Taking Care Of A Neighbor

Gold? Silver? Oil Stocks?  Dissolve my position?  Hang on? Dollar still falling?  Fed raising the interest rate? My economic worth is depleting every day!  For some time now, the global economic downturn has been with us and rears it’s ugly head further as the new year brakes upon this world in less than a week. Makers of iconic products are declaring bankruptcy month after month.  Financial annalist observations are that the debt now in our society is astounding.  I am watching my little billfold dwindle.

I read other day that the United States’ total public and private debt is close to 335% of its GDP. The figure seems unbelievable. Who asked for debt to be a staple of our normal life routines? Not my mom and dad or my grandparents. For them, debt was a source of shame. Somehow, could most people believe that debt is no big deal?

Bettyann has a vision of the less fortunate and shares her concern and ideas almost daily, now. Mainly that of providing those most vulnerable a very practical helping hand year around.  Not lavishing them at Christmas, only. We had Christmas dinner with mother at the long term care facility where the dinning room was filled with elders who were eating the same delicious meal, only without family, friends or for that matter, anyone. "Where do they go but back to their double occupied room with plush stuffed animals, greetings cards and hand made trinkets made and delivered by school children? What will they do now until the first bingo game on New Year's day? How long will it be before the Girl Scout group come and visit?  Who will love on mother's roommate between the times we are there?"

And I sit here, this morning, freshly on my mind is the U.S. subprime meltdown, foreclosed homes, and families living from hand to mouth.  Pundits say everything has come back to normal but I don’t believe it.  In conversation someone pointed out to me the European financial crisis concerns is still an escalating concern.

There are many things that the writings of Scripture do not say about the situation we find globally before us: the practice of corporate bailouts or chancy economic loans, to name a few. But the writings of Scripture have much to say about debts and debtors, neighbors and communities, and the economic crisis as it forever sits between the rich and the poor, the last and the first, the powerful and the powerless. As implications of economic decline reach beyond typical boundaries to an increasingly larger populace, opportunities to examine the dynamics of power and wealth loom large. Though the sacred/secular divide would have me believe anything articulated in Scripture is irrelevant for such an examination of and opportunities to encounter on some small scale the daily concerns of "the least of these" continue to hit a little closer to my heart’s home. I think I’m becoming a little more sensitive to The Voice and I know Bettyann is.

I see that the writings of Scripture present the invitation to step out of my autonomous economic and into a community of divine and paradoxical abundance, where there is room at the table and bread to pass around. I can cling to the spirit of autonomy that flows freely through this post modern market and mindset; I can remain convinced of my sense of entitlement and personal despair, and assure that my worth and my neighbor's worth is indeed enhanced by the things I and they collect, consume, and dispose of. Or, I can consider the God who rained bread from heaven in the deadest of wastelands, the Spirit who blessed five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand, and the Son who told stories which proposed that I, too, am to live with such a spirit of generosity and an existence ever-concerned with neighbors.

I’ve noticed that in difficult times, it is easy to reason that I only have the energy and the resources to worry about Bettyann and myself. I suppose, I might even have reasoned that the Good Samaritan himself helped the man on the side of the road only because it did not come as a great personal or financial liability. In fact, the one who first asked the question that merited Jesus's telling of this parable imagined the world quite similarly. His very question, "Who is my neighbor?" betrays his philosophy that the world can be classified in terms of commodities, liabilities, and entitlements—classifications that sound woefully familiar to my inter ear: There are those I might be responsible to help and there are those I am not responsible to help. There are certain situations in which I might be accountable and there are situations in which I am off the hook.  Yet Jesus squelches any cry of liability or entitlement with a story which turns these categories into the smoke and mirrors that they are—despite all my graphs, predictions, and fears. Instead of the stance of autonomy that asks about personal risk, far better questions seem to be posed by one who indeed had much to lose: What will happen to this man if I keep walking? What will happen to this man if I fail to respond with compassion? Who will take care of my neighbor, if I do not? Through this Samaritan, Jesus suggests that loving one's neighbor demands the abrupt dismissal of self-interest, hierarchical concern, and individualistic fear—not just for the sake of the one wounded but for every neighbor, on every road, for the sake of the common good. Such a neighbor even learns to inquire, Why is it that this man has been denied safe passage in the first place?"

Exactly one year before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said something very similar in one of his speeches: "We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Almighty Father, Creator of heaven and earth, You also created me in love and have invited me to serve at your pleasure. You have placed me to be a part of Your family. To be and act as Your son; responding to Your direction, with resolve. I commit again, this moment to place myself at Your disposal, especially as the implications of crisis hit closer and closer to my physical, mental, and spiritual center.  I allow Your Spirit to convict me in opening my personal space as a home, and not my fears that only cast a shadow over who I am meant to be.  My world is in need of a good neighbor!  Give me the grace I desperately need in being such. Amen

Hark, How All The Welkin Rings

Many a commentator has called the first chapter of Luke a preface to a great story—the foretelling of a herald, the prophecy of a child, the return of the throne of a king—the second chapter being the culmination of that story. The Roman world is called to a census. A young couple journeys to Bethlehem to be counted. A child is born. “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.’”

I suppose to most Christians, like myself, along with those who are not, the Christmas story is often viewed as wonderful in its familiarity, calling forth each year my childhood delight in the monotonous; enticing my imaginations to a stable and a story. Christmas hymns, full of imagery and story, are piped through as background music at various retail centers.  It has been at my favorite coffee shop and been the cause of not only me but others sitting close by to hum along or commenting, "love that song," and itching to tell of Christmas' past.  I notice manger scenes can still be found as part of familiar Christmas décor in church's landscape.  Of course fewer and fewer on the public property.  Yet, I've been asking myself and thinking, during this past week of the hustle and bustle of preparing for the special day, might it be, for us who the Advent scenes are most familiar, it may also be a story that can find surprisingly unfamiliar each year. Is it similar to a child delighting in another reading of a bedtime favorite?  Is the Nativity in the front of a church somehow still startling in its mysteries? Is the child still out of place in the manger? Is the Christmas story full of profound paradox. 

I am drawn in, each evening, to viewing only a bit of world news and a few days ago, I caught a report from Bethlehem. The reporter captured on film the horror of what has been happening for years on the eve of this season, all be it for the sake of tourist less than normal right now.  What my eyes saw certainly was not adding up to “the little town of Bethlehem” which I have always imagined in pageants and songs. The harsh reality of God becoming a child in the midst of the cold and dark world suddenly seemed a blaring proclamation: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. I have had a rushed refreshing of my mind and reflection of my heart as I ruminate on: God taking on flesh to live here, with me, in all this chaos and fighting and despair.

