This picture is from several years ago along the Prayer Trail at Lakeview Methodist Conference Center in Palestine Texas
Core Values of Discipleship
Sharing Fellowship
This past week we were invited to an awards ceremony for our 9-year old granddaughter Zadie. Zadie had been invited to a Wednesday night Bible study at a local church by one of her friends, and she grew to love it. She would ask me, a retired and still-working UMC pastor, if I knew some of her memory verses and other wonderful things she was learning. At the ceremony she was celebrated along with a lot of other kids who had memorized Scripture and concepts. This is a local Assemblies of God church, and they were using the King James Bible. It was a fantastic evening, that these children were loved and encouraged and challenged. They didn’t get the award unless they had done the work.
I talked with the pastor afterwards, and he had served this faith community for 30 years, he had seen many of the young leaders in the church grow up, get married, have children. When he learned I was a retired UMC pastor he asked if I had been part of the group that moved every two years or so. When he was a kid growing up in West Texas, his parents told him that the Methodist pastor’s children would be moving soon, so to keep that in mind as he became friends with them. We know too many pastors, too many pastor’s families, that moved so often without the chance of putting down roots.
Yet I wondered if this pastor had friends he could confide in, people who were not of his “flock”.
I entered seminary at 45 years old, and I had been mentored in discipleship relationships for many years before then. With a few sterling exceptions, most of my old friends are still from this time before, or people I served with in churches where we met in authentic covenant groups, much like our Wesleyan bands. The friends from the last few years I have met in band.
From our core values of discipleship in the Inspire Movement: Am I making close spiritual friendships? Am I sharing the ups and downs of my spiritual life? Am I giving and receiving guidance? And I growing in the fruit of the Spirit? Am I developing my spiritual gifts? Am I confessing my sin?
Am I willing to be open, to be vulnerable, to be and receive a true friend of trust and discernment? I am, and I am blessed by the bands I am in, where I can share where I am seeing God in my life, and be willing to be guided by prayerful reflection of others.
Most men I know don’t have deep, spiritual friendships. Most pastors I know do not have friends like this. Holding yourself apart is a way of distancing ourselves from others and from God. We hold ourselves apart, but we don’t have to. We have an opportunity with the principles of the Inspire Movement to find the “open door” the Spirit revealed to John in Revelation 3:
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.
“‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name…” (Rev. 3: 7-8)
The Lord working in our lives is that open door, an open door to the reality of our lives, the reality of the love of God. We are able to pass through that open door with the help of others, with the guidance of spiritual friendships like we form in band and in house fellowships and the like. My granddaughter is forming spiritual friendships, memorizing the Word of God and coming to a deeper relationship with Jesus, all because someone stepped out and asked her. I am doing the same because someone asked me about Inspire, about band. It is a good thing to see the Lord at work in our lives.
What do you think?
More information on the Inspire Movement can be found at https:inspiremovement.org
My wife and partner Brenda had a total knee replacement surgery April 5. I have done no blog writing since then, but have kept up with the writing of sermons. For those who are interested, the following is a portion of what was preached on May 29, 2022, Ascension Sunday, at Cooks Point United Methodist Church, shortly after the murder of elementary school children and teachers on May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
The day’s texts were Acts 1: 1-11 and Luke 24: 44-53.
With the terrible news of this past week — terrible news, horrible news, we had a reminder of the evil in our midst. We’ve heard lots of talk and speeches and posturing about the need of more laws and more regulations, and where to place the blame, and while there may be something to that, they miss the point.
I remember after the Columbine shooting — April 20, 1999 — there was a call for more and stricter laws, and one commentator pointed out that over a dozen existing laws had been broken by the shooters.
There is something else that needs to be addressed, that needs to be recognized.
Sin.
Evil.
Spiritual forces of wickedness.
My friend Elizabeth Moreau wrote this in her blog, Servants’ Feast last week: If we want to make sense of what happened in Uvalde, then we need to accept that the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone acknowledges and ansers such unspeakable evil. This is a world that has rejected its Creator and sought to be our own gods — from the beginning of time. The only barrier to the evil that prowls around looking to devour is the Cross of our Lord. We live in a world that needs to be saved, and that is precisely what we see every day in limitless ways, including in the mass murder in Uvalde.
