Just For You: Welcome

Y’all Come!

5.3.19

“Beloved!” This was the word I chose to focus on last year. The concept and truth that I am, you are, a beloved child of God is the core of who I am. It’s the core of who you are. This is not what our culture tells us but it is what God tells us by His actions and in His Word. As Henri Nouwen puts it “Before your were loved or wounded by your parents, your teachers, your friends, you were God’s beloved child.” Therefore, as I turn to Him with a grateful heart, I can be confident and rest in who I am in His sight.  I can also grow in looking at each other person in this same light.

    “Welcome!” This is the word I choose to focus on this year. “Beloved” helps me know who I am. “Welcome” helps me know who God is.

    Richard Foster says, “To think rightly about God is, in an important sense, to have everything right. To think wrongly about God is, in an important sense, to have everything wrong.”  A.W. Tozer comments, “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than a low or unworthy conception of God.”

    God’s welcoming heart astonishes me. Indeed, He demonstrates amazing welcome as He calls me under His warm, protective and cozy wings. God welcomes me to rest on Him as a weaned child rests on her mother. He welcomes me to “Come to Him.” Especially when I am weary. Especially when I am worn out. Jesus pictures God as the Waiting Father,  ready to welcome a wandering child home from the far country. And then what? Why this Welcoming Father throws a party. As my husband recently said to a returning friend, “Break out the robe, the ring and the fatted calf. Let’s party!” No condemnation there. No censure. No regaling the past or looking down on the one who turns and returns. (When we do that we’re in Elder Brother territory. May God help us to see ourselves and become more like our Father.)

    Back where “The stars at night, are big and bright....deep in the heart of Texas,” we had a saying—“Y’all come!” Jesus came bringing this invitation from the Father. Jesus’ welcoming heart to all showed us the Father’s heart. Jesus, as He walked on to the cross, opened the door for us  to come on in, to come to Him. And as Hebrews says we can now draw near with confidence.

    The invitation and welcome is there. The question is do I see the Father as He is and will I dare to draw near? I draw near as I pray and tell Him all that’s on my heart. Not what should be on my heart but what is on my heart. He knows me inside and out. He longs to have His children home. He longs for me to tell all. He listens and He hears.

    He is a Faithful Friend who welcomes me to not only come the first time, but to want to spend time listening to Him and talking to Him. To know Him better. To let Him into my life. David and I have no delight greater than having one or more of our sons come and spend time with us. But we are only a dim reflection of the way our Father desires each of us to come to Him.  I find that when I know I am welcomed into someone’s presence, it’s a magnet drawing me to that one. And I usually leave with a lighter step as I walk into my day. I know I am heard and cared for by the One who so loves me in such a welcoming manner.

    Always God is saying, “Come closer. I know your name. You are welcome in my heart and in my presence. Y’all come!”

   Thanking God for His welcoming heart and kind invitation to come,

Carolyn

Love That Is Not Love

On one hand I could stay, and be your lovin' man

But the reason I must go, is on the other hand. —Randy Travis

"The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not bear false witness,' 'You shall not covet,' and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Romans 13:9). 

Some years ago I sat with my friend Ron Ritchie in a counseling session with a young man we both knew and loved. He was telling us about a new affection that had come into his life, a wonderful, vivacious, attractive, warm-hearted, understanding woman—and this despite the fact that he was already married. "This is a new life for me," our friend gabbled on enthusiastically. “But you wouldn’t understand."

"Oh, but I do," Ron said, nodding his head and looking very serious. "You do?" the man replied in surprise. "Yeah," Ron deadpanned. "It's called adultery." 

Exactly. Love precludes cheating on one's spouse and children, as well as a host of other god-awful sins. 

Love is a perfectly good word that has fallen on hard times. It's used these days to cover a host of misdeeds, namely the thoroughly selfish hot-headed, whole-hearted, unbridled pursuit of another person’s body regardless of marital status or any other consideration. (Children be damned.) This person is so beautiful, so exciting, so loving, so kind, so interesting, so right, yada, yada, yada... This must be love! 