I was reminded this past Friday evening by the American Minute app, that is a great tool of learning for me that upon his conversion, Charles Wesley began hymn writing as a means of attempting to capture the strange hope of a God among us, which was persistently stirring in his mind. Though a few of the words have long since been changed, one of Charles Wesley’s 6,000 hymns is a widely beloved declaration of the Incarnation. Seeking to convey in pen and ink a Christmas story both familiar to my heart and startling in its wonder, Wesley wrote:

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!” 

For Wesley, the Christ child in the manger was forever an indication of the great lengths God will go to reconcile his creation, a savior willing to descend that we might be able to ascend. “Welkin” is an old English term meaning “the vault of heaven.” Wesley was telling the radical story of the Incarnation: All of heaven opening up for the birth of a king and the rebirth of humanity. 

Father, God I am eternally thankful for Your love.  Enough love in sending Jesus Christ to earth making it possible for my rebirth. I commit to singing with pure joy:   Hark! the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!”  Amen

Thoughts On Sleeping

This past week, Bettyann and I were on our annual pilgrimage of celebrating with Amy, Jason, Sarah, and Brayden, Christmas!  Some years ago there is a little deli I found that make marvelous bagel sandwiches and frequent when I’m in the area.  While slowly enjoying my bagel with Taylor ham, cheese and egg with mayo along with rich coffee, I grabbed a much crumpled, stained and mangled news paper.  The first section I looked at was the op-eds. A seemingly out of place essay brought this particular morning’s routine to an introspective mode. It was a short article, though it seemed out of place even there. It did not suggest a refutable opinion, or a thought to stir action, but a silent picture of my frail existence—a quiet look at sleep-needing humans. The writer described the nightly scene on a commuter train, after a workday has been mentally laid aside, and one “can see pajamas in homebound eyes.” The author’s conclusion was as unassuming as the passengers he described: “As long as I’ve been riding trains into New York—some 25 years by now—I’m still struck by the collective intimacy of a passenger car full of sleeping strangers.”

It was for me a picture worth adding to this; my journal of personal thoughts. Something in this scene; that easily transported me along side of napping strangers also brought me to my own weakness that morning, to life’s frailty, to my need. Something as simple as my body’s demand for sleep is a bold reminder that I am but a creature. “I am poor and needy,” says the psalmist.  “Remind me that my days are fleeting.”

The human condition is inescapable!  Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who devoted his life to tracking down those responsible for the mass murdering of Jews in World War II, announced at age 94, that he had ended his search. In an interview, he told reporters, “If there’s a few I didn’t look for, they are now too old and too fragile to stand trial.” What a bold indication of our days. “All are from the dust, and to dust all return.”

This morning, I’m reminded that in the Garden of Gethsemane, minutes before Jesus felt the grip of those who would hand him over to die, the disciples were sleeping. He was sweating blood, but they felt the heaviness of their eyes instead of the heaviness of the moment—or perhaps because they felt the heaviness of the moment they could not escape the heaviness of their eyes. He asked them to stay awake and pray, but they could not. I’m thinking that It’s a sincere look at humanity, not unlike sleeping commuters and dying regimes: weak and unaware, asleep, unseeing, and in need.

It’s been only a couple of years ago that I discovered that the Christian calendar is patterned in such a way that a person can remember this condition throughout their days and counter-culturally declare it to the world. For example, I try to do this by recognizing that the ashes of Ash Wednesday unmistakably remind me of the dust I came from and the dust to which I will return. I began celebrating the beginning of Advent two Sundays ago with the cry of John the Baptist to stay alert in my personal sleepy world for a God who takes my embodiment quite seriously. And the crushing weight of Holy Week pleads with me to seek a hope far beyond myself and my weakness. “Day by day,” instructs the Rule of Saint Benedict, “remind yourself that you are going to die.” Within this culture generally terrified of aging, uncomfortable with death, and seemingly desperate for accomplishments to distract most, the instruction is most likely unpopular.  That’s my observation, at least in the small world I move in these days.  And yet, for me, to keep this reality of weakness in mind need not be a source of despair, but a means of seeking and seeing God. “As for me,” referring to the psalmist writing, “I am poor and needy, but the Lord remembers me.” The apostle Paul cries likewise: “‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”  My condition is fatal, but it is far from without hope.

It is somewhat odd to think of death in a season remembering the birth of the Christ child, I suppose.  But from the beginning, it was apparent that this birth was accompanied by death. The young couple was forced to flee at Herod’s edict to slaughter all the boys in and around Bethlehem two years old and under. Elsewhere, an aging prophet told the young mother that the child cradled in her arms would cause the falling and rising of many, and that a sword would pierce her own heart too—and at simply seeing this sleeping infant he himself was ready to die. The darker side of Christmas is as real as the parts I love to embrace.Minutes before his last breath in this life, Jesus was asked by the criminal beside him to remember him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Sitting along side a death bed, holding the persons hand or wiping the forehead with a cool cloth or providing swabbing of the mouth, I am unable to remember, ever experiencing words more human.  No, I can't think of any prayer by me or anyone dying can be more sincerely uttered—however close to that last breath might be. Remember me! As Christ responded to the one beside him, so he responds to my needy, sleeping soul, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Father, God, thank You for Your awakening me from my personal sleeping world. Thank you for what the Church identifies as Advent, calling me to wakefulness. My request, this morning is that my journal thoughts will set those who read it, to take on a fresh understanding of the One who neither sleeps or slumbers.  Amen

I'm Seeing It All Upside Down

There have been numerous pictures and stories shared over the past couple of years, on Face Book of animal, arch enemies cuddling, eating and playing together. A video on You Tube caught my interest of a polar bear in Hudson Bay, Canada making a most unlikely friendship with a wolf. I suppose that once and a while a friendship is forged that seems to surprise everyone but a dog, cat, and mouse? A monkey and pigeon? A bear, lion and tiger? Really now, a dog and fish?

The thought of such a relationship is one that fascinates me in its complexity (if not an accident waiting to happen). Though the friend who first sent me this story assured me that unusual bondings have occurred throughout the animal kingdom without bad endings, I still find myself leery of both the bear’s and wolf’s intentions. Can either really surrender its natural instincts to hunt? What happens when one gets in the other’s way of a Snowshoe rabbit meal? Can the nature of a polar bear or wolf remain reversed because of a relationship? 

In a significant prophecy of the coming Messiah (literally, anointed one) and his ensuing reign, Isaiah describes a scene full of similarly unusual relationships: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” Isaiah 11:6-9. 

