”

Let’s face it – we two-footed creatures weren’t designed to dance on the edge.  We’re not only unfinished – we’re also weak.  We are built to walk on a surface more suited for our fragile spiritual anatomies – a safer surface… like grass (which unfortunately for us dog-owners presents its own unique challenges).

peace.

 

My Wife Gives Me Money: thoughts on ordinary graces

The other day, preparing to leave the house, I reached for my wallet, only to find that Katherine had slipped a few dollars into one of its folds.   She does that from time to time – sometimes because I ask her to, but usually because she has this internal alarm-calculator that seems to alert her at just the right moment that I need some cash.

You have to understand that this is the way our life works.  I often joke that if something unexpected and tragic were to happen to me the family would go on as usual, but if we lost Katherine we would have a crisis on our hands.  I don’t know who the checks get written to or where the spare checks are stored.  And this doesn’t include the bills she pays online!

Now before you are tempted to psychoanalyze our marriage, spare yourself – it is our system – and it has worked for 26 years.  I do the lawn and she pays the bill for the gas that goes into the mower – trust me, it works for us.

Actually I rarely have more than one blank check on me.  Another of our internal jokes is that we call this check my ‘bullet,’ so named after Barney Fife’s sole bullet.  Barney was the physically and socially challenged, inept, but loveable deputy in Andy of Mayberry.  He was only allowed to have one bullet at a time because he couldn’t handle the temptation to wield his gun in front of people, often with terrifying results – and whenever he carelessly shot it into the ground while putting his gun back into the holster, the privilege was revoked and his bullet confiscated for a spell.

So every now and then, Katherine gives me a bullet.  You would think that the check is for purchasing a new car, the latest 3-wood, or world peace – something grandiose that should accompany my rare one ‘bullet,’ and sometimes I do get it with the hope of something special, but in truth, it is more likely to be used to buy exotic items such as dental floss or paper towels on the way home from work.  You get the picture…

The thing is that I just take the money Katherine leaves – maybe say, ‘thanks,’ and then go on my way.  But for some reason, the other day when I saw what she had left me, I thought about all the ordinary graces God puts in my path – and then at that moment I felt grateful.

It isn’t that they are especially what we may naturally perceive to be the ‘biggies,’ like the sudden ability to forgive everyone who ever wronged us, or a clear path of the future, or the long-awaited answer to a daily prayer that had spanned years – you know, those graces that we long for and hope for and then celebrate when they come.  No, it is an ordinary grace – one gracious kindness among many that, lined up together, as pearls on a magnificent string, add up to a lifetime of love and affection from a Father who delights to care for those who are His.

And it dawned on me that nothing in the Kingdom of God is mundane – that every grace is mountainous and every kindness amazing, which I think is why Jesus used the ordinary to describe the majestic in Matthew 6 as He encouraged His disciples (and us) to let the simple provisions of the Father (‘lillies of the field’) to be the trail that leads us past despair on the journey.

When all you have is one ‘bullet,’ this is really Good News.

peace. 

 

On Vacation

We’re on vacation in Florida for the next couple weeks.  Swam and Surfed today - beautiful day at the beach - nice waves from Hurricane Bertha.  Will try to get pics your way in the days to follow…

peace.

 

Razor’s Edge

It happened in a nanosecond – before any reaction was remotely possible, other than to gasp.  In the space of a moment, Tuesday morning, I thoughtlessly moved my razor under my shaving-cream covered lip – only to mow through the tiny beard (a ’soul patch’ as I have learned it to be called) I had cultivated for nearly three weeks.  For me it is one of the few places that hair grows on my face.

You had to see it – well, the truth is that you could barely see it.  But I was proud and that was all that mattered, right?  I digress…

My real point is that what was actually there, suddenly, and with the swipe of my Gillette Mach3 Razor (I know, I know, there is a more recent version – cut me some slack – I just got into the new millennium with blue jeans!) – with a single swipe my beard was all but erased from my face.  All that remained was the last rites – the ‘clean-up.’

In many years of faith and ministry I have learned that so many Christ-followers live in the dread that any given moment could be the one in which God uses a single swipe to eliminate His delight in them, from them.  All kinds of factors play in – Churches that preach a moralized, guilt-inducing, version of the Gospel (which Paul reminds us to be no Gospel at all) – Past wounds that haunt and serve as daily reminders that regardless of how good a moment can be, pain is around the corner – Good relationships gone sour – you name it.  And somehow – even naturally – these translate into dread, the dread that God might possibly do with us what has been done to us – that He might simply, on a whim decide that He has grown tired of loving us.

