You Say You Want a Resolution?

When you have a God-consciousness you tend to see God in places unexpected.

We like resolution. We like it in music. We like it in a sneeze. (Don’t you hate it when you get built up for a big sneeze and then it dissipates. So frustrating!) We like it in a story. That is why it is so tough to abandon a book we have been reading, though bored to distraction. We want to know how it concludes. That’s why we hate soccer games that end in a tie. (You know you do.)

My wife and I have been watching some Hallmark Christmas movies. Yes, I am that good a husband. I notice that even in watching the cheesiest ones, I want to watch until the end. That, despite the fact that the plot seems the same in all of these: Girl meets boy; boy and girl share a mutual dislike of each other, but we, the audience sense a different kind of tension; issues are resolved, and by the end of the movie the two have fallen in love and committed themselves to each other forever.

 

On a side note, we have also noticed several other elements that seem to be included in each of these stories. There is always a scene at a Christmas tree lot. A real Christmas tree is the only kind that will do for the people who populate these movies. There is always a mean capitalist involved who thinks only about the bottom line. Sometimes it is one of the two who are destined for love. Of course, it is the other who wakens a latent love for Christmas in the other and helps capture the true meaning of the season once again. And lately I have noticed the prominent product placement of Folgers Classic Roast coffee, found right next to the coffee pot just before a couple sits down for a heart-to-heart and a cup of joe.

They are cheesy stories, so why do we like them? Why do I care that my wife has fallen asleep halfway through the movie and I must wait until later to see the all-too-predictable conclusion?

This is where I find the evidence for God. (You may have thought that the evidence was in the fact I actually watch these chick flicks with my wife at all.) We like resolution. We need resolution. We want a happy conclusion at the end of a struggle.

This is an old story. I see it as a story that is implanted deep into the DNA of each of us. It is the story of God. It is the story, more specifically, of God courting us.

We were made for God. He was our first love. He made us. He loved us. We went after other loves.

When the story is properly resolved, we end up with the one we should have been with from the very beginning. “Our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee,” confessed Augustine. To echo C. S. Lewis, the fact that we long for, indeed expect, a satisfying conclusion to the Big Story is evidence that it is there for a reason. There is a grand scheme. There is a plan. There is a happy conclusion.

The story of God and us is the prototype of all love stories. God cast His love on us. He pursued us. He won us.

Christmas is a big part of that redemption story. God, in his pursuit of us, became man. Of course, the story is not complete without His death and resurrection. He came to give himself for us. In so doing He has left us a perfect picture of the kind of love a husband is to have for his wife (Eph. 5:25-30).

This redemption story is not complete until we come to Him in faith. Then the union is complete. The story resolved.

But there is another part of the story of God yet unwritten. That is the chapter we are living now. In Longfellow’s great poem, turned Christmas Carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” he laments that there is no peace on earth, though we sing of such things. He wrote this in the midst of the American Civil War. Today we see war and conflict all about us. Where is this resolution to the conflict? When will this story of God be resolved? Stay tuned. “God is not dead, nor does he sleep.”

The redemption story gives us hope, yeah, confidence that the story–The Big Story–will be resolved as it should be. All things will be restored to their perfect state. God will have won. The Story resolved.

God made a “God made a farmer” commercial.

In the wake of the Superbowl filled with stories of Brother vs. Brother, Beyonce, brownouts and blown calls, the topic of conversation turns to, “What as the best commercial?” The consensus winner seems to be the one featuring the voice and words of the departed, iconic Paul Harvey, “God made a farmer.”

The big loser seems to be, and for good reason, the GoDaddy commercial featuring a sloppy kiss between a hot blonde and rash-infested nerd. We all hope that that will be the last time that commercial airs.

What is the message of the messages?

I think the message is that we still want to be inspired. We want to be inspired to do the right thing even when it is the more difficult road.

We still want to give honor where honor is earned.

We still admire hard work that benefits us all.

We still want to pass on a legacy of diligence and industry and faith to the next generation.

Or maybe, we just like trucks.

