Romans a hard truth: Speaking of Wrath and Beauty

Romans 1:18  God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

19  You see, what is known about God is evident within these people,

Because God made it evident to them.

20  Since the world’s creation God’s invisible attributes,

His eternal power and

His divine nature, have all been clearly seen, so that these people are without excuse.

His attributes, power, and nature have been understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

21  Even though they knew God.

They did not honor Him as God.

They did not give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations.

They did not honor Him as God, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22  Professing to be wise, they became fools.

23  They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.  They are without excuse

24  Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them, they are still without excuse.

25  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.  They are without excuse

26  For all of this, God gave them over to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.  27  The men, also, abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.   They are without excuse

28  And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are not proper, being filled with all

29  unrighteousness,

wickedness,

greed,

evil;

full of envy,

murder,

strife,

deceit,

malice;

they are gossips,

30  slanderers,

haters of God,

insolent,

arrogant,

boastful,

inventors of evil,

disobedient to parents,

31  without understanding,

untrustworthy,

unloving, (heartless)

unmerciful; (ruthless) and,

32  Although they know God’s ordinance’s, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice these evils.

 

The world began in beauty: the glory of a Garden: Eden.  It’s gone now, or hidden, or guarded. Maybe we get to see it in the end. 

The garden was closed due to sin.  We are good at sin.  God responded with wrath.  What does that even mean?

A flood followed by a rainbow washed evil people away.  Jews continued to sacrifice innocent animals’ blood sacrifices with no clear, lasting answer to God’s wrath.  God’s wrath is like my mom’s wrath, or vice versa.  The Greeks used two words for anger: thumos and orgae.  Thumos is flash point or score book anger.  Your roomie drops dirty clothes on the floor for you to pick up and clean…for a time.  However when time is fulfilled, when the last score fills your scorebook of stupid roomie tricks.  You explode.  Roomie says, “All I did is —” and you angrily say, “NO, you’ve been doing it forever!  Yelling shows this is thumos. 

Orgae originally covered all passions, all emotions.  In time it meant only the strongest passion — anger.  This cool to lukewarm anger waits to see how stupid your choices will be.  My mom had a facial expression I should have learned sooner.  Her look said her words were useless, her reasons unheard.  She relaxed a tad to hand me over to unseen consequences coming to me. 

God’s wrath, calmly, patiently will bring you to God’s righteousness.  See the two “worlds” below.

 

Under God’s Wrath                              Under God’s Righteousness

Creation Groans                                      (ch8) Creation is set free from our sinfulness.
Every imaginable evil reigns
but nature’s laws hold in witness to       God’s true nature as we respond to Him in Christ
                                               

We can “see” God’s wonder but            we must believe in Christ to be IN Him.

 

God first hands us over to our sin’s results, maybe those costs awaken us.  W cry out to Him.  In the Old Testament.  Israel and Judah chased other gods.  They did heinous things to themselves and worse to their children in worship of those idols.  Those practices were “all the rage” an odd word in this discussion.

God sent prophets asking, “You’re certain you want to worship this ‘god’?  This lump of stone can’t protect you from Assyria, Egypt, or Babylon!”  God asked despairingly, lovingly, anguished, horrified, and in anger (all the emotions all the orge!).  Then He removed His protection and the next conquering army extinguished lives, obliterated homes, and carryied away those left alive. 

The Jews who woke up chastened in Babylon later returned home.  The Jews who awakened in Assyria, well, they vanished.  Waiting for you to wake up in God’s wrath is dicey.  Hoping you can put the brakes on in the Prodigal’s Pig Pen is suicidal and stupid. 

Under God’s Wrath                              Under God’s Righteousness

What I wish for here                          is Good over here

is His Grace                                      beckons me to Him

God’s wrath is meant to wake me up and wish for the good I see in His righteousness!  People in wrath can’t get good things from the domain of Righteousness without taking the Righteous Father’s Son as Lord and Master.

God’s wrath isn’t flashpoint.  His wrath carries all His emotions: worry, grief, agony, pain, and a wrenching sense we haven’t bottomed out, yet.  God’s wrath sees our hopelessness, depression, self-destruction, and is sick when those are not enough to make us sick of ourselves and move to change.  God’s wrath leaves us to the inevitable.  Let’s read the passage. 