It isn’t easy to detect because we know the answers, and frankly, sometimes the answers become their own kinds of obstacles.  We know that God’s love isn’t contingent on our ability to love Him back.  We know that He is the Pursuer.  We know that His love is eternal, His grace a gift and His forgiveness a purchased reality.  Those are the answers.  And they are good answers.

But then there is the practice – the playing out of what we know in our minds, in every day life.  Like when we screw up, or when we fall, or do what we thought we would never do or do again.  It isn’t in the classroom or the laboratory, but in the heart, in real life that the Gospel proves itself and demands that we believe what we profess.

Hey the Gospel promises freedom, not misery.  Our broken world certainly brings its share of heartaches, and this isn’t to be denied – such is life in an unfinished world among unfinished1’s such as we are – but don’t confuse your status with your struggles.  Paul says it best in Galatians 5:1 – “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Sometimes all we can do – rather than drown in self-pity and unrelenting terror – is to start growing the beard back – to get up and speak the Gospel to ourselves as though hearing it for the first time, believing that the music you hear is coming from the One who has never lost sight or love in delighting over you with singing.

peace.

 

Mariachis in a Chevron Station

This past weekend I preached in a friend’s installation service in Pasadena, California. No doubt, ‘installation’ may seem strange since it refers to human beings. I often say that we pastors are like plumbing – we get installed into churches. We aren’t kings, so we can’t get coronated, and we aren’t presidents, which rules out corporate assumptions – we are pastors, so we get installed.

On Saturday evening I discovered, to my horror, that I had packed my shaving kit on top of my only white shirt. Apparently the kit had some dirt on it, and consequently it smudged the shirt. So I determined to find a store and buy one of those detergent sticks, which I found after dinner at a corner Chevron station shop (an invention right up there with the iPod).

There in the store were three young Mexicans dressed in beautiful costumes – a man and two women. I asked what their costumes meant and they informed me that they were a Mariachi band – they had just performed that evening. When I asked if they could do a number for me they did a quick silly ‘La Cucaracha’ – we all laughed.

Leaving the store, I smiled – it was a sweet moment. And it reminded me that there is much to love in this world that is filled with all kinds of diversity - that God has allowed for beauty to peer through cracks in the ruins.

My message the next day was from Acts 14, where Paul and Barnabas preached in Lystra, and there healed a man born without the ability to walk. What struck me in the passage is that Luke tells us that as he was speaking, Paul gazed at the man. Such a man in Paul’s day was all but ostracized – a social outcast of sorts. He couldn’t take care of himself which sadly translated to having no value to society. But he wasn’t lost on Paul. Paul ‘gazed’ at him.

The scriptures teach that every human being is created in God’s Image – regardless of how they may appear or even initially act, there is something to love in them – something that demands and deserves a closer look.

And sometimes we just have to gaze at folks until we love them. I think this is what struck me about Paul. All that our unnamed, powerless and broken friend needed was someone who saw in him what Jesus already knew – that he had value.

I don’t know if it was the costumes, the sweet smiles, the silly attempt at ‘La Cucaracha,’ or all the above – but something in that moment told me that it is worth keeping my eyes open – watching the world I live in – taking in the faces, the sights, sounds, songs, stories and tastes – ‘gazing’ until love replaces my silly fears and my selfish tendencies. In fact, when all was said and done, it is amazing that those Mariachis even gave me the time of day (or night).

And I guess that is really the point – the Gospel alone enables us to see and be seen through the eyes of Grace.

peace.

 

 

The One Thing We Don’t See

“They should put expiration dates on clothes so we men will know when it goes out of style.”

Garry Shandling (Comedian)

This was a traumatic week for me on so many pathetic and superficial levels. For what seems to have been an eternity my wife, Katherine has attempted to get me to change the style of Levi’s Jeans that I wear. For the record I have worn Levi’s 560, Red Label jeans for years and years. The 560’s are relaxed fit, tapered jeans that sit comfortably on the waist (that’s basically what the big cardboard label on the pants says).

I wear the relaxed fit because the Straight Legs that I used to wear would have to be professionally spray-painted on to my body to have any realistic chance of getting or staying on (Translation: they didn’t fit, starting about 20 years ago).

The 560’s seemed like the natural ‘next step’ for me, a mature, moderately larger man than when in high school (these are the lies we tell ourselves… and believe). They were narrow at the ankles, comfy in strategic zones, such as the hips, and, in my humble (delusional) thinking – very cool.

Now Katherine saw it differently. To her they were, in a word, awkward. Perhaps embarrassing is more accurate. Or maybe humiliating… You get the point. In short, she hated them, but fortunately she loves me, and the jeans loathing never did cross over.