"Hogwash," Paul would say. The love of which Jesus spoke and speaks today means copying the long-term, patient, sacrificial—pedestrian, if you will—love of Jesus himself, and in that love there is no place for adultery or any other form of sexual misconduct. No, love keeps its word and stays its course and pays its price no matter what hardship it encounters. "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds." 

First century Romans agreed that Christians, no matter what else could be said of them, were not sexually immoral. That was a curious anomaly for them in their benighted, sex-saturated day. 

Would that could be said of us today.

David Roper

4.4.19

The Thing That Couldn't Be Done

He tackled the thing that couldn't be done;

With a will he went right to it.

He tackled the thing that couldn't be done;

And he couldn't do it.

Paul: “I don't understand myself. What I want to do, I can't do; but what I don't want to do, I do" (Romans 7:15).

Gallons of ink have been spilled over this verse to establish the provenance and period of Paul's life that prompted this confession. Was Paul thinking of his pre-conversion, or post-conversion days? 

My answer would be neither. Paul wasn’t thinking of a specific period in his life. He was establishing a principle that’s true every moment of our lives. (Note the present tenses: "I am...") Any time we try to implement a law (any law) we will fail."The flesh (self effort) profits nothing (John 6:63).

Benjamin Franklin famously worked out his own list of thirteen virtues that he deemed "necessary and desirable"—temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility—and determined to master them one at a time.

Franklin wrote, "My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen" (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin). 

Franklin tackled the thing...and he couldn’t do it. He gave up mid-course.

When it comes to bettering our behavior, resolutions, vows, promises, declarations, disciplines, diets and exercises are useless. They don’t work very well, or for very long. Lasting goodness is the work of Another. It can only be achieved "through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:25).

We must then hand ourselves over to Jesus to mend or make us, and refuse to help him with the task. In time his goodness will flow into us. And out of us. Our part is to ask and keep asking. His part is to give.

"Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us...and overcome all that overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death… Come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

David Roper

4.29.19

The Mess We’re In 

"Gentlemen, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

A number of years ago Jolly John Landrith and I were traveling through Macedonia and came upon the ruins of the ancient city of Philippi. It was a bitter cold, rainy day and having found the ruins of the old Roman prison there, we sought refuge from the wind behind a rock wall, turned up the collars on our parkas and begin to sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" at the top of our lungs. (It was pretty awful, I must say.) A docent popped up, rushed into our “cell“ shouting, ”Hey guys, what must I do to be saved?" 

We, of course, were reenacting a scene from Luke's Acts of the Apostles in which Paul and Silas, having been flogged and thrown into this prison, were praying, singing hymns and praising God. 

There was a great earthquake that night that shook the jail to the ground—you could say the concert brought the house down—and the doors of the prison were flung open. The Roman jailer, tasked with guarding the prisoners and knowing that his life would be forfeited if they escaped, rushed into cell shouting, "Gentlemen, what must I do to be saved?" 

The verb, translated "saved" in the Graeco-Roman world simply meant "to be rescued," and could be applied to any number of situations. We could paraphrase the jailor’s request this way: “Gentlemen, what can I do to get out of the mess I’m in?”

Paul, taking advantage of the ambiguity, answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be delivered.”

Considering the corruption, pollution, exploitation that surrounds us; our messy marriages, bitter estrangements and the desperation and fear that drive the current spate of alcohol and opioid addiction. "What can we do to get out of the mess we're in," is the cry of every hear. 

Well, for starters, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That's the answer to that question, at every level whether we're engaged in matters of the state or our own well-being. That’s the starting point. Once we invite Jesus to be our salvation he’ll take it from there. 

N.T. Wright says, "Everything is contained within that (verse) — all the volumes of systematic and pastoral theology, all the worship and prayers and devotion and dogma, all the ethics and choices and personal dilemmas." 

In a big mess? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put yourself in his hands. You will be rescued in due time. Perhaps not in this life, but certainly in the next. You can count on it.