 

Under God’s Wrath Sounds like

   “God gave them over”

  

²⁴So God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts — that their bodies might be dishonored.  We’re overweight and anorexic.  We’re depressed, anxious and panicking.  Our infant mortality, malnutrition, and heart disease rates exceed some undeveloped countries.  We dishonor our bodies.  Pornography is rampant and licking at the screens of computers and phones.  We dishonor our bodies.  The APA intimates child molestation may not be all that bad after all.  Opening a way for us to dishonor many more bodies.  Jesus wept.  God’s wrath holds its breath.

²⁶For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.  Yui Lin sat shocked in our study:  “You mean all your parents did not throw you against the wall if you did something bad?”  We also push the due penalties of our sin into others.  We fill 40 to 50% of our hospital beds with psychosomatic disorders.  We receive in our own persons the due penalty of our error.  Jesus wept.  The Father’s anger wrenchingly wonders how much more we will take before we turn back to Him.  We multiply ways to inflict the due penalties of drugs and violence on us and our children’s bodies. 

“28b God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, that are 32 worthy of death.  They not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” 

God gave us over to ever sicker entertainment.  He winces as we applaud someone making a buck with vile lyrics.  God cringes as depraved souls on talk showsappear urbane.  Jesus is furious as bizarre individuals open fire anywhere.  And God may consider apologizing to Sodom and Gomorrah as Howard Stern survives incredible gaffs because he’s a money-maker.  We’re drinking wrath.  We drink wrath’s consequence in us to create multi-billion dollar porn and rap industries.  We approve what they do by entertaining ourselves to death with it.  We redecorate in even more gruesome colors our wrath-filled world rather than repent.

In insurance we quantify risk.  Scientists, statisticians, and policy makers attach numbers to the risk of getting breast cancer, or multiple STDs at epidemic levels, to flying and food additives, to getting hit by lightning or falling in a bathtub.  Wrath skews our risk assessment. 

Some live happily on the San Andreas Fault, but fear riding a New York subway.  Some smokers can’t get near a fatty steak, and some women afraid of a birth control’s side effects have unprotected sex with strangers.  Our risk assessment is skewed in a wrath filled world. 

It’s as if we incarcerate petty criminals with zeal, while inviting mass murderers into our bedrooms.  If we want to put money on real killers, we’d go after suicide, not asbestos. 

Radon.  We twist the facts reassure ourselves.  Some see their risk is low in a new house; others, because their house is old.  Some see little risk in a house on a hilltop; others, because theirs is at the bottom of a hill.”

Three out of four baby boomers (born 1946 to ‘64) say they look younger than their peers, and 4 out of 5 say they have fewer wrinkles than other people their age¾statistically impossible.

Enough!  Downer.  Bummer.  So sad!  Why?  Paul explains in 2 Corinthians.  7:9ff Your sorrow led you to repentance.  For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way.  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. Wrath brings Godly sorrow to you.

Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, all godly guys, were saddened by the world, confessing the sins of their nation.  God heard and powerfully responded to each. 

Let the truth bring Godly sorrow to you.

It’s hard to see why we need sorrow.  Hmm.  Most gospel tracts start with:  “God has a great plan for you over in His righteousness, but you’re stuck in wrath world.  See how wonderful He is by looking at Nature and at beauty.  You hate being in wrath viewing wonderful stuff from outside.  You were created to be inside His grace, inside His salvation!”

The Beauty in God’s Righteousness

Start with verse 19, “That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that anyone is excuse.

Once, flying down the Gulf Coast of Louisiana I looked down out my window to see islands connected under the shallow water by strips of land.  On the surface, those links seem invisible: unconnected islands.  Likewise, Paul argues we see more from (God’s) elevated point of view.

Beauty. In Emmy Noether and Albert Einstein’s work we see physics truths based on symmetry: a deep beauty.  Soap bubbles meet at 120-degree angles, and two hydrogens and oxygen in water molecules meet at 105 degrees¾giving shape to bubbles and snowflakes.  Trees, blood vessels and rivers all branch in strikingly similar ways.

Beauty. Berkeley, geologist Raymond Jeanloz, impresses students with the power of large numbers by drawing a line designating zero on one end of the blackboard and another marking a trillion on the far side.  Then he asks students to draw a line where a billion falls.  (It falls near the chalk line marking zero.)

Wonder. The number of molecules in a pint of water placed end to end…. form a chain capable of encircling the Earth over 2,000 million times.

Awesome. A pinhead heated to the temperature of the center of the Sun, writes Jeans, “emits enough heat to kill anyone venturing within a hundred miles of it.”