It is inexplicable to me! As imaginative as I am, the scene is unimaginable to me . I would no sooner trust the cobra than I would trust the one who suggests I allow Claire, Brayden, or for that matter, any other of my grandchildren or my daughters reaching toward it.  Yet the vision speaks of a dramatic change in nature throughout God’s kingdom, where the aggressiveness and cruelty that are so much a part of this world will be forever changed. I will look at the relationship of the wolf and bear and not fear either’s trust of each other. With good reason, I ascribe such a reality as something God promises in the future, in heaven, when nature as I know it has passed away. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain; the wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the goat, for the old order of things will have passed away. I believe this is indeed an image of things to come. But, I ask myself; could it not also be something more? 

What if there is something about the coming of the Messiah that brings this scene to life right now?  This very week or day? What if the Incarnation of which I will fully celebrate in sixteen days—the coming of Jesus onto a first century scene—caused things on earth to be turned upside-down ever since? Like the brutal outlaw in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, the Misfit, recognizes, there is something about the Incarnation that has “thrown everything off balance.” The mere presence of the source of all matter in my very midst, the Incarnate Christ coming to me in flesh and blood introduces a possibility of grace that changes the nature of everything. In O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find writes: “If He did what He said, then its nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then its nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.” Isaiah depicts a world where lions and vipers will not kill; young lambs will rest peacefully beside predators, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” 11:9. It is unnatural for a wolf not to harm a defenseless lamb or a snake not to bite the hand that invades its nest. Is it any more natural that I should be able to defy my human nature? That I should claim the old has gone and left a new creation in its place? That I should find myself born a second time from above? 

Yet to bow before the person of Christ—in life, in prayer, in relationship, in community—is to lay my life at the feet of the One who was born and presently is both Lamb and Lion in a way that overturns these very notions of nature. In his work Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton finds fault with the way this is often envisioned. “It is constantly assured,” he writes “…that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?”

Father, God, You deserve nothing less than praise and worth from me this morning for this mystery that, somehow, Christ achieves it all. Just knowing Him is clinging to the fierce hope of transformation and the gentle assurance of new life—on earth and as it will one day be in heaven. I realize it is He alone who can reverse my nature and the nature of the polar bear and wolf: He is both Lamb and Lion! Amen

I'm Staking a Claim on Christmas

I silently smile frequently these days as Bettyann shares her emotions about the “Christmas story” series on the Hallmark channel, especially with Clair. Over the years I have razzed her, Michelle and Clair, reminding them that the stories have no truth, only productions of someone’s fantasy writing.  But then, I was thinking the other day, there are some stories, that are not true that move even me, whether I’ve heard or seen them when I was younger or now at seventy two.  An example is the 1965 release of the first Peanuts movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas.  That was a year before Michelle was born and was instantly loved by me at 22 years of age and not a father yet. Every time I have seen it over these 50 years, I enjoy it just as much. But I didn’t know the fact, until I was reading, that it almost did not make it past the television executives who hated it. The movie was criticized for everything from being too contemporary in music, to being too religious in tone. But audiences everywhere confidently disagreed. Having aired every year since its debut in 1965, it is now the longest-running cartoon special in history.

One of my favorite scenes finds Charlie Brown on a hunt for the perfect "great big, shiny, aluminum tree—maybe even a pink one" as instructed by Lucy for their Christmas pageant. At the tree lot, Charlie Brown walks through row after row of flashing, shiny spectacles of color, trying his best to choose well and please his friends. But then he sees a small, natural tree, nearly overshadowed by the flash and glitter of the rest. It is pitiful and loosing needles, but it is the only real tree on the lot. In a moment of confidence, Charlie Brown chooses the unlikely sapling over all the others (and is thus the target of laughter and mockery by all).

Watching that scene I thought, it seems to me that I have always seemed to know intuitively that there is something remarkable—perhaps something even sacred—about being selected long before I understood the implications of choice at all. That someone saw anything worth choosing in this sickly little tree is a turn in the plot that quiets me to the point of having a lump in my throat. Charlie Brown claims the unlikely, pathetic tree as his own, and there is a part of me that feels claimed too.

The story of God among the world is filled with the language of claiming and calling, gathering and choosing. Yet, stripped of the story and its characters, these words often offend some. There’s speak of the injustice of a God who claims anyone, who shows signs of favoritism, or calls anyone particularly. I think they forget what they felt deeply as children—namely, that being claimed among a group of the prettiest and the smartest and the fastest is not about deserving it at all.

In a country of wealth and grandeur, the people of Israel were slaves who were exploited and abused. They were overshadowed, inconsequential, and cast aside, not unlike the tiny tree in the vast lot of color. But God came near and claimed an unlikely people, picking them up, giving them a name, collecting them like a hen gathers her chicks. The book of Deuteronomy recounts the fledging relationship: "For the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye" 32:9-10.

I’ve always found it interesting that God's gathering of the Israelites was not based on prerequisites. Yet it was far from passive and unfeeling, emerging from God's love, mercy, and wisdom. The prophets would later describe it as the selection of a bride for a bridegroom, and Christ would later describe himself as the bridegroom who came even closer to beckon that bride to his side. I found gold in my exploration when I found that God's own are referred to as the "apple of his eye." I think a wonderful expression reserved for those who are most endeared to me. More so, the original Hebrew for the expression can be literally translated as "little person of the eye." The idiom is surprisingly close to the Latin "pupilla," from which the English word pupil is derived. The word means "little doll," and was applied to the dark center of the eye because of the tiny image of oneself that appears when looking into someone's eyes. It seems to me, it’s like God expresses, "If you get close enough, you will see that it is you who is held in my eyes." Wow! Awesome! I see God's claiming as inherently personal, the story of the Incarnation a claim that God would gather every chick, every creature, every soul.

Father, God, I thank You for my new claim on Christmas. I confess that to often my choices are inherently the same. When I base my spirituality on preference it fails to consider the One it rejects, which is particularly ironic when it rejects to a distaste of exclusivity. When I consider Your choosing a forgotten nation, loving them out of no merit of their own, and giving them Your name regardless, how is it that I do not consider You behind all of the things I have to say about religion and exclusivity? I thank You for giving me the conviction that is needed to realize that You have come even nearer to me. You sent Your vulnerable Son, Jesus, to reach a dejected me, to cleanse me and claim me out of no doing of my own, and have given me Your grace regardless.  Thru all my struggles of choices I am eternally grateful for You, the incarnate God of Christmas, Who’s story continues to give this weak, unwise, and fumbling Bill Prather a new name: "the apple of Your eye!”  Amen

Lesson From the Shelves of a Hardware Store

It happened the other day, when I walked into Lowe's store for a hardware item.  "For goodness sake, the Thanksgiving Day has not even been celebrated," I said to myself.  Noticing to my chagrin, at age seventy two, time passes more quickly for me, my cognitive decay kicked in and it seemed that all this preparation for a forth coming Christmas celebration had been inadvertently left behind from the previous year’s Christmas sales shelves.  Then for a moment I cowered at the thought of digging through boxes in the storage area, we have rented for twenty years, containing dozens of Christmas decorating items we have accumulated over the past forty nine years.  At this point, it seemed better to be a month early in setting it up than ten months late in packing it away. I decided to make a note on that afternoon to begin planning the day after Thanksgiving as a full throttle day of commitment to assisting Bettyann in the joy of decorating, inside and out.

