E-Musings

2012-02-15T09:49:00.005-07:00

For the Love of God

“We were born for the Love of God. If we do not find it, it were better for us if we had never been born.” —Justice Hugh Black

There are two kinds of people in the world. There those who aimlessly trip through life with goofy grins on their faces, who, if they think about life at all, are more concerned with what it provides than what it means. I think of friends of mine whose lives revolve around hunting, fishing, sex and six packs and who sincerely believe that the one who accumulates the most toys has won.

And then there are other friends who spend their entire lives trying to discover what, if anything, life is all about. They’re the readers and thinkers, the lovers of music, art and wisdom, who take on the ideas of all the ages, examining them from all sides, trying them on for size, jettisoning some, embracing others, in order to find the good, the true and the beautiful—always learning, always searching, always trusting that life someday will reveal it’s long–concealed and exquisite design.

In either case, about age 40 or so, when they’re more in sight of the end of life than it’s beginning, the enterprise becomes senseless. That’s when they get deeply restless and the search for fulfillment through money, power, sex or celebrity no longer suffices. They get no satisfaction from philosophy or morality, artistic creation or any of the pursuits of the will or ego. That’s when they may realize life’s stupendous simplification: God is what they’re been looking for all their lives. And there he is at the end of every alternative, standing and waiting!

If you’re looking for God, my friend, you will find him. You will find him because he has been looking for you all your life. It is his longing for your love that has drawn you to seek him. “I look for God,” Pascal said. “because he has found me.”

DHR

2012-02-04T17:03:00.001-07:00

In January, Carolyn's 95 year-old mother fell and was taken to the ER. Her condition deteriorated and on Sunday morning January 22, she slipped from our presence into the presence of the Lord. Mother was an extraordinary woman whose life continues to bear fruit. She will be greatly missed, but we do not sorrow as those that have no hope. She is with her Savior whom she loves and whose presence means infinite joy for her. She is "fine," to use the self-assessment she always gave when asked how she was feeling. Her obituary, which Carolyn wrote, can be accessed below.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/idahostatesman/obituary.aspx?n=clara-ellis&pid=155637857

As you can imagine, we've had much to do and no time to write. I hope to continue in a week or so when our schedule settles down to something like normal.

DHR

2011-12-25T09:28:00.002-07:00

Into My Heart

One Christmas, a long, long time ago, when our granddaughter Melanie was very small, she was wandering and wondering her way around our living room, gazing intently at Carolyn’s “set–arounds.”

Carolyn has a wonderful array of ornaments and Christmas knick–knacks she has collected over the years. One of her cherished items is an olive-wood crèche she bought in Bethlehem many years ago. Every Christmas Carolyn arranges it in its place on our living room coffee table. It’s there as I write this piece.

Melanie came to the crèche that day long ago and stood over it transfixed for a moment. Then she picked up the carving of the baby Jesus in her tiny hands and drew it up to her heart. She closed her eyes and said, “Baby Jesus, sleep…” and rocked the little olivewood figure of Jesus in her arms.

Tears sprang to my eyes and I felt the strangest, strongest emotion. I could not have told you then what I was feeling, or why I was so deeply moved, but I knew that something profoundly stirring had occurred.

Later I realized why my heart was so deeply touched by that simple gesture: it was symbolic of that other childlike act in which we take up the wonderful gift of God’s love, our Lord Jesus, and draw him close to our hearts. This is what he longs for—to love and be loved in return.

There is that song that children sing (and adults too, once they get over their fear of being child–like):

Into my heart, into my heart;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today; come in to stay;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

And so it is, “where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

DHR

2011-12-23T13:53:00.005-07:00

Two Caves

English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy writes of Mixen Lane, a low district in the city of Castlebridge, as “the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the hiding place for those who were in distress, and debt, and trouble of every kind.”[1] He was thinking of a cave near the city of Adullam in Israel’s lowlands, a safe place to which David fled from the rage of King Saul (1 Samuel 22:1,2).

As the story goes, word of David’s cave spread rapidly and mysteriously through Israel and in time “every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was discontented, gathered to him; and he became a prince over them.” It was a threatened and threatening crowd that found David—full of their own troubles, frightened, faint–hearted, stressed out, burdened and embittered by what they had endured.

David took them in—all of them—and taught them what God had taught him through years of adversity and pain. He read his poems, sang of God’s covenant love (Psalm 89:1) and taught them to fight the battles of the Lord. The outcasts found a new center of life in David, and he in turn became their prince.

This once–motley crew became the core of David’s mighty men, brave warriors, “ready for battle and able to handle the shield and spear. Their faces were the faces of lions, and they were as swift as gazelles in the mountains” (1 Chronicles 12:8). They were Israel’s border guard protecting her southern flanks against the Philistines and Amalakites, a wall to Israel “by day and by night.” They became the nucleus of the greatest fighting force of that time, an army that carried the standard of Israel from the Tigris to the River of Egypt.

—All of which suggests another cave not too far away, near Bethlehem in Judea, a stable in the earth into which shepherds drove their flocks at night. There another prince was born, that other David whom the prophet foretold: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says,” ‘…my servant David will be a prince among them’” (Ezekiel 34:23–24).

There in that lowly cave (one must stoop very low to get in) the weary and heavy–laden still gather. Some come in dire distress, worn out by worry and fear. Others come burdened with debt, owing much to many. Others are downcast by an unhappy childhood, a failed marriage, a cruel death that snatched love away. Still others come starved for want of something they cannot name.

There they find a Prince who sings to them in their misery and weakness, who tells his stories and strengthens them with his love.

There, as they sit at his feet, they learn to be mighty men and women once again.

DHR

[1] The Mayor of Castlebridge

2011-12-19T14:46:00.008-07:00

Simeon's Farewell

Let the infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken word,

Grant Israel's consolation

To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

-T.S. Eliot, "A Song for Simeon"

Simeon was a venerable, old saint that had long waited "the consolation of Israel" (cf., Isaiah 40:1). The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah.

"By chance," some would say, Simeon arrived at the temple coincident with Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus. Seeing the child, Simeon took him from his mother, cradled him in his arms, and began to sing:

Now Lord, as you have promised, you may dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people; A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.

Thus Simeon passes off the scene, his small part in the drama well played, "with peace and consolation dismissed," Milton said.

Much of what Simeon sang about Jesus came from the Prophet Isaiah, who promised that, "all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God" (Isaiah 52:10). This infant would bring glory to Israel and salvation to the entire earth.

This was surely a moment of great joy for Mary. All mothers know that their children are special, but for Mary, this was a public ratification of what she already knew: that her son's kingdom "would have no end." (Luke 1:33.[1]

But Simeon then states a hard fact: though the child was appointed for ”rise of many," many would fall—They would trip over him and curse him in their frustration. He would be slandered, rejected and killed, and Mary herself would suffer excruciating pain.

Simeon's words reinforce the bitter-sweet quality of the nativity: the story delights us, but we know that the birth of the child will lead to suffering and death, as do, in fact, all births. Beyond the cave in which Jesus was born we see the shadowed outlines of the cave in which he was buried.

[I think of the irony in an old Christmas episode of The Simpsons, in which the character playing one of the wise men admits to re-gifting the myrrh he's brought for baby Jesus, "because," he argues, “Nobody needs myrrh!” No one but One who must suffer and die.[2]]

Perhaps that's why we old folks are strangely moved when we look at happy parents cradling a newborn baby, for we know that their child will surely suffer and that a sword will pierce their hearts as well. I've been around too long and have seen too much to believe otherwise.

How often have I listened to the stories of old friends and thought back to our youthful naiveté. Little did we know what sufferings we would endure.

I think of a childhood friend whose wife was murdered in a savage invasion of his home, while he was left confined to a wheel chair. Two other friends have challenged children; others have lost their children or seen them damaged in tragic ways. One friend's wife was injured in an accident from which she never fully recovered; others have suffered multiple losses through disease, death, or divorce. In fact, I can think of no friend who has not suffered in a significant way. I think of George Herbert's poignant words, "I cried when I was born and every day shows why."

"In this world you will have trouble," Jesus said, but, he said, "Be of good cheer!" I must say—as I think of my friends— despite their challenges they are of good cheer. They sorrow—Christianity is not Stoicism; there's no virtue in the stiff upper lip—but they do not sorrow as those who have no hope for they have learned that we all share in Jesus' sufferings, for if nothing else, the Incarnation tells us that at the center of our life is One who has been broken, who, from the cradle to the cross, has been one with us in our pain and loss. This is our consolation.

Does God promise that we will not feel pain? Not in this life. Does he feel our pain? The Incarnation is the final, irrefutable proof that he does. We can cast our care upon him knowing that our suffering matters to him, and sometimes that's all we need to know.

There is great relief in laying our burden down, even briefly, in the presence of someone who understands and cares. Author Margaret Guenther tells of a Scottish pediatrician who comforted her hurt and frightened child, not with medicine, but with a great, enveloping bear hug and the words, "Och, poor wee bairn!" "The wee bairn stopped crying at once," Mrs. Guenther said, "for she realized that another understood her pain and did not seek to minimize it." Thus Jesus consoles our broken hearts.

I, like Simeon, have grown old, but I have lived to see the Lord’s Messiah. And I too have seen that he is indeed our consolation.

DHR

[1] The phrase, "no end" can be interpreted both temporally and spatially. The Moravian translation of this text is "without frontiers."

[2] Myrrh was an expensive spice used to embalm the dead.

2011-12-19T08:29:00.001-07:00

Growing Old With God

Anna was old—waiting for “the death wind,” T. S. Eliot said. She had lived with a husband seven years after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. Anna never missed a service at the temple, worshipping night and day (Luke 2:36–38).

Anna had grown old with God, the alternative to which is to grow old without him, the end of which is boredom, futility of existence and effort

Growing old is not for sissies, as they say. It’s often overclouded by the multiple losses to which aging is susceptible—separation, bereavement, physical and mental decline. These blows can fall on us at any time, but they seem to fall heaviest in our latter years.

There’s no way to shield ourselves from the difficulties encountered as we age, but our last years can be happy, productive years, years of growth in grace and beauty, if we give ourselves to developing the inward life of the soul.

Age breaks down our strength and energy and strips us of our busyness so we have more time to develop intimacy with God. Far from frustrating God’s best in us the weakness and limitations of age enable us to grow to full maturity. The end of the process is body and spirit united—one in loving God and others. Without the limitations of old age we could never make the most of our lives.

I recall a man saying that long aging and years of weakness and failing health had made his life worth living. “How awful it would have been if, instead of getting old, I’d been extinguished in middle age without learning what God has to offer.”

The senior years can be viewed as a pleasantly useless era where we qualify for Social Security, AARP and senior discounts and have a lot of free time to do nothing at all, or they can be a time of great usefulness to God. There’s much left to do!

We can serve as mentors and conservators of wisdom and virtue, the essential role elders play in society and in the church—grand old men and women who point out the ancient paths and show young believers how to walk in them (cf., Jeremiah 6:16).

Furthermore, there is the power of an ordinary life lived with an awareness of God’s presence, seeing him in everything and doing all things for him. Teresa of Avila found God in her kitchen walking among the pots and pans. Brother Lawrence, the author of Practicing the Presence of God, saw God in his mundane tasks in a monastic scullery. This is the mark of the mature soul, quietly, humbly going about his or her homely tasks, living in joy and leaving behind the sweet fragrance of Jesus’ love.

By God’s grace, we can grow sweeter as the days go by, easier to live with, more delightful to be around. Izaak Walton, wrote of an old companion: “How comforting it is to see a cheerful and contented old age…after being tempest–tossed through life, safely moored in a snug and quiet harbor in the evening of his days! His happiness sprung from within himself and was independent of external circumstances, for he had that inexhaustible good nature which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.” This is the mind that is stayed on God.

Even when our journey leads into illness and weakness and we’re confined to our homes and then our beds, our years of fruitful activity are not over. Like Anna, we can worship and pray night and day. Prayer is the special privilege of infirmity and in the end its greatest contribution.

And we can love. Love remains our last and best gift to God and to others. As St. John of the Cross wrote, “Now I guard no flock, nor have I any office. Now my work is in loving alone” (A Spiritual Canticle).

Prayer and love. These are the mighty works of the elderly.

And then, on ahead, there is the resurrection of our worn out bodies, what ancient spiritual writers called athanasias pharmakon (the medicine of immortality), God’s cure for all that ails us. This is God’s loving purpose for us beyond all earthly existence—“that when this mildew age, has dried away, our hearts will beat again as young and strong and gay” (MacDonald).

This is our hope and, I must say, the most cherished article of my creed.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made;

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become

As they draw near their eternal home.

—Edmund Waller (1606-1687)

2011-12-16T10:38:00.003-07:00

Shepherds

“There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them...” (Luke 2:8,9a).

The angel bypassed Jerusalem and the religious folks of that day and appeared to a band of shepherds “living in the fields.” No one back then would have thought that shepherds would be interested in such things, for they were hard, profane men—more like Idaho’s Owyhee County buckaroos than the sanitized shepherds we associate with the story these days.

Yet, like all of us, these were spiritual men, for “spiritual” is not something we seek, but “something we are and cannot escape” (Philosopher Dallas Willard). In all of us there is a deep, insatiable hunger for transcendence, that elusive “something more,” and our hearts break with that longing.

Here is our satisfaction: “Today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord.” And this is where you will find him: “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And so the shepherds went off to search for the baby. They skirted the resorts, spas and lodges of the rich and famous (for there were no feed troughs there) and went looking for a stockyard, a feedlot, or a sheepfold. They found the baby “nearby” (They had no idea how near he was), lying in a manger—the "savior who is Christ the Lord.”

Let’s hear it for the shepherds who found salvation. Let’s hear it for a God who was willing to humble himself to save—the only God worth having; the only God for you and me.

The shepherds found the baby nearby—an easy thing it was to find him. I hope you’ve found him too. If not, I hope you’re still seeking. Wise men and women do.

If you’re seeking, I can tell you where to find him. He’s not in our culture, devoid as it is of any indication that our savior was born. We've left him far behind.

Not to worry, however: he’s still very near: “You’ll find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

DHR

2011-12-13T06:52:00.019-07:00

What If Christmas Means More?

He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!

Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”

“It came with out ribbons! It came without tags!”

“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”

“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

-Dr. Seuss, How The Grinch Stole Christmas

As incredible as it may seem, a manger is where Christmas CAME! The God of the universe came to earth—to a cold and solitary cave and was born as a tiny, helpless infant. How could it be so?

My task is not to explain it, but to take it into my heart. The more I do, the more I discern the heart of God.

Here’s the lesson for me: That God loves us enough to share our brokenness, weariness, worry and sorrow. He clothed himself in mortal flesh "that so, he might be weak enough to suffer woe" (John Donne). He was and has always been, as one of Israel's prophets put it, “acquainted with grief."

The world is steeped in sadness these days. Despite the season that promises great joy there is little that comforts and satisfies us. Poet Mathew Arnold was right: "And the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; / And we are here as on a darkling plain..." —Dover Beach

Ribbons and tags, packages, boxes and bags can never dispel that sorrow, nor can they heal our broken hearts.

We know that's true; it's a simple and undeniable fact, empirically verified every Christmas. We've all tasted the sadness that descends upon us when the holidays are over and everything is done. Life again becomes "dukkha," as Buddhists say, painful, disjointed and unhappy.

But what if the Grinch was right? What if Christmas doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more? What if it means that God loves you—you, the one reading these lines.

Indeed, God does love you like you wouldn’t believe. He loved you before you were born; he loves you now; he will love you after you die. He has "appeared...from afar saying, 'I have loved you with everlasting love'" (Jeremiah 31:3).

Human love has reasons to love—wealth, beauty, intelligence or other attributes that make love's object loveable and desirable. But divine love is not based on merit or distinction. God loves you, not merely because you are yourself, but because he is himself: "God is Love" (John 4:8,16). Philosopher Peter Kreeft argues that God cannot answer the question, "Why do I love thee?" He can only say, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

One measure of that love is the Crib where God, for our sake, become a wee bairn—the final proof that he loves us as no other.

Why, then, are there no crèches these days? Why do we try so hard to avoid the mystery of God's amazing grace when it is so simple and so blindingly clear? Why are we so afraid of His three little words: "I love you"?

You are God's beloved. Why not tell him, "I love you, too."

DHR

2011-12-11T08:19:00.003-07:00

THE CHILD

I was walking through our mall last week and thought of an old Doonesbury cartoon: Michael J. sits ensconced in his easy chair watching TV. After loud shouts and the sounds of gun fighting the announcer says, “This concludes our regular broadcast day. Stay tuned for film clips of the Marines, a story from the life of Jesus and our National Anthem.” Doonesbury gets to his feet and joins in the singing of the anthem.

There you have it—the good, old American way: Equal time for everything and everybody. Nothing is special any more, not even Jesus, who, if we acknowledge at all, we place in a cluster of traditions.

Especially at Christmas. We keep the Christ–child around to grace an occasional manger, but he’s merely one symbol among many: Rudolph, Scrooge, St. Nicholas and his elves, toy soldiers, little drummer boys, shepherds, angels, Christmas trees, Yule logs and Jesus, all vie for our attention; everything alongside everything else. The Son of God gets lost in the Yuletide clutter.

Melissa knows better. She’s one our grandchildren. Some years ago, Carolyn and I took her to the Festival of the Trees—an event here Boise in which businesses and organizations decorate Christmas trees, competing with one another in various categories. The display is magnificent.

We were enchanted by the grandeur of the hall as we moved from one tree to the next, pointing and exclaiming. But Melissa soon lost interest, surfeited by splendor, until she came to a small manger scene and there she paused transfixed.

Nothing else mattered—not the magnificently decorated trees, not Santa Claus who was nearby and beckoning and not even an incredible talking tree. She was captivated by the Child.

