Abide

"This is what I mean, brothers: the time has grown very short. From now on... let those who mourn live as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away" (1Corinthians 7:29-31).

"This world is passing away." My goodness, is that not true! If I had to render one opinion on my life I would have to say that it is the speed with which the past eighty-six years have passed away. It seems only yesterday that I was young and now I am old. Tempus fugit.

Indeed history is speeding to its consummation, which is what Paul had in mind, but more existential is the realization that our days are "soon gone and we fly away." Therefore we shouldn’t cling to the stuff of this life because it's all small stuff in the end.

Looking back I have to say that the things I mourned and the things that brought me happiness were very small things indeed—passing events that now have no importance. I recall a position I wanted and lost. The loss was quite troubling at the time. Today it has no significance at all. 

Paul's underlying concern in 1Corinthians 7 is the unending human quest for "something more," the urge to move up or move on. Paul's counsel is to "abide with God"—find your satisfaction in Him. 

"Do you want to be married?" Paul asks. Get married, but don't think that marriage alone will satisfy you. "Do you seek freedom?" (Paul was thinking of Roman slaves.) By all means, gain your freedom if you can but don't think that this alone will cure your anxiety. "Is there something you want to buy?" Buy it, if you must, but tomorrow the shine will be off of that shiny thing. Did you lose out on a promotion? Not to worry. In time you'll see that upward mobility, in itself, is a just another small matter. Do you clamor for beauty and glamor? In a few years they will mean nothing at all. The only lasting satisfaction comes from a life of undivided devotion to Jesus. Abide in him (John 15:4).

Our son Josh has a one word plate on his pickup: "ABIDE,"  drawn from Sam Eliot’s line in the cult flick, “The Big Lebowski” ("The dude abides..."). Each time I see the truck I think of Paul's simple anodyne: "Abide with God" (1Corinthians 7:24). 

I pray that this dude will abide. 

David Roper

5.13.19

Just for You: Welcome

 Ask and Receive 

 5.10.19

My friend and I have been going through a book together, one that has been sectioned according to themes. This past week we were discussing “Meek.” Along with the author’s thoughts there were relevant Scripture passages to consider and discuss. As I prepared at home before our meeting I read and pondered Philippians 2: 3-11 and Titus 3:1-7.  Quickly, God brought to mind a situation where I had not been meek, at least not in my thoughts towards another. This was a perfect time to turn in repentance and confession and give praise for God’s abundant supply of mercy that washed over me. As I reveled in a fresh perspective of how His mercy and kindness was abundantly available to me and to the other, I walked with much more freedom.  My friend and I prayed each of us would have more of this quality of meekness by His grace. Our desire is to reflect Christ to God’s other children. Of course this begins in our thoughts. We asked.

Several days later it happened. God graciously gave me another opportunity to walk in the humility of meekness. At the time I did not recognize what I heard as an opportunity. What I heard left me feeling displaced, dismissed, overlooked and unregarded.  You know the kind of message that can have this affect. Perhaps it is a ministry opportunity that was denied or given to another. Or taken by another. Perhaps it was a relational situation where you were not included. Perhaps your words were dismissed when another’s “better” way was presented.   

I called my friend and asked her to pray for me, realizing our Lord uses the prayers of others to augment our desires for change. I knew she understood meekness, as we had just studied this theme.  I wanted the right attitude, especially towards the others involved. I did desire to see His life and light come first in my thoughts, and then in my actions and reactions. My friend joined me in asking.

This morning as I came before the Lord, the situation and people I mentioned above were not on my mind at all. I picked up a book of essays looking for something else. What I received was God’s answer to yesterday’s asking.

Elizabeth Canham wrote: “Each of us is a mystery. Today we are encouraged to psychoanalyze, understand, and fix the problems that have contributed to our sense of alienation or disease. We forget that we will never plumb the marvelous depths of our own being. What we see and know is like the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is God’s handiwork in all its richness and depth. We are strangers to ourselves and the most appropriate posture we can adopt is awe and a willingness to allow the Spirit to reveal more of what is hidden below the surface. This pilgrimage, a journey of discovery and surprise, and the welcomed stranger within enables us to honor the mystery of the others who travel with us. On pilgrimage we travel light, discarding the heavy load of judgment and appreciating the gifts of those we meet along the way. Sharing resources, stories, and needs creates hope. In an inequitable world dominated by fear, those who follow the Christ-path will embody pilgrim hope—the hope that on this journey together God has not ‘forgotten the recipe for manna.’ There is enough for us all and together we are invited to sit at God’s table in an ever-widening circle of belonging.”

God prompted me to ask for change. I did.

God tells me I will receive an answer. I did.

Today, aided by the Spirit using my friend to ask with me, and aided by the Spirit using another’s words, I learned three lessons from this experience. 

* First, as I see myself as the “welcomed stranger within” with mysteries I don’t yet understand, I can see others in the same light and appreciate their gifts.

* Next, since on this pilgrim journey “God has not forgotten the recipe for manna,“ therefore, there is enough to go around for all of us, including me. Enough value, love, direction, places to serve or whatever good I am seeking. 

*Third, God says ask. After I have asked, I want to stop and “be still and know” that He is God. He hears. He answers.   Maybe not right away or in the way I expected, but He does answer by His Spirit and in accordance with His Word and His good and perfect will. Most often I can leave it with Him. I will receive an answer. 

Thanking God for His heart that welcomes me, 

invites me to ask and to receive, 

 especially if what I ask for is a heart and perspective like His,

Carolyn Roper

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