Listen to this passage from 1 Peter 5, starting at the 6th verse:
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
I think the shooter was devoured…
I’m taking us back to our baptismal vows, taken by candidates for baptism and by their sponsors.
The candidates for baptism are brought forward, and the pastor asks these questions:
On behalf of the whole church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
I do.
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
I do.
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations and races?
I do.
As Christians, we recognize the reality of evil — the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world, and our own sin.
As followers of Jesus, who believed in, lived by and taught the Scriptures, we believe that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and the truth of Isaiah 53:6 — all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
We believe in the power of sin, the evil powers of this world, the spiritual forces of wickedness — and we believe that as Christians we have the power to renounce and reject them.
But that doesn’t take away the reality.
Part of that reality is that we have to be sober-minded, we have to be vigilant, because our adversary the devil is roaming the earth like a lion, looking for someone he can devour.
The core issues for us to face are these forces of spiritual wickedness, the evil powers of this world, and our own sin. That is primary.
Remember a few weeks ago we explored 1 Corinthians 15, the last chapter of the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the new church just a few years after the death, burial, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. Paul wrote this:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…
When we address the tools of evil as if they were the cause of evil, we miss the central point.
I often use the analogy of alcoholism and drug abuse because of my background and my lens on the world. Someone who is an active alcoholic has to stop drinking. That is the primary problem. Everything else is secondary. His or her home life, spouse, children, stress levels, anything else are not the cause of the problem. It is the alcohol, and until that stops nothing else will change.
Our primary issue is not the tools of evil, but evil itself. Our primary issue is sin. And that is addressed by repentance and embracing the grace of God offered through the torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who died for our sin and was resurrected to offer new life.
Where was God in that classroom, and in other pathways of terror? I believe right there, just like every other horror, every other denial of humanity.
And we have a mirror, where we can look at see what we’ve become, and see our need for a Savior. We become doers of the Word of God, and not just hearers. James tells us that when we are only hearers and do not obey the Word, we are like people who look in a mirror and then forget immediately what they look like.
But you and I are here, as agents of Christ in the world, as part of the new Kingdom of God, helping each other and others see the mirror truly, opening our eyes that we may truly see and be witnesses of Christ in the world.
RISE
So now we move to the texts for today, and talk about the Ascension of Christ. Last Thursday was Ascension Day, 40 days past Easter Sunday. We don’t make as big a celebration of Ascension Day as other events in Christian and world history — like Christmas, Pentecost, Easter — but it is central in the plan of the Lord.
We have two texts today, both written by Luke the Evangelist. In the Acts passage read earlier, Luke gives a brief summary of what he had done with his first book, the Gospel of Luke. He wrote Theophilus, who could have been his benefactor, that he wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day Jesus was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
After his sufferings he presented himself to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during the forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Jesus had been talking about the kingdom of God since he began his ministry. Remember after the temptation in the desert, again for 40 days, he began his ministry teaching and proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand.
But the kingdom of God is not like the kingdoms of our world.
That’s hard to grasp now, and it was hard to grasp then. His followers didn’t understand. Here’s part of our text:
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set up by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The kingdom of God is not like an earthly kingdom. Those of us who are part of the kingdom of God are spread throughout the world, agents for change in all parts of the world. Christianity has moved throughout the world, and soon it will be stronger in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. Africa, South America, Asia and China have growing populations of Christians, and resultant persecutions as well. We are the infiltrators of the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world, agents of transformation in a fallen world, with Jesus on the throne. Jesus was telling his followers that they did not understand, but they could trust him.
And he is telling us the same thing. We do not understand, but we can trust him.
Jesus is trustworthy.
In our gospel passage from Luke, Jesus further explained what had happened and gave hints of the things to come.
Then he said to them, “these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have clothed with power from on high.”