We tried our best to urge her on—we wanted to see the trees—but she lingered behind, wanting to hold the baby, pressing closer to him despite the ribbon stretched around the cradle, keeping her away.

Finally, she agreed to leave, albeit reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the crèche through the trees. And as we were leaving the building Melissa tugged on my hand and asked, “Papa can we go see the baby?” We returned to the manger and waited while she gazed long and longingly at the Child.

As Melissa adored Him, I marveled at her simplicity. Unlike her, I often fail to see Jesus for the trees.

“There are some things worth being a child to get hold of again,” George MacDonald said. “Make me a child again,” I prayed, “at least for tonight.”

DHR

2011-12-05T10:00:00.003-07:00

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The was deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter."

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we lead all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

I’m drawn to T.S. Eliot’s brutal honesty, his willingness to write what he really felt rather than what he would like to feel. “The Journey of the Magi” is one such study in candor.

Christianity came hard for Eliot. Like C. S. Lewis, he was “dragged into the Kingdom kicking and screaming.” His was a desperate leap from bitter cynicism, characterized by a good deal of uncertainty, “wavering between profit and loss,” as he put it. Here, in this poem Eliot spells out his ambivalence.

“The Journey of the Magi” purports to be a monologue in which one of the wise men, traveling from the East to find the Christ-child, recounts his journey with all its hardship and perplexities.

The opening paragraph of the poem (in quotes) is a direct quotation from a Nativity sermon by a seventeenth century bishop of the Church of England, Lancelot Andrewes, lines Eliot admired for its stark realism. Instead of the simple Gospel report that “magi from the east arrived in Bethlehem,” we read of one man’s arduous journey: the cold, the distance, the dirt, the sleepless nights, the regret, the memories of a palace and the pretty girls left behind; and the hostility of those he encountered on the way, their lack of understanding and encouragement, singing in his ears, “This is all folly.”

One after another (note the repetitious “and”) we learn of the obstacles along the way. The man has little confidence in himself as he pushes toward his goal, haunted by doubt and no assurance that he will find what he seeks at the end of his journey.

The next paragraph opens with a ray of hope: “Then at dawn we came to a temperate valley”: dawn and freshness, the rich smell of damp earth and vegetation, running streams and mills beating in the darkness. Yet in the midst of these pleasant surroundings there are ominous signs: three trees silhouetted against the sky and sinister hands dicing (throwing dice) for pieces of silver, and “no information.”

Nevertheless the wise man journeys on, and eventually arrives one evening, “not a moment too soon” (catch the moment of heightened expectation!) to find “the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory”—a masterpiece of understatement if there ever was one! The goal of the grueling quest is an anti-climax. There is no feeling of fulfillment; no drama, no excitement, no ecstasy. Only perplexity and paradox.

The old man’s faith is firm, “I would do it again,” but what was the purpose of it all? Was it only to die to his past life—his friends, and the ease and affluence of his former days? Having found the Child, he cannot go back to the old life and “an alien people clutching their gods.” He is no longer at ease there. Yet, his new life is “hard and bitter agony,” something “like Death.” Is there nothing now to live for but to wait for “another (final) death?”

Here is one man’s dark night of the soul, a period of unhappiness and skepticism in which he wonders if it’s been worthwhile to leave everything to find and follow Jesus. Who’s mind, if we’re true to ourselves, has not harbored that thought?

Some individuals live in their heads; they’re born with a questioning, inquiring spirit and are predisposed to doubt. It’s the way God made them. Other’s doubts are born of argument: a comment by a respected, but unbelieving university professor, a random word spoken by a friend, an article on the Internet, reflecting the spirit of this age. Or doubt may come through sickness, disappointment, or a friend who succumbs to sin. All give logic to unbelief. What then can we do when “doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind”?

We can take comfort in the thought that doubt is not displeasing to God. He knows how frail and fragile one’s faith can be. “He will not quench a smoking flax.”^[1]He is wonderfully compassionate, and infinitely patient with our misgivings. He was himself tempted in all points as we are.[2] He fully understands.

We can pray, for nothing is of ourselves, not even faith. Faith is a gift of God. [3] “I believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” is the cry of honest skepticism.[4]

We can turn doubt into action. We can take up the next duty, the very next thing God is asking us to do. Like Mother Teresa, who, if we can belief her biographers, floundered in deep despair in her final years, we can live a life of service in the midst of our uncertainty. No matter how dark things seem to be there is truth to be lived and, though it seems odd, that obedience can begin to restore our faith. As Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”[5]

Finally, we can ponder Peter’s response when Jesus asked his disciples if they too would go away: “Lord,” Peter asks for all of us, “to whom shall we go?”[6]

DHR

[1] Isaiah 42:3

[2] It’s worth noting that doubt is not sin, but mere temptation.

[3] Ephesians 2:8,9

[4] Mark 9:24

[5] John 7:17

[6] John 6:68

2011-11-30T16:12:00.003-07:00

The God Who Would Be Man

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling to himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two very different places.” “Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “it’s inside is bigger than it's outside.” Yes, said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside that was bigger than our whole world.”

—C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle

“The Incarnation is the central miracle asserted by Christians,” C. S. Lewis insisted. “They say that God became a man.”

One of first questions raised by the early church is how did it happen? How did the immortal, eternal Word become flesh? Matthew and Luke explain Jesus’ entry into the world as a virgin birth, or more correctly, a virgin conception, for it was Jesus’ conception and not his birth that was unique.[1] Mary was a normal woman in every way and Jesus’ gestation and birth was normal in every way that matters. But his conception was unique for he had no human father. As the old text puts it, Mary “had known no man.”

Mary herself was concerned with this question, for nothing in her schooling necessarily led her to the expectation that Messiah would be virginal born:[2] “How can this be?” she asked the angel, who then explained, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:34, 35). This is a miracle and a mystery.

Every conception, of course, is a miracle. No woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, no doe a fawn apart from God. But once, for a very special purpose, God dispensed with natural process and a long line of descendents. With his naked hand he touched Mary and made a wee bairn who was…well, himself.

Here’s where clinical explanations falter. All we can say is what the first writers said: the child was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). This was inexplicable then as now, and yet was acceptable, a staunch belief enshrined in the earliest creeds.[3] It became part of the minimal faith of new converts. Today it stands at the heart of our faith.

“But does it matter?” you ask. Of course it does. “All this took place,” Matthew informs us, “to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means (Matthew translates), ‘God (is) with us’” (Matthew 1:23).

God is with us. That’s what the virgin birth meant and still means. This is an answer to the old question: Does God care? Does disease, pain, infirmity, handicap and death overwhelm him as much as it does us? Does God weep? Does it matter to him that babies are hooked on drugs and infected by AIDs in utero? Dostoyevsky’s cynic, Ivan, asks of human suffering, “What do the children have to do with it?” Does it matter to God that children suffer?

The answer is the Incarnation, for in this act God entered fully into our suffering. Pain was his lot in the slow ascent from a struggling, kicking embryo to an utterly dependent baby, through gangling, awkward adolescent to become a man—a “man of sorrows.” Through all, he was “acquainted with grief.” “In all our afflictions he was afflicted.” Yes, he understands. He cares like no other.

Dorothy Sayers says it far better than I: “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever the game he is playing with His creation, He has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

Jesus’ conception, though one of a kind, is timelessly typical of what is eternally true of God. He “never undoes anything but evil, never does good to undo it again. The union between God and (human) nature in the person of Christ admits no divorce. He will not go out of nature again…”[4] He is, and has always been, Immanuel: “God with us; the God who became just like you and me.

DHR

[1] The virgin birth should not be confused with the “Immaculate Conception," the Roman Catholic tradition that Mary was free from original sin, or the “Immaculate Reception,” a Franco Harris catch in a play-off game against Oakland in 1972.

[2]Isaiah's prophecy (Isaiah 7:14) does not necessarily raise this expectation. The word Isaiah uses, usually translated virgin ('alma), is ambiguous and may simply mean "young maiden." The near fulfillment of the prophecy probably was a child born to the prophet's wife who was not a virgin. (She had already borne children.) Matthew, however, translates and interprets Isaiah's prophecy with the Greek word, pathenos that is not ambiguous and unequivocally means "virgin" (Matthew 1:14).

[3] The earliest creed, the so-called Apostles' Creed states in part: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary..."

[4] C. S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 123

2011-11-28T10:49:00.006-07:00

Logos

“The lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song... Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked round you, you saw them” (C.S. Lewis Magicians Nephew p.126).

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Plato, the Greek philosopher, reasoned there must be an “idea” (or “form”) behind every object in the material world, one that preceded its existence. And if that idea exists, there must be a mind that conceived it and spoke it into being. These three transcendent realities—a divine mind, an idea, an utterance—Plato combined into one absolute and named it the “Logos” (the Word).

Plato was very near the truth, so near, in fact, that early Christians sometimes referred to him as “one of our own.” But though he caught a glimpse of “the true Light that gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:9), he did not fully comprehend it. Something more was needed, something tremendous, something yet to come, something the wisdom of man could not conceive: “The Word (Logos) became flesh and dwelled among us …” (John 1:14). The divine Logos and a mortal man together bore one name: Jesus. This is what Christians call The Incarnation, the final, irrefutable proof that God really, really cares.

American Theologian Frederick Buechner had this to say: “We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want — scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all — would not, in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind to keep the whole show going, but that there is a God right there in the thick of our day-to-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars, but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want, but whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get” (Secrets in the Dark, p.16).

All through the Old Testament we read that God has been doing his best to get next to us, humbling himself, condescending to make himself known, but nothing can match what happened that night in that cave. It was there that the Logos became the little Lord Jesus, a helpless infant with unfocused eyes and uncontrollable limbs, needing to be breast–fed, swaddled, cuddled and cared for, “the infinite made infinitesimally small,” G. K. Chesterton mused. “Immensity contracted to a span.” That is indeed the miracle we’re really after and the miracle that we got: The Logos become Immanuel: God with us.

John speaks of the Logos in a most personal way: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled—(this was) the Word (the eternal Logos)!” (1 John 1:1).

John was astounded by the thought that he had heard and seen Plato’s Logos, and held him in his hands.[1] The one who made up the universe “out of his head” and spoke it (or sang it) into existence was “pleased as man with men to dwell.” Why did He do it?

It was love—pure and simple.

DHR

11/28/11

[1] The Greek word translated “handled” suggests something more than a tentative touch. It has the thought of familiarity and affection—perhaps a hug.

2011-11-22T07:16:00.001-07:00

Love Finds a Way

“Love never dies.’ (1 Corinthians 12:8 The Message)

Years ago I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine that depicted a sour, disgruntled, elderly gentleman standing in rumpled pajamas and robe at his apartment door. He had just secured the door for the night with four locks, two deadbolts and a chain latch. Later he noticed a small white envelope stuck beneath the door. On the envelope was a large sticker in the shape of a heart. It was a valentine. Love had found a way.

We ought to have a reason for the hope that’s in us, Paul says, but reason alone can never change another person’s heart. Only love can.

(Do you recall Dostoevsky’s parable of The Grand Inquisitor and Ivan Karamazov’s arguments against the love of God? His brother Alyosha did not debate the issue. He simply leaned over and kissed Ivan—a “line of reasoning” that burned its way into Ivan’s heart.)

Folks don’t believe much in God’s love these days. We have to show it to them—incarnate it, as God did in Jesus. In that way we can—so to speak—help him bring salvation into the world.

Authentic love, however, is not the matter of a moment, a month or a year. It is eternal: “Love never dies!” It is the gift that we keep on giving.

DHR

11/22/11

2011-11-18T10:13:00.006-07:00

Poor Preachers

Judge not the preacher for he is thy judge
If you mislike him, thou conceiv’st him not
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.
The worst speak something good: if all want sense,
God takes a text and preacheth patience.

—George Herbert

Years ago I heard about a young minister who asked a local auto mechanic to give him a special rate to fix his car. “I’m a poor preacher,” the young man explained.

“Yes, I know,” the mechanic replied. “I heard you preach last Sunday.”

Perhaps you have a “poor preacher.” So he isn’t polished and articulate, the most artful guy around. Don’t judge him harshly. If you do, it may be because you don’t understand God’s purposes. Despite the text your pastor may have chosen, God has his own text in mind.

Look for the nugget in the rubble. "The worst speak something good” now and then. Listen to the message carefully—try not to let your mind drift away—and ask God to give you one thought that will transform your thoughts and your heart. Jot it down, take it home and think about it throughout the day.

If nothing else, you may learn patience, that hardest of all virtues to acquire.

DHR

2011-11-13T06:45:00.001-07:00

Logos

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

I love this time of the year: the first skiff of snow on the mountains, Canadian geese circling, gathering strength for their journey south, the extravagant patchwork of multihued leaves overhead and strewn across the forest floor. I echo the poet, “Whence comes this beauty?”

Plato, the Greek philosopher, concluded that there must be an “idea” behind every beautiful thing. Before there could be a beautiful object, there must be the thought of the object that preceded its being. And if that thought exists, there must be a mind that conceived it and then spoke it into existence. These three transcendent realities—a divine mind, an idea, an utterance—Plato combined into one and named it “Logos” (the Word).

Plato was very near the truth, so near, in fact, that early Christians referred to him as “one of our own.” But though he caught a glimpse of “the light that enlightens every man,” he did not fully comprehend it. Something more was needed, something tremendous, something yet to come, something the wisdom of man could not conceive: “The Word (Logos) became flesh and dwelled among us …” (John 1:14). The divine Logos and a mortal man came to bear one name: Jesus—“immensity contracted to a span.” This is what Christians call the Incarnation, the final, irrefutable proof that God really, really cares.

John was stunned by the thought that he actually saw Plato’s Logos, and held him in his hands.[1] The one who made up the universe “out of his head” and spoke it (or sang it!) into existence was “pleased as man with men to dwell.” Why did He do it?

It was love—pure and simple.

DHR

[1] The Greek word translated “handled” suggests something more than a tentative touch. It has the thought of familiarity and affection—perhaps a hug.

2011-11-10T08:30:00.002-07:00

Rage

Sing, muse, sing of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus—that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans to countless agonies and threw many warrior souls deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies carrion food for dogs and birds—

—Homer, The Iliad

Homer hangs the key to The Iliad on the front door. The first word in the Greek text is, “Rage!” The rest of the poem traces the tragic results of Achilles’ fury—the terrible loss of human life, the “countless agonies” that befell the Achaeans (Greeks)—all because Achilles would not give up his murderous rage.

James writes, “My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be… slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:19,20).

There is a place for anger: Injustice directed at others ought to outrage us, but rage and revenge to redress the wrongs that you and I receive will never achieve the righteous purposes of God. We must commit ourselves to the only one who judges justly, and let him defend us from wrong.

Paul writes, “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12.19).[1] This is not weakness; it is strength under control—a steadfast refusal to defend oneself and “give place to wrath,” i.e., step aside so God can work. This is meekness, the mark of a true child of God (Matthew 5:5).

Keep me from wrath, let it seem ever so right:

My wrath will never work thy righteousness.

Up, up the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine,

Help me to climb, and dwell in pardon’s light.

I must be pure as thou, or ever less

Than thy design of me--therefore incline

My heart to take men’s wrongs as thou tak’st mine.

—George MacDonald

[1] Jude speaks of the inevitable judgment of evil, but issues this caveat: “Even Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil…dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 8).

2011-10-28T07:13:00.005-06:00

Star Shepherd

“Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these…” (Isaiah 40:26)

Some night, when you’re away from the lights of the city, look up. There in the heavens you’ll see a luminous band of stars, stretching from horizon to horizon, the “Milky Way”—our galaxy.

Our galaxy is a massive, flattened, rotating disk of stars 80,000 light years in diameter. If you could travel at the speed of light (approximately 186,000 miles per second) it would require 80,000 years to traverse our galaxy. It contains about 400 billion stars.

In 1995 two astronomers in Baltimore, Md. conducted what became known as the Hubble Deep Field Study: They took an exposure of a small patch of sky and discovered over 3000 galaxies (not stars, galaxies) in that tiny portion of space. Based on that discovery, astronomers now estimate that there are more than a trillion galaxies in the cosmos, each containing billions of stars!

Yet, each night, without fail, God “brings out their host by number …He knows them all by name. By the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).

Sometimes, when I fly into a large city, and see innumerable lights below I wonder how God can possibly care about me. I think, “My way is hidden from the Lord” (Isaiah 40:27). Perhaps you do too.

Please know that the Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the one who names and numbers the stars knows you by name!

You will never be forgotten.

DHR

2011-10-25T11:24:00.004-06:00

As in a mirror

The Readiness is All

—Hamlet

Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd opens with a farmer, Gabriel Oak, spying on a young woman from his hiding place in the woods. She gazes at her face in a mirror and smiles to herself, fully satisfied with her appearance. “She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape… She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind.” Gabriel’s terse assessment: “Vanity.”

I think of James’ comparison: “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”[1]

Obedience is not agreeing with truth and intending to do it. It’s doing what God asks us to do as soon as possible. He does not ask us to do everything at once, and he does not ask us to do things that are impossible to do. Nor does he ask us to do anything by ourselves. He is within us to will and to do his good pleasure.

But he does ask, and sometimes he asks very hard things. It’s no good merely wanting to do them. “Good intentions must take advantage of their first ripeness,” George MacDonald wrote. Otherwise we may one day cease to have any good intentions at all.

Why, then, do I fail to act? Vanity. I see my face in the mirror and smile to myself, fully satisfied with my appearance. Pride has blinded me to the need for alteration. The answer, as James continues, is to “receive with meekness the implanted word” (James 1:21). The word must fall into a humble heart.

So, I must ask God for the humility to look into my heart and take heed to his words. Then I must make a start and ask Him to perfect it. He waits to be gracious.