Astonishing. A brain builds up all its gray matter by doubling.  To get 15 billion nerve cells takes thirty-three doublings of the first cell; to get to half that number takes thirty-two doublings ¾ roughly the size of an ape’s brain.  Your brain is but one doubling away from your simian relatives.

Beauty. When Smoot sought to verify he’d found the primordial wrinkles in space time. One of the most convincing clues was the fact that the wiggles he saw were scale invariant — meaning that each patch of sky revealed the same spectrum of wrinkles, from smallest to largest.

He wrote: … we’re born and grow in fondness for each other; we have genes for it.  We can be talked out of that fondness, for the genetic message is like distant music, and we can be hard-of-hearing.  Society is noisy, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection. Hard-of-hearing, we go to war.  Stone deaf, we make nuclear missiles.  Nonetheless, the music is there, waiting for more listeners.  (God said to know Him we must be still to know that He is God.)

A very slight cause, which escapes us,
determines a considerable effect which we cannot help seeing,
and then we say this effect is due to chance. — Henri Poincare´

Beauty. Even though Einstein’s theories focus on the universe’s invariant properties that never change, a popular translation came out: “There is no truth; truth depends on how you look at it”; or, “Everything is relative.”  Einstein’s hidden scaffolding holds nature’s many-faceted house up.  Instead of “everything is relative,” relativity says:  “Things look relative, but don’t let that fool you.”

We love creation’s symmetry even in the face of our asymmetrical treatment of others. 

Gross points out that Einstein’s great advance in his 1905 paper on special relativity was he “put symmetry first…..This is a profound change in attitude.”

Beauty. Emmy Noether’s theorem proved conservation laws to be symmetry’s laws — a huge breakthrough.  Since the laws of physics are symmetrical, they do not change over distance or time, in space or on Earth, on large scales or small, today or tomorrow. 

Emmy was not interested in calculation; in fact, she was so far removed from “pedestrian activities like calculations” that some people called her brand of mathematics “theology.”

Like Einstein, Noether saw Nature’s hidden structures hold seemingly dissimilar things together.  To honor her, Einstein wrote a letter to the New York Times describing her as a “creative mathematical genius” who discovered methods “of enormous importance.”

“What’s beautiful in science is exactly what’s beautiful in Beethoven,” said a physicist Victor Weisskopt.  “In the fog of events you suddenly see a connection.  It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply in you, connecting things that were always in you that were never put together before.”

“To understand nature ¾ its rules, is equivalent to understanding its symmetries.”  “This is why particle physicists are obsessed with symmetry.  At a fundamental level, symmetries not only describe the universe; they determine what is possible, that is, what is physics.”

Symmetry. Symmetry also led our discovering antimatter.  Strange stuff — unknown here before the 1930s — made its first appearance as a minus sign in an equation.  When physicist P. A. M. Diary mathematically combined special relativity and quantum mechanics, the union produced twin symmetrical solutions — one with a plus sign, the other with a minus — two versions, each the exact mirror image of the other.

In 1949 Richard Feynman showed that mathematically, an antiparticle is the same as a particle moving backward in time.

So a thorny question arose:  If the universe came into being in a burst of pure energy, where did all the antimatter go?  It must have been there, because the laws of physics are symmetrical.  And if there was as much antimatter as matter, then every bit of matter would have joined with a bit of antimatter and annihilated each other into nothingness.  That didn’t happen since enough of something stuck around to evolve into stars, galaxies, planets and us.

Beauty. Blood vessels, trees and rivers branch in surprisingly similar ways.  The same simple patterns repeat over and over, growing from seeming chaos:  Jupiter’s serene red spot, sitting just below the giant planet’s waistline for centuries, is created by unimaginably turbulent storms.  Patterns of inheritance, like your father’s nose are recognizable in so many permutations.

Wrath is moving us to God’s righteousness where beauty exists. In God’s righteousness lies truth, beauty, symmetry: life.  How impossible is it to travel from wrath filled darkness and chaos into truth and beauty’s rightness?

The two dimensions: wickedness and morality, light and dark, wrath and righteousness. 

God’s wrath is His righteousness refusing to leave us in wickedness, darkness, or the carnage of our sin.

Beadoleoma

“Ah dinna ken” is one of Jill’s and my favorite ways to say “I don’t understand.”  I have ways in other languages.  I NEED more ways to say “I don’t understand.” 