HOPE
Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures — maybe he showed them the passage from Isaiah I quoted above. Maybe he told them that he was the water gushing from the rock in the wilderness, or the fourth man walking in the fire in Daniel, or that it was he who was the suffering servant in Isaiah or the still small voice Elijah heard. Maybe they came to understand that all the Scriptures pointed to Jesus, from the blood on the doorway protecting the people of Israel in Exodus to the prediction of the Messiah riding in on a donkey in Zechariah, to all the references in the Psalms.
Jesus had already ascended by the time he was speaking to them right before he was carried into heaven. He said, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you….” He was still there, speaking with them in person, but he was not still with them in the same way. Jesus was already enthroned as the new king.
Think about that. Jesus as king, as his enthronement took place on the Cross. And we are his followers, scattered around the world and across time.
In the Acts passage, after Jesus was lifted up, his followers remained there, gazing up toward heaven, and suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said to them, Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him to into heaven.”
And Luke’s Gospel account added that they went back to Jerusalem, and were continually in the temple praising God.
Jesus left so that he could be with us. He is with us today, and he can be with those who call upon him and worship him throughout the world. In the Apostles Creed we proclaim that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and will come again in glory. The Resurrection of Jesus brought about the new world, and Jesus is offering us the chance to bring more folks into the kingdom before that great and glorious day to come.
We have work to do.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Blessed is he whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 146: 5-10)
It was the first night of the Kairos Prison Ministry inside one of the state prison units in Texas, and we had sandwiches and chips for dinner: ham and cheese and/or turkey, on wheat or white bread. Mayonnaise and mustard in little packets, lettuce and fruit and cookies were available.
“I haven’t had a sandwich like that in nine years,” a young man assigned to our table said. He probably wasn’t 30 years old. Sandwiches like that are what my wife and I have if we don’t have any leftovers and don’t want to cook.
The mission of Kairos Prison Ministries International is “Changing Hearts, Transforming Lives, Impacting the World”. It begins with a 3 1/2 day weekend in the unit, with prayer and teaching and singing and food, and love shown in lots of ways. A “prayer chain” hundreds of feet long of colorful linked paper strips with names and locations stretched across the three “rooms” we used for meeting, chapel and cafeteria. (“Rooms” because it was a gym with portable dividing walls.) Every color a name, and every name a prayer.
It’s not my purpose here to define Kairos or give a full account of the weekend, but I saw changed lives when people saw that strangers loved them in the name of Jesus. Letters from the team and many others to each participant told them they were being prayed for, that they were loved, and that Jesus came for them, too. Quotations from many of our Scriptures, many written by Paul in prison, took on new meaning inside those walls. One man had not received a letter in the 40 years he had been incarcerated. I met with a young man, 19, who had been imprisoned since he was 14 years old, slightly older than my grandson. He told me some of his story, and he told me he had never told anyone all before that day. A burden was visibly lifted from him, and a joy started to come over him as the weekend went on — it looked like hope.
One of the changed lives was mine. One of the songs we sang was “My Jesus”, which has a chorus of “Let me tell you about my Jesus, and let my Jesus change your life!” I’m not the type to cry openly, but I did that weekend. During my days before sobriety I did what was necessary for me to be in prison; I didn’t get pulled over, I didn’t get stopped, I didn’t hurt anyone and there is no reason for any of that except God’s mercy.
Sin is the great leveler. All of us have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23, written from prison) And all of us are made in the image of God, and all of us are those Christ came to save, to give a new hope, a new purpose, a new and abundant life.
We had a night where we wrote the names of those we needed to forgive on flash paper, stuck the pages on a nail on our cross, and watched the paper — and the director’s eyebrows! — go up in an instant.
Kairos is not a quick weekend where the little saviors come in and then leave. We start weekly “prayer and share”, and work to get fellowship communities working inside the prison, among the “brothers in white.” A band of brothers in Christ is formed, and new hope is given to those without it.
The Great Awakening in England began in part under the preaching of John Wesley, who gave the news to the poor, to the brokenhearted, to the prisoners, to the coal miners, that there was a God who loved them, even then, even when it looked like they had a thrown-away life — and they heard for perhaps the first time that when Jesus said “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16) — that the “”whosoever” meant them, meant you, means me.