God of the Mundane

We want to see God in the miracles, in the stilling of the seas and the raising of the dead.  He normally shows up incognito.  He does not usually make a garish display of his awesome power.  He shows up in the mundane and even boring details of life.

He came as a baby in an obscure village in an insignificant nation under Roman hegemony. He lived most of his short life in an even less significant town in Galilee. Sure he pulled off some pretty awesome miracles, but never for show. He often admonished witnesses to keep the miracle a secret.

I think we most often miss God because we are looking in the wrong direction. We are looking for the Big Thing. God will show up in the little things. He may not be in the earthquake, the hurricane or the fire. He is most likely in the gentle whisper (see 1 Kings 19:11-13).

I think it is the case for me that I don’t see him until after He has left the scene. I see Him as I look back on what already happened. Things came together in unexpected and incredible ways that I would never have predicted. But all the details came together to bring glory to God and redound to my benefit.

I recognize that I am more spiritually daft than most. Many recognize the work of God as he is working. I am just a bit slow.

I will try to open my eyes to the God who is at work in every detail of life. He is the God in the cry of the new born. He is the God who gives new life to our lawns and trees this season of the year. He is the God who may be seen in the face of a child, the tear of joy, or of pain. He is the God who cares about the little things as well as the big things.

I recently read a Twitter post whose writer I respect and general point I get. But I did take issue with the specific message–the words actually stated. It said, “I refuse to ask small things of a Big God.” I understand the point. “God can do the big things. Ask him for big things.” But there are a lot more little things that we deal with. Our car breaks down, our child is sick, a friend grieves. To whom do we address the small concerns?

The same God who can do big things is also concerned about the little things. He wants those who have a vision to change the world. But the world will be changed one person, one detail, one decision, one day at a time.

It will be changed by a big God concerned about little people and small details.

A Cry for Humanity

Today, December 7,  is the date which President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew would “live on in infamy.” On that date in 1941 Japan pushed the United States into the worldwide conflict that we would have engaged eventually. But with the bombing of our naval base at Pearl Harbor, we were jerked into the reality of war brought to our own shores. This current generation can identify a little with what that “greatest generation” experienced because of the events of that other infamous date of more recent memory, September 11, 2001.

Albert Camus once said that “man’s first faculty is forgetting.” God also knows that we are a forgetting race. He gave to the Jewish nation elaborate celebrations that are, in part, visual mnemonic devices to help his people remember what he had done for their nation. And, by remembering, bring honor to God. Likewise, Jesus gave to his disciples the bread and the cup by which they, and we, would remember the sacrifice He paid with his body and his blood poured out on our behalf. Each time I consume the elements am consumed by them. I visualize the Savior beaten and bloodied, hanging on a cross. It is an awful sight. It is a sight that brings tears even as I write this sentence. It really happened! It is not a theological proposition. A real man–the Son of God–gave himself over to a brutal death. For me! I remember. When recalling His death no longer draws tears, I have not truly remembered. It is part of our human condition of forgetting. The impact is gone.

That is why we remind one another to remember.

“Don’t forget the milk.”

“Remember to take your pill.”

“Remember the Alamo.”

“Remember Pearl Harbor.”

“Remember 9-11.”

When we forget, we lose the power for good that memory effects. Remembering brings the power of the lesson to bear on today’s need.

This morning I read the story of Luba Gercak. She grew up in a shtetl, a Jewish community in Poland. She married a cabinet-maker while still in her teens and expected a quiet and peaceful life. When the Nazis invaded Poland, her world was upended. Her husband was taken to Auschwitz. Her three-year old son was ripped from her arms and sent to be killed. I wept. I didn’t tear up. I cried like child torn from his mother. Or, perhaps, a mother torn from her child. I pictured one of my three-year old grandsons being pulled from his mother’s love and sent to die. Somebody really did this. A human being took an innocent three-year old child and sent him to be killed. The story could be multiplied by the thousands. People committed unthinkable acts of atrocity upon others who had not long before been neighbors.