So “ken” is a favorite word. It may stem from reading At the Back of the North Wind, and The Princess and Curdie from George MacDonald, who Mark Twain loved touring.  CS Lewis published an anthology of MacDonald.  He also put George in The Great Divorce. George just walks into the action, and if you had read him, you shake your head and laugh!

So “ken” is a favorite word not a favorite doll.

“Kenning” is also a favorite.  Kenning is when you pair two words to create an evocative new word.  In Beowulf, over a third of all words are kennings.  Two favorites are bone-house for a body, and beadoleoma for “battle light” or Beowulf’s sword.  Now you sense Tolkien’s source for a sword that glows as enemies (and battle) draw near. 

And where I got my name for WordPress.  Maybe it is not blinding, more of a dull, you really must turn off all the lights to see it — and it is not a razor, but it is my battlelight. 

Which touches on Paul and his letter to maybe his most beloved folks.  Ephesus was scary, hard, beautiful and Paul’s kind of folks.  He skipped meeting them on what all figured was his last trip before dying.  Could not not see them.  He stopped down the coast and folks ran down, fell on his neck weeping so hard they all staggered down.  Then they dusted him off, pointed him to his boat taking him to a certain fate, and waved bye-bye. 

Ephesians.  So in his love letter to them he writes a sustained metaphor: the Armor of God for believers.  And at the last of the list he bequeaths to them swords. 

What loving God bequeaths swords to His children?

The same God who sends His Own into sewers to find disposable babies, into brothels to find disposed-of children, into labs to research what we cannot see but die of easily.  This God who loves the world through us gives us swords, and if my kenning is correct, the sword that lights your way, also is sharp beyond your ability to hone it, and it awaits your using it to better, to protect, to save, and light the way for those given to the slaughter. 

Beadoleoma.  If it is bright, you did not make it so. 

Influence(r)

We allow others to hijack the concept of influence.  It is killing us.

As a kid growing up in church, school and community, I had influencers.  Many intentionally and many without knowing it poured into my life.

I then noticed untrue, unreal trends. They did not reflect what I observed.  People in churches gave testimonies, and they were mostly in first person, and over and over it was “God showed me” and “I realized” and — I knew they were omitting older folks, family, friends and strangers who shared zest, hope, light, strength, insights with that person testifying.

It was not honest.

I also noticed  “influencers” lived in Washington DC, New York and London and held sway in decisions affecting thousands, millions of people.

But my life’s deep influencers were like Mary Nixon who graduated herself so she could teach us AP English in 7th, 9th, and 11th grades.  She showed me we can love literature, think deeply while wrestling with life issues and still believe, in fact, believe more deeply.  My grandfather and namesake showed me courage got him through a World War, built his values and beliefs, and when I was older I found, his courageous love moved him to adopt my mom and better to me than many bloodline grandfathers.

And I DO have mini influencers.

A student who is first in her family to graduate college.

An abused boy striving to be a great dad to three girls.

The crossing guard lady for my son’s school: twenty years and counting.

The two ladies who open the doors to worship for the last several years.

None of them have a website, blog, Facebook business page, or more than a hundred followers.

I remember a cartoon from, I think, the New Yorker.  Two undertakers stand outside an empty room with someone in repose in a casket.  One whispers to the other, “I thought a big room because he had 2,000 Facebook friends.”

Every time someone hijacks an important word like “influence” or “friend” we are closer to being like Neo before Trinity or Morpheus.

So says a guy writing to influence you rather than invest a lunch or anything expensive to actually touch your life.

hearse thief

Medical schools starting two centuries ago faced a continuing need: corpses.  They needed recently healthy corpses.  They needed the pregnant, children, old or diseased and mostly: fresh corpses.

Dying as a pauper in London or New York made a fair wager — your corpse passed to a dissection class before a grave.  Medical schools harvested no corpses. Needing plausible deniability, there arose a trade providing corpses, and these men were bizarrely titled Resurrection Men, spitting on Christians’ hope of resurrection.

If caught, they faced grave robbing charges.  Or worse, if police suspected he hurried anyone from this life to help doctors-in-training learn surgery — he faced death — and of course, a final turn ‘through’ medical school.

Grave robbers.  Hearse thieves.  Everyone — murderers, thieves, prostitutes — looked down on them and feared, desperately feared passing through their hands.

Christians were offended at such a title for these men.  This ‘resurrection’ horrifically twisted hope in Christ.