Revivals don’t start in Highland Park or River Oaks or Beverly Hills. Revivals start when the ones who had no hope realize that Someone came for them, and loves them — and those of us who want to and are called get an opportunity to be a part.
“Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore
Jesus, ready, comes to save you, full of pity, love and power.
I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in His arms.
In the arms of my dear Savior, O – there are 10,000 charms.” Joseph Hart, 1759
Photo taken several years ago at Lakeview Methodist Conference Center in near Palestine, Texas
Is there a link between the Beatitudes, Romans 7 and Step 1? I’m starting a sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount, found in Mathew’s Gospel in Chapters five through seven, and, not surprisingly…well, see what you think.
The Beatitudes are the beginning of this famous sermon, and Jesus began with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” John Wesley, co-founder with his brother Charles of the Methodist movement in England about three hundred years ago, wrote extensively on the Sermon on the Mount. Out of his 44 sermons that were and are viewed as doctrinal standards for Methodist people (at least some now!), 12 were based on the Sermon on the Mount.
Wesley believed the Lord Jesus started with “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” because we have to acknowledge our sin, our brokenness. If we do not realize what we have been saved from, then we have a great difficulty realizing what we have been saved to. If we do not come to grips with our sin — lust, greed, envy, jealousy, anger, pettiness, gossip, etc. — then we will never understand why the things we thought would bring us joy bring only a temporary respite. We are searching for something that cannot be found apart from God. St. Augustine famously wrote that our souls will find no rest until they rest in Thee, O Lord. We acknowledge our sin, we mourn our sin, and we are comforted.
In Romans 7, one of the most intriguing passages in the Bible, Paul writes about the anguish the domination of sin can bring. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me….For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me….Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7: excerpts from 14-25)
This blog is about the link between discipleship and recovery. For those of you in recovery, how does this sound to you? Does that reading from Romans bring up any memories? “I’m going to stop as soon as…..(fill in the blank).” “I’m going to show my control; I’m only going to drink wine from now on.” Or the classic: “I can quit anytime I want.” And the drinking, and the drugging, continues…
Step 1 of Alcoholics Anonymous is “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” We have to admit we are powerless, admit our sin, admit we need help. Within a week, God willing, I will celebrate 34 years of sobriety, more than half my life. Yet at any AA meeting I will introduce myself like this: ‘Hi, I’m Frank, and I’m an alcoholic.” I don’t say that out of fear, but out of gratitude for the God who saved me, and the people God used to do it. It’s been more than half my life since I used alcohol or other drugs, but I know I could go back to where I was and to where I was headed within a few hours if I forgot who I am and where I came from and how I got out.
Churches might be better off if we introduced ourselves like this: “Hi, I’m Frank, and I’m a sinner.” The more I realize my sin, the more I realize the darkness I once lived in, then the more of the light of Christ I can see in my life, and in the world. Wesley believed we come to changed lives by the Sermon on the Mount, walking with Jesus as he shows us the way to the kingdom of God. By loving God and loving our neighbor, there is a real chance that our lives can be changed. It’s Jesus who makes that possible. Only Jesus…
Hydrangeas outside the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire, England.
A friend asked me if I would write a post with what advice I’d give the me from 20 years ago. I suspect he is 20 years younger than my 67 years, and his question has given me a lot to think about.
In this past year my friend Ronnie died. Ronnie and I were in high school together, and we played guitars together and even performed in an open mic forum or too. Ronnie could sing so well, and wrote some beautiful, heartfelt songs about some parts of a difficult life. Being blessed with what could be a long life has awakened gratitude in me. Yesterday I had a routine medical procedure that required me being put under anesthesia. Before I went under I offered a prayer to the Lord for a good life, grateful for the love of God, for my family and those who love me, for the chance to live.
Twenty years ago I was working for the Bread of Life, part of the ministry to the homeless of St. John’s Downtown in Houston, and was beginning my candidacy process to be an elder in the United Methodist Church. I wouldn’t start working in a church for another year and a half. I was in the second of five years of seminary. Brenda and I had been married for coming on five years, and we were praying for the next step.
