“David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers…” (Acts 13:36).
 
Some years ago our boys and I spent a week on an abandoned backcountry ranch on the Salmon River. One day, exploring the old homestead, I came across an ancient grave with a weathered, wooden marker. The marker bore an inscription enshrining the name of a man named James Moore, an early resident of the ranch no doubt, now "laid with his fathers" and long forgotten, lost to the next generation.
 
Someone—I think it was Tolstoy—said the best of us are remembered for a hundred years or so. The rest of us are soon forgotten. What are our markers, I thought, but monuments to the forgetfulness of the living. Memories of us, like our memorials, fade away.

But no matter. May we, like David, serve the purposes of God in our generation—and leave the remembering to Him!

DHR

What's it all about, Alfie?

“...Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge“ (Colossians 2:3b).

My Apple iPad contains a voice recognition application named Siri, Ask Siri any question and she offers an answer. “Siri ... is a life changer,” one reviewer wrote, “and this is only the beginning.”

One day, pursuing wisdom, I asked Siri, “What is the meaning of life?” She answered, “42.”

“42” is an old philosophical joke, based on Douglas Adams’ book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he concludes, "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42,” a claim that has become more famous than the novel itself. Thoughtful people have worried themselves into a frenzy trying to ascribe significance to the number and its occurrences, but Adams himself claims the number has no meaning at all.

And that is the irony in the joke: “What is the meaning of life?” is a question about which there are no meaningful answers.

Yet my heart cries out for answers: Who am i? What is my purpose here on earth? And what is my ultimate destiny? These are the questions that bewilder me.

Over the years I’ve caught glimpses of abstract truth, but these days I’m looking beyond abstraction to something more: the ideal made real—Jesus who knows, thinks, feels, says and does the truth. That’s what Jesus meant when he said “I myself am…the truth!”^[1] (Cf., John 14:6).

So, I must sit at his feet and give him my heart’s attention and devotion. He has the answers to life’s nagging questions. Through him I know who I am (God’s beloved child); what I am to do (my Father’s perfect and perfecting will); and where I am going (to my Father’s house, my last and everlasting home).

I have seen Truth and I am satisfied. Jesus, not 42 (and not the Hokey Pokey), is what it's all about.

DHR

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^[1] Jesus made the person pronoun “I” strongly emphatic. When Phillip said, “How can we know ultimate reality?” Jesus said, in effect, “You’re looking at it." Likewise consider Pilate’s cynical question, “What is truth?” when it was standing in front of him.

Young at Heart

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

—Fredrick Buechner in Godric

I own a 1995 GMC truck. It’s worn-out, dented, battered and scratched and has more miles on it than its odometer has numbers. Some parts of it don’t work well; some non-essential parts don’t work at all, but I’m fond of it. I’ve owned it for 17 years or more. It’s mine.

It’s only mine, however. It isn’t me, (or I, as my grade school grammar teacher Miss Moody would insist). I never confuse myself with my truck.

So it is with my body. It’s worn-out, dented, battered and scratched. Some parts of it don’t work well and some non-essential parts don’t work at all. I’m rather fond of it, however. I’ve owned it for 80 years or more. It’s mine.

But my body isn’t me. I have a body and, thank God, I shall soon have one better, but I am not now my body nor shall I ever be; I am my soul, the immaterial, inextinguishable, thinking, reasoning, adventure–­seeking, fun–loving “me” that has been joined to God’s family forever, begotten through Jesus Christ my Lord. I am an immortal child of God; I will never grow old and I will never die.

That’s why, when I look in the mirror and gape at this bundle of dry, withered sticks that I call my body, I can rightly say, "That isn’t me!” My true self is hale and hearty and will never grow old.

If anyone insists otherwise—for I do look old and decrepit—I shall answer, “Stuff and nonsense!” for, as George MacDonald argues, “Of all children, how can the children of God be old?"

DHR

The Power and the Glory

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” —1 John 1:8  
 
British author Graham Greene has written a book entitled The Power and the Glory. It was chosen by Time Magazine as one of 100 best books of the 20th century, all the more remarkable since Graham Greene was a Christian. Greene did not write “Christian” books, however. He smuggled the gospel into his novels in subtle ways.