But God has, if anything, a profound sense of humor, and a deep, deep sense of irony.

So Jesus hiked from the north country through valleys southward.  At evening, He climbed up from the road to tiny Nain.  Maybe Nain was built on Shunem’s ruins or nearby.  And in tiny Nain where birth and death were bookends for few surprises, everyone could recite a time when God let a town woman push the great Prophet Elisha to attempt, to ask the impossible.  All these centuries later, every child and agnostic knew the story.  Elisha promised her a son.  She bore him, and on a hot day in harvest he died.  She rode hellbent for leather straight to Mt. Carmel where prophets commune with God.

And she answered the Prophet’s servant pointedly asking, “Is all well with you?”

“Yes!”

“Is all well with your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Is all well with your child?”

And she lied, or she believed more than a cooling corpse waiting in the Prophet’s room she built for him.  “All is well!”

It shook him.  Such faith.  Such hope.  Elisha rushed from the mountain to spend an afternoon begging God to relent and resurrect the child.  God gave him back.

Centuries ago.  Where legends live.

So, Jesus walking into Shunem/Nain stopped a funeral for an only son: a widow’s final hope.  And disregarding all civility Jesus touched the hearse to talk to — the dead boy.

Who responded.  Jesus helped him from the hearse, gave him back to his mother, and everyone paraded back into town, leaving a bewildered hearse driver scratching his head.  The first victim of The Hearse Thief, doing a dress rehearsal for Himself soon enough, and all of us soon enough.

If Jesus wept at a later funeral, He surely smiled at this one, and God, as usual, had a laugh on any who call hearse thieves by such an exalted, holy title as Resurrection Man.

Special Consideration

I deserve special consideration.  At least, I think I do.

Honestly, it’s in my script.  I was born in America when only a fraction of my friends went to war.  A baby boomer; I attended school in a rich district, where being white got me benefits blacks schools did not get.  My church brought in Oxford scholars. I had an IQ to enjoy accelerated classes, was a doctor’s kid.  Nothing I earned.  All came unasked, undeserved.

I sensed I was called by God to serve Him, so I got to do that for years, with pay, and believed down deep, I got special considerations.  Get out of Jail Free cards.

The problem with special consideration, though, is that it has nothing to do with me.

Years ago, Jill and I boarded a Delta flight and were happily surprised to find the Captain was Darl Henderson.  We had been to his house often, eaten, and skied behind his boat while serving as a youth minister in Coral Gables.  I would never have known he flew C130s in Vietnam so close to the action that he got combat pay, if I had not wandered down a hallway to a bathroom (two were in use!) and seen photos on a wall.  He was quiet like that.

Darl was kind.  We found our seats and buckled in.  As we ignored the safety talk, a stewardess asked Jill and me to move to First Class and take new seats — at the Captain’s request.

We ate with real silver ware, a meal we only dreamed about in “last” class, and were too excited to sleep in the huge chairs while Darl flew.  Special Consideration.

I think I deserve special consideration, irrespective of any fact that I ever deserved any of it that has come before.

Between our two boys, Jill miscarried in the same month that her horse died.  We were devastated.  We fell from special consideration, but no more than the one in five pregnancies that abort universally.  Even there, at a prayer service where Mildred told us she had born two children full term to lose both, Charles Burnside quietly gave us a check — covering all our out-of-pocket costs to the odd dollar amount we would be billed for!  How could he know?

At the core of my faith, I believe, I hope, that beyond a special consideration of salvation, God in Christ plans for me, that He builds on, extends that special consideration.  And He does; just like 50,000+ names on a black scar of granite in a hill on The Mall; just like the 168 who died in the Murrah Building blast; or teens murdered in classrooms in schools across the country or on our highways.

You see, we denigrate the term, squandering it on temporary dwellings: bodily and material.  We denigrate it as we fear it: God’s special consideration means Heaven, with Him.  I want that, but fear it might be today, so, like Freud said, I binge on trivia and seek winnings, upgrades, great prices on steals, and so on.

I fear the ultimate upgrade, the last special consideration.  Not Darl.  Somewhere flying over battles covered in the Evening News collecting bullet holes in the fuselage except around his seat, he quietly found true special consideration.  Like God in Christ, Special Consideration is meant to push us to be creative in making it happen for others.

 

 

Jodie, on the occasion of your surgery

I cannot begin to tell you how emotional it was when, as an infant, you were diagnosed with diabetes, and then the worst  brittle diabetes.  Your mom wept for days.  She wept sticking you repeatedly to find your blood sugar level.

