wesley was right.

[6 minutes]

Do all the good you can,

by all the means you can,

in all the ways you can,

in all the places you can,

at all the times you can,

to all the people you can,

as long as ever you can.

John Wesley

Years ago the New York Times ran a feature asking for people to share their Thanksgiving (horror) stories. There were a number of funny anecdotes along with the disaster stories, but in the mix came one tragic comment from somebody who called themselves “Sad Person”:

My Holiday horror story is that every year I am reminded that my family doesn’t want me and I don’t have any friends. I wish the world wouldn’t stop for eight weeks every year and I could just be in peace.

There were a good many responses to “Sad Person” but I thought this one captured the gist of my post today:

A note to sad person. What you say about your family may be true, but I certainly hope not. However, remember, if you want a friend you have to also be a friend to someone, too. It’s not a one-way street. Be kind to someone who is lonely, do a good deed for someone in need, do volunteer work at a hospital/charity, and smile at everyone you meet. You will make people feel very special and you will feel wonderful for doing it.

I got the idea for today’s blog piece from a recent rereading of Galatians. In chapter 6, Paul appeals to a congregation of tired, irritated, even selfish believers who had lost the plot. He even said, “Y’all got me SMH” (Gal 4:20). This whole section, from verse one on, could fall under the title: “CHURCH IS HARD” or “SAINTHOOD IS EXHAUSTING.”

People sin and break your heart. They can drag you down with their drama and be a royal burden. You and I can be a piece of work also, let’s not forget. The flesh is loud and whiny and arrogant and is always trying to kill you when you’re not looking. It won’t ever shut up, or let up, or give up. The struggle is real. Saints don’t happen overnight (Gal 4:19).

good advice

So, given all that, just do all the good you can to anyone and everyone as you have opportunity. Don’t complicate things. Don’t overanalyze. Don’t overthink it. Just do good (v10). You’ve got shortcomings, I’ve got shortcomings; we’re not going to have everything figured out. Just. Do. Good. In the name of Jesus. Don’t withhold it because you don’t think they deserve it (newsflash: you don’t either!). Do good anyway.

There’s so much drama, yes. On the daily there’s a never-ending pile of (pardon the French) doo-doo we have to deal with all the time. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,” Jesus said. True to all of that, but that means there’s never-ending possibilities to do good, to make someone’s day, to punch holes in the darkness, to right wrongs, to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

Sainting is hard. Loving is hard. Bearing one another’s burdens is hard. Bearing our own loads is hard. Fighting the flesh is hard. Getting up and being motivated to face another day is hard. But we do it for Jesus. We are kind for Jesus. We are patient with others for Jesus. We fight what we’d like to say for Jesus. We fight airing our grievances for Jesus. We fight jerking a knot in somebody’s tail for Jesus. We overcome evil with good…for Jesus.

There are some I’ve had to halt praying imprecatory prayers for because God told me “I want you to pray good for them. Leave that other stuff to me.” So I pray good on their day. I ask God to bless them. I pray for opportunities to serve them in little ways. What I can’t do is be around them because that’s not good for my mental and spiritual health, but the good I can do is to pray good for them…and leave the other stuff to God to work out. Lord knows I fail, but I’m starting to fail a little bit less these days.

due season

Another motivation to “do all the good we can” is that, one day, there’s going to be a reaping (v9). And the reaping is going to be epic. It’s going to be so good. “Every ounce of Christian suffering will be compensated for with millions of years of rest, and still more besides. This suffering will be merely a blip on the radar of an eternity of peace, a grain of sand compared to the global beaches of God’s comfort in the world to come” (Jared C. Wilson).

So keep doing good even if the only good you can do right now is to smile at someone or finally finish that chore you promised or pay for the person’s coffee behind you in the drive-thru line. Or text someone you’re on the outs with and just say, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

Hey brother- (or sister-) -in-Christ:

“You were running well”…..now you’re just going through the motions

You were “standing”……now you’re bowing in defeat

You were “walking in the Spirit”……now you’re wasting away in inertia.

You were “doing good”…..now you’re questioning whether your good is doing any good at all.

Anne Lamott tells of a friend who told her “‘I’m not suicidal, but sometimes I wish I was dead.’ This is the point beyond exhaustion, when you can’t see how you’ll ever fill up again. And then she does, through what she calls lunch-money faith: nothing dramatic, and just enough.”

Perhaps you don’t have the emotional currency right now to invest in something that will cost you dearly, but you have just enough coin in your pocket to buy someone a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name. Lunch-money faith, right? Your level of faith right now has you in the shallow end of the pool when you can distinctly remember a time when you swam in the deep end. It’s okay. You can make a splash there too.

Wesley was right. Do all the good you can, etc. But if “all the good you can” is only enough to fill a thimble, offer that thimble up to God and ask him to bless it, then give it to somebody in Jesus name. Then ask for him to give you a cup for next time. I hear Jesus really enjoys a cup of cold water now and again.