Well this week she finally succeeded in convincing me to get a new style. She, our daughter Erin and I went to the Levis store at an outlet mall – and I made the switch, buying four pair of Levi’s 505, Regular Fit, Straight Leg, Red Label, Jeans. They fit just right – longer at the foot, not tapered, and different to look at. Katherine loves them and our daughters completely approved (Emily saw them this morning), both girls admitting that my 560’s were way too high (as Katherine had been saying for years).

When I told some guys on our Staff about the jeans this morning (along with a detailed description of how Katherine would use her fingers to draw a sort of clown outline in the air to describe how I looked in the 560’s), they laughed and nodded and uttered something under their breaths to the tune of, ‘Rev. High Water finally got new Jeans.’

Suddenly it struck me – Everyone I have known for years has seen and known that my jeans sat too high on my ankles – that you could see too much sock – that they were awkward and embarrassing - yes, even humiliating. Everyone knew that too much shoe showed and that too much leg loomed. Everyone knew that my high tops barely reached the bottoms of my 560’s (those jeans that I thought were ‘very cool’).

Everyone, that is… except for me.

You know, we unfinished ones have the ability to see just about everything on the planet – except for ourselves.

The Apostle Paul says, “…What we are is plain to God” (2 Corinthians 5:11).

Nothing is lost on the Father. In us He sees the good and the bad, the lovely and the hideous, the strong and the weak. He sees what we know and don’t know, and He sees what we need. And fortunately, as with my wife, the embarrassing, awkward and humiliating never cross over into His affection for us in all our imperfection. In fact, amazingly, when He sees us – He takes delight.

Take it from ‘Rev. High Water,’ this is Good News.

peace.

 

Jesus on an Airplane

On a recent trip to Miami (to perform a funeral), I sat beside a woman who would be attending a nine-day seminar at a hotel in the City. The seminar was intended to help this woman, and many others, overcome their fears, sins and shame by virtue of the strength of their own thinking.

She confidently asserted her message with me – that is, until the jet began to race down the runway for takeoff. With that she became visibly nervous as she stiffened up in terror. The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Throughout the flight I learned that she was a single Mom and a former athlete and coach. While her ‘ex’ lived with his girlfriend nearby, she was dating an older guy. Her church experience was a story of extremes. She was raised in a rigid guilt-imposing environment that she eventually discarded for a less defined religious expression that recognized Jesus as Teacher, but not Savior. ‘We would rather save ourselves,’ she said to me. Reading between the lines I realized that she was a wounded, confused person – looking for answers, hoping that her life wasn’t wasted, or over.

As you may already have figured out, by that time she knew my occupation, and as invariably happens, the conversation became decidedly spiritual. Don’t get me wrong – I like it when that occurs, because my resistance to make a big deal about it allows for getting back to the other person’s story – knowing that the details will somehow fit into an opportunity to weave it into the larger narrative of the Gospel.

Eventually the inevitable came because ‘what goes up must come down’– it was time to land. Whatever nervousness our friend displayed on the way up, paled in comparison to her sense of fright at the thought of landing.

Partly in jest, I said, ‘Is this the part where I tell you about Jesus?’ For some reason she softened and responded affirmatively – almost to say, ‘Yes, please tell me.’ From there I was permitted the privilege of speaking the Gospel to this woman. I could tell that the simplicity of the message was appealing to someone who had to twist all sense of reason and logic to believe what she was about to experience in that conference.

I have no idea of what will come of that conversation – I’m not one of those Christians who feels compelled to press for a decision that may or may not be real at the moment. It may be that she was simply comforted to the extent that her fears were distracted to some degree by virtue of our conversation. It may lead her to a deeper place where she comes to faith. That is my hope.

What encourages me is that Jesus is always in the business of finding people where they are and in spite of where they’ve been – even if at 34,000 feet in a packed airplane.

peace.

 

Reunion

Reunion is the title of one of my favorite Allman Brothers Band songs.  It is a festive, beautiful tune – one of those songs that progresses and builds, and one you kind of hope will never end.  It is happy because it represents a coming together of people who love one another.  A well-known grocery store chain in Florida once used the song in an advertisement as the backdrop against which family and friends are reunited to enjoy their fresh produce at some occasion that includes a bountiful spread.

This week I have been in Dallas, Texas.  Along with roughly 1000 other pastors and church leaders we are meeting for what we call our General Assembly.  Once a year we gather and discuss, debate and wrestle through what seem to be the pressing matters of the Church as it relates to our particular corner of the universe.