David Roper

4.23.19

Happiness is...

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (Acts 20:35).

Let's see now. Is this saying in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? One of Paul's epistles? One of the apocryphal, pseudepigraphic or gnostic Gospels?

No, this is one of the so-called “lost sayings” of Jesus, one of the "many other things that Jesus did (and said), which if they were written one by one..., even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). It was a truism embedded in the memories of those who followed Jesus.

The saying is a beatitude, in agreement with much of what Jesus said about the happiness that comes from giving oneself away. Acquisition never made anyone happy. The more we get the more we want and the end is a mad quest to get more, an obsession that is empirically verified in the lives of the rich and famous. 

I shared Jesus’ lost saying with the fair Caroline this morning and she gave it a novel twist. If it's more blessed to give than receive, our weakness can become an occasion for others to give and enter into joy. The Friends have always contended that God placed the old and the feeble among us that the strong may be blessed in their giving. 

I must admit that I find it easier to give than to receive. I’m an independent cuss. My father impressed upon me his credo that we should never ask others to do for us what we can do for ourselves. It's a good rule in so far as it keeps us from mooching off our friends, but it can make us proud and unwilling to receive. 

Aging has a way of dealing with our hubris however: As we become more helpless we have to depend on the strong and thus we give them a blessing.

David Roper

4.13.19

Virtue-signaling

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

Virtue-signaling is a newly coined phrase, referring to our efforts to show others how virtuous we are. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were notorious for virtue-signaling: “They do all their works to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.”

Virtue-signaling comes across as artifice and dissimulation, with undertones of self-righteousness. "Humblebrag," another neologism, aptly describes the effort. It reeks of self because it is the result of self-effort. 

Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."  Put another way, “Let God work in you so others will see that you are the product of his genius." 

And how do you do that? Through prayer. We must ask God every day to make us the person he wants us to be and give Him the time and the space to do it. It will take awhile, but it's worth the wait (Psalm 27:14).

David

Growing Eyes

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 counterintuitive notion that two realms of reality can exist in the same space at the same time. 

It’s a curious and compelling fact that studies in theoretical physics suggest that there may indeed be unobservable, parallel universes as real as our own existing all around us, intermingled with us as parallel realities. “We’ve established that space, time, matter and energy engage in a behavioral repertoire unlike anything any of us have directly witnessed. And now, penetrating analysis of these and other related discoveries are leading us to what may be the next upheaval in understanding: the possibility that our universe is not the only universe” (Brian Greene in the Introduction to The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, p. 2). 

Greene goes on to state a more starling fact that studies in string theory indicate that our universe is directly influenced by events taking place in that alternate universe, the projection “of processes taking place on some distant surface that surrounds us” (The Hidden Reality, P. 8).

So…what if our world does share space with another unseen, parallel world? What if our universe is “directly influenced by events taking place in that alternate universe”? 

Bless my soul there is an unseen world all around us. Some call it “heaven.” 

We know very little about heaven, for little has been revealed. Perhaps that’s because there are no words to describe this world and no analogies for it in our experience. One thing does seem certain, however: heaven is not “up there” or “over yonder,” but all around us, another realm of reality, invisible but as real as ours! We could see it if we only had eyes to “see.” 

Read the story of Elisha and his disciple at Dothan (2 Kings 6). The disciple awakened in the morning, looked over the wall and discovered to his dismay that “an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city.” He ran to alert Elisha and cried out in despair, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” “Don't be afraid,” Elisha replied. “There are more of us than there are of them.” (Or words to that effect.)

Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes so he may see.” So the Lord opened the young man’s eyes and he “saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire…” He saw the invisible legions of heaven gathered for his protection, against which Syria’s forces were powerless. He had not seen them, but they had been there all along. 

So…keep your eyes open; help is all around you, invisible to normal sight, but as close as they can be. “The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands upon thousands” (Psalm 68:17). There are more of us than there are of them!

David Roper