Luba later saw her husband’s dead body being dragged behind a Nazi truck. She wished only death for herself until God gave her a purpose for living.

She was sent to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany. One day she heard a child’s cry. She found that a group of Dutch children, 52 in all,  had been yanked from their parents and landed there, without plan for their future.  She first shamed her fellow inmates into allowing the children to share space with them. Then she urged an SS guard to allow her to take care of the children. She would beg, borrow and steal whatever she could find to keep the children fed and alive.

On April 15,1945 the Allied tanks rolled into Bergen-Belsen and liberated those captives of the holocaust. Anne Frank died at this same camp. But of Luba’s 52 children, only 2 had succumbed to the death that was a constant reality at the camp.

Luba later married and moved to the US. But she never forgot her children. They never forgot her. On a bright April day in 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation from Bergen-Belsen, some thirty of her children gathered on the steps of the Amsterdam city hall to honor Luba. She was given the Netherlands Silver Medal of Honor for Humanitarian Service from Queen Beatrix. The greatest gift she received that day was seeing her children living successful lives. The operative word being “living.”

One of those children is Stella Degen-Fertig. She was too young while at Bergen-Belsen to remember Luba. But her mother never let her forget. “I have thought of you all my life,” Stella told her through tears. “My mother always told me she had given birth to me, but that I owed my life to a woman named Luba. She said that I was never to forget.” Then she whispered in Luba’s ear, “I never have.”

So let’s remember. Let’s remember what evil lies in man. It didn’t begin with Hitler. We recall the slaughter of innocents 3,500 years ago when the Egyptians tried to end the Jewish race. It happened again in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It happens in some form or another every day somewhere in this world. Humans kill other humans with no reason.

Let’s also remember the Luba’s of the world. People who, sometimes in the middle of insane inhumanity, act as palliative antidote to malevolent violence and malignant apathy.

Remember the teacher who took the extra time to make sure you understood.

Remember the relative who set an example for you of unilateral love and grace.

Remember your mother who sacrificed her well-being that you might have enough.

Remember those who ran into burning buildings to help others get out.

Remember those who strapped on their boots and walked into the face of terror in order that we might live free.

“Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:3).

Learning & Knowing

How do people learn?  How do we know?  How do we know how we learn? How do we learn what we should know?  Alright, enough of that.  But I do want to pursue the question of how people really learn, and what it means to learn.

Pastors are often frustrated because they teach “their people” how to live according to God’s standard, and people still mess up.  Big time.  I have taught young adults the absolute imperative of dating only fellow believers who will help them in their walk with Christ.  The words are barely out of my mouth when I find that one of my charges has just fired up a relationship with someone who couldn’t tell the difference between an epistle and an apostle, a Baptist or a Buddhist.  Our married couples are still choosing to divorce at near that same rates as unbelievers and find no conflict with their Christian commitment.

Did they learn what was right?  They certainly understood the biblical truth on an academic level.  But did they really learn the truth?

Andy Stanley suggests that people’s behavior is not changed by preaching.  Rather, you change behavior by changing systems.  God has designed us this way.  “Your church is perfectly designed to get exactly the results that you are getting.”  If you want to change your church, change your systems–how you program, what you reward, how you schedule, how you teach.  It is all systems.  They drive and determine the course of your church. 

Most of us have never thought about the systems we live in and work in every day.   We all know the systems.  Few of us can articulate what they are.  They dwell deep in our DNA–deeper in those who have been around the longest.  The systems are rarely taught.  But they are always caught–like an infectious disease.

I will not develop that idea here, but it is food for thought.  Rather I want to ask the question: can we really say that we have learned because we can regurgitate the right answers on cue?  Or does learning require more?

Paul said, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want…” (Philippians 4:12).

Paul knew what it was like to be rich or poor. He knew it, not because he read it in a book. He lived it. Through this school of life, he learned. The stuff life threw at him made him truly understand.