I was guarded toward church ministry, and had been avoiding the call for many years, but was still drawn and driven toward it, perhaps like the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert for a time of temptation after his baptism. (Mark 1: 12) I knew of many unhappy stories of those who served in the church, and I would both learn more and have a few of my own in the years to come.
But I would say to that guy from 20 years ago to cultivate “an attitude of gratitude” — like we say in the AA rooms — and to “count it all joy” when we encounter diverse temptations. (James 1). Throw yourself on the mercy of God, cast your cares upon the Lord, and don’t try to take them back when you do. Read and be shaped by the Word of God, and pray not for things, but for character and relationship. All the worry, all the anxiety, all the hoping to get folks to do something or be something — all the concern about what others thought of you or how they regarded you — let that go as best you can. None of it matters in the end. None of it.
I’ve been reading some poetry from William Stafford. He wrote a poem every morning before dawn for years. In the months before he died in 1993, he continued this practice, and many of these last poems are astounding in their beauty.
“Toward the End”, begins with this quote from the Spanish mystic Theresa of Avila: This is from the collection, The Way it Is: New & Selected Poems. Watch how he ends, with the realization of joy that makes all of it worth it — no more regrets, no more wishes of difference…gratitude. While reading this over and over I had images of faces flashing by from all the years, some close, some distant, some painful, some fierce, all being part of what brought us here, as I saw nothing but blessings…
“Toward the End” by William Stafford
Let mine eyes see thee,
sweet Jesus of Nazareth;
let mine eyes see thee
and then see death.
Theresa of Avila.
They will give you a paperweight
carved out of heavy wood with black letters
that say everyone likes you and will miss
so steady and loyal a worker.
You carry it home and look at the nice message.
Not always have people allowed you even
a quiet exit — catcalls from that woman
who once appeared kind, plenty of lectures.
And oh the years of hovering anger
all around when each day reluctantly
opened and then followed like some dedicated,
stealthy, calculating, teasing assassin.
Now you can walk into the evening.
Walls where people live lean
on each side. You feel your mother by you
again, and your father has taken your hand.
Sister Peg skips ahead and looks back
that way we all loved and said, “Ours —
how eager she is! Beautiful!” We didn’t
stay true, Peg. We didn’t, we didn’t.
The road bends gradually, then aims
straight at sunset. People are streaming
where all the sky opens on a bluff
and the sea drops off, blue and bright.
Suddenly this moment is worth all the rest
Never has the sweetness arched so near
and overwhelming. They say a green flash
comes if you are lucky right at the end.
Now you see it was always there.
******
I would tell my 47 year old self that the anger was not worth it, the resentment was not worth the life given up in exchange. Give yourself over to the Lord, and learn to love God and neighbor and let God take care of the rest. The “green flash” Stafford writes about reminds me of C. S. Lewis, who wrote that at the end, when we review our life, we’ll see that hidden Hand that’s always been there, and we’ll turn to the Lord and say, “so it was you, all along.”
Here is our little Maggie, just over seven months old.
God is at work, all the time. I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot in the last few years, I mention it in my writing and preaching, and more and more it rings true. God is at work, all the time.
The freeing of Egypt from slavery began when the baby Moses was pulled out of the water, but nothing would show for 80 years. The salvation of the world entered history in a stable far from home, but most of the world didn’t notice. A friend of mine told me a story of walking in the woods, and she and her companion came across a perfectly formed cross from two fallen branches. They marveled, and her friend wondered what else they might have missed because they didn’t have eyes to see. God is at work, and most of the time we don’t know it.
This past Sunday, the day after Christmas, marked 48 years since I had heart surgery, a pericardiectomy to remove part of the lining around my heart. I was 18, and had caught a viral infection somehow during the previous summer. I would have been dead by Easter without intervention, I was told later.
I hemorrhaged after the surgery, and most of my blood had to be replaced. Blood wasn’t screened as much as now, and I turned yellow, called “temporary jaundice.” Twenty years later, I learned I had Hepatitis C, which had just been realized. The only treatment was interferon, which had a 25 percent chance of success and would give me flu-like symptoms for several months. Since I felt fine, I declined, year after year as I kept checking my liver enzyme levels. God is at work, all the time.