DHR

[1] James 1:22,23 The Message

2011-10-20T11:16:00.005-06:00

The Grapes of Wrath

“Break their teeth in their mouth, O God!” (Psalm 58:6)

What can we say about the so-called imprecatory psalms—poems that breathe out vengeance and reprisal? Can we justly pray that God will break the teeth of the wicked and leave them like toothless tigers?

Of course we can. The New Testament speaks of a day of reckoning when God will judge evil and set everything right and we can pray for that day to arrive. God allows tyranny to run its course because, among other reasons, he is not willing that any should perish,[1] but tyrants will have their comeuppance. There is a God who judges the earth: A day is coming when He will send out his angels with their razor sharp scythes, “to gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, and throw them into the great winepress of the wrath of God (Revelation 14:18ff). We can pray that God will hasten that day.

But Jesus made it very clear that we must never avenge ourselves and these prayers should never be used for personal revenge. “The prayer for the vengeance of God is the prayer for the execution of his righteousness in the judgment of sin.”[2] These petitions are valid only for those who wish to see justice upheld and God's glory manifest in the world.

In the meantime, we are called to overcome evil with good. The weapons of our warfare are not retaliation, but love, personal righteousness, prayer, faith and patience. We must do all we can to act justly and bring justice to our sphere of influence, but then we must wait for the day God has appointed to set all things right. He will do so in due time. “Vengeance is mine,” God has said, “I will repay” (Romans 12:19). Then, men will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous; Surely He is God who judges in the earth” (Psalms 58:11).[3]

To be sure, we may suffer while God delays. The harvest of righteousness is almost always sown in trial and tears and we must wait in patience for God’s day to come (James 5:1-11). But it will come and then the whole earth will be filled with justice and “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

So, we must not fret over the actions of lawless, ruthless men and women.[4] God is doing all things well.

He is working out his purpose

'spite of all that happens here.

Lawless nations in commotion,

restless like a storm-tossed ocean.

He controls their rage and fury

so his children need not fear.

Let our hearts then turn to heaven

where he bides his time in peace

Giving him our heart's devotion

till the present troubles cease.

DHR

[1] 58:3 “They (tyrants) go astray as soon as they are born…” may be a gentle reminder that we are all little tyrants at birth…

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible

[3] There is a subtle twist in this verse that doesn’t appear in translation. The subject of the sentence is elohim (gods) and the verb “judges” is a plural participle, which suggests the reading, “Surely, the gods are judging…” This may be nothing more than an acknowledgement by unbelievers that we live in a just world.

[4] Nor should we speak evil of our rulers. Peter’s instruction is very clear: we must “honor the king” (1 Peter 2:7). It’s worth noting that the “king” in Peter’s day was Nero or Galba, two notoriously evil rulers. Media hosts and others may entice us to harsh rhetoric, but we must never speak of our leaders as they do, nor should we repeat their slanders. We may choose to vote evil–doers out of office, but while they hold that office we must honor them and show them due respect (“It is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people’” Acts 23:5). And may I add, we should never attribute evil motives to our leaders unless they reveal them. It is slanderous to attribute subversive motivations without confirmation. We cannot know the secrets of the heart. An inspired Apostle enjoins us to, “judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts…” (1 Corinthians 4:5). Only God knows the heart.

2011-10-06T11:10:00.003-06:00

Time and Eternity

“Before Abraham was, I am” —John 8:56

Years ago, when I was a child, I was invited to participate in a backyard gathering in which a neighbor told stories from the Bible. The first story was about “the beginning” of the heavens and earth.

I don’t remember the lesson, but do I recall a child asking, “What was before ‘the beginning’?” I also recall thinking, “What a dumb question.” (It wasn’t dumb at all, of course—St. Augustine asks the same question. I just wasn’t smart enough to ask it.)

Our teacher answered the question with one word: “Eternity.” “What is eternity?” the child persisted.“ ”A long time,” she said, and then explained: “Suppose a bird flew from Texas to Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, rubbed its beak on the mountain and wore away one grain of sand, and then flew back to Texas. Imagine that the bird made one round trip every year and rubbed away one grain of sand on each occasion. When Mount Everest has been worn down to the ground it will be like one second in eternity.”

“Wow!” I thought, duly impressed.

I suspect this concept of “eternity as a very long time” is one that’s generally accepted these days, but what if eternity is not prolonged time at all, but timelessness?

That’s not a novel idea, you know. Plato and other philosophers toyed with the notion of time and eternity and concluded that the invisible world of forms (the ultimate realm of reality) is outside of time and thus is timeless. Time did not exist before creation, Plato said. It was “begotten,” to use his word, when “the Sun, the Moon, and five other stars” were created (Timaeus 38b).

Augustine elaborated Plato’s idea in Book 11 of his Confessions. Whatever time is, he said, it began with creation, for time is a construct for the material world alone. God created time when he created the cosmos. As he famously put it: “Beyond doubt, the world was made not in Time, but together with Time."

Surprisingly, theoretical physicists now endorse this hypothesis. I don’t pretend to understand Albert Einstein, but I do know that he believed that time does not exist apart from the physical universe. In one of his more popular statements, Einstein put it this way: “Before relativity, one believed that space and time would continue existing in an empty world. But, according to the theory of relativity, if matter and its motion disappeared there would no longer be any space or time” (Philipp Frank, Einstein, His Life and Times, p. 178). No matter, no motion. No motion, no time.[1]

There may be an essential corollary to this theory, namely that in eternity, i.e., in heaven, no one will experience the passage of time. There will be no past or future; only the present. That’s a difficult concept to wrap our minds around—indeed impossible—for like the concept of infinity we have no analogies in our experience, and no language to explain it. But, bless my soul, it could be true.

“So what?” you say. Well, for one thing, if there is no time in heaven there will be no waiting. So, if I predecease Carolyn (and my family and others that I love) I will not have to wait for her to appear. She will be present when I arrive.

Intriguing, I must say, but I dare not think further in that direction, for as Paul cautions us we must not go “beyond what is written” (1 Corinthians 4:6).

DHR

[1] This would give us the answer to that vexing, medieval question: How many angels can stand on the head of a pin? Since angels are heavenly (spiritual) beings and there is no matter in that realm, there can be no progression, no movement, no motion. Every object would be “present" at once. Thus, “How many angels can stand on the head of a pin?” An infinite number. As George MacDonald wrote, “If two things, or any parts of them, could occupy the same space, why not 20 or 10,000?" (Lillith).

2011-10-02T07:58:00.005-06:00

The Things That Matter

“That you may approve the things that are excellent …”

—Philippians 1:10

The Stoic philosophers of Paul’s day spoke of the diapheron—“the things that matter.” The diapheron, in classical ethics, were those subtle aspects of character that set one person apart from others—what one did, but also a special way of doing it. Paul probably had this distinction in mind when he wrote of “things that are excellent,” or literally, “things that matter” (ta diapheronta).

The “things that matter” have to do with manner, demeanor, bearing, voice inflection, and facial expressions. It’s what we do but also how we do it. “A man ranks according to how he does a thing,” George MacDonald wrote.

I Think that's what Jesus had in mind when he queried his disciples: “what do you do more than others? (Matthew 5:47). The “others” were the Pharisees who were “good” in the worst sort of way. True goodness brims with gentle wisdom and loving–kindness. It’s not off-putting, but wonderfully attractive in the fullest sense of that word, in that it attracts others to the beauty of our Lord.

Jesus said, “The good (and here he uses a Greek word that means “beautiful”) person brings goodness (beauty) out of the good (beauty) stored up in him (Matthew 12:35). This is the beauty of holiness, a radiance that comes from within, from the One who dwells there, who is incomparably lovely, and who, in his quiet love will gradually turn our actions into something truly beautiful.

Our part is to ask and ask and ask again...

DHR

Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me

All his wonderful passion and purity

Oh, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine

Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me

—Albert W. T. Orsborn

2011-09-22T09:12:00.001-06:00

Waiting & Watching

“Deus habit horas et moras” ("God has his hour and delay”) —Latin Proverb

Ethiopia and Egypt were in league, seeking an alliance with Assyria, endangering Judah and Jerusalem. Judah’s plight was desperate, yet God said to Isaiah, “I will wait, and I will watch…”

His stillness was not acceptance of this conspiracy; he was bidding his time (Isaiah 18:1-7)..

I think of Jesus—watching his disciples struggle against the waves on Lake Galilee; waiting for three days while Lazarus languished in the grave. Was he unaware? Did he care? Of course he cared! He was watching and waiting for the right time.

The Bible is filled with God’s delays, many of which are inexplicable from our point of view. Yet, every delay flows from the depths of his wisdom and love. If nothing else, delay, if we accept it, can produce the quieter virtues— humility, patience, endurance, and persistence in well doing—those qualities of life that are the last to be learned. But, “in the fullness of time,” to use that good old biblical refrain, God will arise for our salvation. “We ‘wait for the morning,’ which is to say that we wait in hope. We wait while we are being ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’” (Eugene Petterson, The Jesus Way.)

Are you in distress? Does our Lord seem distant and detached? He is not indifferent to your plight, nor is he unmoved by your pleas. He is watching and waiting while his purposes are achieved in you and in others. Then, at the right moment—in this life or the next—he will appear (Isaiah 18:5-7).[1] “God is never in a hurry, but he is always on time.”[2]

DHR

[1] The imagery is that of a wise vinedresser who knows the proper time of the year to prune his vines. God thus bides his time until the appropriate moment to prune away those who oppose his purposes.

[2] Someone said this years ago and it stuck in my mind.

2011-09-13T07:46:00.001-06:00

Safe!

“We’re safe,” said Ford, after his first ever teleport transfer (and discovering that he and Arthur had been transported onto the bridge of an enemy space ship). “Ah,” said Arthur, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of.”

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Spring of Gihon lies on the eastern flank of Mount Zion and, in Hezekiah’s day, was outside the walls of Jerusalem. Foreseeing a siege by the Assyrian army, and knowing that the location of the spring was the city’s weakest point, Hezekiah drove a shaft from the spring through solid rock and directed the water inside the walls to the Pool of Siloam. He then closed off the “old pool” (the Spring of Gihon) and built a second wall to enclose it. Thus Hezekiah made Jerusalem safe (2 Chronicles32:30).

Isaiah observed: “You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to its Maker, nor did you have respect for Him who fashioned it (the old pool) long ago” (Isaiah 22:11). The irony of the project was that God, who fashioned the Spring of Gihon, deliberately placing it outside the walls to made Jerusalem vulnerable to a siege![1]

As it turned out, Hezekiah’s fail–safe water system was wasted effort. God delivered the city in a way that had nothing to do with human endeavor. You can read the story for yourself in 2 Chronicles 32.[2]

It comes to this: God creates weakness that we may become strong. Our physical, mental, and emotional limitations were fashioned long ago that “we might not rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Corinthians 1:9). Our limitations constrain us to cast ourselves wholly on God. In this way, his infinite resources become ours. Unqualified dependence, thus, is the only place of safety.

Paul, who was fond of paradox, put it this way: “When I am weak then I am strong” (1 Corinthians 12:10). We’re most safe when we’re most vulnerable—“obviously some strange usage of the word safe,’” I must say.

DHR

[1] The Old Pool and the vertical shaft that rose from it were, in fact, the means by which David gained access to the old Jebusite citadel of Jerusalem when it was in the hands of the Canaanites (2 Samuel 5:6-10).

[2] Chris and Ted Stewart, in their book, The Miracle of Freedom: Seven Tipping Points that Saved the World, make this an event that saved Western Civilization from paganism.

2011-09-06T07:58:00.004-06:00

Clouds

“Do you know how the clouds are balanced...?” (Job 37:16)

One day, many years ago, my boys and I were lying on our backs in the yard watching the clouds drift by. “Dad,” one child asked, “why do clouds float?”

“Well, son,” I began, intending to give him the benefit of my knowledge, but then I lapsed into silence. I realized he had asked one of those questions for which you have an answer until you’re asked. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but I’ll find out for you.”

The scientific answer, I discovered, is that condensed moisture, descending by gravity, meets warmer temperatures rising from the land, that dissipate the moisture into vapor, the tendency of which is to ascend because it is lighter than the surrounding air. That’s a natural explanation for the phenomenon.

But natural explanations are penultimate answers; “grace perfects nature,” as medieval theologians used to say: “We see things more clearly when we see their ultimate origin.” Clouds float because God, in kind hearted wisdom has ordered the natural laws in such a way that they reveal the “awesome works of Him who is perfect in knowledge” (Job 37:16b). Clouds, then, become a kind of sacrament—an outward and visible sign of God’s goodness and grace.

So, when you‘re making castles in the sky remember that the one who made all things beautiful makes the clouds float through the air. He does so to call us to wonder and adoration.

“O LORD, how manifold are your works! in wisdom you have made them all: the earth is full of your riches” (Psalms 104:24).

DHR

Afterthought: I’m reminded of a story I read years ago about nineteenth century English writer Harriet Martineau who was something of an atheist. One day, reveling in the beauty of an autumn morning she burst out, “Oh, I’m so grateful!”—to which her believing companion replied, “Grateful to whom, my dear?”

2011-08-29T13:30:00.001-06:00

The Simple Life

Paul achieved life’s stupendous simplification: “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21). All progress in the spiritual life is movement toward that conclusion, moving from the many to the one; from the complexities and compulsions of this world to the conviction that few things are necessary, really only one.

This means that progress in the Christian life is not progress toward goodness (as I once thought), but progress toward loving God—moving toward the point at which we say with the Israel’s poet, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. As for me, the nearness of God is my good” (Psalms 73:25-27).

“Earth has nothing I desire besides you.” That perspective changes the way we look at everything. Suffering and adversity become the means by which we are made hungry and thirsty for God. Disappointments become the tools that wean us away from our earthly occupation and move us toward a preoccupation with God alone. Even sin, when repented of, becomes a mechanism to push us closer to him. All things, in fact, become useful when viewed as the means to our “chief end,” and our highest good—the nearness of God.

Like Paul, we will always say, “I have not yet obtained all this…” but we must press on to attain it (Philippians 3:12).

And do how do we “press on”? Not through teeth–clenched self–effort. Movement toward God is the result of two things alone: His steady attraction and our humble and self–forgetting response to Him. Like everything else in this life, the initiative begins with God. He seeks us to the end that we may seek him—forever.

DHR

2011-08-18T13:21:00.003-06:00

The View from the Back Pew

For over 16 years now Carolyn and I have been observing Sunday morning worship from a benchwarmer’s point of view. From that perspective, I’ve made a few observations and formed a few conclusions that I thought I’d pass along for what they’re worth. As Paul would say, “I give an opinion.” Nothing more.

(1) The era of the forty-five minute sermon may be over

Attention spans have been abridged these days to the point that most folks find it difficult to attend for more than 25–30 minutes, even if the presenter speaks with the tongues of angels. Our culture does not lend its ear to lectures without breaks or opportunities to give feedback. Television is mostly to blame, I suppose, with its thirty-minute segments broken into shorter units by commercials.

Brevity does not mean that sermons necessarily lack content and depth. Depth is a function of insight, orthodoxy, wisdom and clarity, which, in turn, is the product of prayerful meditation on and obedience to the text.

I‘m told that American statesman Edward Everett preceded Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg and delivered an oration that contained 13,609 words and lasted for two hours, but it’s Lincoln’s 268 words that are carved in stone at the end of the National Mall.

There’s a lesson there, or so it seems to me.

(To be continued)

DHR

2011-08-15T10:56:00.008-06:00

The Third Heaven

“If here two things, or any parts of them, could occupy the same space, why not 20 or 10,000? — But I dared not think further in that direction." —George MacDonald, Lillith

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; their trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed… But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord.

This is an extract from an essay by Henry David Thoreau entitled “Walking,” in which he plays with the idea of “cohabitancy,” the notion that two realms of reality can exist in the same space at the same time.[1]

Was Thoreau right? Is there an alternate, parallel universe that is “cohabitant” (shares time and space) with our world? Bless my soul, there is! Some call it “heaven.” [2]

We know little about this realm, for little has been revealed. Perhaps that’s because there are no analogies for heaven in our experience. Paul visited heaven, but could find no words to describe it: he “heard inexpressible things, things that no man is able to tell” (2 Corinthians 12:4).[3]

One thing does seem certain, however: heaven is not “over yonder,” as we used to say in Texas, but here, all around us, sharing our time and space. We could see it if we only have eyes to “see.”

Read the story of Elisha and his servant, trapped in the city of Dothan, surrounded by the Syrian army—two against “horses and chariots and a great army” (2 Kings 6). Elijah’s servant cried out, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” Elisha replied with absolute calm, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then the prophet prayed, “Lord, open his eyes that he may see.” And Elisha’s servant “saw that the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around.”

For a moment Elisha’s servant stole a look into heaven and saw the legions of God surrounding the city, an army of inestimable number, invisible to natural eyes, but ever and always present in the deepest sense possible, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice.Hence, we need not fear “ten thousands of people who have set themselves against us all around,” for “the chariots of God are twenty thousand, thousands of thousands; the Lord is among (us)…” (Psalm 3:6; 68:17).[4]

Faith “sees the unseen” (Hebrews 11:27)—the realm of ultimate reality, invisible to those who look on the surface of things.

So keep your eyes open. As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by seeing.”

DHR

[1] Studies in theoretical physics support Thoreau’s thesis: To account for all physical phenomena there must indeed be an unobservable, parallel universe (or universes) lying in and around our own. (See Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos).

[2] The Bible actually speaks of three heavens: (1) the heaven of the birds and clouds, (2) the heaven of the stars and (3) the “third heaven,” the invisible realm of spiritual realities (2 Corinthians 12:2).

[3] Paul’s phrase, translated “not lawful” in the Authorized Version, actually means “not possible.”

[4] The Hebrew text of Psalms 68:17 suggests an immeasurable number. Jerome translates, “innumerabilia.”

