No Spanking Zone

A wooden plaque hangs on our front door:

Papa and Nana’s House

Hugs and Kisses

No spanking zone

Milk and Cookies

Kids spoiled while you wait

It’s what we want our home to be for our grandchildren and for everyone—a place of happy, playful, care–free affection, a refuge of unconditional love. 

“Spiritually, if not literally, we can (all) love as grandparents,” Margaret Guenther says, “Parental love is weighted with concerns: Will this child learn the multiplication tables and state capitals? Know how to tie his shoes? Maybe earn a living some day? By contrast, grandparental love asks for nothing: no conditions are attached.”[1]

Assuming that we’re growing in grace as we grow up, we should all be becoming more “grandparental” in our love for one another, fretting less over other folk’s sins and shortcomings and letting them grow in God’s time and way, not dismayed or disillusioned by occasional bad behavior. We can enjoy God’s children and let them be.

God’s children are just that—His children, not mine—and thus they are His responsibility. I can be “irresponsible” in the literal and best sense of that word. I can point others to righteousness in a non-judgmental way, but I’m free from the heavy burden of trying to correct or control them. I can love and pray with calm detachment. I can be forgiving, merciful, lenient and kind-hearted, knowing that it is not condemnation, but the kindness of God that draws men and women to repentance (Romans 2:4).

Papa and Nana’s house—no spanking zone; milk and cookies; hugs and kisses. God’s children are welcome here!

DHR

---

[1] Margaret Guenther, Toward Holy Ground, p.46

Forever After

I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Last Sunday was our 57^th wedding anniversary and for the occasion I sent Carolyn an anniversary card depicting two frogs, one of which says to the other, “I’ll love you till I croak.” To which I added my own scrawl: “And beyond!” 

I’m sometimes asked, “Will we know and love one another in heaven?” George MacDonald answers that question with a counter–question: ”Will we be bigger fools in heaven than we are here?” Of course we will know and be known, love and be loved throughout eternity.[1]

Love is a divinely designed, essential part of our joy. We are not designed to be solitary beings, but lovers like God himself. And just as God on earth loved every person in a special way, so we are designed to love people specially. (Jesus had special friends: his disciples, Mary, Martha and Lazarus.)

Love is one of the greatest of God’s gifts to us and God’s gifts are “irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Our family and special friends will always be our family and special friends. Heaven, thus, is just another place for love to grow. We never love well enough here; we will never be loved well enough. But in heaven we will love and be loved to perfection.

One of my favorite reads is George MacDonald’s novel The Golden Key, a tale of two children Mossy and Tangle, their love for one another and their journey together to find the door that can be opened with a golden key (Jesus). They love, marry and grow old together and then are lost to one another when Tangle dies. Mossy, old, lonely and foot-weary, finally arrives at the “place from which the shadows fall.”

He came to a great precipice of rock, up which he could discover but one path. Nor did this lead him farther than halfway up the rock, where it ended on a platform. Here he stood and pondered. It could not be that the way stopped here, else what was the path for? It was a rough path, not very plain, yet certainly a path. He examined the face of the rock. It was smooth as glass. But as his eyes kept roving hopelessly over it, something glittered, and he caught sight of a row of small sapphires. They bordered a little hole in the rock.

He tried the key. It fitted. It turned. A great clang and clash, as of iron bolts on huge brazen caldrons, echoed thunderously within. He drew out the key. The rock in front of him began to fall. He retreated from it as far as the breadth of the platform would allow. A great slab fell at his feet. In front was still the solid rock, with this one slab fallen forward out of it. But the moment he stepped upon it, a second fell, just short of the edge of the first, making the next step of a stair, which thus kept dropping itself before him as he ascended into the heart of the precipice. It led him into a hall fit for such an approach—irregular and rude in formation, but floor, sides, pillars, and vaulted roof, all one mass of shining stones of every color that light can show. In the centre stood seven columns, ranged from red to violet. And on the pedestal of one of them sat a woman, motionless, with her face bowed upon her knees. Seven years had she sat there waiting. She lifted her head as Mossy drew near. It was Tangle. Her hair had grown to her feet, and was rippled like the windless sea on broad sands. Her face was beautiful, like her grandmother’s, and as still and peaceful as that of the Old Man of the Fire. Her form was tall and noble. Yet Mossy knew her at once.

"How beautiful you are, Tangle!” he said, in delight and astonishment.