I can teach a person to swing a tennis racquet. I will show him the proper grip, talk about weight transfer from back leg to front, and demonstrate the way the racquet should start low and finish high as the strings hit the ball in this upward motion, adding topspin. I could give a test and my student may be able to write down the requisite steps to a proper forehand.  This still does not mean that he knows how to hit a forehand. Until he does it–until he holds the racquet in his hand and feels the grip, brings the racquet back and hits the ball–he does not really understand.

How do most churches disciple people these days? We write a manual. We take the new believer through a set of classes, teaching them the propositions we feel are important. We may give a test and offer a list of things that he needs to do. Pass the test. Voila!   New disciple!

It looks nothing like the way Jesus trained disciples. His way was more dynamic. Teaching took place in the context of living.

“How do you do it?”

“Watch!”

“Now, you do it!”

“Understand?”

Discipling needs to be more a dynamic enterprize based on a modeling relationship of the Christian life than a static, catechistic, academic process. We want disciples to know the foundational truths of the Christian faith. They learn them best in the context of a relationship with a more mature believer, or preferably, a small group of believers.

The business world has discovered the biblical model, that is the Jesus model, for training people. Many now use mentoring and group interaction to effect learning and growth.

Perhaps it is time for the church to rediscover Jesus’ pattern (or system)  for disciple-making. Jesus’ pattern is to model and mentor in close proximity (or propinquity) with his disciples. The believer learns in the context of living and watching those who have walked the path longer. I know this puts more pressure on the discipler, but that may be a good thing. It introduces a sense of mutual accountability that helps both disciple and discipler grow in their walk of faith. The pattern is hear, watch, do (see 2 Timothy 2:2).

In this way they not only learn. They know.

kgp

Living Life to the Full

You hear it often.  From coaches.  From parents.  From preachers.  I have said it. 

“Give 100% all the time.” (Or “110%.”)

“Live each day to the fullest.”

“Don’t waste a second of your life.”

While I totally agree with the sentiment, let us speak honestly about the issue.  First we can’t give 100% all the time, much less 110%.  There are seasons and spurts where we may, and some times when we must give every ounce of energy we have to a cause.  Should we try to give 100% all the time at everything we do, we would soon be depleted. 

When I play basketball I like to think I give 100%.  But the fact is, I can only give 100% effort for very short periods–5 seconds say–when I break into an all out sprint down court.  I keep most of the energy in reserve for the times I need to kick it into gear.  When I have gone all out playing basketball for a couple hours, the next day my best is much less than the day before.  My energy is spent.  I have aches that keep me from moving as well. I need to replenish.  I could not go full out for that long two days in a row.

Likewise, if I try to bench press the most weight possible for me, I could only do it once. In fitness terms it is call the One Rep Max (1rm).  By definition, I could not do that twice.  I need to figure out what my 1rm is and do sets at 6-8 reps at about 80% of 1rm, or 12-15 at 70% 1rm.

The point is that we don’t give 100% all the time.  We can’t.  Whether we’re talking about basketball, lifting weights, being a parent, employee, or Christian worker.  We need down time.  We need time to rest and relax.  We need times when it looks as if we are doing nothing.  Regeneration is as important to long term productivity as the activity itself.

So what do we mean when we say we need to live each day to the full?  You may think of a Mountain Dew commercial.  Some guy is flying down the mountain on a snowboard with reckless abandon, thanks to the charge he got from “the Dew.” I imagine if I tried that, my life would not be so full as it would be short.

Living to the full does not mean to fill each second with an adrenaline rush or major expenditure of energy. What do we mean then when we say to live life to the full?

A few thoughts. Living life to the full means that we are living out our purpose. Most people have no idea what their unique purpose is. I am not talking  just about goals, which are also important. But even before that, it is important that we know what is our ultimate purpose. Because ultimately it doesn’t much matter if we achieve a set of given goals if they are not advancing the purpose for which we were born. Find your purpose and your life begins to make sense. Passion will energize your efforts, when your efforts are fueled by your purpose.

Second, I think when we live life to the full we are present in every waking minute (or most of them). That is, we live in the moment. God has placed you in this place, at this time for a purpose. There is a person before you with a need you may help meet. A child needs your wisdom. A spouse needs your shoulder. A daughter needs your credit card. Well, you get the point.