2011-08-12T12:04:00.001-06:00

No Tell-Um Holes

“Give, and it shall be given unto you, full measure, pressed down, running over” (Luke 6:38).

I’ve had some dandy “no tell–um holes” in my day—a high lake on Jug Handle Mountain, a stretch of Billingsley Creek, the upper flow of Smith’s Creek at the foot of the Trinity Mountains, a couple of pools on the South Fork of the Boise River, some riffles on the Owyhee River. But, to be honest, I can’t think of a single fishing hole that I just “happened” upon. All of them have been given to me by a friend.

I’m learning, or would like to learn, to have no “no tell–um holes.” It’s better to give good things away than keep them for oneself. It would seem that giving our stuff away to others would diminish us, but it’s the other way ‘round. Accumulation makes us less than we can be. “It is possible to grow and not to grow, to grow less and to grow bigger, both at once — yes, even to grow by means of not growing at all!" (MacDonald in Lillith).

Dante said that as soon as a soul ceases to say, “Mine,” and says, “Ours,” it makes the transition from a narrow restricted, individual life to a truly free, truly personal, truly creative life. Put in biblical terms, if you share the good things that God has given to you, he will lead you into a “larger” place. Russian poet, Andrei Voznesensky, expressed the thought this way: “The water in living wells / does not stagnate; / the more you tear from your heart / the more of it you keep."

You would think after almost eight decades I would learn the truth of Jesus’ words that a man’s life does not consist of an abundance of things. I’m beginning to learn it, however, not just because he said it, but because I see for myself it is true.

Anyway, you can’t take it with you. Job had it exactly right: “Naked I came into this world and naked I shall return” (Job 1:21).

DHR

2011-07-30T14:44:00.000-06:00

The Great Awakening

“One short sleep past and we wake eternally.”

—John Donne

I have a treasured memory of gatherings with family friends when our boys were small. We adults would talk into the night. Our children, weary with play would curl up on a couch or chair and fall asleep.

When it was time to leave, I would gather our children into my arms, carry them to the car, lay them in the back seat and take them home. When we arrived I would pick them up again, take them to their beds, tuck them in, kiss them goodnight, turn out the light and close the door. In the morning they would awaken—at home.

This has become a parable for me of the night on which we “sleep in Jesus,” and awaken in our eternal home, the home that will at last heal the weariness and homesickness that has marked our days.

Poets, philosophers and raconteurs have often compared sleep and death. In sleep our eyes are closed, our bodies are still, our respiration so slight we seem not to be breathing at all. Ancient writers, in fact, referred to sleep as a “little death.”

The New Testament writers picked up the symbol and gave it new meaning. While secular Greek poets and other authors referred to death as “perpetual sleep,” or “everlasting sleep,” the sacred text speaks of a “sleep” that leads to a great awakening.

Early Christians seized on the symbol. The catacombs in Rome, which were first constructed and used by the early Christians for burial sites, were called koimeteria (our word, “cemetery”) or “sleeping places,” a belief reflected in numerous inscriptions on sarcophagi: “He/She sleeps in Jesus.”

These early Christians could extract the full meaning of the metaphor because they understood that death is exactly like sleep. We slumber and awaken immediately after. (We’re not conscious of time when we fall asleep.) Thus sleep is good and nothing to fear. Death, in fact, is heaven’s cure for all earth’s afflictions—“good for what ails us,” my mother used to say.

John Donne, whom I quoted above, has one of the best commentaries on death as sleep, or so it seems to me. He begins with his oft–quoted phrase “Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so.”

“Really?” we ask, “Death not dreadful?” Donne, a devout Christian, answers that death cannot boast because it cannot kill us. Death is mere “rest and sleepe,” and, he continues, there is great pleasure in sleep: “much more must flow”—a place to rest our weary bones. “Why swell'st thou then,” Donne asks of Death, “One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more...” This is the death of death and our dread.

I came across an Old Testament text the other day, a closing comment that ”Moses died…at the word of the Lord.“ The Hebrew text reads, ”Moses died…with the mouth of the Lord,“ a phrase ancient rabbis translated, ”With the kiss of the Lord.“

Is it asking too much to envision God bending over us on our final night on earth, tucking us in and kissing us goodnight. Then, “one short sleep past, wee wake eternally.”

We’re all getting closer to that great gettin’ up day.

DHR

2011-07-01T08:39:00.000-06:00

Problems and Mysteries

“A problem is something which one runs up against, which bars the way. A mystery, however, is something in which I find myself involved” (philosopher Gabriel Marcel).

I have, on occasion, left the keys to my car in the ignition and locked the door. I return to discover that I can’t get in the car, and I’m far from home. I have a problem.

Problems can be amusing (like playing “Angry Birds” on my iPad), frustrating (like locking my keys in the car), or challenging (like solving a Rubic’s Cube). Problems call for the application of thought and technique and most can be resolved in time.

But there are some issues that do not yield to objective thinking and method. These are the big questions, the deep mysteries of life: Is God good? Does he love me? What will happen if I give myself wholly to him? Can I know his love and acceptance?

These are not problems that can be solved by calculation; they are mysteries. They demand “involvement,” a choice, a commitment, a childlike leap of faith.

In George MacDonald’s novel, The Golden Key, he tells the story of two child, Mossy and Tangle, who possess the key to heaven (Jesus), but who struggle with much uncertainty and doubt along the way. At one point Mossy asks the Old Man of the Earth, (the symbol of deep wisdom): “Tell me the way to the country whence the shadows fall (heaven).”

The Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.

“That is the way,” he said.

“But there are no stairs...“

“You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”

DHR

2011-06-24T11:45:00.000-06:00

Legacy

“Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, ‘and these,’ said she, ‘are my jewels.’”

—Robert Burton (1577–1640)

The Talmud, an ancient collection of rabbinic writings, says there are three things a man ought to do before he dies: plant a tree, write a book and have a son. In other words, we ought to leave something behind that prolongs our usefulness.

I’ve done all three with varying degrees of success. I’ve planted a number of trees, some of which have flourished while others have perished of pestilence, or neglect. Despite the lofty Latin names we give them—semper vivere, for example—no tree lives forever.

I’ve written a few books and some of them remain, though it’s not likely that any of them will long endure. Like Carl Barth, I imagine myself entering heaven with a pushcart full of my stuff and hearing the angels laugh at me. “I shall be dump them,” as he suggests, “on some heavenly floor as a pile of waste paper.”

But, if you’ll allow me one conceit, I’m inordinately proud of our three sons, who have grown into sturdy young men. They are my most significant legacy.

There is a universal preoccupation among us to build something enduring. No one wants to drift through life and leave nothing noteworthy behind. That’s why we work so hard at our work and spend so much time and energy on our widgets. We spend ourselves building a house or a city, rising up early and going late to rest, “eating the bread of anxious toil,” (Ps. 127:1,2), busying ourselves beyond all common sense and human endurance to make our mark on this world, all the while overlooking the one investment that matters beyond imagination—our children.

A friend of mine, Bill Younger, wrote recently with this thought: “If we died tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. Why then do we invest so much in our work and so little in our children’s lives?” Good question, I say.

“Behold!” Solomon declares, as though stabbed awake by the insight, “Children are a heritage from the Lord”—an invaluable legacy he has bequeathed us. They are “wages from the womb”—a priceless pay–off. Nothing is more worthy of our energy and time. “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth,” is Solomon’s striking simile. Our children are our most powerful and far–ranging asset. “Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” (Psalm 127:3-5).

Yet, for so many young men and women there is “not enough father,” as Robert Blye used to say. Young people have fathers, to be sure, but they’re mostly absent or distant for they’re much too busy making a living.
Nobody understands this better than Fredrick Buechner who weaves the tale of Godric, a Twelfth Century holy man, around this theme. Old Godric looks back to his childhood and struggles to recall the face of his father, Aedlward:

Aedlward’s face I’ve long since lost, but his back I can still behold. He held his head cocked sideways, and his ears stood out like handles on a pot as he strode forth from the smoke of our hut to work our own scant croft of leeks, parsley, shallots, and the like, or else my lord’s wide acres. Endless was the work there was, the seeding, the spreading of dung, reaping and threshing, cutting and storing. In winter there were scythes and plows to mend, the beasts to keep, roofs to patch until your fingers froze. It seems that he was ever striding off in every way but ours so I scarcely had the time to mark the smile or scowl of him. Even the look of his eyes is gone. They were grey as the sea like mine, it’s said, only full of kindness, but what matter how kind a man’s eye be if he never fixes you with it long enough to learn? He had a way of whistling through his teeth like wind through wattle, and it’s like wind that I remember him. His was a power to thump doon, open and shut like wind, a grey gust of a man to make flames fly and scatter chaff. But wind has no power to comfort a child or lend a strong arm to a lad whose bones are weak with growing. If Aedlward and Godric meet in Paradise, they’ll meet as strangers do and never know. It was fear kept Aedlward from us, and next to God what he feared of all things most was an empty belly…. It was his fear we’d starve that made him starve us for that one of all things that we hungered for the most, which was the man himself (Godric. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980, pg. 9,10)

But, you ask, “How can I give my children what they hunger for when I must keep the wolf from my door?” Israel’s poet answers: there is no need for “anxious toil, for (God) gives to his loved ones while they sleep” (Ps. 127:2).

There’s something very significant about this psalm, something easily missed unless we understand that the Sabbath for Israel began not on Saturday morning but on Friday evening at bedtime. The Hebrew evening and morning sequence says something very important: God puts his children to sleep so he can get their work done. “Sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake,” said George MacDonald.

Fatigue overtakes us in the evening and we have to stop working. We lay ourselves down to sleep and drift off into blessed oblivion for the next 6-8 hours, a state in which we are totally non–productive. But nothing essential stops. Though we may leave many things undone and most projects unfinished God is still on the job. “He gives to those he loves while they sleep.”

The next morning his eyes sweep over us and he awakens us to enjoy the benefits of all that he has done and to join in a work in progress.

In other words God is at work when we are not. (Truth be known, he is at work when we are!) We can make time for our children and leave our work to him. They are our legacy, an investment we will never regret.

David Roper

2011-06-23T19:23:00.000-06:00

Sour Grapes

Your vanity and greed and lust

Are each your portion from the dust

Of those who died, and from the tomb

Made you what you must become.

—William Dean Howells

Advances in the behavioral sciences suggest that there may be negative psychological traits that are genetically influenced. Individuals appear to be born with dispositions toward alcoholism, sexual aggression, erratic work habits and other personality disorders.[1]

It would appear, in fact, that everything wrong with us is “our portion from the dust of those that died” and make us “what (we) must needs become.” Whether we go back to our first parents or some other relative, whether we talk about major perversions or minor peccadilloes, it’s all the same: every one of us has been cursed to some extent by some ancestor, handicapped by his or her perversions, saddled with insecurities, insanities and sinful predilections. Wrong-doing resides in our DNA, without our creation or consent, demanding compliance.

It’s common these days to assume that wrong–doing includes only those behaviors that are voluntary and unforced. If it can be shown that some orientation is caused rather than chosen we render human choice irrelevant and remove that behavior from the realm of moral argument. “Our fathers have eaten sour grapes and our teeth have been set on edge.”[2]

“No,” Jeremiah would say, “Whoever eats sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.” Regardless of the roots of our behavior we are morally responsible for the wrong that we do.

But here’s the good news: We are not stuck. The laws of heredity are not the highest laws. There is one higher. George MacDonald wrote, “Everyone is born nearer to God than to any ancestor and it rests with everyone to choose whether he will be of God, or of those who have gone before him....”

It does no good to excuse our bad behavior. The only way to rid our selves of an evil trait is to call it evil and bring it to God for his healing. He can then begin to bring about a cure.

The decision to bring our flawed temperaments to him may be nothing more than the end–product of a lifetime of failure. We may have struggled so long with our compulsions that we’ve given up in despair. But God does not despair of us even when we have despaired of ourselves. He assures us: “I will forgive your iniquity, and your sin I will remember no more.”

Some of us are difficult cases. Flawed by environment and indulgence as well as heredity, our personalities resist change. We have “a hard machine to drive,” as C. S. Lewis would say. Yet God can take the most difficult and damaged life and gradually turn it into good. He does not leave us in ruins. He is “watching over us to build and to plant.”[3]

The process is neither swift nor painless, but chaotic and often subject to agonizing delay. Progress is seldom made by quantum leaps, but by tentative steps and a number of hard falls. It is a gradual thing, better seen in retrospect than in prospect. Yet, every day God is at work “putting his law in our minds and writing it on our hearts.”[4]

For reasons God only knows, some of us may glorify him for a time through our compulsions. We’re so damaged that total healing awaits heaven. If you’re one of his children so afflicted you can be assured of his promise: there will be progress and someday, if only in heaven, there will be perfection. The God who started his great work in you “will keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.”[5]

DHR

[1] I have omitted homosexuality from this list because no certain biological basis for sexual orientation has been established. The most cited study is one published in Science by gay activist, and neurobiologist Simon LeVay. LeVay noted a small difference between homosexual and heterosexual males in a tiny area of the hypothalamus (INAH-3), but not all scientists accept his conclusions. Drs. William Byne and Bruce Parsons of Columbia University examined the evidence and concluded: “There is no evidence at present to substantiate a biologic theory of homosexuality,” though their study was never been reported by the press. (William Byne and Bruce Parsons, “Human Sexual Orientation: The Biologic Theories Reappraised,” Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 50, March 1993: 228-239.)

[2] Jeremiah 31:29

[3] Jeremiah 31:28

[4] Jeremiah 31:33

[5] Philippians 1:6, The Message

2011-06-17T09:28:00.000-06:00

Cosmos

“The cosmos continuously declares the glory of God…” (Psalm 19:1)

I came across a single flower growing in a meadow today—a tiny purple blossom that was “wasting its sweetness in the desert air.” I’m sure no one had ever seen it before, and perhaps no one will ever see it again. “Why this waste?” I thought.

Nature, however, is never wasted. It daily reveals the truth and goodness and beauty that brought it into being. Every morning it offers a new and fresh declaration of God’s presence. Do I see Him through that beauty, or do I merely glance at beauty and shrug it off in shoddy indifference?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 18th century English poet and philosopher, observed two tourists looking at a magnificent waterfall. One said it was “pretty” the other said it was “sublime.” Coleridge thought the first response was silly, the second was exactly right, for sublime means “awe-inspiring,” and “worthy of worship.”

Worship is the only adequate response to beauty when we behold it, for creation’s glory is a reflection of the glory of God. “Glory” suggests an epiphany (a shining out or a manifestation) of God and is, or so I believe, the biblical word, for “beauty.” Theologian Herman Bavinek said as much: “For the beauty of the Lord, scripture has a special word: glory.” God’s beauty is the penetrating light that shines out through all creation.

The word, “translucence” comes to mind. It suggests the capacity of all creation to take on something of God’s beauty and allow that beauty to “pass through” to our eyes. Our task, in turn is to grow eyes that look not merely at, but through the object to the beauty that lies beyond it and to think, “How beautiful must be He who made this beautiful thing?”

Thus, our response to beauty, when we behold it, should be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving—for the radiance of a corn flower, the splendor of a morning sunrise, the symmetry of one particular tree—for all nature declares the ineffable beauty of the One who made it.

C. S. Lewis was walking with a friend as they talked about worship and gratitude. Lewis wanted to know how to generate a thankful heart toward God, and asked, “Should we summon up all we know about God and his greatness?” His friend turned to a brook nearby (it was a very hot day) and splashed his face and hands in a little waterfall and said, “Why not begin with this?”

A little waterfall, a wind in the willows, a baby robin, the rose moles on a brook trout, a tiny flower. Why not begin with this?

DHR

2011-05-16T10:16:00.000-06:00

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

"Ultimate peace is silent through the density of life,"

-C. S. Lewis

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand clapping? The “sound of silence” comes to mind—one answer to this ancient koan.

Silence, I've come to believe, is the answer to many of life's contradictions. I'm learning to say less these days. It was Jesus' way. In the face of severe provocation he was "silent (peacefully calm) and did not reply" (Mark 14:61). Jesus could have answered his critics, but, "like a sheep before its shearers is silent, He did not open his mouth.”

There is awesome power in silence, especially in those overwhelmingly bad situations in which we are subject to harsh words from those we greatly love. There, silence is most difficult for loved ones have the greatest power to wound us. But, there it is most essential, for we owe our own homes the greatest measure of gentleness and forbearance.

Silence forestalls angry reactions and bitter words that we may later regret and others may not forget. Silence gives us time to slow our thoughts and reorder them, perhaps to remind ourselves that the one who wounded us is weary, or worried and otherwise out of sorts. Or, we may quickly forgive for they may not know what they're doing. We should always forgive anything the moment there is anything to forgive for there is no better time.

Silence is a means by which we may help others see themselves, for their voices reverberate in the quietness we offer, and in it they may hear their unkind words and regret them. When we step aside and wait in stillness, we give God an opportunity to work through us. When we take up our own cause we may frustrate his ultimate intention to use us to bring spiritual healing and health to others.

Silence can be the gentle answer that turns away anger. Defensive reactions make things worse: they "stir up wrath"(Proverbs 15:1). Restraint and silence relieve tension and restore peace. When we thus "make peace," we "sow a seed whose fruit is righteousness"(James 3:18). Others begin to grow toward goodness through our example.

Finally, calm, unruffled silence is an eloquent and gracious reflection of God's unconditional love. Clement, a first century Christian, wrote, "Let (those who belong to Christ) demonstrate by silence the gentleness of their tongue; (thus) let them show His love" (1 Clement 21:7).

And so we pray for a silence that, "swallows up the waves of wrong and never throws them back to swell the commotion of the angry sea from whence they came" (George MacDonald).

Ah, for the grace to annihilate wrong in this way.