"Am I?” she returned. "Oh, I have waited for you so long! But you, you are the Old Man of the Sea. No. You are like the Old Man of the Earth. No, no. You are like the oldest man of all. You are like them all. And yet you are my own old Mossy!

DHR

---

[1] Jesus said, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30)—a verse Carolyn ascribes to a scribal error. But Jesus’ statement about marriage doesn’t say anything about love in the hereafter. It was made in response to the Sadducees that posed the question of multiple marriages and how a man that had seven wives on earth could sort them out in heaven. It was a trick question since the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection (that’s why they were sad, you see) and only wanted to show how absurd the idea must be. Jesus replied that the question was irrelevant because there will be no “marriage” in heaven for there will be no need for it. We will be like the angels that live forever, and do not procreate. (A cherub, despite Rubens pudgy, little munchkins, is not a baby angel. It’s the Hebrew singular form of cherubim.) Marriage as an institution will be passé, because there will be no need to conceive and nurture children, nor will there be any need to safeguard our commitment to one another. But we will love one another forever for “love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:8).

Never Say Never!

"Na, na, I’ll never preach again!” whispered James to the soutar (shoemaker), as they  rose from their knees.  

"I winna be a’tegither sure o’ that!” returned the soutar."

—George MacDonald in Salted with Fire

"David mustered the army and went to Rabbah and captured it" (2 Samuel 12: 29). A brief report, a throw-away line…that celebrates God's amazing grace. 

Joab, David's commander, sent word to David that Rabbah, the royal city of the Ammonites, was about to fall. Joab had seized control of the outskirts of the city, but the acropolis was still standing and David was given the honor of capturing it. Accordingly, he gathered his army, besieged the stronghold and seized it. But here is the grace note: This conquest occurred very soon after David’s horrendous  fall (cf., 2 Samuel 11:1-27).

Treacherous, adulterous, murderous David! You would think that God would turn away from him, but this is not his way. God forgives, restores and reinstates repentant sinners. Thus Jesus met the apostle who denied him and gave him this commission: "Go feed my sheep." 

As soon as David said, “I have sinned,” Nathan said, ”The Lord has put away your sin," and David was given the task of conquering Rabbah, the principle city of the Ammonites, Israel’s archenemy.

Perhaps you think that God is through with you, can’t stand you any longer, will never use you again, but a broken and contrite heart brings full pardon, even if you have been very wicked (Psalm 51:17). In his everlasting love, God will have mercy on you and in his good time he will use you again. (His nature is forgiveness.) Awful sins are fully forgiven for his grace is equally “awful.” Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds!

DHR

The Beauty of Holiness

What I hold in my mind will, in time, show up in my face, for as George MacDonald once pointed out, the face is "the surface of the mind.” 

If I cling to bitterness and resentment, if I hold a grudge, if I fail to forgive, my countenance will begin to reflect those moods. My mother used to tell me that a mad look might someday freeze on my face. She was wiser than she knew. 

On the other hand a generous and charitable heart, one filled with unselfishness and kindness, will find its way to the surface, for goodness cannot be hidden. In time it will show itself in kind eyes and a face that is gentle and wise.

So my task is to not to try to fix my face and make it good, for that would be hypocrisy, but to set about killing the ugly things that come out of my heart, "so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also" (MacDonald). 

Yet, I know my heart, how hard it is, how disinclined to change. No one but God can drive its sullen self-centeredness away. So I must ask him by his power to fulfill every desire for goodness. Then, someday, my face may reflect the holiness he has put into my heart.

I have a friend, a Catholic priest, who served as Mother Teresa's translator when she was in the United States to address the United Nations. I was in his study one day and spied a picture of the two of them standing together on the streets of New York. I marveled again at her ancient, wrinkled, leathered, lined face, utterly unadorned, and thought to myself, "Is there anyone in the world more homely, and more beautiful?”,

Hers was the beauty of holiness. May it be ours as well.

DHR

“Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.” 

Our son, Josh, is a commercial salmon fisherman, fishing this summer out of Valdez, Alaska. He took this photograph and sent it to me this week. It reflects my voyage—an old fisherman, sailing into an uncertain future (note the gathering clouds), encircled by the faithfulness of God! (A rainbow, you know, when seen from above, is a perfect circle.)

DHR

Photograph by Joshua Roper: joshuaroperphotography.com

Scaret of Dying

Annie Trumbull Slosson, whose quaint and profound folktales give us a “glimpse of Joy beyond the walls of the world,” writes about a little boy that was “scaret of dying.”