Strangely enough, my decision then coincided with a friend’s mentioning a good Christmas quote. Advent was suddenly all around me. In a Christmas sermon given December 2, 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!” To be early with my commitment to drag out the boxes of decorations and help in the process of decorating suddenly seemed a wise, but convicting thought. What about the sake of remembering? If Advent reminds me that I am  waiting in now, beginning the last week in November, what reminds me that I am waiting in October or February?

The story of the Nativity, though beautiful and familiar, and admittedly far-reaching, is as easily put out of my mind as Christmas decoration are put in boxes.  On certain sides of the calendar, a Nativity scene looks amiss. Sitting on my lawn in the fall or the spring, it seems somehow away from home, far from lights and greenery, longing for Christmas fanfare. But looking at it with thoughts of Advent near, I am struck by the irony that longing is often my sentiment amidst the glittering lights, greens, and fanfare of Christmas.

Bonhoeffer continues, “When once again Christmas comes and we hear the familiar carols and sing the Christmas hymns, something happens to us… The hardest heart is softened. We recall our own childhood. We feel again how we then felt, especially if we were separated from a mother. A kind of homesickness comes over us for past times, distant places, and yes, a blessed longing for a world without violence or hardness of heart. But there is something more—a longing for the safe lodging of the everlasting Father.”

Unlike any other month, these days begin weighing on my heart.  The Gift and the difficulty of waiting. The listening to Christmas songs and hymns, I remember that I am troubled in soul and looking for something greater; I remember that I am poor and imperfect and waiting for the God who comes down and I hear again the gentle knock at the door. I embody a strange hope, though. I see a home with tears and sorrow, but I also see in this home the signs of a day when tears will be wiped dry. Advent is about waiting for the One who embraced sorrow and body to show me the fullness of home. Really it is not December that reminds me I am longing for God to come nearer, but the Nativity of God, the Incarnation of Christ. For each day is touched by the promise that in this very place Jesus has already done so, and that he will again come breaking through, into my world, into my longing, into my sin and death.

In his sermon on Advent, Dietrich Bonhoeffer offered a prayer worth praying in this morning and really all year round: “Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what 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 in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death.” Every day, despite its location on the calendar, a still, small voice answers my cry persuasively here and now, “Behold. I stand at the door and knock.”  Amen

Dealing With Snobbery

I’m out of date!! What I believe, what I ware, what I drive, what I

plant, what type furniture I create.  So implied by some in my circle of colleagues and among family members.  I suppose, perhaps, thought the same thing; in some degree about an earlier generation or another elder.  I was glad the other morning to find that C.S. Lewis coined the phrase "Chronological snobbery" to describe a phenomenon that is common to all ages, but one that he found significantly heightened within the modern mind around him. He describes chronologically snobbish is to walk with "the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age," while carrying with it "the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited." It is to hold that we not only know more, and know more accurately, but that the thoughts and knowledge of those before us don't fully matter as a result. Like a fashion that has faded out of style, they have simply been deemed "out of date." 

It is this attitude that moves many to scoff at the Bible because it was written by "pre-scientific" persons who would have no way of knowing how to address the modern mind. But I challenge myself in asking: what makes me conclude that I am not, as one of a previous generation has been, blinded to my own intellectual flaws, susceptible to my own characteristic illusions? Is it not an incredibly arrogant gamble to assume that I am any different? Moreover, what makes me conclude that enhanced knowledge of human DNA or the human reproduction system makes me more capable of discerning the meaning and purpose of life itself?

Joseph knew enough about the laws of nature to at first conclude the infidelity of his betrothed wife. The disciples knew enough about the laws of physics to be completely terrified by the man walking on the water toward their boat. The crowd of mourners knew enough about death to laugh at Jesus when he insisted that the girl was only sleeping, and to walk away astonished when she came back to life. 

Could my perception of superiority be hanging on the false hope that my own thoughts and journey are somehow more impervious to decay than others that have come and gone before me? All of the ages that have passed, all of the knowledge and works of men and women in generations before me, like branches that whither, all have moved away. Like the times themselves, always moving on, I too will fade with the very theories I have dismissed. In all of this withering, is there anything that survives? It is a question I have been asking myself more and more in this season of life and must answer with every resource of history and science and philosophy available to me, past and present.

It was also a question that led C.S. Lewis to conclude that all that is not eternal is eternally out of date. As the holiday season quickly approaches, I will hear rumblings of an old story, though perhaps given to skepticism or covered in sentimentalism.

Yet the story of Christ has endured for innumerable reasons: because there is something astonishing and more than novel about God being born an infant; because there is something believable about humanity calling for the death of a man whose ways scare us; because the circumstantial evidence supports the likelihood that something really happened after his body was laid in the tomb; because the apostles and others continued to testify of the events they saw; and because ancient and modern communities long thereafter have been transformed by the same God-man Jesus. In a world where the new often replaces the old without a fair hearing, could it be that the story of Christ has endured because it is true?  

My Balancing of Seriousness and Laughter

In August of 1963, due to his ailing health and increasing responsibilities, C.S. Lewis announced his retirement from Cambridge. He asked his stepson Douglas Gresham and a friend, Walter Hooper, to go to the university to settle his affairs and pack the two thousand or so books that lined the walls of his Magdalene College office. Knowing the house was already filled to its bursting point with books, the pair wondered all the way home where on earth they would find the space to put them. But Lewis had already contrived an intricate plan for their use. 

A nurse named Alec had been hired to stay up nights in case Lewis fell ill and needed his assistance. As the men returned with the enormous load of books, Alec laid asleep in his room on the ground floor. As the truck pulled into the driveway, Lewis appeared, cautioning them to silence. "Where'll we store the books?" Hooper whispered, to which Lewis responded with a wink. Carrying each stack with tedious concern so as not to wake the sleeping victim, the three men piled the works around the nurse's bed, sealing him in a cocoon of manuscript and literature. When they were finished, the books were stacked nearly to the ceiling, filling every square inch of the room where the snoring nurse still slept. 