DHR

2011-05-08T08:45:00.000-06:00

Peacocks and Their Kin

“…God plays a game with the soul called ”the loser wins“; a game in which the one who holds the poorest cards does best.” —Evelyn Underhill

Male peacocks are resplendent creatures with iridescent blue-green plumage and elongated trains tipped with "eyes" colored in hues of gold, red, and blue. They are strikingly beautiful birds…

But they have the ugliest feet in the world!

To be honest, most of us have “ugly feet,” don’t we—some blemish, some disfigurement, some physical limitation or handicap, something that makes us feel “less than”? It may be a deformity we’ve borne all our lives, or it may be the disfigurements of old age—wrinkles, blotches, sun–spots, shriveled limbs—unsightliness that makes us self-conscious and reticent.

Paul described his deficiency (whatever it was) as a “thorn in the flesh” a defect that shamed and humiliated him (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Three times he asked the Lord to remove it, thinking that he could then serve God better. But the Lord assured him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul replied with great humility, “So then, most gladly I will boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

We may be too lovely for God to use, but we can never be too ugly. One of the ironies of faith is that he often chooses those who are less endowed with natural grace and beauty to accomplish his most important tasks. They are used in ways they could never imagine. Here is mystery: We are chosen because of our limitations, not in spite of them. How encouraging is that! “God was looking for someone weak enough to use and he found (you)” (Hudson Taylor).

So…whatever measure of “ugliness” we enjoy, it is ours lest we get carried away with ourselves, and fail to make the most of our lives. It is a blessing to make us better, stronger, wiser for it is “out of weakness” that we are “made strong” (Hebrews 11:34).

DHR

2011-04-23T09:16:00.000-06:00

Better Things Ahead

“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind” -

—C.S. Lewis

John was my best friend, an enthusiastic dispenser of goodness and kindness, a fountain of perpetual joy. I called him Jolly John.

I thought that John and I would be friends forever… But he died.

Augustine wrote in his Confessions of a friend much like John who was “half of his soul.” When his friend unexpectedly died, Augustine was inconsolable, for he too thought his friendship would last forever. He had loved “one that must die, as if he would never die,” he wrote. This Augustine called, “loving a man as a (mere) man.”

Augustine’s friend became a follower of Jesus on his deathbed and Augustine followed him into faith soon after. Then he wrote in his Confessions, “He was not yet my friend (before our conversion) as afterwards…for true (friendship) it cannot be, unless You join us together…by that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us… Blessed is he who loves You and his friend in You… For he alone loses none who are dear to (You), for those who are dear (to You) cannot be lost.”

John is not lost to me, for I will see him again quite soon—younger, better, stronger, wiser and more joyous than ever before. And we will be friends forever.

How do I know? In the risen Christ I see the end for which I was made and the confidence to believe it. These “few atoms, blown to dust,” will form again in a better life, in which there is no parting. Dividing death will have been defeated. I will be joined forever and ever with John and all my other loved ones who are waiting for me there.

George MacDonald wrote, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but the Lord will give back again better than ever before.” We’re all getting closer to that great day!

DHR

2011-04-13T07:50:00.000-06:00

Fathers and Sons

“I just wish I could have told him in the living years.”

—Mike and the Mechanics

My father was a good father, and, in most respects, I was a dutiful son. But I allowed my father to starve for the one thing I could have given him: myself. He was a quiet man; I was equally silent. We often worked for hours side by side and scarcely a word passed between us. He never asked; I never told him my deepest desires and dreams, my hopes and fears.

In time I woke up to my reticence. Perhaps the perception came when my first-born came into the world, or when, one by one, my sons went out into the world. Now I wish I had been more of a son to my father while I was under his roof. I think of all the things I could have told him. And all the things he could have told me. At his funeral I stood beside his casket for the last time, struggling to understand my emotions. “It’s too late, isn’t it?” Carolyn said quietly. Exactly.

My comfort lies in the fact that I’ll be able to make things up in heaven, for is that not where every relationship will be set right? George MacDonald thought so: “What a disintegrated mass were the world, what a lump of half-baked brick, if death were indeed the end of affection! if there were no chance more of setting right what was so wrong in the loveliest relations! How gladly would many a son who once thought it a weariness to serve his parents, minister now to their lightest need! and in the boundless eternity is there no help?” (Home Again: A Tale).

Death is not the end of affection, but the beginning of timeless existence in which there will be no more secrets and love will grow forever. Then, the hearts of sons will be turned to their fathers and the hearts of fathers to their sons. Then, we’ll pay attention to the things that matter most.

DHR

2011-04-05T07:40:00.000-06:00

Three Questions

Leo Tolstoy tells a story about a king who believed that he would never fail at any enterprise if he had the answer to three questions: (1) What is the right time for any action? (2) Who are the people that matter? And, (3) in each situation, what is the most important thing to do?

None of the wise men of his kingdom could answer the king’s questions, so he disguised himself as a peasant and went out among his people to find the answers.

In his quest, he came across an old hermit who was digging in his garden. The King approached him and said: “I have come to you, wise hermit, to ask you to answer three questions: “What is the right time for any action? Who are the people that matter? And, in each situation, what is the most important thing to do?”

The hermit listened to the King, but answered nothing. He just spat on his hand and recommenced digging.

"You must be tired," said the King, "let me take the spade and work awhile for you."

While he was at work a man appeared who had been grievously wounded. The king bandaged his wounds only to discover that the man was an assassin sent to kill him, but, while the king was helping the hermit, the king’s men had discovered the plot and had wounded him. The would-be assassination asked the king for forgiveness which he freely granted.

Later, the king asked the hermit once again the answer to his questions

The hermit answered, “When that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business.

There you have it: What is the right time for any action? Now! This minute! Neither the past nor the future have any real existence; the present is the only time we have the power to act. Who is the person that matters? The one in front of us, for every person we meet in this world, if we only knew it, is fraught with deep and desperate need. And what is the most important action? To love that person by being good to him, “because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!” (Tolstoy).

What a marvelous simplification! — reminiscent of the conversation Jesus had with the lawyer about loving one’s neighbor and the young man’s self–justifying question, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply, our Lord told the story of the Good Samaritan, the point of which is: The very next person you meet (Luke 10:27-29).

DHR

2011-03-22T10:05:00.000-06:00

Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

Since Christ embrac’d the Crosse it selfe, dare I
His image, th’image of his Crosse deny?

—John Donne

John Donne was thinking of the Puritans of his day and their refusal to “sign” the cross. But, he argues, we can not avoid the sign of the Cross; we see it everywhere:

    Swim, and at every stroke, thou art a Cross;
    The Mast and yard make one, where seas do toss;
    Look down, thou spiest out Crosses in small things;
    Look up thou seest birds rais’d on crossed wings;
    All the Globes frame, and spheres, is nothing else
    But the Meridians crossing Parallels…

All these “crucifixes” remind us of the Cross, but more notably,

    When that Crosse ungrudg’d, unto you sticks,
    Then are you to your self, a Crucifix.

In other words, we ourselves may become a “sign” of our Lord’s Cross that others will see!

Paul says much the same: “(We are) always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:10-12).

Daily, we’re “delivered over to death.” I think of the parameters of old age: forgetfulness, failing eyesight, flaccid muscles, aching joints, impaired hearing, an unsteady gait and other strictures. These are the “little deaths” that accumulate until death is done with us. Despite the plethora of pills and potions we use to stave off the process as long as possible our “mortal flesh” is dying and there’s nothing we can do about it!

But we can do something about our attitude. We can embrace our dying—accept it “ungrudg’d” as Donne put it. This is what Paul means when he says, we “are always carrying in the body the dying of Jesus,” i.e., we have adopted the attitude that characterized Jesus. Our Lord accepted each diminishment in his life as His Father’s will and died to His own inclinations. That’s what it meant to him to take up his cross daily. The Cross on which he eventually died was merely the culmination of that attitude.

Put simply, “carrying in the body the dying of Jesus,” is offering up each “little death” to God as Jesus did and praying with Him, “Not my will but yours be done.” In that spirit we ourselves become a Crucifix.

Bitterness and resentment over the aging process produce an unpleasantness that characterizes some folks in their final years. But a cheerful acceptance of each “little death” as it overtakes us releases the life of God within us and a surfeit of goodness—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-restraint. This is the life of Jesus “made visible in our mortal flesh,” a life so irresistible that others are fascinated and drawn toward the One who is life indeed. Thus Paul’s ironic equation: “As death works in us, life works in you.”

May we then,

    Be covetous of Crosses, let none fall.
    Crosse no man else, but crosse thy selfe in all.”

DHR

2011-03-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

A Long, Long Trail A–Winding

“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path (Psalm 142:3).

Sometimes the path seems impossibly steep and lengthy. I have no strength, no will for the journey. Then I remember that God knew this path long before I was called to walk it. He has always known the difficulties I will experience, the pain that I could never explain to another. He knows and offers his presence.

Perhaps you’re overwhelmed with sadness today. It may be the weight of a difficult ministry; the worry of a hard marriage; the sorrow of a struggling child; the care of an aging parent; the troubles that accompany your own aging. Surely, you say, God would not have me walk this way. There must be another, easier path for me to travel.

But are any of us wise enough to know that some other way would be better, some other lot more likely to make us into better and wiser children? No, our Father in heaven knows the best path, out of all possible paths, to bring us to completion.

His ways are higher than our ways; his thoughts higher than our thoughts. We cannot teach Him wisdom, or increase his fondness for us. We can but humbly bear his will and take the path he has marked out for us today, and do so in absolute trust in his infinite wisdom and love. (He is wiser and more loving than we can ever know.) He who sees, has foreseen and has not led

us astray.

DHR

2011-02-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

Scars

“She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful” (Luke 7:47, The Message).

A number of years ago I was hiking along the North Fork of the Salmon River here in Idaho and came across a grove of ponderosa pine trees that had been partially stripped of their bark. I knew from a friend, who is a forester, that the Nez Perce Indians, who hunted this area long ago, had peeled the outer bark from these trees and harvested the underlying cambium layer for food.

Some of the scars were disfiguring, but other of the scars, filled with crystallized sap and burnished by wind and weather, had been transformed into patterns of rare beauty.

So it is with our transgressions. We may be scarred by the sins of the past, but those sins, repented of and brought to Jesus for his forgiveness, can be transformed, by his grace, into marks of extravagant beauty.

Those who have found themselves to be great sinners have learned the terrible consequences of sin: They have tasted its bitterness and now loathe it. They hate evil and love righteousness. Theirs is the beauty of holiness.

Furthermore, those who have fallen know they are part of the “all” that have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Knowing their sin, their hearts are tender toward others. They rise up with understanding, compassion and kindness when others fail. Theirs is the beauty of humility.

Finally, acts of sin—however outrageous—freely and thoroughly forgiven, lead to intimacy with and affection for the One who has shown mercy. Such sinners love much for much has been forgiven. Theirs is the beauty of love.

DHR

2011-01-31T17:03:00.000-07:00

Eternally Young!

“Deep inside this wrecked and ravaged hull there sails a young man still!”

Fredrick Buechner, Godric

A friend of mine was playing with his son one afternoon, and, lying flat on his back on the floor, pretended to fall asleep. The child climbed on his chest, leaned over his face and pried open one of his eyelids. “Hey, Dad,” he shouted. “Quit fooling around. I know you’re in there!”

The child understood something it took me more than seventy years to learn: I am not my body; I am merely “in there.”

The Bible makes it clear that we have bodies, but we not our bodies. We are our souls. (Genesis 2:7). The real “me,” the part that defines me and has eternal existence, is something other than my body. My body is mine, but it is not me (or I, as my old grammar teacher would insist.)

In the same sense, I have a vehicle, a fifteen–year–old GMC truck. It doesn’t go well these days—not as well as it used to go—and it takes a good deal of maintenance to make it go at all. I’m fond of the old truck; it takes where I’m going; and it is mine. But I would never confuse it with me.

The implications of this insight are enormous: I am not my failing eyesight, my aching knees, my stumbling gait, my quavering voice. These are attributes of the body I presently have that is growing older and older, faster and faster. (Thank God, I shall soon have a better one.) In the meantime, I am not growing old at all, for I am ageless and eternal. By faith, I have become a child of God. “And how, of all children, can the children of God grow old?” (George MacDonald).

DHR

2011-01-21T10:14:00.001-07:00

Six Degrees of Separation

“The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where…it is going” (John 3:8).

Eighty years ago a Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, wrote a short story entitled “Chain-Links,” in which he proposed the idea that any two individuals in the world are connected through, at most, five acquaintances. His theory has been revived with the expansion of the internet and recent social networking innovations—Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, et. al. His theory is known these days as “Six Degrees of Separation.”

Picture an individual somewhere on earth, someone you know by reputation alone. According to Karinthy’s thesis, five friends link you to that person. You know Tom, who knows Jerry, who knows Susan, who knows Mary, who knows George, who knows that individual.

It’s impossible to validate the theory, but, properly understood, there may be something to it. Some years ago I received a letter from a man I’ve never met—one of the most prominent and influential men in the world—in which he told me that a brief note I had sent to a close friend several months before had found its way to his in-box and had encouraged him in a time of weariness and dark despair. I don’t know the length of the chain, but the friend to whom I sent the note sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend, who sent it to a friend… Eventually my scribbling made its way to the man in question.

It may be that you and I are indeed links in a chain that leads to every other person on the planet. This means that a simple word offered in love, guided by the wisdom of God, and borne aloft on the wings of the Spirit can have unintended but eternal consequences.

Should we not then fill ourselves full of God’s word and pass it on to others with the prayer that God will use it for his intended purposes? Who, but God, knows where that word will go!

DHR.

2011-01-07T10:26:00.001-07:00

Any Time, Any Distance, Any Place

“In journey’s often…” (2 Corinthians 11:26)

For some time now, I’ve been corresponding with a Nepalese pastor who frequently travels with his church members to distant communities in the Himalayas to preach the gospel and plant churches. Recently he sent me his itinerary and asked me to pray:

On 21th - singing, preaching, dancing, and distributing gospel tracts (Thansing, 45 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 23th - singing, preaching, dancing, Jesus film show and gospel tracts distribution (Amptar, Nuwakot, 120 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 25th - singing, dancing, preaching in Kathmandu Friends church
On 26th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Nalang, Dhading, 130 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 27th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Darbung, Gorkha, 150 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 28th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Darbung, Gorkha, 160 kilometers from Kathmandu)
All the programs are followed by a love feast.

I marveled at the terrain and vast distances my friend covered on these outings and wrote to ask how his motorcycle was holding up. This was his reply:

"We had wonderful time of marching in the mountains with our church members. All do not have motorcycles and I need to be with them, so we all walked. It was blessed time. Still more places to go."

I thought of my reluctance to venture out of my own comfort zone and inconvenience myself: to drive cross-town in the snow to visit a lonely, elderly widower; to walk across the street to help a neighbor at the close of a long, weary day; to get up and answer a knock on the door (when I’m reading and would rather not be bothered) and welcome a troubled friend; to go any distance, any time, any place for the sake of love.

And I thought of our Lord, for whom no distance was too great to go.

DHR

2011-01-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Simeon’s Farewell

Let the infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken word,

Grant Israel’s consolation

To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.

—T.S. Eliot, “A Song for Simeon”

imeon was a venerable old saint who had long awaited “the comforting of Israel” (cf., Isaiah 40:1). The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Anointed.

“By chance,” some would erringly say, Simeon arrived at the temple coincident with Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus. Seeing the child, Simeon took him from his mother, cradled him in his arms, and began to sing:

Now Lord, as you have promised,

you may dismiss your servant in peace.

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared in the sight of all people;

A light for revelation to the Gentiles

and for glory to your people Israel.[1]

Thus Simeon passed off the scene, his small part in the drama well–played, “with peace and consolation dismissed,” Milton said.

Much of what Simeon sang about Jesus came from the Prophet Isaiah, who promised that, “all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (Isaiah 52:10). This infant would bring glory to Israel and revelation to the Gentiles spread around the world.

This was surely a moment of great joy for Mary. All mothers know that their children are special, but for Mary, this was a public ratification of what she already knew: that her son’s kingdom, “would have no end”![2] (Luke 1:33).

But Simeon then states a hard fact: though the child was appointed for “the…rise of many,” many would fall—trip over him and curse him in the darkness. He would be slandered, rejected and killed, and Mary herself would suffer excruciating pain.

Simeon’s words reinforce the bitter–sweet quality of the nativity: the story delights us, but we know that the birth of the child will lead to suffering—as do, in fact, all births.

Perhaps that’s why we old folks are strangely moved when we look at snapshots of happy parents cradling a newborn baby, for we know that their child will surely suffer and that a sword will pierce the parent’s souls as well. I’ve been around too long and have seen too much to believe otherwise.

How often have I listened to the stories of old friends and thought back to our youthful naiveté. Little did we know what sufferings we would endure.

I think of a childhood friend whose wife was murdered in a savage invasion of his home, while he was left confined to a wheel chair. Two other friends have challenged children; others have lost their children or seen them damaged in tragic ways. One friend's wife was injured in an accident from which she never fully recovered; others have suffered multiple losses through disease, death, or divorce. In fact, I can think of no childhood friend who has not suffered in a significant way. I recall George Herbert's poignant words, “I cried when I was born and every day shows why.”

“In this world you will have tribulation,” Jesus said, but, he continued, “Be of good cheer!” I must say—as I think of my friends—that despite their challenges they are of good cheer. They sorrow—Christianity is not Stoicism; there’s no virtue in the stiff upper lip—but they do not sorrow as those who have no hope for they have learned that we all share in Jesus’ sufferings, for if nothing else, the Incarnation tells us that at the center of our life is One who has been broken—who, from the cradle to the cross, has been one with us in our pain and loss.

Dorothy Sayers puts it this way: “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is-limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever the game he is playing with His creation, He has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience-the humiliation of the manger, the trivial irritations of family life, the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.”