Once there was a boy that was dreadful scaret o’ dyin’. Some folks is that way, you know; they ain’t never done it to know how it feels, and they’re scaret. And this boy was that way. He wa’n’t very rugged, his health was sort o’ slim, and mebbe that made him think about sech things more. ‘Tany rate, he was terr’ble scaret o’ dyin’. ‘Twas a long time ago this was,—the times when posies and creaturs could talk so’s folks could know what they was sayin’.

And one day, as this boy, his name was Reuben,—I forget his other name, —as Reuben was settin’ under a tree, an ellum tree, cryin’, he heerd a little, little bit of a voice,—not squeaky, you know, but small and thin and soft like, —and he see ‘t was a posy talkin’. ‘T was one o’ them posies they call Benjamins, with three-cornered whitey blowths with a mite o’ pink on ‘em, and it talked in a kind o’ pinky-white voice, and it says, “What you cryin’ for, Reuben? “And he says, “‘Cause I’m scaret o’ dyin’,” says he; “I‘m dreadful scaret o’ dyin’.” Well, what do you think? That posy jest laughed, the most cur’us little pinky-white laugh ‘t was,—and it says, the Benjamin says: “Dyin’! Scaret o’ dyin’? Why, I die myself every single year o’ my life.” “Die yourself ! “says Reuben “You ‘re foolin’; you ‘re alive this minute.” “‘Course I be,” says the Benjamin; “but that ‘s neither here nor there,—I’ve died every year sence I can remember.” “Don’t it hurt? “says the boy. “No, it don’t,” says the posy; “it ‘s real nice. You see, you get kind o’ tired a-holdin’ up your head straight and lookin’ peart and wide awake, and tired o’ the sun shinin’ so hot, and the winds blowin’ you to pieces, and the bees a-takin’ your honey. So it’s nice to feel sleepy and kind o’ hang your head down, and get sleepier and sleepier, and then find you ‘re droppin’ off. Then you wake up jest ‘t the nicest time o’ year, and come up and look ‘round, and—why, I like to die, I do.” But someways that didn’t help Reuben much as you ‘d think. “I ain’t a posy,” he think to himself, “and mebbe I wouldn’t come up.”

April showers bring May flowers. They also bring us the stirring of hope. Spring “posies, trees and creaturs” are hints of heaven, for God has planned it that way. But spring alone is not enough. It may only leave us with Reuben’s worry: “I ain’t a posy and mebbe I wouldn’t come up.” Spring’s hope can be an illusion, which is why T. S. Eliot, in his pre–Christian days, thought April was “the cruelest month.”

There is a surer word: Jesus said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25,26).

Who said this? One who actually rose from the dead. It’s one thing to make a bold assertion; it’s another to back it up, and back it up Jesus did by rising from the dead, “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

“If you believe that the Son of God died and rose again,” writes George MacDonald, “your whole future is full of the dawn of eternal morning, coming up beyond the hills of life, and full of such hope as the highest imagination for the poet has not a glimmer yet.”

The Son of God died and rose again, and his resurrection is the guarantee that God will bring us up and out of the ground. A thinking, feeling, remembering, recognizable part of us will live forever.

Living forever means living out the thought of eternity that God has placed in our hearts; meeting one’s loved ones lost through separating death; living in a world without blood, sweat and tears; seeing our Lord who loves us and gave everything he had to unite us to him forever.

But there’s another meaning I see: since we go around twice we can live in broken and ruined bodies for time; we can endure poverty and hardship for awhile; we can face loneliness, heartache and pain for a season. We don’t have to have it all on this earth. There is a second birth.

David Roper

Salty Sermons

“The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together.” ―T. S. Eliot

"Let your speech always be with grace,  seasoned with salt..." (Colossians 4:5,6).

Paul's metaphor, "seasoned with salt" meant ‘witty’ in Classical Greek usage and suggests language that is pithy, interesting and well chosen. British theologian, G. B. Caird commenting on this verse suggests that every person we address should be "treated as an end in himself and not subjected to a stock harangue."

In context, the verse applies to “those that are outside," but it seems to me that the principle applies to preaching as well and argues for discovering new ways to state old truths and manuscripting our sermons so we don't fall back on clichés and cant, worn-out phrases. That’s lazy thinking. As the “Preacher" would say, we should “search to find just the right words….” (Ecclesiastes 12:10).

Writing out our sermons makes us more responsible in our use of language. It helps us avoid shoddy thinking, evangelical argot, technical jargon. It makes our sermons more relevant and memorable. It makes us more exact.

With a prayer for salty sermons...

DHR

7/15/14