Much to the relief of the anxious culprits who were waiting outside, Alex finally awoke. From within the insulated tomb, first came sounds of bellowing, and finally the tumbling of the great literary wall. An amused nurse emerged from within the wreckage. 

Over the years I have often wondered how Lewis thought up his wonderfully playful whimsical personalities of his imaginary worlds. After reading this story, I think I now understand. Such are the mirthful (new word for me) scenes—fiction and non-fiction—that seal in my mind the many weighty lessons I have learned from C.S. Lewis. I have a stronger belief, in my 72^nd year, that my Christian 

faith has room—and reason—for laughter! I must add that my online study of a nine week course entitled: An Introduction to C.S Lewis: Writing and Significance is like an early Christmas gift. Of course, at my age I'm always looking for a bargain and it cost is nothing, offered by Hillsdale College. 

Ruminating for a long period of time I have come to believe that much of C.S. Lewis’s thought and work wrestles with the existential evidences of the existence of God, the signals of transcendence around all of mankind.  And, at least for me, it asks me to see myself as I am: unreconciled with the universe, yet longing for home.  Two decades ago, it was Lewis that first taught me to move toward the questions that reappear though I had buried them, and to admit the logical outworkings of the philosophies I had held loosely. It was Lewis who taught me to search after God with not only my heart, mind and energy, but with the wonder of a child who is able to be startled by the very thing he is looking for. My Christian faith gives an explanation—and a face—to the joy I stumble across, the joy, as Lewis writes, that "flickers on the razor-edge of the present and is gone."   

On the one hand, if life is but time and happenstance why would I laugh or wonder, or experience a desire to play? What good is joy, what purpose is humor or laughter or beauty, if life is but a series of instincts to survive and the universe at a cosmic level is meaningless? But on the other hand, if I am truly made in the image of a holy and loving God, how wonderful that God has made me both with logic and laughter, a life of intrinsic worth and immortal wonder. 

I have had the privilege to hear an old tape of one of Lewis’s remarkable lectures: The Weight of Glory.  He spoke hauntingly of the glory of the God and the immortality of the soul made in God's image and toward the end added a word of warning: "This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But, our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously."

Father, God, You have made me for joy, sending the Son of life that I might know what that very word means. You know how I, for such a long time in my life kept knocking at the door of my life before it was opened.  Thank You for C.S. Lewis.  Thank You for the light of Your precious Holy Spirit of realizing that exploring and playing and discovery may well be among my life’s greatest efforts. Amen

Why Bother?

There is a very congenial client of whom I have been engaged with for over a year now; deciding “exactly” what a piece of furniture is to look like for her exquisite living space. The nuances of her dreams, which are often, not to mention the multitude of pictures seen in magazines, continue to complicate the matter of building her piece. Due to her long and demonstrated felicitous persona, it caught me a bit off guard when, in her exasperation, blurted “why bother?” When I have uttered the term, I think it’s most times that my thinking goes something like: "There's no use trying. This is just the way it is." And to me such an outlook seems realistic in the face of some insurmountable challenge. 

A few days ago, I encountered this same reasoning in my reading of Mark, chapter five. It happens after a man named Jairus asks Jesus to follow him to his home to heal his dying daughter. Mark reports, "While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. 'Your daughter is dead,' they said. 'Why bother the teacher any more?'"  Given this ominous news, their rhetorical question appears entirely reasonable, though they surely show a lack of compassion for Jairus or an understanding of what has just taken place. Jesus was speaking with a woman who was immediately healed when she touched his garments. Yet what interests me further is the attitude often veiled in this question: resignation, cynicism, and false pride.

I am noticing more and more these days all sorts of issues facing me and my friends, which are disappointing, often scary, and can illicit despair.  In fact I know some who are bowing their heads and asking, “even so Lord, come quickly,” conceding to the “why bother” attitude. But I've taken a little while to ruminate in considering this way of thinking and discover just how costly it might be for me. Let alone being an anathema to the Scriptures and all that Jesus taught. In fact, Jesus's response couldn't be more revealing: "Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, 'Don't be afraid; just believe'" Arriving at Jairus's home, Jesus then ushers those cynically laughing at him out of the house and raises the child to life again before her father and mother.

Yes, I have been tempted to reason, "That was then; this is now. Am I honestly to pray and believe that God is going to resurrect a loved one?" No, I reason this isn't quite what this passage is teaching, for such historical narrative first and foremost provides evidence that Jesus is God incarnate (rather than three principles for receiving an answer to prayer). However, the evidence of Jesus's identity and power unfolds a very tangible application, and one that is found throughout the gospels. That is this: If God can really overcome death and raise someone to life, surely is God not also able to strengthen, heal, or provide for me in times of trouble? Furthermore, I conclude with St Paul when he wrote to the Roman believers, "if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you". The question it seems then is whether I believe that this same life-giving power can be at work within me or whether I’ve resigned myself to "This is just the way it is."  

In Luke eighteen, the first few verses, I read a parable given by Jesus of a widow without a family in first-century Greco-Roman society who could have easily concluded "why bother," before a powerful judge who "neither feared God nor cared about men" and who refused her petition for justice. Yet, I believe Jesus employs this very story to teach about prayer. Refusing to believe that "this is just the way it is,"the widow persists in her cry for justice to the judge. "For some time he refused," says Jesus. "But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"

David Wells, of whom I have been learning from these past few month comments on this parable: "Nothing destroys petitionary prayer (and with it, a Christian view of God) as quickly as resignation. 'At all times,' Jesus declared, 'we should pray' and not 'lose heart,' thereby acquiescing to what is." 

Father, God I am still on a steep learning curve when it comes to accepting "what is" is not always "just the way it is!" Forgive me when I, plainly, just don't bother to pray and not lose heart. Thank You, Father for Your Spirit helping me to in realizing more and more that my fearless persistence and prayer is gong to continue to be costly but yet to counter my "Why bother?" which will surely be costlier still.  Amen.

Thoughts On Shelf Life

The boys at breakfast were talking about how the butchering process took place years ago with various animals on the farm with every part of the animal being used.  I shared my remembrances of "hog" butchering by grandfather and father, always a month prior to Thanksgiving. The meat hanging for curing in the meat house and grandmother preparing the pickled pigs feet, head cheese, crackling and other unmentionable delicacies. 