Does God promise that we will not feel pain? Not in this life. Does he feel our pain? The Incarnation is the final, irrefutable proof that he does. We can cast our care upon him knowing that our sufferings matter to him, that he cares, and sometimes that’s all we need to know.

There is great relief in laying our burden down, even briefly, in the presence of someone who understands and cares. Author Margaret Guenther tells of a Scottish pediatrician who comforted her hurt and frightened child, not with medicine, but with a great, enveloping bear hug and the words, “Och, poor wee bairn!” “The poor wee bairn stopped crying at once,” Mrs. Guenther said, “for she realized that another understood her pain and did not seek to minimize it.”

Thus Jesus comforts our broken hearts.

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth and song;

As the burdens press and the cares distress, and the way grows weary and long?

O yes, He cares—I know he cares! His Heart is touched with my grief;

When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares. —Frank E. Graeff

[1] Simon’s song is known as the Nunc Dimittis, named from its first words in the Latin Vulgate.

[2] The phrase, “no end” can be interpreted both temporally and spatially. The Moravian translation of this text is “without frontiers.”

2010-12-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

Any Distance, Any Time

“In journey’s often…” (2 Corinthians 11:26)

For several years now, I’ve been corresponding with a Nepalese pastor who frequently travels with his church members to distant communities in the Himalayas to preach the gospel and plant churches. Recently he sent me his itinerary and asked me to pray:

On 21th - singing, preaching, dancing, and distributing gospel tracts (Thansing, 45 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 23th - singing, preaching, dancing, Jesus film show and gospel tracts distribution (Amptar, Nuwakot, 120 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 25th - singing, dancing, preaching in Kathmandu Friends church
On 26th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Nalang, Dhading, 130 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 27th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Darbung, Gorkha, 150 kilometers from Kathmandu)
On 28th - singing, preaching, dancing, and gospel tracts distribution (Darbung, Gorkha, 160 kilometers from Kathmandu)
All the programs are followed by a love feast.

I wondered at the vast distances my friend covered on these outings and wrote to ask how his motorcycle was holding up. This was his reply:

"We had wonderful time of marching in the mountains with our church members. All do not have motorcycles and I need to be with them, so we all walked. It was blessed time. Still more places to go."

I thought of my reluctance to venture out of my comfort zone and inconvenience myself: to drive cross-town in the snow to visit a lonely widower; to make my way across the street to help a neighbor at the close of a long, weary day; to get up and answer a knock on the door (when I’m reading and would rather not be bothered) and cheerfully welcome a talkative, elderly friend; to go any time, any place, any distance for the sake of love.

And I thought of our Lord, for whom no distance was too great to go.

DHR

2010-12-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Child

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass…” (Luke 2:15).

Some years ago Carolyn and I took our grandchildren to the Festival of the Trees, a local event in which businesses and organizations decorate Christmas trees, competing with one another in various categories. The display is magnificent.

We were enchanted by the grandeur of the trees as we moved from one to another, pointing and exclaiming. But one of our grandchildren, Melissa, soon lost interest, surfeited by splendor, until she came to a small manger scene and there she paused transfixed.

Nothing else mattered—not the magnificently decorated trees, not Santa Claus who was nearby and beckoning, not even the incredible talking tree. She was captivated by the Child.

We tried our best to urge her on—we wanted to see the rest of the trees—but she lingered behind, wanting to hold the baby, pressing closer to him despite the ribbon stretched around the cradle, keeping her away.

Finally, she agreed to leave, though reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the crèche through the trees. And as we were leaving the building she asked once more to “see the baby.” We returned to the manger and waited while she gazed long and longing at Jesus.

As Melissa adored Him, I marveled at her simplicity. Unlike her, I often fail to see the Child for the trees. “There are some things worth being a child to get hold of again,” George MacDonald said. “Make me a child again,” I prayed, “at least for tonight.”

DHR

2010-12-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Happiness is...

"Present mirth hath present laughter…"

—William Shakespeare, “Carpe Diem”

I was examining the magazines at our grocery store checkout stand the other day and concluded that happiness is firmness, fitness, prosperity, power, stardom, sex and pleasure. Bless my soul, we’ve forgotten that man does not live by bread alone.

Happiness, of course, is what everyone is seeking. That “end” was established long ago by the likes of Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers, who were musing on something we’ve always known: Regardless of the means, our end is happiness.

Human beings cannot not seek happiness. It’s why we do everything we do: It’s why we become tri–athletes or checker champs; why we speed–climb vertical rocks or turn into recumbent couch potatoes; why we become mechanics, machinists, mothers, fathers, doctors, lawyers, or Indian chiefs. Masochists hurt themselves because they think that will make them happy. Murderers kill others to make themselves happy. Suicides kill themselves because they can’t stand to be unhappy. We are made to be happy and nothing else will do.

That’s why happiness is said to be our final end by philosophers and theologians, by which they mean that happiness is not the means to anything else. We don’t seek happiness so we can be rich. We don’t seek happiness so we can find love. It’s the other way around: We seek love, wealth and everything else so we can be happy. Thus happiness is our final end.

Happiness is not our chief end, however; that’s God. But even with reference to God, happiness is our final end. We don’t seek happiness to find God; we seek God to find ultimate happiness.

Our modern English word “happiness” normally means subjective satisfaction or contentment, usually the result of good fortune. A friend approaches me with a goofy grin on his face and I think: “Something good must have happened to him.” Thus we think of happiness as happenstance. Indeed, our English word “happiness” is based on an Old English word, “hap” that means “chance.”

The word ancient Greek philosophers used for happiness, however, was eudaimonia, best understood by breaking the word down into its component parts: The prefix, eu, means “good,” daimon is the Greek word for “spirit,” and ia suggests a “lasting state.” So authentic happiness is an enduring state of inner peace. It is knowing, despite all counter-indications, that it is well with one’s soul. For Jews it is shalom.

Here’s the crux: St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Since it is possible to be happy and there are certain acts that make us happy we must in due sequence consider by what acts we may be happy and by what acts we are prevented from attaining it.”

How eminently practical! It’s possible to be happy and there are certain things we can do that will make us happy. Should we not then, “consider by what acts we are prevented from attaining it?

Put simply, the way to be happy is to be good, something about which virtue theorists have agreed for millennia. Plato, in his dialogue, The Republic, said that happiness is elusive, but can be achieved though justice, i.e., doing the right thing. Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, said, “Happiness is the reward of virtue” (Ethics 1.9). One of Israel’s poets said the same of his king: “You love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore (for this reason) God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness…” (Psalm 45:7). This is also the burden of Jesus’ beatitudes, his instruction on happiness.[1] “Happiness is…” he insists, and then proceeds to give us a list of seven virtues (Matthew 5:3-10).

“Goodness is better than badness because it’s nicer,” Mammy Yokum said. “Nicer,” surely, but also more happifying. Happiness does not come from wealth, honor, fame, power, pleasure or any bodily good, as our popular culture would have us believe, but in doing the right thing. [2] Should we not gain our understanding of happiness from the wise and not from fools?

So, I ask myself, if I’m made for happiness and happiness comes from goodness why would I choose misery instead of joy? Wretchedness instead of happiness? Because I’m insane, that’s why. There can be no other explanation.

Now, it is true that neither you nor I will ever know complete happiness in this world. The best proof of that premise is that even in those moments when we’re supremely happy, we’re not completely happy. Something is missing. “This world is full of many miseries therefore man cannot be perfectly happy in this life,” Aquinas said, “but a certain participation of happiness can be had in this life.” [3] Perfect happiness awaits heaven and home.

So, if we want to be as happy as we can be in this world, we must be as good as we can be—overcome our sensuality, immodesty, moodiness, irascibility and intolerance, among other things—something we cannot do unless we want goodness and ask for God’s help every day. “Only God is good,” Jesus said,[4] thus any goodness in us must be the work of His hands. “What a labor He has with us all! Shall we ever, some day, be all, and quite good like Thee?” George MacDonald asks.[5]

God help us.

DHR

[1] The word “Beatitudes” comes from a Latin term beatus that means “happy.”

[2] Here I add a parallel premise: If virtue makes us happy, vice makes us sad. Wrong–doing may awaken immediate, short–term, superficial exhilaration, but its after-taste is bitter. The Bible puts it plainly: we enjoy the enjoyment of sin “for a season” (Hebrews 11:25). Thus it occurs to me that I should bear no resentment toward those who direct their wrong–doing against me. I should rather feel pity and compassion.

[3] Summa 111,5,3

[4] Mark 10:18

[5] Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

2010-12-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

Into My Heart

One Christmas, a long time ago, when our granddaughter Melanie was very small, she was wandering and wondering her way around our living room, gazing intently at Carolyn’s “set–arounds.”

Carolyn has a wonderful array of ornaments and objects she has collected over the years. One of her most cherished items is an olivewood crèche she bought in Bethlehem. Every Christmas it finds its place on our living room coffee table.

Melanie came to the crèche that day and stood over it transfixed for a moment. Then she picked up the carving of the baby Jesus in her tiny hands and drew it up to her heart. She closed her eyes and said, “Baby Jesus, sleep…” and rocked the little olivewood figure of Jesus in her arms.

Later I realized why my heart was so deeply touched by that simple event: it was symbolic of that other childlike act in which we daily take up the wonderful gift of God’s love, our Lord Jesus, and draw him close to our hearts. This is what he longs for—to love and to be loved in return.

There is a song that children sing (and adults too, once we get over our fear of being childlike):

Into my heart, into my heart;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today; come in to stay;

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

May He dwell deep down in your heart this day.

DHR

2010-11-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Naked in the Palaestra

Bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.

—the Apostle Paul

Plato was discussing the impropriety of training female guardians for the state with his friend, Glaucon: “Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra,[1] exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young; they certainly will not be a vision of loveliness, any more than the enthusiastic old men who, in spite of wrinkles and ugliness, continue to frequent the gymnasia.”[2]

I think of the little gymnasium I frequent each week, where I work out with a group of “enthusiastic old men” (and women), and I ponder our efforts to stay alive, or at least look alive, as long as possible. A vision of loveliness we are not, but at least we’re not naked in the palaestra. Believe me that would not be a pretty sight!

Exercise does profit a little, Paul says, and I struggle to be as fit as I can be. I try to eat right (more or less, though I do love fried chicken). I lift and walk and do other stuff, but I know that my body is a wasting asset, not long for this world. Its powers are vanishing, or have vanished out of sight. “High notions of myself are annihilated by a glance in the mirror...”[3]

Better it is, then, to concentrate on godliness because it holds promise for this life and the life to come. Contrary to the old adage, we can take something with us after all.

Godliness sounds dull, foreboding and far from us, but the essence of godliness is simply self–giving love, caring more for others then we care for ourselves—a love that is hard to come by, but one that grows in the presence of love. We grow loving and more lovely by sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening to Him, talking things over, learning God–likeness from one whose name is Love.

Youth is all about doing, while aging is a journey into love, it seems to me, and (if you will believe me again) there’s nothing half so beautiful as a loving old soul, “wrinkles and ugliness” notwithstanding. Physical exercise is good, no doubt, but there is something far, far better: It is to love and to love and to love.

DHR

[1] A gymnasium for wrestlers
[2] Plato, Republic 5.452.b
[3] Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz

2010-11-09T14:22:00.001-07:00

Shmoos and their Kin

"No good deed goes unpunished."

—folk saying

Some of you may be old enough to remember the lowly Shmoo, Al Capp's pint–sized, pear-shaped, lovable, little creature that laid packaged eggs, gave grade–A milk and rendered sweet cream butter (no churning required).

A Shmoo swooned with ecstasy if someone wanted to eat it. If you looked at one hungrily, it would happily jump into a frying pan. Fried, it tasted like chicken; broiled it tasted like steak; roasted it tasted like pork; baked it tasted like catfish. Eaten raw, it tasted like oysters on the half-shell. If a Shmoo really loved you, it would lay a cheesecake, though Capp confessed, "This was quite a strain on its li'l innards…"

Shmoo's eyes made ideal suspender buttons; their whiskers made first-rate toothpicks; their pelts, cut thin, made fine leather; cut thick they made the very best lumber. Shmoos were supremely useful, happy, harmless creatures that loved people (especially children) and existed for no other reason than to do good to others.

Yet, according to Capp's sage, Ol' Man Mose, "Shmoos is the greatest menace to hoomanity th' world has evah known."

"Thass becuz they is so bad, huh?" asked Li'l Abner.

"No, stupid," answered Mose, uttering one of life's profoundest ironies. "It's because they're so good!"

In the end Schmoos were hunted down to extinction (except for a small remnant in Dogpatch), but a great enigma was resolved: Why do some folks hate good people? Simply because they're good[1], that's why. No other reason. Darkness cannot tolerate the light!

So, don't be surprised if some folks hate you when you're trying to do the right thing. You can never be good enough to appease them. In fact, the better you are the more they will despise you. Remember: they hated the only really good person that ever lived; they hated Him, as they will hate you, "without cause."[2]

But, no matter. No one can harm a truly good person.[3] Oh, they can slay the body, but they cannot harm the soul. So don't be surprised if people despise you. Keep a good conscience and return every act of hatred with a blessing. Bless and do not curse. "Be tenderhearted, courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this that you may inherit a blessing.[4]

The blessing is happiness in this world and the next. No matter what people say or do, they can't take that away from you.

DHR

[1]John 3:19
[2] John 15:25
[3] 1 Peter 3:13
[4] 1 Peter 3:8,9 Peter is not insisting that we submit to physical abuse. The Bible makes a strong case for the necessity of force to restrain evil when it endangers human life. The state "carries the sword." Even individuals may defend themselves when physically assaulted. Augustine was perhaps the first to note that Jesus' instruction about turning the other cheek refers to an insult and not an assault. His argument is that, given the fact that most assailants are right-handed, an attacker would normally strike us on the left cheek. To turn when someone strikes the right cheek assumes a back-hand slap—an insult.

2010-11-01T15:23:00.000-06:00

Old Men Can’t Jump

“Well, we must be getting home,” said Kanga. “Good-bye, Pooh.” And in three large jumps she was gone. Pooh looked after her as she went. “I wish I could jump like that,” he thought. “Some can and some can’t. That’s how it is.”

—Winnie the Pooh

I see young men and women doing extraordinary things that I cannot do. They can; I can’t. That’s how it is. It’s easy to feel useless when you’re old.

It comforts me to know that our Lord understands these moods; He was of this world. I don’t know how one who lived only thirty-two years can feel the dismay and disgrace of the elderly, but I take it as truth that He does. He lived all possible lives in the life that he lived and thus He knows it all: “how moons and hearts and seasons rise and fall.”

And then I gave myself another idea: We old folks may not be able to “jump,” but we can love and we can pray. These are the traditional works of the aged.

Love is the very best gift we can give to God and others. It is no small matter for love is the means by which we fulfill our whole duty to God and our neighbor. Love for one person may seem to be a very small action, but it is, in fact, “The Greatest Thing In The World.”[1]

And we can pray. John sees the prayers of the saints ascending before God and an angel hurling them back to the earth: “And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.”[2] We raise our reedy, time–worn voices in prayer and God shakes everything that can be shaken—a return that George Herbert termed, “reversed thunder.” Our prayers may be immature and incoherent, but there is no greater force in the universe!

Love and prayer—the mighty works of the aged, indeed, the mightiest works at any age! It seems then, that old folks may not be so useless after all!

DHR

[1] Henry Drummond’s phrase. Cf., 1 Corinthians 13:13
[2] Revelation 8:4,5

2010-10-30T09:22:00.000-06:00

“Baccay”

When I was a young boy, growing up in the church, I was introduced to the Filthy Five:

Thou shalt not drink
Thou shalt not smoke
Thou shalt not play cards
Thou shalt not dance
Thou shalt not go to movies

There was a sixth, making a Dirty Half-Dozen: Thou shalt not engage in mixed bathing. At first I was unsure with what I was not to be mixed. Then I learned it was girls: At a summer camp I attended, girls and boys swam at different times. (Of course, we boys stood around the perimeter of the pool outside the fence and ogled the girls.)

There was security in these easy certainties; you knew exactly where you stood. Yet, even as a young boy, I saw the irony in these prohibitions. I could refrain from all of them and miss the point of authentic goodness. Goodness, like God, is very subtle.

George MacDonald, in his novel Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood makes the case far better than I. He writes of a young cleric who went out to acquaint himself with a parishioner, an elderly Scot named Rogers. He had seen the old man walking through the village, clouds of smoke billowing from his briar pipe, and so purchased a tin of tobacco for him and offered it to him as a gambit:

“You smoke, don’t you, Rogers?” I said
“Well, sir, I can’t deny it. It’s not much I spend on baccay, anyhow. Is it, dame?”
“No, that it bean’t,” answered his wife.
“You don’t think there’s any harm in smoking a pipe, sir?”
“Not the least,” I answered, with emphasis.
“You see, sir,” he went on, not giving me time to prove how far I was from thinking there was any harm in it, “you see, sir, sailors learns many ways they might be better without. I used to take my pan o’grog with the rest of them; but I give that up quite, ‘cause as how I don’t want it now.”
“Cause as how,” interrupted his wife, “you spend the money on tea for me, instead. You wicked old man to tell stories!”
“Well, I takes my share of the tea, old woman, and I’m sure it’s a deal better for me. But, to tell the truth, sir, I was a little troubled in my mind about the baccay, not knowing whether I ought to have it or not. For you see, the parson that’s gone didn’t like it, as I could tell when he came in at the door and me a-smokin.’ Not as he said anything; for, ye see, I was an old man, and I daresay that kep him quiet. But I did hear him blow up a young chap i’ the village he came upon with a pipe in his mouth. He did give him a thunderin’ broadside, to be sure! So I was in two minds whether I ought to be on with my pipe or not.”
“And how did you settle the question, Rogers?”
“Why, I followed my own old chart, sir.”
“Quite right. One mustn’t mind too much what other people think.”
“That’s not exactly what I mean, sir.”
“What do you mean then? I should like to know.”
“Well, sir, I mean that I said to myself, ‘Now, Old Rogers, what do you think the Lord would say about this here baccay business?’“
“And what did you think He would say?”
“Why, sir, I thought He would say, ‘Old Rogers, have yer baccay; only mind ye don’t grumble when you ‘ain’t got none.’”