Or else you need to learn the lesson that God has for you now. The book, the song, the associate, is speaking truth to you in your situation now. Living to the full would imply we get out of the moment all that God put in it. It means we give it all that is required of us.

Finally, I believe that when we live life to the full we stay focused. This has many implications. I will mention one of which I am particularly guilty. Many of us like to multi-task. We believe we are getting the most out of the moment by doing more than one thing at a time. There are some things that work well together. I often listen to books on my iPod while playing golf or working out. I don’t think either is diminished by the other.

Other activities don’t go as well together. When my wife is trying to engage me in a conversation and I am dividing my attention between her and the evening news, communication is sacrificed. It means I end up confused about where my wife is tomorrow night because I was listening to Charles Gibson trying to explain the latest cap and trade plan instead of hearing my wife tell me she has a parent-teacher meeting. Studies show that multi-tasking makes us less productive, not more.

Colossians admonishes slaves, with application to us all, “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men.” God is the One keeping the books. When we allow our relationship to God to define our success, it matters very little if others take note of our achievements (or lack of them). So live your life to the full.  Shoot for giving 80 % and we’ll call it good.

The Problem with Prophets

Elijah was causing problems for Ahab (not the Arab) the king of Israel.  He prayed (according to James 5:17) that it would not rain until he gave the word.  And it hadn’t rained for years.  Ahab was angry at the propeht.

Obadiah was a faithful servant of Yahweh, who had hidden many true prophets from the king’s wrath.  Here is the exchange in 2 Kings 18 when Obadiah meets Elijah, the prophet.

⁷ As Obadiah was walking along, Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed down to the ground, and said, “Is it really you, my lord Elijah?”

⁸ “Yes,” he replied. “Go tell your master, ‘Elijah is here.’ ”

⁹ “What have I done wrong,” asked Obadiah, “that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death? ¹⁰ As surely as the LORD your God lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear they could not find you. ¹¹ But now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ ¹² I don’t know where the Spirit of the LORD may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn’t find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the LORD since my youth. ¹³ Haven’t you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the LORD ? I hid a hundred of the LORD’s prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water. ¹⁴ And now you tell me to go to my master and say, ‘Elijah is here.’ He will kill me!”

I can see Obadiah’s hesitance.  “You want me to go tell my master, the king, that you are here.  God will sweep you off to your next gig and I will be left holding the bag, which will soon be holding my head.  Not a good plan for me.”

That is the problem with prophets.  They are here today and who knows where tomorrow.  Prophets are not the people you want to rely on to faithfully serve in your ministry week after week.  They are always getting a new “call from God.”

A friend once told me he asked a young couple to be part of a jazz band he was putting together.  The couple told him they would have to pray about it.  He told them not to pray.  God would just tell them no.  He was not interested in employing a couple musicians, good though they were, who on consultation with God the next week might render a different answer.

I know people who believe that everything they do must be done with a clear “direction from God.”  Of  course they don’t really believe that or else they would never do anything.  So it becomes only the BIG decisions that need the divine imprimatur.  What time to wake in the morning is a decision they can handle all on their own.  Whether to take that job in Hoboken is an issue about which God must direct them.  It is never quite clear how God directs them.  I suspect that they end up doing what they want to do anyway.  But now they have divine sanction for it.  But that may just be the cynic in me rearing its practical head.

One of these friends recently blogged about the difficulty he was having “waiting on God.”  There were things he wanted to do but needed divine permission.  After all, as he wrote, “whatever is not of faith is sin.”  Never mind that that scripture passage has nothing at all to do with how we make decisions.  In the context of Romans 14 it is about not violating your own conscience.  Some may eat certain meats, others may not because of conscience.  Here is the immediate context:

²²So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. ²³But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.”

You may do whatever you want that is not sin and does not violate your conscience.  What may be right for you may be wrong for me.  I can never drink alcohol with a clear conscience.  Some find no problem with it.  For me to drink would be a violation of my conscience.  It would not be done in faith.  That is what that text means.