I was in the hospital last week.  They pricked my fingers three times a day.  I used all my fingers on one hand.  Did you celebrate your 10,000th prick?

Then they told your parents your life expectancy was 12 years … possibly.  So we heard story after story in the night, in the morning, in the bathroom, in the bedroom when everyone in the family — including pets — took turns awaking for no particular reason (God must laugh when we say silly things); to walk in, check you, and find you had cratered.

Your family created a “new normal”.  Jodie cratered.  Jodie’s out cold — and we must calmly, intentionally work our way out of this.

This latest series of debilitating headaches, leading you through a new, bewildering forest of conflicting diagnoses, crashing and ascending hopes — has drained all of you.  Draining Jill and me ten hours away is a lot less than your mom and dad.  That draining, doesn’t even include the bills. . . .

So, next week you return to Houston, to Ben Taub where your grandfather loved his traning as a physician to remove your outsized pinneal gland.  Being twice as old as doctors said was even possible, helps me pray that you lick this thing and flourish.

Scary Answers

I teach a class called “Imagination” as part of the core curriculum for Entrepreneurship at OSU.  The OKSU OSU.  I teach and assign projects in an “Open Ended” manner, on purpose.  Even when I explain, “If I tell you how to do a journal entry, and what topics to cover, I would not have seen the 20+ formats I have seen work creatively for  so many students.”

Three students will drop the class immediately when we leave the room.

One bright eyed, intent student will ask, “How many words do you want in an entry?”

We have taught students in years of schooling that there is one correct answer, the teacher’s way of doing things, and no matter what the teacher says, she is absolutely looking for one answer in the discussion.  She will smile through all the other answers, but she ends the discussion when we arrive at the right answer.

In creativity, and in innovation, we can find hundreds of answers, and all might work. — with work.

Christianity seems similar.  Many people accept that we are a mess, in need of saving, and God did this elaborate, astonishing thing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we only have to accept.  One answer.  Does not demand too much to accept.

Craig Groeschel preached this morning in his Selfless series.  He described how to see God in the moment (even in the grind) and develop new answers, new growth, see the tough things through to the end.

Crickets.  Twenty people applaud, and the rest sit in super quiet mode, eyes a little glazed over.  Millions of correct answers — with work.  Too much for some people.

The on”oanswer fits all” is a great way to build audiences, to increase church attendance.  The millions of possible answers, the kind we must work out not knowing if we are right, trusting through the falling on your face times, and trusting God is guiding — builds Christ followers.

Graduate from the answers Someone else constructed, so you only have to answer “I accept” or “I am afraid” to the answers that mutate, grow, stretch us, slap us into next week, and force us to depend on God to follow God.

It is scarier, more demanding, and full of pitfalls, like all good adventures.

Nabeel, faith and noes.

Nabeel Qureshi was a most educated youth minister.  Most never attend med school, maintain the years of A’s it takes to get and stay there, and they don’t face proliferating possibilities like Nabeel faced.  He wrestled to be a doc on three continents, to retell his conversion from Islam on six continents, and encourage this newest generation’s dreams.

I suggested he write a book.  To keep it simple.  To reveal his story as a form other Muslims could follow simply.  Not easily, but distilling complex questions into simple steps Nabeel took to follow God, Allah, he thought.

He grew into a warrior.  I watched postings to YouTube and the web and laughed aloud, “Be the first on your block to merit your very own fatwah!”

Then Nabeel was married, having a beautiful child and dying of stomach cancer as Muslims cheered wildly at life’s cruel judgment.  I prayed God to heal him.  I posted one such prayer to this blog.

God said, “No.”

People apologize for God, and bend the light on the matter saying, “God healed him, He just healed Nabeel by taking him to heaven.”  Touching sentiment.  God said, “No” to healing Nabeel and extending his impact here.  Nabeel died.

How does faith look after that?  For Nabeel, watch his haunting YouTubes on our hope in Christ out of this world into the next.  Beautiful.  Courageous.  Faith-filled.  Watch them.

For me it’s a gut kick.  Worse than watching your college team get man handled by a 3A high school squad.  Having been injured to the point of dying, I know that if I choose who prays for me, I want them praying for me like I’d pray for me to live.  If you hide behind, “whatever is Your Will, Father” in some non-invested theologically secure place, then save your breath.  No one knows if those prayers get answered.