“And this is the man I thought I would be able to teach!” The young minister mused.

DHR

2010-10-26T10:16:00.000-06:00

A Willingness to Yield

“The wisdom that is from above is…willing to yield.” —James 3:17

A number of years ago, two friends and I meandered and fished our way across Magruder Corridor, a primitive, single–track jeep road that follows an old Nez–Perce trail that cuts through the Selway–Bitterroot Wilderness in Northern Idaho.

One afternoon we were eating lunch beside the road when the only vehicle we had seen all day pulled up beside us. It was an ancient, battered, dust–covered pickup containing a couple of bearded, hard–looking, backcountry characters. One of them motioned me to approach.

In my naiveté, I hopped off the tailgate of my jeep where I was sitting and ambled over, hoping to be friendly and helpful. One of my friends shadowed me, aware that these men were looking for trouble.

“Do you know what we call flatlanders up here,” the man in the passenger seat growled. “No,” I replied. So he told me, using a word I’d rather not repeat. Before I could utter another word, my friend, who is a former SWAT commander and one of the toughest men I know, elbowed me aside, leaned on the door and peered into the cab. “Do you know what we call folks who live up here?” he asked quietly.

“No,” the driver snarled and reached for the door handle.

“We call them…Sir,” my friend replied.

Both men laughed, waved and drove on.

Israel’s wise man was right: “A soft answer turns away wrath” (Proverbs 15:1). This is meekness, not weakness. Meekness has prodigious strength!

DHR

http://pastor.resourcesforyourministry.org/author/droper/

2010-10-07T10:03:00.001-06:00

Holy Luck

“All luck is holy” —Charles Williams

Carolyn and I were on the first leg of a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to our home in Boise, Idaho. Our first stop was Boston. It had been an exhausting week and I dropped off to sleep as soon as I found my seat, but was soon awakened by a disturbance in the aisle.

The steward and a passenger who had been seated on Carolyn’s left were arguing about the man’s seat assignment. Somehow, he had been separated from his fiancée who was seated several rows behind us. The man grew increasingly angry and argumentative until another passenger, seated by the man’s fiancée, offered to trade places. The swap was made and Carolyn’s new seat–mate settled into his place, drew out a legal pad and began to work on a project.

Unfortunately (for the man), there was a garrulous little French boy seated on his left—a charming child—who wanted to talk. The man, who seemed to be the soul of patience, gave up his work after a few minutes and began to chat amiably with the boy. Carolyn was soon drawn into the conversation.

I heard the man say he was from Los Gatos, California, a town near Los Altos, California where Carolyn and I had lived for eighteen years. He was on the Frankfort to Boston leg of a flight to San Francisco. I heard Carolyn remark on the fact that we had many friends in the Bay Area and went back to sleep.

When I awakened an hour or so later Carolyn was sharing her faith with her new–found friend, scribbling on his pad of paper, drawing diagrams and animating her story. He was listening intently and asking questions. I sat there quietly and prayed for the man and for her.

At one point he said, “My wife believes that stuff.”

Oh?” Carolyn replied. “And how did she become a follower of Christ?”

“Through Bible Study Fellowship,” he replied.

“How did she find out about Bible Study Fellowship?” Carolyn asked.

“A friend of hers, Nell King, invited her to attend.”

“How interesting!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Nell King was one of my best friends when we lived in the area!”

And then the coin dropped: Some months before we moved to Boise, Nell had asked Carolyn to pray for a woman who had just become a Christian through Bible Study Fellowship and for her husband who was not yet a believer—the man now seated on Carolyn’s left —there “by that power which erring men call chance.”[1]

Serendipity is God’s trademark. Once again, you never know…

DHR

[1] Charles Williams

2010-09-30T08:29:00.000-06:00

Pride and Prejudice

“And He has made from one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).

My childhood home was loving and happy, but my parents were often away. On those occasions the center of warmth in our home was the kitchen and a tiny, joyous African-American named Annie who was our maid.

I spent many hours with Annie, sitting at our kitchen table reading books or playing with toys and listening to her sing and hum Negro spirituals and other hymns. She was a little well from which sprang a continual flow of cheerfulness and song.

Annie was one of those humble, obedient souls that learn wisdom much sooner and far better than most of us, for it’s a universal law that we can only understand truth by obeying it. Truth eludes the clever and evasive, but the simple, the honest, the good–hearted know more and better things than the rest of us. As George MacDonald put it, “Good people know good things.”[1]

Annie called me “Bubba,” her word for “brother,” a noteworthy name, as I think about it.

I remember rushing into the kitchen one morning and, in childish exuberance, showing Annie a slingshot my father had given me and proudly announcing that it was a “n*****r-shooter.” “Oh, no, Bubba,” she said, and then proceeded to pour out her heart in a gentle lecture on the harm and hurt in that slur, accompanied by a terrible sadness in her eyes.

I never used that word again.

I learned that day that unfathomable sorrow lies beneath the rage and retaliation of those who are victims of our prejudice, for the source of all anger is frustration and the greatest frustration is to be dishonored and debased. Every human being is created in the image of God—more like God than any other creature—a holy icon, if you will, worthy of high honor, indeed admiration and awe. To demean that image and deface it is to wound another human being at the deepest level.

The root of prejudice is pride, of course, and our predisposition toward self-absorption and a false superiority that we must prove to others and to ourselves by petty bigotry. (We must degrade others to upgrade ourselves.) But love sees the value of all human beings and cares more for others than it cares for itself. Jesus himself showed us the way (Philippians 2:1-4).

There is but one race: the human race. We are brothers of the same family, made to be treasured and cherished by one another. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight.

Are all equally precious to me?

DHR

[1] C. S. Lewis writes, ”What you see and what you hear depends a good deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.“ Put another way, we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.

2010-09-27T14:35:00.000-06:00

You Never Know...

“And (Jesus) said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself...’” (Mark 4:26-28a).

During my seminary years, I directed a summer day camp for the YMCA. Most of the boys and girls in the camp were from families well below the poverty line and were underprivileged in many ways. They came from the so-called “Trinity Bottoms” and lived in shacks down by the river.

Each morning I began the day with a brief story in which I tried to incorporate some element of the gospel. One of stories I told was about a moose that wanted to be a horse. The moose had seen a herd of wild horses, thought them elegant creatures and wanted to be like them. So, he taught himself to walk like a horse, talk like a horse, eat like a horse, etc. However, he was never accepted as a horse because he was...well, he was a moose.

How can a moose become a horse? By being born a horse, of course. And then I explained how we can all be born again.

It was an odd story and I probably wouldn’t use it these days, understanding as I do now, that children find it difficult to understand metaphors; they’re literalists, pure and simple. I know of no child who was drawn to Jesus through the story, but, you never know.

One summer I had a staff counselor (Let’s call him Henry) who was not a Christian, in fact was very hostile to the faith and who opposed my efforts to bring the good news to these children. I could do nothing but love him and pray for him, but he left at the end of the summer to go back to college, unfriendly to me and hardened in unbelief, or so I thought. That was more than fifty years ago.

A couple of years ago I received a letter from Henry. I saw his name on the return address and remembering our conflict marveled that he would write. I tore open the envelope and read the first sentence: "I write to tell you that I have been born again. I am now, at last, a horse."

Augustine, in one of his sermons to pastors wrote,"For what man can judge rightly concerning another? Our whole daily life is filled with rash judgments. He of whom we had despaired is converted suddenly and becomes very good" (Augustine Sermon 46:24-25, 27).

There is life in the seed. Sow, and in time the seed will sprout and grow, “for the earth yields crops by itself...”

You never know.

DHR

2010-09-20T09:30:00.000-06:00

I'll Take Him

“Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me” (Psalm 27:10).

Many years ago, when I was a student at the University of California at Berkley, I developed a friendship with a fellow-student in a similar field. We often met at White Plaza to eat lunch and encourage one another. Both of us faced stiff challenges to our faith in our academic programs

Tragedy had fallen into my friend’s life like bricks falling out of a dump truck—one after another. The culmination of sorrows was the loss of his child and the departure of his wife who could not deal with the pain.

One day, as my friend and I were walking down Telegraph Avenue in Berkley, we found ourselves behind a disheveled hippy–mother with a grubby little boy in hand. She was angry at the child and was walking much too fast, towing him at a pace his little legs couldn’t maintain.

Presently we reached a busy intersection where the child abruptly stopped and his hand slipped out of his mother’s grasp. She turned on him, spat out a curse, and trudged on without him. The little boy sat down on the curb and burst into tears. Without a moment’s hesitation, my friend sat down in the grime and rubbish of the gutter and gathered the little urchin into his arms.

The woman turned and looking at the child and began to curse my friend. I’ll never forget the exchange: Roy sighed and looked up. “Lady,” he said softly, “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

So it is with our Father in heaven, who loves us just this tenderly. Though mother and father have forsaken us, He will gather us into his arms.[1]

DHR

[1] Psalm 27:10. The Hebrew verb, a’saf, translated variously, essentially means, “to gather (someone) in.”

2010-09-15T07:16:00.000-06:00

The Deserts of the Heart

In the Deserts of the heart,

Let the healing start…

—W.H. Auden

It was an odd providence that sent Philip into the desert. He was a distinguished leader in the church in Jerusalem; his presence was required there. He was engaged in the mission in which “crowds with one accord listened eagerly.” Vast crowds gathered to hear his preaching.

Yet Philip was torn from busy, fruitful activity and thrust into lonely isolation: A messenger said to Philip, “Get to the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” Luke adds laconically, “This is a desert” (Acts 8:26).

God may send us into the desert for awhile: The seclusion of a lingering illness, the loneliness of a new location, the desolation of suspicion and distrust, the tedium of a secular job—all are deserts in which God may work in us to get a greater work done—in us and in others.

John Bunyan’s confinement produced The Pilgrim's Progress. William Cowper’s mental illness shaped his luminous poetry and hymns. David Brainerd’s physical weakness formed his diary, a work that has mobilized more men and women for the cause of world missions than any other. There is service to be rendered in isolation and solitude, if we will but wait.

Are you in a desert? Don’t fret. Wait on God. Sit at Jesus’ feet; give yourself to him in worship, praise and adoration. Silently pray for those you encounter along the way; love them and shower them with mercy and kindness. Quietly manifest Christ’s likeness in contented anonymity. Perhaps in passing you’ll speak grace to someone like Philip’s pilgrim who will put his trust in the Savior and lead a nation to faith.[1]

There’s irony in all that God does. We deem our deserts waste places, but they’re not wasted unless we waste them in anxiety and bitterness. When we rest in God’s will for us and see it as the very best thing, he will cause the desert to bloom.

Everything we desire is in the desert, if we will but wait. “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:25,26).

DHR

[1] “While every day the saving message spread farther afield, some providence brought from Ethiopia…one of the queen’s principle officers and the first–fruits of the faithful throughout the world. He is believed to have been the first to go back to his native land and preach the gospel of the knowledge of the God of the universe and the life–giving sojourn of our Savior among men. Through him came the fulfillment of the prophecy: ‘Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand to God’” (Eusebius, History of the Church. 2.2.13–14, AD 266-340).

2010-09-07T18:36:00.000-06:00

The Hidden Life

Some years ago, I came across a poem by George MacDonald entitled, “The Hidden Life.” It had to do with an intellectually gifted young Scot who turned his back on a prestigious academic career to return to his aging father and to the family farm, there to engage in “ordinary deeds” and “simple forms of human helpfulness.” What a waste,” his friends lamented.

So we too may serve in some unnoticed place, doing nothing more than ordinary deeds. Others say, “What a waste,” but God wastes nothing. Every act of love, no matter how modest, rendered to him, is noted and has eternal consequences. Every place, no matter how small, is holy ground. If we are faithful in the small duties of our lives, we will have grace for greater things, should they come our way. In the meantime, “We must confine ourselves to the present moment without taking thought for the one past or the one to come,” Jean Pierre de Caussade wrote. “Love is the duty of the present moment.”

But, we ask, what of the world? We read the weary tales of war and violence, poverty, and the wretchedness of little children, sad with hunger, neglect, and cruelty. What can we do to bring salvation to the world?

The best we can for the whole world is the best we can do for our world. Our influence on our small part of the whole will go where God determines it will go, and with his help may go out to the world like ripples on a pond in ever–widening circles to the ends of the earth.

Influence is is a simple matter—often an unconscious matter—of human helpfulness: being there, listening, understanding the need, loving and praying. There is no greater service and no greater influence than that of a gentle, caring, unselfish neighbor.

Evelyn Underhill writes, “Among the things which we should regard as spiritual in this sense are...friendly visits, kind actions and small courtesies… We must see that our small action is part of the total action of God.” (From The Spiritual Life). Every action, then, done in love, is part of God’s larger work to show his love to the world.

So, for those of us who wonder where to begin, we can begin where we are: by caring for those nearest to us and giving human help where it’s needed, whether our lives are filled with mundane duties, or matters of international concern. “Who is my neighbor,” the rich man asked Jesus, to which our Lord responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, and its unexpected answer: The very next person I meet.

DHR

2010-09-01T07:47:00.000-06:00

Putting Us Right

“An’ noo, for a’ oor wrang-duins an’ ill-min’ins (misjudgments), for a’ oor sins and trespasses o’ mony sorts, dinna forget them, O God, till thou pits them a’ richt.”

—The Prayer of an Old Scot in George MacDonald’s David Elginbrod

Benjamin Franklin aspired to become a good man, and accordingly drew up a list of thirteen virtues he deemed “necessary and desirable,” including with each a short explanation.

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing. 6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleaness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity. Rarely use venery (sexual indulgence) but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation. 13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin’s intention was to make a habit of these virtues and thus he determined to fix on one character trait at a time, and, when he had mastered it, proceed to the next until he had mastered all of them.

“I made a little book,” he wrote, “in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross’d these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.

In the end, Franklin gave up: “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” he wrote in his diary. So it is: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”[1]

“In vain you make yourself beautiful…” Israel’s prophet concludes.[2] We cannot adorn ourselves. All we can do is come to God with our lofty ideals (along with our “wrang-duins an’ ill-min’ins”) and ask him to make us braver, stronger, purer, less selfish, and more loving. God himself is our cure. All progress toward the perfection of holiness—however gradual—is based on that premise.

Paul, who loved a good synthesis, put it this way: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[3] “For,” [“because”] he wrote, not “although” or “and.” It is God who does the work in us. He does the work and we enjoy the freedom to will and to do those things that please him.

When British author F. B. Meyer was a very young man he attended a meeting in the house of emancipationist, William Wilberforce. Those gathered were discussing their struggles against impatience and other forms of selfishness. An elderly gentleman listened for awhile and then related this incident: “I was speaking to a number of children last Sunday afternoon; and finding that the flowers and birds outside were attracting them, and they wanted to get away, and that I was fast losing my patience, I turned to Christ and said: 'Lord, my patience is giving out; grant me yours, and, for that moment he gave me patience. I could stand the noise and confusion.’”

Meeting Dr. Meyer the next morning, Mr. Wilberforce said: "What did you think of that?” Dr. Meyer replied: "It has changed my life. From now on, instead of refusing, resisting, struggling against temptation, I shall ask, in the moment of impatience, for Christ’s tranquility, in the moment of impurity, for his purity, in the moment of anxiety, for his direction and wisdom.”

So, setting ourselves right is not self-condemnation and firm resolution, but rather it is becoming aware of our failed and flawed condition and putting ourselves in God’s hands for his healing—in that moment or in due time. Put another way, “Ask what you will, and it will be done for you.”[4]

DHR

[1] C. S. Lewis
[2] Jeremiah 4:30
[3] Philippians 2:12,13
[4] John 15:7. The significance of this promise lies in its context: bearing the fruit of Christ-like character.

2010-08-31T10:56:00.001-06:00

Simplicity

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! Let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…”

Henry David Thoreau

I tried to buy a cell phone the other day that had but one function: the ability to make and receive phone calls. I found that no such apparatus exists. If I buy a phone I must, at the very least, play games, take pictures, view videos, surf the web, read and return email, listen to music, take notes, tell time, maintain a calendar, and learn the coordinates of my current location. Only incidentally does it make and receive telephone calls—all of which suggests that things are much too complicated these days, especially for us old folks. Most of us are minimalists, looking for ways to simplify our lives.

Thomas Aquinas suggests a wondrous simplicity. He says there are really only three things in life worth doing: (1) moral good—like loving my neighbor; (2) practical good—like keeping up my lawn; (3) and delightful good—doing stuff I find pleasing or agreeable. Thus, there are three questions I need to ask of any endeavor: Is it virtuous? Is it necessary? Is it fun?[1]

How many actions go beyond Saint Thomas’ criteria? A plethora, I fear. These are the things that accumulate, complicate and clutter up my life. In which case, I need to stop doing them. Now.

It’s just that simple.

DHR

[1] I hasten to add that not all fun is good. That’s hedonism, a pagan philosophy. I’m assuming here “good” fun.

2010-08-31T10:38:00.001-06:00

Benjamin Franklin aspired to become an honorble man, and accordingly drew up a list of thirteen virtues he deemed “necessary and desirable,” including with each a short explanation.

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing. 6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleaness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity. Rarely use venery (sexual indulgence) but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation. 13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin’s intention was to make a habit of these virtues and thus he determined to fix on one character trait at a time, and, when he had mastered it, proceed to the next until he had mastered all of them.

“I made a little book,” he wrote, “in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross’d these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.