Nearly 20 years after the diagnosis, new treatments became available, and they had a better than 90 percent success rate. Because I had not participated in the interferon regimen, I qualified…and after a few months I had “no indication of the virus.”
Additionally, I stopped all alcohol intake in 1988 — my sobriety date is February 17 — long before I learned of the hepatitis. This may have saved my life. I don’t know. But I know God is at work, all the time.
I have this picture of our little Maggie because she and her brother Winston ran out the door I opened yesterday and went on an adventure. Frantically we chased them, and many in our neighborhood participated, and I saw them again, on the other side of a busy street. They don’t know about cars and roadways and they ran out in the street as a truck with a trailer pulling lawn equipment was coming down Eagle Ave. I yelled and the driver didn’t see them. Winston cleared the truck and Maggie was lightly touched by a tire. She spun and screamed. She has a laceration requiring stitches but no broken or crushed bones. One second slower and she’d be dead. Three seconds slower and both pups would have died on the road.
Is that God protecting them? I don’t know. But as I kept thinking about it all day, reliving seeing Winston get clear and Maggie spinning after the truck passed by and hearing her scream, as I kept giving thanks she was alive and not seriously hurt…
for the first time I thought about how relieved my long dead parents must have been when their son pulled through that terrible surgery and the aftermath, and lived. My mother told me she promised God that she would dedicate me to His service if I lived, and here I am.
Recently I’ve read Rich in Years: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Long Life, by Johann Christoph Arnold. It’s a Plough Publishing book, and I recommend it and anything published by Plough, including the beautiful and thoughtful quarterly magazine of the same name.
I’ve been thinking about this gift of having a long life, and learning to embrace it. I have friendships more than a half century old, I’ve been able to make some music longer than that, and as I get older my faith seems deeper, and perhaps more certain — if you can say that faith is certain –or maybe it is richer. I’m learning to seek more peace.
In the sixth chapter of Hosea the prophet wrote: For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire. All of them are hot as an oven, and they devour their rulers. All their kings have fallen, and none of them calls upon me. (Hosea 6:5-7)
Those images: hearts like an oven, smoldering anger — most of us know what this is like. Most of us are too familiar with what it is like to be so angry, so chronically resentful that there is always a smoldering fire, always a heart like an oven ready to heat.
True for you? It’s been true for me, way too true and for way too long. In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, on page 66 we can read: It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile…we found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit.
How much of my time, of my years, have I squandered, wallowing in resentments and endless replays of “what shudda happened!” How much time — maybe enough time.
In Rich in Years the point is beautifully made to reconcile our lives. Make peace with others, make peace with yourself, make peace with God. Forgive…easy to do, impossible to do, essential to do if we want a life of freedom.
In forgiveness we become free,from that bondage of resentment. Right now, this is the life we have. Christ came to announce the coming of the kingdom of God, salvation by the forgiveness of sin — we gain our lives by confessing the hurts we’ve held on to, the “cherished resentments” we have so valued, and by offering and receiving forgiveness. Try it today. And try again tomorrow. And the next day. And when you think you fail remember this: for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything… (I John 3:20)
Give a gift worth giving this Christmas. Give the gift of forgiveness to that special person…and to you.
Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” Hosea 6: 1-2
I’m more and more drawn to the idea that God is at work in our lives, and only in those bright moments of clarity can we know it. The one who would lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt had come when the baby Moses was pulled from the water, but no one would know for 80 years. A baby born to an elderly couple came out of the wilderness 30 years later to proclaim the hope of the world. A baby born far from home to an unlikely couple and who would have thought: “Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more may die..”
God is at work, right now, in your life and in mine. When I read the Hosea passage recently, I thought of my sister, who developed an infection in her shoulder around some hardware put there in a previous surgery. Her shoulder was torn and cut away, that she might heal. Sometimes God needs to re-open a wound on me, something I thought I dealt with, when the anger, the hurt, the resentment comes back. That wound needs to be torn, and broken, so that the underlying infection can be healed and I can begin a new life.