The conversation progressed to current tastes, flavors, and the reasons for the dissatisfying flavors of meats and food items, in general. One of the fellas mentioned, "You never heard the words, 'shelf life' until thirty or forty years ago,"dating all our ages. Self life is an expression that describes exactly what it attempts to define. For instance, while paying for my breakfast, I picked up a pack of Twinkies from the “impulse rack,” and found their shelf life to be twenty-five days, after which, their existence on the shelf as something edible expires. But, in my ruminating, I realize shelf life is also an expression that is metaphorically full. I mean that when I say "Cabbage Patch Kids." They were once quite a phenomenon. I remember that Denver shoppers were injured as the dolls were pulled off the shelves and seized by anxious crowds. People stood at the doors of stores over the hours of night in a craze that was relatively short-lived; as far as fads go, the shelf life was fairly brief.  I have always been tempted to ask one very good friend what ever happened to the many she purchased, but then I don't like rocking any relationship after ending up with a short end of the stick so many times.

In high school chemistry we took in the ponderous thought that everything has a active element. In fact, in many substances this is an incredibly important number to watch. A variety of compounds, particularly those containing certain unstable elements, become more unstable as they approach their natural element. Chemical explosives grow increasingly dangerous over time and with exposure to certain factors in the environment becoming liable to explode without warning.

It seems to me there is a tendency to view ideas and thoughts as having a similar aging process. I’ve noticed particularly this in the previous two generations. When something is deemed ancient or even slightly "behind the times" it is often accordingly considered obsolete. As if it has become out-dated like a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk.  I'm discovering that the thought and/or idea of aging is more unusable as time passes. I remind myself; this is the reason I continue keeping my mind as active as I know how.  

For some, a wrist watch as a useful instrument has become a work of art on one’s wrist for display. Beautifully stoned with diamonds, ladened in gold, exquisite face, with no movement. And in hundreds of thousands of similar cases, history has shown this to be an accurate picture. Certain philosophies come to my mind as movements that rendered themselves useless over time and exposure to the world. Like compounds approaching their shelf life, their collapse was inevitable and they eventually imploded without warning.

I suppose there are those who would disagree but I believe that ideas undeniably have consequences and some approach their shelf lives more dangerously than others. While some have not fully burst at the seams, signs of instability appear. Take for example the two promenade political parties of our country. Grumbles of discontent from within their own ideological camps may hint at incoherence. Even so, the noticeable shelf life of specific ideas causes me to question the cause of their expiration, rather than assume it is time alone that moves an idea to expire.

This is no doubt well-studied in science. Factors that increase and decrease the shelf life of a product move well beyond time itself. When certain compounds are stored at decreased temperatures, their shelf life is increased significantly. Likewise, it's like I keep telling Bettyann that the development of preservatives dramatically set back the expiration dates on food in our refrigerator.  She gives me one of her disgusted looks of disbelief, as if to say I don't know what I'm talking about, tightly gripping the item and promptly buts it firmly in my hand and say,"just put it in the trash for me d-a-r-l-i-n-g!" I say, "but dear, it hasn't even a 'little green' on it." She doesn’t even argue with my comments or sincerely offered suggestions any longer.  It’s a goner!  It’s expired! Anyway, back to my point: like compounds and breakfast items, all ideas do not expire equally. The thought is kept to myself but I still believe I would thus be badly mistaken to dismiss a thought solely because anything is old.  Even that self made beaver hat made forty years ago. 

The ancient psalmist speaks of God's hope as something that does not expire. "Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them" Psalms 119:140. Extending through generation after generation, the promises of God stand untouched and unphased by a changing environment.

Personally I know how often I have learned the hard way, thinking that surely modern thought has improved the idea, only to find myself returning to words commanded generations ago. Again and again God's own discover a reason to love the promising hope of Father, Son, and Spirit: "I have learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever."

Father, God, Speaking reverently, I view Your Spirit as the ultimate preservative.  I find Your love is not offered without depth.  I find Your promises are filled with the intention of life.  Every promise in the Book is mine, having  been thoroughly tested and have yet to expire.  Amen 

I’m Loosing More All The Time

I’ve found a powerful story in Dennis Linn’s small seventy page book: Sleeping with Bread, telling of the bombing raids of World War II where thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. After experiencing the fright of abandonment, many of these children were rescued and sent to refugee camps where they received food and shelter. Yet even in the presence of good care, they had experienced so much loss that many of them could not sleep at night. They were terrified they would awake to find themselves once again homeless and hungry. Nothing the adults did seemed to reassure them, until someone thought to send a child to bed with a loaf of bread. Holding onto their bread, the children were able to sleep. If they woke up frightened in the night, the bread seemed to remind them, "I ate today and I will eat again tomorrow."

Hours before he was arrested, Jesus spoke to his disciples about the time ahead of them, days they would face without his physical presence. "In a little while," he said, "you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me." Reasonably, at his words the disciples were confused. "What does he mean by 'a little while'? We don't understand what he is saying," they grumbled. Jesus answered with more than reassurance. To their confusion and uncertainty, perhaps also to their fears of the worst and visions of the best, Jesus responded with something they could hold on to. Concluding his last conversation with them before the cross, he said, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." 

I, not unlike many in my personal world of family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, also, like a child with bread, seem to be holding onto what gives me life; Jesus!  He offers peace in uncertainty, (Bettyann uses the word Shalom), mercy in brokenness, something solid when all is lost. He speaks of peace that transcends my understanding when I’m clinging to the One who gives me life.  This morning, being honest with myself, I ask the question: when uttering this word “peace,” am I truly in a quiet state of mind?  Or is my mind silenced by coercion or despair—emotions associated with my religion?

In my self examination, I’m finding for my personal edification, what I have quoted hundreds if not thousands of times to parishioners and patients, the Apostle Paul’s admonition "Do not worry about anything," that he had every reason to be anxious about everything.  In prison and facing days unquestionably out of his control, Paul was undeniably holding on to something solid. "The Lord is near," he wrote from a jail cell. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:5b-7.  

Am I right when reading St. Paul by thinking there is no promise for me as a follower of Christ that I will not experience darkness or sorrow anymore than Paul was avoiding it or Jesus himself escaped it? On the other hand, I am thinking he does promise, as clearly as Jesus promised the disciples, that there is a reason for hope in the best and worst of times. So, at seventy two, and experiencing loss in so many ways, I believe the Lord who is near, in the person of the Holy Spirit, has overcome this world in which I will continue to find trouble.

Father, God, I give You praise in acknowledging the fact that to be found in Your Son, Jesus Christ, means to be thoroughly stilled by who Christ is.  I am thankful for the gospel because it is as if Jesus says; "These things I have spoken to you, so that in me you might be thoroughly quieted by what gives you life."