In the end, Franklin gave up: “I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined,” he wrote in his diary. So it is: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”[1]

“In vain you make yourself beautiful…” Israel’s prophet concludes.[2] We cannot adorn ourselves. All we can do is come to God with our lofty ideals (along with our “wrang-duins an’ ill-min’ins”) and ask him to make us braver, stronger, purer, less selfish, and more loving. God himself is our cure. All progress toward the perfection of holiness—however gradual—is based on that premise.

Paul, who loved a good synthesis, put it this way: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[3] “For,” he wrote, not “although” or even “and.” It is God who does the work. He does the work and we enjoy the freedom to will and to do those things that please him.

When British author F. B. Meyer was a very young man he attended a meeting in the house of emancipationist, William Wilberforce. Those gathered were discussing their struggles against impatience and other forms of selfishness. An elderly gentleman listened for awhile and then related this incident: “I was speaking to a number of children last Sunday afternoon; and finding that the flowers and birds outside were attracting them, and they wanted to get away, and that I was fast losing my patience, I turned to Christ and said: 'Lord, my patience is giving out; grant me yours, and, for that moment he gave me patience. I could stand the noise and confusion.’”

Meeting Dr. Meyer the next morning, Mr. Wilberforce said: "What did you think of that?” Dr. Meyer replied: "It has changed my life. From now on, instead of refusing, resisting, struggling against temptation, I shall ask, in the moment of impatience, for Christ’s tranquility, in the moment of impurity, for his purity, in the moment of anxiety, for his direction and wisdom.”

Put another way, “Ask what you will, and it will be done for you.”[4]

DHR

[1] C. S. Lewis
[2] Jeremiah 4:30
[3] Philippians 2:12,13
[4] John 15:7. The significance of this promise lies in its context: bearing the fruit of Christ-like character.

2010-08-03T12:33:00.000-06:00

Beautiful, Broken Thing

“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7).

I was walking down by the river the other day and came across a male Western Tanager on the ground. He had been mauled by a predator and was dragging a broken wing.

I gathered the bird in my hands—rough hands it must have seemed to the bird, reminiscent of the abuse he had already endured. I’m sure he thought he was in the grip of another foul, cruel enemy. He fought ferociously, screaming his defiance, pecking at my fingers until he drew blood.

But I saw beyond the fury to his fear. I felt his heart racing under my fingers, so I held him until he calmed down, and gently tucked him into my shirt. Then I took him to the Bird Lady—a woman who lives nearby and who cares for wild, broken things. She has healing in her hands.

It occurs to me that some folks are like that bird—threatening because they are threatened. They lash out in fury, an anger that cloaks a wildly beating, broken heart.

Would that I saw their heart as God does.

DHR

2010-07-28T16:00:00.000-06:00

The Old Windmill

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).

A fellow who grew up on a ranch in West Texas tells about a rickety, old windmill that stood alongside their barn and pumped water to their place. It was the only source of water for miles.

Trouble was the windmill was balky; it had a squeaky gearbox and worn–out bearings. In a strong wind it worked well, but in a light breeze it wouldn’t turn into the wind. So, his father would climb up a long ladder on the side of the tower and manually turn the tail of the windmill until the fan faced directly into the wind. Properly positioned, the slightest breeze enabled the windmill to do its work and supply water to the ranch and its stock.

I think of that story when I meet with pastors here in Idaho, most of whom are in small churches in remote communities. Many find themselves increasingly tired and dispirited, not so much because the work is hard or the successes slight, but because they feel isolated, unsupported, and left alone—caregivers for whom no one seems to care. As a consequence they get weary and sad, and find themselves struggling every day to bring life–giving water to their flock.

I like to tell them about the old windmill, and our need to daily re–position ourselves: to intentionally turn toward the Lord and his word, to taste His goodness, to drink deeply from him who is the only source of living water. Then ministry begins to flow from within, outward.

I like the way Evelyn Underhill puts it, “The object of our life toward God…is to make us able to do this work.”

DHR

2010-07-27T09:36:00.001-06:00

Other Thoughts on the Good Life

“But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.”

—Psalm 73:28

We spend our early years ramping up: building up our bodies and physical skills, molding our minds through years of schooling, gathering a wide circle of friends. We find ourselves falling in love and marrying, growing a family, establishing ourselves in a vocation, accumulating financial resources…Then, one by one all these acquisitions are lost…

And the pace accelerates as we age.

Shakespeare in his play, As You Like It, has a sour, melancholy character, Jacques, who gives a speech in which he compares the world to a stage and life to a play:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant…

Jacques continues through the ages of man to the final stage, to the…

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

Indeed, with every passing year we lose one or two or more of the things we’ve spent a lifetime acquiring until finally we have lost everything.. Robert Frost underscores our dilemma: “The question . . . is what to make of a diminishing thing."

What to make of it? Well, first off, we can give our diminishments back to God and leave them there. “In acceptance lieth peace.”

Jesus prayed: “May this cup pass. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.”
Mary prayed: “Be it unto me according to Thy word.”

We can accept the losses as they come, relinquish the things that have been our life. We can give them back to the God who first gave them.

George MacDonald writes: “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, but the Lord will give back better than ever before…” Better than ever before? To be sure, the thing given back is far better: It is God himself. Our losses dig in us a larger place for Him to fill. The end of the process is to be immeasurably enriched: We possess and are possessed by the one thing we cannot lose: unconditional, unqualified, eternal Love!

Martyred missionary, Jim Elliott, put it this way: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

DHR

2010-07-24T06:08:00.000-06:00

The Good Life

“(God) has shown you, O man, what is good: To act with justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Philosophers ask, “What is the good life and who has it?” When I ponder those questions I think of my good friend, Roy.

Roy was a gentle, quiet man who refused to assert himself, who sought no recognition for himself, who left the care of his life to his Heavenly Father and occupied himself solely with his Father’s will. His was a heavenly perspective. As he often reminded us: “We are but sojourners here.”

For ten years or more Roy and I met each week to pray for one another. His prayers were my weekly benediction.

Roy died last fall. The church was filled for his memorial service, where his friends reminisced for more than two hours over his influence on their lives. Most spoke of his kindness, his selfless giving, his humility and gentle compassion. He was, for many, a visible expression of God’s unconditional love.

After the service, his son, Dan, drove to the assisted –living facility where his father lived out his final days and gathered up his belongings: two pairs of shoes, a few shirts and pants, some socks and few odds and ends—the sum of Roy’s earthly goods. He loaded them into the back of a mini-van and delivered them to a local charity. Roy never had “the good life,” but he was “rich toward God” in good deeds (Luke 12:21).

George MacDonald asks, “Which one is the possessor of heaven and earth: He who has a thousand houses, or he who, with no house to call his own, has ten at which his knock arouses instant jubilation?”

Roy’s was the good life after all.

DHR

2010-07-14T05:57:00.001-06:00

Fishing Where They Ain’t

“I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment…” (Philippians 1:9).

I have a friend I fish with now and then. He’s a thoughtful man. After climbing into his waders and boots and gathering his gear around him, he sits on the tailgate of his truck for awhile and scans the river, looking for rising fish. “No use fishing where they ain’t,” he says.

Calls to mind the question: Do I fish for folks where they ain’t? (And here I define “fishing” as acting and speaking in such a way that others are drawn to the loving-kindness of Jesus.)

Our separation as believers is not horizontal but vertical, not spatial but ethical. We are to be unlike the secular world in our behavior, but squarely in it, as Jesus was. He was “the friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34).

So I ask myself: Do I, like Jesus, have friends that are outside the pale, or am I content to huddle with my good Christian friends? If the latter, I’m fishing “where they ain’t.”

But fishing is more than just being around non–Christians; it’s also being attentive—like my friend who discerns feeding trout where I don’t: fish tailing for nymphs, or sipping midges off the surface. His senses are exquisitely trained.

Paul writes accordingly, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in…all discernment…” (Philippians 1:9). Paul’s noun, “discernment,” has to do with sense perception—sensitivity to one’s surroundings. (It’s used in one classic source for catching the subtle fragrance of a flower.)

Discernment, in this sense, is heart–kindness that sees beneath the surface of the off-hand remark; it hears the deeper cry of the soul. It asks, “Can you tell me more?” and follows up with compassion and concern. “There is much preaching,” George Herbert says, “in this friendliness.”

Such love is not a natural instinct. It is solely the product of prayer.

And so I pray: “Lord, may I today become aware of the cheerless voice, the weary affect, the down-cast eyes, and all the other marks of weal and woe that I, in my natural insensitivity and self–preoccupation, may easily overlook. May I have the love that springs from and is rooted in Your love that I may love others with discernment.”

DHR

2010-07-01T08:43:00.000-06:00

Lambs May Wade

All Scripture…is profitable (2 Timothy 3:16)

C. S. Lewis, in an essay on “Christian Apologetics,” divides religions, as we do soups, into thick and clear: “Now if there is a true religion it must be both thick and clear: for the true God must have made both the child and the man…”

There are indeed “thick” concepts in the Bible: mysteries, subtleties, complexities that challenge the most accomplished mind. And yet, in the same volume, there are concepts that are crystal clear: simple, attainable, and easily grasped. (What surpasses the profundity and simplicity of St. John’s clear affirmation: “God is love”?)

John Cameron, a 19th century writer suggests, “In the same meadow, the ox may lick up grass, the hound may find a hare, the bird may pick up seeds, the virgins gather flowers, and a man finds a pearl: so in one and the same Scripture, are varieties to be found, for all sorts of conditions. In there, children may be fed with milk, and meat may be had for stronger men. (There) ‘the lamb may wade and the elephant may swim…’”[1]

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in the Book—ocean depths that can bestir the most sophisticated mind, and shoals that can be negotiated by any simple, honest soul.

That said, why hesitate? “All scripture is profitable.” Jump in!

DHR

[1] This last phrase was originally used by Chrysostom, a 5th century Church Father.

2010-05-31T15:40:00.000-06:00

Lovesick and Dumbfounded

“(The Lord) takes great delight in you…” (Zephaniah 3:17).

With apologies to Zephaniah the prophet and my Hebrew professors, I offer this translation:

The Lord, your God is with you—
your hero, mighty to deliver!
He takes great delight in you.
He is speechless with love for you.
Every time he thinks of you he breaks into joyful song! (Zephaniah 3:17)

I’m awed by the notion that God takes great delight in me, that he breaks into song each time he thinks of my name. But it’s the phrase I render, “He is speechless with love” that dumbfounds me.

The verse is usually translated, “He will be quiet in his love,” or in some translations, “He will quiet you with his love.” But the Hebrew verb does not suggest tranquility. It means, “to be dumb,” or “to be speechless.”[1] And since the verb is in parallel with other verbs that describe God’s emotions (“He takes great delight,” and “He breaks into joyful song”) it must point to what he himself feels.

Could the analogue be a lovesick swain, thunderstruck with love for his beloved, so overcome with affection that he is tongue–tied? Is God, in some inexplicable, anthropopathic way, “struck dumb” with love each time he thinks of me? If so, to be loved like this is, in turn, to be rendered speechless.

Who is it that God so loves? One who is good and true and breathtakingly beautiful? No. One who is unholy and unsightly, but who “takes refuge in the name of the Lord” (Zephaniah 3:12).

DHR

[1] Jenni-Westerman, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.

2010-05-28T07:22:00.001-06:00

Papa Didn’t Say “Oh.”

“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion…” (Psalm 145:8)

I have a friend who was working in his home office one evening, trying to get some essential paperwork done. His little girl, who was about four years old at the time, was playing around his desk, puttering about, moving objects here and there, pulling out drawers and making a good deal of noise.

My friend endured the distraction with stoic patience until the child slammed a drawer on one of her fingers and screamed in pain. “That’s it!” he reacted in exasperation, as he escorted her out of the room and shut the door.

Later, her mother found the child weeping in her bedroom and tried to comfort her. “Does your finger still hurt?” she asked. “No,” the little girl sniffled. “Then why are you crying?” her mother asked. “’Cause,” she wailed, “when I pinched my finger, Papa didn’t say, ‘Oh!’”

Sometimes that’s all we need, isn’t it? Someone who cares and who will respond with kindness and compassion. Someone who will just say, “Oh!”

There is indeed One who knows our deepest sorrows, for he was made like us in all respects apart from sin. He is the “fellow–feeling human God,” George MacDonald said, who has suffered as we have suffered and who understands like no other. He is full of compassion and comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3,4).

He waits to be gracious.

DHR

2010-05-18T14:30:00.000-06:00

JACOB

Jacob was one of those unfortunates, saddled from birth with a difficult disposition. He was born gripping his twin brother’s heel, trying to tripping him up and get ahead. That was the trajectory of his life—wheeling, dealing, double–dealing, grasping, grabbing, jerking people around in order to gain selfish advantage. Yet God was not ashamed to be called “the God of Jacob,” a phrase that occurs several times in the Bible.

Jacob is reminiscent of those who come into life with a pervasive tendency to go wrong, who live in hereditary hells—saddled from birth with insecurities, insanities and sinful predilections; who are addicted to food, sex, alcohol, drugs, spending, gambling or work; who have disturbed and difficult personalities; who, as C. S. Lewis once put it, have a “hard machine to drive.”

But no matter. God loved Jacob. As the man himself put it, “God has been my shepherd all my life.”

God knows all our weary stories and all the sources and possibilities of evil in our natures. He knows the patent facts of our lives and the latent forces—the hurt and the heartbreak that others cannot see and which cannot be explained, even to our closest friends. He’s aware of the reasons for our moodiness, our temper tantrums, our selfish indulgences. Others may be put off by our personalities, but God never turns away. He sees beyond the prickliness to the broken heart. His understanding is infinite.

It’s a matter of indifference to him how damaged we are or how far wrong we’ve gone. Our vileness does not alter his character. He is eternal love—“the same yesterday, today, forever.” We may not be what he wants us to be, but we are not unwanted. If we will have him, he will be our shepherd.

Fredrick Buechner marvels at the folly of God to welcome “lamebrains and misfits and nit-pickers and holier–than–thous and stuffed shirts and odd ducks and egomaniacs and milquetoasts and closet sensualists,” but that’s the way he is. Whatever we are, wherever we are, his heart is open to us; “Love surrounds us, seeking the smallest crack by which it may rush in.”

Isn’t it odd
That a being like God
Who sees the facade
Still loves the clod
That He made out of sod?
Now isn’t that odd?

2010-05-09T17:00:00.001-06:00

The Good Old Days

I remember the days of old…” (Psalm 143:5).

Years ago I came across a scrap of graffiti scrawled on a college classroom wall: “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”—a reminder that our memories may be excessively euphoric. Yet, we older folks still allow our minds to run backward through the years and yearn for that better time and place—the “good old days.”

For some, these reveries bring delight and thanksgiving. For others the past evokes only bitter memories. Deep in the night they ponder their own disillusionments, failures and fantasies, and think of the cruel hand that life has dealt them. They brood over what went before and think about “what if,” and “what might have been.”

It’s better to remember the past, as David did, and contemplate the good that God has done, to “meditate on all (his) works; to muse on the work of (his) hands” (Psalm 143:5). [1] We should call to mind the loving kindness of the Lord, name his blessings through the years and count them one by one. These are the memories that foster the highest good: They evoke a deep longing for more of God and more of his tender care.[2] They take us out of the past and into that secret place of familiarity and fellowship with our Lord.

I heard a story recently about an elderly woman who would sit in silence for hours in her rocking chair, hands folded in her lap, eyes gazing off into the far distance. One day her daughter asked her “Mother, what do you think about when you sit there so quietly?” “That, my dear,” her mother replied softly, with a twinkle in her eye, “is between Jesus and me.”

Oh, that our memories and meditations would so draw us into his presence!

DHR

[1] The basic meaning of this Hebrew verb translated “muse” seems to be “to turn over and over in one’s mind.”
[2] “I stretch out my hands to you; my soul is like parched earth with respect to you.” —Psalm 143:6

2010-05-04T11:28:00.001-06:00

I Have a Dream

“Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalms 37:4).

Forty years ago I read J.R.R. Tolkien's short story, "Leaf By Niggle" and was strangely moved by it, though at first I didn't know why. I've since read it a half-dozen times or more and each time have experienced a sudden awareness of truth, especially now that I'm much closer to my own “long journey.”

In the story, an artist named Niggle, longs to finish an enormous canvas of a great Tree in the middle of a forest. He invests each leaf of his Tree with obsessive attention to detail, making every one uniquely beautiful. Niggle ends up discarding all his other artworks, or tacks them onto the main canvas, which becomes a single embodiment of his dream—a dream he longs to complete before he takes his “long journey.”

But, despite Niggle’s efforts to accomplish the task, his crippled neighbor, Parish—who calls on him for help at the most inopportune times— endlessly interrupts him. At one point Niggle has to sacrifice part of his canvas to patch Parish’s leaking roof and this, along with other distractions, frustrates his great work—until he takes his long journey and reaches his final destination. There “before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. ‘It's a gift!’ he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.” [1]

In the end Niggle is rewarded with the realization (the making-real) of his great dream,[2] a far better thing than the flawed and incomplete form of his own desires.

Perhaps you too have a wondrous dream—a holy task to be completed before you take your long journey—but interruptions and distractions continually frustrate you. Be encouraged. “The Lord will perfect that which concerns (you)” (Psalm 138:8). Delight yourself in the Lord this day and he, in good time, will “make real” your desire—in this life, perhaps, or surely in the life to come, where all our dreams come true.

DHR

[1]The story is largely autobiographical, reflecting Tolkien's absorption with finishing TLOR in the midst of constant interruption. In a letter to a friend he wrote: "I should say that, in addition to my tree-love—the story was originally called "The Tree"—it arose from my own pre-occupation with The Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all.'"

[2] Or, if you prefer, Niggle's Tree was ultimate reality and always existed; he simply reflected it in his dream.