God is at work, bringing the wound, bringing the healing, and often I don’t know it until I look back.
Probably the same for you. What do you think?
The picture is our Winston, seeing a bigger possibility when he hears me walking his big sister just on the other side of the fence.
Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. Hosea 6: 1-3 ESV
One of our former pastors, the wise and incredible Dr. Rudy Rasmus of St. John’s Downtown, Houston, said we were all recovering from something. This week I’ve been wrestling with something, and found some help in the most unlikely place, the book of Hosea. For those of you who have not read this Old Testament book, I recommend it.
I’m struck by this line that the LORD has torn us, that he may heal us. That he has struck us down, and that he will bind us up, that we will be revived after two days, and will be raised up on the third. Of course we think of Jesus’ resurrection, but something about the living word of God makes this applicable for me, too. I’m still recovering from something.
I’m still recovering from seeking other people’s approval before I move forward. This week I’ve been praying and thinking about what to write next, what direction I want to take my writing, and I realize I’m waiting for someone to tell me, or give me ideas, or some other way of avoiding stepping into the place God has given me to dwell.
This is idolatry, the seeking favor of others you may have put in the place where God should be…
Hosea was writing to specific people at a specific time for a specific purpose, but I read this in November of 2021 and it showed me something new. Maybe God tears away to expose an old hurt that didn’t heal, like a scab over an infection that never cleared up and will prove deadly if not cleansed.
Whatever I write and whenever I write, I want to write because I believe God is calling me to it, not to seek someone else’s approval.
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3, ESV)
This is such an odd saying, and for many of us we have grown up with it and it still doesn’t make sense. In John’s Gospel Jesus talks in images, like being “born again” (or “born from above”), and his ‘I AM” sayings, “I am the Bread of Life; I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”…and his followers are often confused. I can only imagine what it would be like to hear Jesus say these things and then just move on down the road, walking with him and talking with him with your head spinning, not understanding but knowing there is something there, something undefinable but somehow solid, “more real than the air we breathe” as poet Rich Mullins sang.
We don’t understand our beginnings, we don’t understand where they’ll lead. In the Gospel account, Jesus is approached by one of the religious leaders, Nicodemus, to find out more about him, and probably to be near him. Jesus is a magnetic presence, and later in this same gospel he said that when he was lifted up he would draw all people to him. (I’m not giving all the Biblical references, and if you look them up it will be good for you!)
After all these years of reading this passage, just this week it hit me that if someone is born again, there is a new life beginning. From being born we have to grow up.
And so I thought about that with our recovery process, about how we have to adjust to new beginnings when we stop using alcohol and other drugs, how we have to begin a new life, for many of us far different from the one we had been living. We may and probably will have to change our friends, change our habits, change our social life. We will probably encounter folks who do not want to support us in this new life-choosing decision, telling us we are probably over-reacting or maybe be aggressive and tell us we are weak, that we “just can’t handle it.” You know what’s been said to you. These things have been said to me.
In AA we have such a wonderful system in place to grow into our new life. Get a sponsor, work the steps, go to meetings. A sponsor is someone you can trust, someone you confide in, someone who will guide you, teach you, set you straight when you need it. The steps make you admit over and over that you have lived a life of “self-will run riot” and it has cost a great deal, and you are on a life saving mission to save your own life. And early on you are encouraged to sponsor someone else, which will strengthen you. We even celebrate a new sobriety birthday, marking months and years.
In the church, we may have that rebirth experience and most of us don’t have a sponsor, don’t have the steps, and just come back to church. And we drift away. When we are born again we need to be cared for as we grow.
In the last several years we have been involved with the Inspire Movement (inspiremovement.org) working to help make disciples of Jesus of folk who are interested and teaching them to make disciples of others. We need to grow in our faith in Christ, we need to have someone close to us that cares for us and that we care for. In Inspire we have “house fellowships” of up to 20 people who share a meal and time together and “fellowship bands”, groups of three or four who lean in to deeper relationship. In each other there is a central question: Where have you see God in your life?
If this seems interesting to you, check out the website, or contact me. We need to grow up.
The Unforced Rhythms of Grace -- Frank Coats 