In these days of aging, as loss after loss mounts, I allow Your Holy Spirit to convict and comfort me in my knowing that Christ’s victory gives me fullness of life, and the surety of that victory brings on peace that transcends all things.  I ask that I be taken deeper into the mystery of Christ, that through my trouble You can answer the cries of my heart with more than reassurance.  Thank You for the story I have read of children pacified by the assurance of bread. I am committed to holding the very Bread of Life, a hope more solid than my fears. Amen

Got Into A Hornets' Nest

I began running as fast as my, almost seventy-one year old, legs could go.  I had stepped on a ground nesting of hornets.  They went after my head and continued to chase me regardless of how fast or far I seemed to run. By the time I made it fifty yards, I was completely confused and felt pain on my back, butt, and ear. Wincing, I took off my hat to fight off one of those pesky insects when I was hit again on my leg. Realizing it was on the inside of my pants I tore off my shoes, pants, then my shirt simultaneously trying find my hat as a defense mechanism! After what seemed an eternity, I stood, in pain, looking for another offender, alone, naked and afraid! O yes, and indignant! I hadn't done anything to warrant this. But this train of thought was immediately derailed by another sting on my foot. I can remember the last time I had been stung by a bee. (I was going to college in Santa Cruz and employed at night driving bee hives to Redwood City and had to be taken to the emergency room, I had been bitten so many times, during the route.) By the time the adrenaline stopped rushing, I was overwhelmed with throbbing all over my body. I had forgotten how painful a sting can be and I had no idea how to soothe the hurt. Getting to the house, I filled baggies with ice and dabbing an ointment on the painful areas.  I set off to the Internet for information. What we discovered was half-helpful, half-maddening.

On every website that offered information on treating hornet/bee stings, there inevitably seemed to be a few thoughts on what I should have done to prevent them. The lists were always very similar: Avoid wearing perfume and bright colors. Don't work or play around beehives or hornet nests. Don't provoke them or disturb them. The one I REALLY LIKED is: Remember that bee stings are painful and can be dangerous. The words almost seemed to make the stinging worse; the burden of fault was unbearable.

Over time, I’ve noticed religious people sometimes make use of similar teaching opportunities. I’m wondering: when a person is crumbling under the weight of his or her own sin, crying out over a life of brokenness, or agonizing over a certain sting of consequence, do I ever step in to offer some after-the-fact instruction? If so, I think my objective is probably well-meaning. And, thinking further, I hope there is nothing wrong with the words or wisdom I offered. But I am also realizing, there is undoubtedly a wrong a time to offer them. So, the caboose to this train of thought is: from now on before I give a lesson on all that makes anyone bleed, the wounded need to know there is a physician.

Jesus came onto the religious scene of Jerusalem with a method that bothered a great number of people. The experts of the law were proficient in the commandments of Scripture; they wanted people to know that sin bears great consequence and that the way to God is straight and narrow. The teaching of Jesus certainly echoed these truths, and yet he called out the religious leaders repeatedly as those whose "teaching human precepts as doctrines" Matthew 15:9. "And you experts in the law," he proclaimed, "woe also to you! For you load people down with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them" Luke 11:46. 

  

Of course, the advice given to me about avoiding hornet stings was obviously sound. And on some level, it seems reasonable to include these principles while discussing a treatment plan; prevention is clearly the best treatment. But each time I came across this "guidance," as my entire body throbbed in pain, I naturally wanted to scream. Of course I didn't mean to disturb the hornets' nest; I'm still not even sure where the nest was so I always am carefully when approaching, to this day. To be fair, I didn't see any of it coming. I wasn't wearing bright colors and I wasn't wearing perfume. I simply stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time and I was paying for those steps. Yet regardless: all of this was completely irrelevant at the moment I was looking for help.  

I’ve had it happen often enough that I know; there are times when sin simply comes in and completely flattens me. In hindsight, most of the time, I’m able to see the wrong turns and reckless steps that might have taken me there, or actions that might have prevented the heartache altogether. But in the midst of my brokenness, Jesus isn't the one pointing this out. When I’m wounded, in pain, confused, He simply says, "Come." 

I’m more than glad that when I come to Christ asking for help, I’m offered a Person, not a list that adds insult to injury. I believe, with my entire being, that to every wounded person, he simply offers his own wounds.

Father, God, this morning I thank You that while Jesus indeed gave very prescriptive and resolute instructions that would load down the strongest, You were lifting Him upon an old rugged cross to help me bear the load. I’m finding that, in my personal experience, when I step into His presence the stinging always at first seems worse, but the wound, He assures me, will heal.  Amen

My Self Deception

Recently I converted my worn down, elderly, copy of God in the Dock from a box in storage to my “download” library. In doing so consternation set in upon discovering that the book was originally published in England under a different title. The book was titled Undeceptions. 

This amazement caused my exploration as the reasons for the title change and found that "Undeception" was the word Lewis used to describe a startling experience of awareness—moments when deception is uncovered and the cause is seen clearly from within, moments when blind spots are replaced with reality. He was taken with these awakenings or undeceptions in many of the characters of Jane Austen. In much of Austen's work, he observes, "the undeception...is the very pivot or watershed of the story.”

I seems to me that Lewis would unquestionably tile my story the same. Undeception and Bill Prather. "Undeception" was no doubt a word that fittingly described his startling experience of being brought into the kingdom of God kicking and screaming, the most reluctant convert in all England. It was that experience through which he saw himself, the world, and its creator for the rest of his life.

Just yesterday, having breakfast with a friend, I recognized, yet another, blind spot when encountering God. He called my attention to the fact that he was well aware of the way God was specifically calling him. It was kinda like: “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it"  which woke Jacob to his own deception. He didn't wake up declaring that the God who was once absent had now appeared. He said, "God was here all along and I was the one who didn't see it." As I ruminate this morning, a long dead friend of mine use to refer to pivotal encounters like Jacob's dream as "thin spots"—moments in life where the nearness of God is nearly palpable. Other theologians describe such encounters as openings or baptisms, windows or transcendence. Still others give testimonies similar to the man born blind in ancient Jerusalem. Forced to explain to the Pharisees the unexplainable moment he had with Jesus, he mustered the only words he could think to describe it at John 9:25: "Only one thing I do know. I was blind but now I see."

My inner eye is a bit more focused when reading John Bunyan, in his book Grace Abounding, is describing  a day when he was inexplicably released from doubt and despair.  Not unlike me many times during the past few years, while passing through a field, troubled in conscience and fearing that all was not right, the sentence fell upon his soul: "Thy righteousness is in heaven." Plam 85:11b Writes Bunyan, "I thought I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand. There was my righteousness. Wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me that I lacked his righteousness, for that was ever before Him. Moreover, I saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made it worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself."