That is another problem with prophets.  They make scripture mean whatever the “Holy Spirit” tells them it means.  And who are you or who am I to argue with the Holy Spirit.  They have a “word from the Lord.”

Here is how I live my life.  It is also how I believe God, through the Scriptures, teaches me to live my life.  I do not wait for God to tell me each move He wants me to make.  I read his Word.  I know His voice.  I walk clear-eyed into a world of men whom God loves and for whom Christ died.

I know my gifting.  I use what is in my hand.  I see needs that God sets before me and do my best to bring my gifting and my opportunities to meet the needs I see.  I allow for God to change my course.  Otherwise I plan a long obedience in the same direction.

Paul did not “wait on God” to move him.  He was on the move.  When God did close some doors in Asia, in order to open the door to Europe (“the Macedonian call”) it seems to be an aberration, not the norm.  But many want to make that experience normative.  It is not.  We do what God has set before us, using the tools placed in our hand to meet the needs of the Kingdom of God.  Outside of that I live my life not concerned that I am missing the center point of God’s will.  I do not lose sleep that I have taken the wrong step.  In the end I know that God is sovereign.  What he wills will be done.  There is nothing I can do to change that.  But I do not deem to know His sovereign will before it happens.

Living each day full out for the glory of God is a profit you can take to the bank.

The Legalism of the Liberated

I guess old habits die hard.  Many of us who have dropped the old baggage of legalism are still girded with the fanny pack of judgmentalism.  Our object is just different.

No longer do we concern ourselves with such incidentals as hair and skirt length.  Well, maybe skirt length.  But we don’t worry about the irreparable damage that might be done to the youthful soul by rock-n-roll.  We play the stuff at church now!

What takes our attention off the important things now is just the opposite.  We look sideways at people who wear ties to church, especially if accompanied by a sport coat.  Don’t even get me started on those who wear three-piece suits!  At least we don’t have to deal with the ignominy of powder blue, polyester leisure suits any longer.

We  wonder if the woman in the poufed coif, welded in place by a half can of White Rain hairspray might be harboring legalistic judgments about our wearing sandals to church.  I think I caught a glance of her eying my tee shirt with piosity in her eyes.

If a church still sings only hymns, they are suspect.  If they use the hymnal instead of white screen, that is strike two.  If in singing the hymns from the hymnals, they are accompanied by an organ, strike three.  They are not worth our time.

I am acquainted with a wonderful, godly family who I’m quite sure have never had a rock c.d. in their home.  The girls never wear pants, and the hair styles are straight out of rural Utah.  They are just the kind of people who, when you see them, you begin to check your attire for anything that might offend.  They seem like “that kind” of people.  By “that kind,” I mean those who would sit in judgement of  my liberty.  They are not.  For as I said, they are a wonderful and godly family.  I have never heard a judgmental word usher from their mouths.  They remained at their church as it engaged in the worship wars.  They still faithfully serve there.  I suspect they are not the biggest fans of the new music.  I only suspect it because I have never heard one negative word from any of them over it.  They are of a much more traditional bent than I, but I am beginning to believe that I am more judgmental than they.

My judgmentalism is the new kind.  I judge those whom I deem locked in an era which passed with the last vibrations of the pipe organ for which my home church paid too much.  I have come to this self-awareness gradually, but was struck with it recently when our worship pastor offered a traditonal hymn of invitation.  I almost refused to sing out of indignation. 

That’s when it hit me.  I am a liberated legalist.  I judge those I deem judges.  I sit in judgment of those who have not traveled the full journey with me from “Rock of Ages” to “Rock the Light.” 

So I repent. 

Forgive my looking askance

on your pressed and pleated pants. 

I’ll no longer sit and judge

Or even hold a grudge

If you want to wear your skirts,

And your tightly buttoned shirts.

Go on and sing your hymns,

Or whatever suits your whims.

I will give you total grace,

Though your style I don’t embrace.