The plot of The Power and the Glory is set in Mexico during the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government was suppressing the Church. Persecution was especially severe in the state of Tabasco where the governor encouraged communist paramilitary groups to harass Christians, close churches, and drive the clergy out of town.

There are two protagonists in the book: a police lieutenant who is a communist, an atheist, but a good man; and an unnamed priest who is an alcoholic—a “whiskey priest” in Green’s words—but a man who had a sincere love for God and His people.

In the story, the priest is expelled from his parish in Tabasco but returns to care for a dying parishioner, even though he knows he will be captured. He is indeed captured and imprisoned. The last chapter of the book is devoted to a final conversation between the lieutenant who hounded him to ground and the priest.

The lieutenant argues that communism works, evoking the image of a utopian socialist state. The priest replies: “Your system would work if all men were as good as you. My system (the gospel) works because all men are as bad as I."

I think of the pretentious, self-congratulatory Pharisee who “prayed to himself” and applauded his own good behavior and the Publican who could do nothing but cry out, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  Guess who “went home justified”?

Bret Hume, the Fox News analyst who became a Christian shortly after the death of his son some years ago, has spoken candidly about his conversion. When Tiger Woods’ infidelities destroyed his marriage and marred his image he advised Woods to turn to Christ. “Christianity is the right religion for people like that,” he said; “Christianity is a religion for sinners.”

“Come to me” Jesus said and still says, reaching out to those who are weighed down by sin.

DHR

Wising Up

“Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom ~Psalm 90:12.

The brevity and flimsiness of life have inspired numerous metaphors in literature: Human existence is compared to a dream, a flying shuttle, a mist, a puff of smoke, a shadow, a gesture in the air, a sentence written in the sand, a spray of flowers that wither and die in the wind.  In one famous passage, the Venerable Bede, a seventh century English monk, portrays our life span as a sparrow that flies swiftly through a hall, coming in by one window and out by another.  Our days are few, “and we fly away” Moses said (Psalm 90:10). “Time flies,” we say. “No, you fly,” Time says. Indeed, “Life is hasty” (Thomas Hobbes).

Like Moses I’m getting long in the tooth and thinking about the brevity of life these days—a harsh reality that escaped me in my youth. “Will I leave anything behind that prolongs my usefulness?” I ask myself. “Will there be some enduring evidence that I’ve been here?”

I think of an ancient pioneer cemetery in the mountains nearby, with gravestones standing like small, slope–shouldered sentinels guarding human remains. The stones enshrine what’s left on earth of men and women who were born, who grew up, married, reared children, made something of themselves, grew old and died. Most of the stones have no inscriptions to denote that individual's worth—a name and date and little more. I ask myself, “Is this all that will remain of me—a crumbling stone and recumbent dust.

Once we grasp the fact that we’re not long for this world we may begin to wise up. Hopefully, we’ll add up the days of our lives, reckon their number to be few and determine by God’s grace to make them count. In the words of a plaque that hung on a wall of my boyhood home:

Only one life will soon be past;

Only what’s done for Christ will last.

And when I am dying how glad I shall be,

That the lamp of my life has blazed out for Thee.

DHR

He Today; I Tomorrow

“All of us are weak and frail; hold no man more frail than yourself.” —Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ.

17th century English Puritan divine Richard Dent—not to be confused with former Chicago Bears defensive end, Richard Dent—wrote a book for new Christians entitled, A Poor Man’s Pathway to Heaven. It’s one of the books God used to bring about John Bunyan’s conversion.

In the book he describes a conversation between four men: Theologus (Theologian), his old friend, Philagathus (Lover of Good), Asunetus (Clueless), and Antilegon (Skeptic).