Yes.  It’s harder to pray like cheering for your team, like cheering for mom if she’s sick.  Yes, the let downs are harder, but prayers uttered in wildly cheering faith is what I hope for if it is me, my child, my wife.  Those answers stiffen your prayers for decades.  Will you ride with me?

When we get off, finally, on the other side, I’ll introduce you to Nabeel.  He cheers from the other side now, see?

 

Waste or Largess and yet.

I few minutes ago I had a brilliant insight into life and the universe.  It may or may not interest you, so I won’t bore you.

It struck me deeply.  I sensed two possibilities for my insight.  It resonated through me.  The insight gave me joy.   The resulting feeling suspended me “up” in a long, draining week for seconds.

Again, I see two possibilities for my insight, for a depth of feeling and realization words fail to convey.

Possibility one.  All we are today results from a profoundly long series of random outcomes, against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, gathering star-dust from millions of extinguished stars to donate elements farther down rows of our Periodic Table to fire-form a planet within a hair’s breadth of distance from a correct sun needed for incredibly sophisticated RNA and DNA to take on a job of blindly evolving past millions of blind alleys to get to us.  “Us” who can write, laugh, love, hear and even sometimes understand each other; and die.  All of my memories, depths, and sharing now a meal for worms blindly eating either my corpse or plants enriched by my ashes.  In a generation, at most, any who interacted or shared with me; join me in oblivion, as will we all.  A remorseless universe neither taking note, caring or laughing.

Possibility two.  A God described as having infinite capacity created the thought of me before assembling the iron and nickel for a core for Earth.  He brought my mother from her birth family to an adopted family so she could marry and unite again with my father after two miscarriages to birth me.  And so, minutes ago, this God shared my brilliant insight into life more intimately than even my wife could hope for.  And if all that’s written of Him is good, when I die I am resurrected out of time into eternity to get this — share that insight with Him and possibly at the same depth with those purchased by His grace — around a dinner beyond compare before we get back to work.

How it all works is above my pay grade.

Possibility one says as a terrorist dies, it holds equal lack of value with the deaths of Jesus, Gandhi — the named and the forgotten.  From nothing formed, and to nothing returned.

Possibility two gives me Hope to hold to values. I choose P two.  Probably as it demands more of me in faith, giving to, making a difference, loving and weeping — living.  If Hope is a crutch, then inscribe mine with the name for me in Heaven I don’t even know, yet.

See?  I can now say, “yet”!

i wonder if i can love enough

When I met and married Jill, I was in professional ministry: stuff we can now do for free.  As a seminary trained minister, I allowed me to think I was, what?  More spiritual?  A little better?  I am not sure.

It evidenced often.  Here’s a way.  Jill loved horses and Colorado.  Loves.  And I wondered subconsciously if maybe she loved them more than Jesus, or God.

When we married, I knew for a while that I loved Jill more than anything, but I “corrected” that by relearning to love Jesus first.  Again, I got paid to believe like that.

I spent another thirty years with Jill.  I resigned from church work, and I now play at being honest.  I say “play” because honesty without love or grace is an all-consuming monster.  Brave souls have faced it and been ground to dust.  Many write novels to journal it.

In my honesty I found nothing affects me like a horse or mountains move Jill.  Okay, I weep at some books or movies, but it’s different: not as structural, as fundamental as is Jill’s love for horses like Firefrost or Dartagnan; or the Princeton Valley, Chalk Cliffs, and skiing the Rockies.

I ride bikes.  Clear land.  Work in wood.  Ski.  Write.  Travel some, and nothing grabs me like being on a horse on a snowy day grabs, sustains, heightens, infuses Jill’s day with light and hope.

Which caused me to go back and hear John, whom I translated from Greek: [1 John 4:20] “For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

Jill loves her brothers and sisters, and we see them more than mine.  Jill loves our grand-kids, and goes to lengths to babysit them more than me.  Jill also walks our land and draws strength up out of the ground through her boots — when I see all that needs to be done.  Jill also loves Lewis and MacDonald as if they were fiances she lost in the war.

And John shattered my thinking.  Jill has been passionately crazy about people and things God has crafted for her and handed her — far more than anyone I know.

So God, by way of John, is using Jill, not my measuring stick, to show me: Loving who and what has been evidenced to me by God, is the first step in really learning to love the One who created them as evidence of His love to — me.

This may be a great year to learn to love more.