First Place

I am a competitive guy.  I like to win.  A former coach said taking second is like kissing your sister.  That is not too exciting.  I always believed it.  I have several trophies for tennis tournaments won and for baseball teams I’ve coached.  They are now toys for the grandkids to play with or otherwise just items that collect dust in the corner.  The allure is in the winning more than in the trophy won.

We all want to win first place.  Nobody deliberately chooses second or third.  The fact is that only one can be first.  As we get older and recognize our limitations we begin to scale back our expectations a bit.  Now I am happy to have competed well.  I suppose soon I will be happy to have competed at all.

Competition is one thing when it comes to the sports arena.  In the arena of life I have long ago stopped trying to compete for first place.  There is One on top.  “He ranks higher than everything that has been made.  Through his power all things were made—things in heaven and on earth, things seen and unseen, all powers, authorities, lords, and rulers. All things were made through Christ and for Christ.  He was there before anything was made, and all things continue because of him.  He is the head of the body, which is the church. Everything comes from him. He is the first one who was raised from the dead. So in all things Jesus has first place” (Colossians 1:15b-18, New Century Version).

Jesus is in first place.  He was before everything that was created.  He, in fact, created everything.  He is co-equal with God and the creative force of God.  He was the first one raised out of death never to die again.  And he is the head of the Church, which is His body.  There is no debate for the believer as to who is on top.  Yet still we forget.

How did the one who was on top use such power and authority?  Verse 20 reads, “And through Christ, God has brought all things back to himself again—things on earth and things in heaven.  God made peace through the blood of Christ’s death on the cross.”  The One who had the right to all things, who had made all things, who held first place over all things, gave himself to die for those whom He made in order to bring them–to bring us–back to God.

The implications for us should be obvious.  First, we must stop competing with Jesus for first place in our lives and affections.  Jesus holds that hands down.  He owns that right both through the act of creation and then redemption.  He made us.  Then He died to bring us back to God.  He alone deserves first place in my life.  This means that job, or possessions or money or power or even wife and kids, even grandkids, must take a subordinate role in our affections and our loyalties.  Jesus holds first place over all things.

Second, I must begin to act as Jesus did.  Though He had rights over all things, He made Himself  a servant to all.  He told us, “If you want to be first, be last.  If you want to be great, become small.  If you want to lead, serve.”  Jesus led by example.  “For even the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).  The way to greatness is serving more people.  Let’s begin to compete to see who can serve the most.  There is the road to greatness.

White as Snow

December 17, 2008

It is a famous passage.  “Come now, let us reason together says the Lord.  Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow, though the are as red as crimson they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).  Snow is not a very commons sight in the Middle East from which the author penned those words.  Less common is the sight of snow in places like the Philippines and the Polynesian Islands.  So uncommon that without pictures or video, people native to those lands will never see snow without traveling out of the area.

I understand that missionaries translating Isaiah 1:18 chose to use the phrase, “whiter than the inside of a coconut” to convey the whiteness of snow for people groups who have never seen snow.  But for those of us familiar with the blanket of impeccable white that a fresh snowfall brings, the picture is more than apt.  The snow covered earth under sunny skies can be blinding in its brilliance.  No coconut innards can compare. 

Right now, just such a blanket covers Kansas City landscape outside my window as I write.  The unclouded midday sun does not enhance the whiteness of the snow, it simply reveals it in its true nature.  It is radiant.

What is it about snow that put Isaiah in mind of the person whose sins God has forgiven?  What is it about whiteness that illustrates purity?  I think we get close to the idea with the French word for white: blanc.  Blank, like a blank slate.  Nothing written on it to detract from its pure state.  No footprints through this snow to mar its pristine nature. 

We used to have white glove inspections at the dorm when I was in college.  Yes, it was a very conservative school.  The white glove could reaveal better where the dirt was.  The dirt could often go unseen, or at least unnoticed on a dark surface.  The white glove showed the impurities. 

God alone can make our sins as white as snow.  The only way that can happen is by the act of covering them with His blood, blotting them out forever.  And when God erases our sins, he leaves no erasures.  No trace remains.