Here’s a paragraph or two that got my attention:

Theologos: Some of God’s dear children, in whom no doubt the inward work is truly and soundly wrought, yet are so troubled and encumbered with a crabbed and crooked nature, and so clogged with some master sin; as some with anger, some with pride, some with covetousness, some with lusts, some one way, some another; all which breaking out in them, do so blemish them and their profession that they cannot so shine forth unto men as otherwise no doubt they would; and this is their wound, their grief, and their heart smart, and that which costs them many a tear, and many a prayer: and yet can they not get the full victory over them, but still they are left in them, as the pricking the flesh, to humble them.

Philagathus: Yet love should cover a multitude of such infirmities in God’s children.

Theologos: It should do so indeed: but there is great want of love, even in the best; and the worst sort espying these infirmities in the godly (fellow–Christians), run upon them with open mouth and take upon them to condemn them utterly, and to judge their hearts, saying they be hypocrites, dissemblers. There is none worse than they.

A capricious kindness that makes no moral judgments is alien to biblical thought, but so is a judgmental spirit that has no mercy or love for those who are struggling upward into the light. Knowing our own wretchedness moves us toward deep compassion for those who founder for we know that we also are capable of sudden and complete moral collapse. As a friend of mine once put it, “He today; I tomorrow!”[1]  

Like Pharisees

do we condemn

before both man and God,

one who slipped

and whose clothing

is smeared with sod;

Could we but hear

His voice,

stern above our own,

“let him without sin

among you,

cast the first stone.”

—Ruth Bell Graham

DHR

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[1] Some years ago I mentioned to a group of men that we’re all only thirty minutes away from sexual failure. One Diogenean soul muttered, “it wouldn’t take me that long.”

Paying Attention

“Happy is the one that considers the poor…” (Psalm 41:1).

Some folks are poor in possessions and appearance; others in faith, hope and love. Even if we can’t alleviate the poverty of those we meet along the way we can “consider” the poor, a verb that means, “to pay attention.”

G.K. Chesterton defines a saint as one that exaggerates what the world neglects, and what is neglected today is the art of paying attention. Few seem to be aware of the pain that exists all around them; they go their way inattentive and unmoved. As Jesus put it in his day, “the love of many has grown cold.” 

In such a world it’s not hard to find some misery to alleviate: a divorcee or widow, stricken with loneliness; a weary parent kept awake at night by an unwell child; a frightened man awaiting cancer surgery in the morning; a care–worn checker in a grocery store working a second or third job to make ends meet; a young boy who’s never had enough father; a single mother whose flood of worries has washed her hope away; a lonely old man who believes he has outlived his usefulness; a hurting heart behind your own front door. Perhaps you don’t have much to give, but you can pay attention. You can see beyond what others see to the possibilities of mercy, compassion and understanding.

John Newton wrote on one occasion, “If, as I go home, a child has dropped a halfpenny, and if, by giving another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something. I should be glad to do greater things, but I will not neglect this.” This is “paying attention.”

One summer, several years ago, I came across a book entitled The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow. It is the diary of a twelve-year-old child who lived at the turn of the century in lumber camps in western Oregon. As I read Opal’s diary I was awed by her simple compassion and sensitivity. Though abused as a child she was never swallowed up in self-pity, but freely gave herself away. Here’s a brief excerpt from her diary:

When the churning was done, the mama did lift all the little lumps of butter out of the churn. Then she did pat them together in a big lump, and this she put away in the butter box in the woodshed. When she went to lay herself down to rest on the bed, she did call me to rub her head. I like to rub the mama's head, for it does help the worry lines to go away. Often I rub her head, for it is often she does have longings to have it so. And I do think it is very nice to help people have what they do have longings for.

Perhaps today by some act of kindness you and I can rub someone’s worry lines away, for it’s very nice to help people have what they do have longings for.”

One last thought: There's an upside imbedded in the beatitude. In the oldest and oddest paradox of all, we’re happiest when we're thinking of others. Consider those who think only of themselves, who grasp and grab and play it safe. The life they save is the life they lose. In the end it’s worth nothing to anyone including themselves, a featureless, lifeless parody of those that have lived and cared for others. The only life worth living, it seems, is the one that is given away.

The realm of happiness is easily entered: “Consider the poor.”

DHR