Bunyan's encounter was for him an experience of undeception. I think that his story is, more than coincidence, also just another example of a soul not seeking experiences of self-awareness or even experiences with God, but one seeking the Lord, His kingdom, and His holiness, and in seeking finds it all.

I confess that this has never been easy and most of the time painful. When I have come to the place of willfully putting my vision of life into God's hands, and watch as I see a concoction of spit and mud, my soul seeks relief from fear and seeks God earnestly for courage to move boldly forward.  Self-deception is a difficult thing for me to own up to, and far too often it is easier to see the deception in others than it is to see in myself.

These blinders I have walked with through life, God in his mercy must remove. Opening my reluctant eyes, the Father shows me with his radiance the darkness I've been squinting in, even as God prepares me to see or may never see the great and unsearchable.

Father, God, Almighty, I see more clearly now!  Thank You for my friend David, Bunyan, Lewis, and one after another in biblical and recent history with who I count privileged to know.  The defining characteristic of their encounters with You has taught me that their willingness (even reluctant willingness) to see the deceptions within myself and to bring those deceptions to the feet of the One who has made them visible.  Your love and mercy are to my life the shining undeceptions that unwearyingly move me to see and completely rest in Your grace.  Amen   

"Billy, Go Wash Up, Dinner's On"

I had just come to the front porch, sat down on my old wooden box to remove my muddy shoes.  As I looked at the basket full of garden pickings my mind suddenly filled with the pleasant thoughts of my grandmother, Netti Silva Bauer.  It was like she was standing on the open door threshold of her kitchen; ever reminding me: “wash up, dinner’s on.”  With grandma, I can never remember a time her not announcing, minutes before any meal, “wash up, dinner’s on!”  From an early age, my dirty hands were given a bad rap.  Going into my seventy second year, it remains. As I write, I’m thinking, I was born ready to dig into the mess before me, to imagining a war where I dug a fox hole and getting that Wyoming dirt under my fingernails, taking my shoes and socks off to walk in the mud, feeling its warm, soothing, therapeutic qualities between my toes.  When I think about it further, I’ve always delighted in life by generally getting it all over myself. And, to this day, it doesn’t take long before I’m still reminded that dirty fingers and a messy face is not acceptable, that jumping into mud puddles to experience the rain almost always comes with a reprimand. Sometimes I’m still scolded or admonished that finger-painting coming from wiping on my pants or licking the corners of my mouth from biting into a jelly filled doughnut.  I'm reminded verbally or with a look that that this is fine for the little ones who have not yet graduated to more “refined” utensils. Moving from child to a senior adult seems to have involved cleaning up my act in more ways than one.

The earliest Christian disciples utilized metaphors of childhood in their letters to newly believing communities. Paul compares one’s knowledge of God to the process of learning: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Peter similarly encourages new believers to grow in love and knowledge: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Ruminating, it is easy to read both of these examples and conclude that the ways of children are behaviors I am being told to out grow. I admit it is easy to allow my negative perspectives on what is “childish” to inform the way I receive these exhortations involving what is “childlike.” Yet far from speaking of childhood negatively, Paul is comparing my current understanding and vision of God to that of a child’s, which will encouragingly grow clearer on the soon coming day when I stand before God face to face. Similarly, Peter is not urging me to grow out of my newborn hunger, but on the contrary is calling me to grow further into it. In other words, there are indeed some things in childhood that God would not have me to abandon as I turn seventy two!

My Confession of Arrogance

It’s not a few times that the accusation of being arrogant has been flung my way. “How can  you believe that you’re right and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims along with a thousand of other religions, are wrong?”  “You don’t say that Jesus is a way to God, but the way.”  I respond; that not only do it say it but I believe it!  Therefore my belief system is the height of arrogance, isn’t it?

Some years ago, as a schooled chaplain,  I found myself haunted by the accusation and became reluctant to talk about my faith.  I didn’t want to appear arrogant, bigoted, or intolerant.  The pluralistic view of religions thrives very easily in places like Canada or Europe where tolerance is valued above everything else and for the last two decades has caught a strong foot hold in America.  It seems very easy to slip from the true claim of “all people have equal value” to the false claim that “all ideas have equal merit.”  But, the older I get, especially these past ten years or so, see clearly, those are two very different ideas.

When confronted with the "all religions are essentially the same" idea, I use the example of getting strongly into literature . These last few years, I've read William Shakespeare, Tolkien, Lewis, but also Virginia Woolf, The Velveteen Rabbit and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Now, when I say: “I've concluded that every author is identical;” would someone conclude that: (a) this is the most profound statement on literature they've ever heard? Or would they conclude (b) that I don't have the first clue what I'm talking about? I suggest that they’d probably choose (b). So, what about the statement "all religions are the same"? It seems to me, it likewise suggests that the person making it hasn't actually looked into any of them? Because if one did, I think they would realize it's not that most religions are fundamentally the same with superficial differences but the reverse: most religions have superficial similarities with fundamental differences.  (I’ve had to mull this over for about three weeks before writing it. I confess most minds are probably a bit more malleable and less mullable.) 

My hearkening back to my studies in Reality Therapy, presents a further problem for me with this idea that all religions are essentially the same. That is: it ignores a fundamental truth about reality: ideas have consequences. What I believe matters, because it will effect what I do. To claim that all religions are essentially the same is to say that it doesn't matter what I believe as long as I’m sincere—and neglects the fact that I can believe something sincerely and be sincerely wrong. Hitler held his beliefs with sincerity but that doesn't make them true.

However, truth, by its very nature, is exclusive. If it is true, as I and other Christians claim: that Jesus was crucified, died, and rose from the dead, then it is not true, as Islam claims, that Jesus never died in the first place and that somebody else was killed in his place. Both claims cannot be true. Truth is exclusive.

But just because truth is exclusive, that doesn't make truth cold and uncaring. Truth for me as a Christian is personal. The Jesus who said "I am the only way" also said "I am the truth." In other words, ultimate truth is not a set of propositions but a person. As the Bible says in 2 Timothy 2:12, "I know whom I have believed." Not what I have believed or experienced but whom! Jesus Christ.

To ask why, as I was awhile back, I think that Jesus Christ is the only way is to miss the point entirely. Jesus does not compete with anybody. Nobody else in history made the claims he did; nobody else in history claimed to be able to deal with the problems of the human heart like he did. Nobody else in history claimed, as he did, to be God with you and me. So, I say conclusively , because I believe conclusively, that Jesus is the only way should have nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with my introducing people to him.