At General Assembly we gather, worship, attend seminars and take votes.  Our discussions and debates are conducted according to Robert’s Rules of Order.  We elect Moderators, second motions, call the question, and raise our ballots to register votes.  Much of our activity is tedious and unappealing – I generally dread the thought of attending each June.  The meetings are often intolerably long and many speakers come across as though they have been waiting all year to prove they can put words together in public.  The hotels are generally nice, but a room is a room – and travel food eventually tastes the same regardless of how exquisite the dining.

But something brings me back each year – it is the reunion of friends – friends who travel from all points of the globe.  Every year I see familiar faces of leaders from churches in our past, older pastors who have helped shape me, younger pastors I have had some influence with, friends I have served beside, and former classmates now scattered in churches and ministries worldwide.

While it is true that we deliberate over the business of the denomination, it is the interaction of friends that makes this a special week.  We laugh over past mistakes and exploits.  We weep over broken ministries and marriages.  We reminisce over shared journeys.  We shake hands and embrace.  We watch the NBA Finals.  We dine together.  We offer opinions.  We agree and disagree.

There is something fresh and inexplicably sweet about being reunited to those we love.  Each time our son flies in from Florida we enjoy the taste of reuniting joy.  Whether for Christmas break or summer vacation, those first few moments are particularly powerful because, brief as our time together is, our family is restored in that reunion.  In roughly 24 hours I will be reunited to my wife and two daughters who await my return home in Maryland – frankly, I can’t wait.

This may help explain the dread Jesus’ disciples exhibited when He finally got through and convinced them that He would die and leave them.  For them, death was final and their bond forever severed.  But Jesus knew better and assured His grieving friends that they too would one day be where He was going (John 14:1ff).  In short, He knew they would be reunited.

Just this evening, at the end of a long night, I ran into a pastor who used to be the campus minister at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where Katherine and I served.  We laughed hard as we reminisced about our time together.  That brief encounter made my day.

Winding my way to the elevator, and then into my room I realized that for Christ-followers, every good reunion is a foretaste of what will one day be – in heaven – that one day we will be ‘home,’ never-again to be separated by geography, sin or death.  And it dawned on me that this is why we are here.  We are here to announce that the Kingdom of God has come, and with it, the promise that the Church is intended to be an imperfect, yet distinctive microcosm of heaven on earth, serving as a taste of what will one day.

peace.

 

A Diploma, Twelve Stones and the Cross

Last evening our eldest daughter graduated from High School.  It was a sweet event.  The school both our girls attend has preserved a tradition of offering spoken words of honor and praise for each graduating Senior as they receive their diplomas.  As I sat there beside Katherine, brimming with pride, and overflowing with love, joy and thanksgiving, it struck me that our daughter has encountered one of those markers in life.

Joshua 4 recounts a fascinating event in the life and history of Israel.  After the people of God traversed the Jordan River to finally enter into Canaan, men from each of the tribes were commissioned to carry a total of 12 huge stones on their shoulders from the middle of the river to the first camp they would establish in the Promised Land.  There in the new land they were to lay these stones that would serve as markers, so that whenever children asked what they represented they would hear the story of the day that God dried up the river to enable the Ark of the Covenant and His people to pass through on the day they entered.

Today, I reflected on Emily’s graduation and realized that it has been 33 years since mine!  A few of us laughed about the age ‘thing’ this morning as I related how depressing it sometimes is to have to use one of those pull-down menus to fill in a blank that asks what year you are born.  It seems like I have to wait three eternities until it scrolls down to 1957 – very sad.  All I have as a reminder of my high school days is a few scattered friends, a yearbook – and, fortunately, my diploma, because interestingly and mercifully, every diploma leaves out the gory details of skipped classes, failed tests, missed assignments and after-school detentions.

A diploma tells you and those around you that you made it – that you never again have to go to grade school or middle school or high school – that you are done and that something important happened along the way.  Along with the date of graduation it has your name on it and the signatures of important people who verify that the document is official – that it actually happened!  It doesn’t tell of the pitfalls you encountered getting to that stage – only that somehow, someway, you made it to the other side.

Through the years those stones told an old story to new generations of Israelites – a story of something that had happened in the life of their people – but deeper, the story of a God who fulfills His word and delivers the people He delights in.  What God didn’t do is have the Israelites lay down forty stones that would represent the forty years they whined, complained, rebelled and disobeyed before they eventually got to the river.  This is because the Gospel isn’t about what we can’t do so much as what God has done – in Christ – for us.

For our daughter, as with every grad, this is one step on the path of a much grander journey – a happy step, to be sure, but also a journey that will be marked by all kinds of experiences, good, bad, and in between.  That’s what makes it a journey – life isn’t stagnancy – it is a span of events, an entire lifetime of paths ventured, relationships forged, mistakes made, sins committed and forgiven, struggles wrestled through and lessons learned.

The point never is our stumbling – that is a given – No, it is always the same story that those Israelite children heard from their forefathers – that we are feeble, and we can’t carry ourselves across the river, but that we have a God who loves us and has made a way for us to make it to the other side regardless of our weakness.

Of course the true marker for the Christ-follower is the Cross.  Like those stones it serves as the core symbol of God’s Rescue.  It is what we – and the generations that follow – have been given – to flee to in faith and to be reminded that once we were wandering in sin, but now, through Jesus’ sacrifice, we have ‘crossed over from death to life’ (John 5:24).

I can’t fully express in words the joy and love that flooded our hearts as we watched our precious Emily cross that stage and enter into her moment of graduation.  Perhaps the sweeter and deeper sense was that she has entered into the rest of her life – a life that will encompass many experiences, joys, pitfalls, confrontations, mistakes, sorrows, wounds, people, accomplishments, trials, errors, discoveries, transgressions, doubts and assurances.

Her diploma tells us that she never has to go to high school again.  The Cross assures us that our daughter is safe – because she is His.

peace.

 

Troops

It is Memorial Day weekend and we joined the celebration by spending time with friends in two different homes – a sweet time of cookout, football tossing, marshmallow toasting and friendship spread out over several conversations.

One of my favorite parts of this particular holiday is the war movies.  It would be an injustice to attempt to name them all – each has its own contribution in telling the nation’s story through its wars.  They do something good in me – perhaps it is the sentimental patriotic spirit they connect to in me, or the fact that they are tied to history – I’m not quite sure – but what I know is that through the years I have become strangely attached to the characters in those particular movies.  I love seeing Steve McQueen put the Nazis on a wild goose chase in The Great Escape, or Jim Brown drop the grenades, running across a roof right before he is gunned down in The Dirty Dozen, and of course, William Holden, as he figures out who the true spy is in the prison barrack in Stalag 17 (my personal favorite).

This morning, however, I watched the news, and in light of the holiday one channel offered a short bio on a young retired Marine Sniper.  I was shocked to realize that he retired at 22 years of age.  He articulated the physical and emotional stress of war (he wasn’t complaining, just explaining) – the difficulty he had transitioning back into his soft American life after returning from his tour of duty, and how he determined that he needed to be guided by a different set of values when it comes to living that life out – he had been given perspective.

What struck me is that as I watched and listened to this man’s story, I was drawn in as I would be one of those movies.  And it hit me that this is what made those movies successful and endearing.  They personalize those who serve.

Let me complicate this a bit before bringing it all home.  You may not know this, but a ‘Troop’ is an individual soldier.  There was a time when I thought that ‘Troops’ were groupings – maybe a few dozen, or one hundred, or a thousand soldiers – but not one!  Though it is spelled differently a ‘Troupe’ in the acting business is the entire cast of actors who put on a play.  Boy Scouts are in ‘Troops’ – they meet in homes and get badges in churches and public schools – that kind of thing.  But in the Armed Forces, ‘Troops’ are individuals.

Today and this week, those who have served, and those who love those who have served – and perhaps even have given their lives for this country, and those who are currently serving – all deserve our respect and honor.  You don’t have to like a war to honor those who have sacrificed and committed themselves on our behalf.

However let’s be clear – on the battlefield they are ‘Troops,’ but in reality – in the eyes of Moms and Dads, Coaches, Ministers and Teachers, Best Friends and Former Classmates – they are young men and young women (to me they are boys and girls).  They are sons and daughters – someone’s baby.  They have faces, names and hometowns.  They are Individuals.

Recently in church we were reminded that God doesn’t number us – He calls us by name (Isaiah 43:1). This is the way of the Gospel - it reveals a God who actually pursues us, serves us, has sacrificed for us and forgives us – in and because of Jesus.  It is all so personal.  At first it is so intimate that it unravels and unhinges most – but eventually, to those who believe on the name of Jesus (again – very personal), it is the sweetest of realities.

This week, let’s honor those who serve as though we know them – by name, if we can.  Something tells me that this is the way the Gospel is supposed to work in all of life – not only to those in Iraq, but also to those in Baltimore – to those in Afghanistan, and to those in Ellicott City.  By coming into our world as a needy flesh-and-blood human, Jesus opened the door of Grace, enabling us to see this broken world on a person by person, face by face, name by name way.

With the Gospel it is all so up close.

peace.