Selah, beloved.

joy incarnate

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Luke 1:41

This verse gets me. An unborn child leaping with the news of Jesus. Dancing before his Messiah! And there was cause to dance. The King of kings entered the world in real time.

A millennium earlier King David stripped down to his pajamas and danced before the Ark and here John does the same thing in his birthday suit. Another dance would prove his undoing, yes, but let’s be real. When just a baby, long before that wretched affair with dancing Salome, John cut a rug for Jesus in his mama’s womb.

The reactions of the people of the first Christmas varied then as they do today. John is but one example.

Joseph feared.

Mary wondered.

Elizabeth blessed.

The innkeeper dismissed.

The city slept.

Anna waited.

Simeon prophesied.

Shepherds worshipped.

Herod raged.

John danced.

Recently I was struck by a re-reading of the Christmas story about a choir of angels suddenly erupting in song over the fields of Palestine. What grabbed my attention was the nature and ministry of angels. They never act contrary to the will of God, but always in concert with the Almighty.

They were singing. They were celebrating. They were excited. It occurred to me that the angels were exhibiting on earth the same atmosphere present in heaven. I believe it’s safe to say God was deep in his cups of joy over the whole affair.

We should, first, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breath and depth and richness.
— Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

When Jesus told of a single sinner being converted he said the reaction in heaven was a party. Here’s how our Savior phrased it: “I am saying to you, joy arises in the presence of the angels of God” (Wuest). Did you catch that? Read it again. “In the presence of the angels of God.” Jesus paints a vivid picture of the Father’s joy.

John Piper said, “It is good to have a happy King.” The leaders of today are anything but happy. They are conflicted, narcissistic, frightened, aloof, dishonest, boorish. But the God of the universe is a happy King. His cup runneth over with joy!

That same joy touched John. The very moment the tiny prophet-in-utero was made aware of the Messiah being inches away, heaven’s ecstasy crashed into his amniotic sac. He was struck as if by a bolt of lightning and jumped for joy. Such was the force of celebration that his own mother felt its aftershock.

“Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We are to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We are to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we’ve been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We are to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.”
—Robert Hotchkins, theologian, University of Chicago

In the earliest part of the 20th century, a guest speaker was invited to address the graduates of a college in Massachusetts. Before the ceremony, the speaker, Henry van Dyke, spent some time celebrating God’s joy in creating the Berkshire mountains. He was inspired to jot down some lyrics to which perfectly fit with Beethoven’s famous tune, “Ode to Joy.”

I find the third verse most appropriate this morning:

Thou art giving and forgiving,
Ever blessing, ever blest,
Wellspring of the joy of living,
Ocean depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our Brother,
All who live in love are Thine;
Teach us how to love each other,
Lift us to the joy divine.

This Christmas weekend, I just wanted to remind you that our Father is a Giver of Joy because he is full of joy. As you gather with family and friends, may you offer up laughter and share the happiness of heaven. And, by all means, if so disposed, dance for joy in your pajamas.

Selah, beloved, and the merriest of Christmases!

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just another miraculous birth?

“How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

— Mary, Luke 1:34

If you know me at all, you know how much I love the writings of the late Eugene Peterson. The man has pastored my soul for decades. In one of his perhaps lesser known works, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, he reminds us the birth of Messiah wasn’t the only miraculous birth in scripture, but it was the only one of its kind.

The eminent pastor turns our attention to pre-Advent scripture to briefly recount five miraculous births God was “critically and intimately involved in…”:

Abraham and Sarah (Isaac)
Manoah and unnamed wife (Samson)
Boaz and Ruth (Obed)
Elkanah and Hannah (Samuel)
Zechariah and Elizabeth (John)

And here is how he worshipfully distinguishes the heart-staggering birth of King Jesus from those earlier birth events:

The work of God in the conception and birth of Jesus through Mary is continuous with these five previous “impossible” births, but it is also different…

How so? we wonder.

In the mothers ranging from Sarah to Elizabeth, a barren womb was the impossible condition to overcome; these women very much wanted a child. But in Mary the “impossible” condition is virginity: here there is no yearning for or expectation of a child.
Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places, 55-6

Peterson quotes Raymond Brown (The Birth of the Messiah, p314), who opens to us the compelling thought of this being the first and only birth through agency of a human womb in which God took the initiative.

It was all God’s idea!

In Mary’s case, she was a virgin who had no thought of bearing a child at that time. It was unthinkable to her. Maybe someday but not at this stage of her life, and certainly not as an unmarried woman!

Her pregnancy was ALL God’s idea! He wasn’t answering the cry of a barren couple, he was answering

Himself,

His own heart,

His own yearning.

This is the heart of Advent. This is the miracle and mystery of Christmas hope. Here is the gospel: God from the start has sought you, not the other way around. You weren’t even aware of your longing but that God was already at work filling your womb, your inner cry, with his life.

When Mary visited her cousin to tell her the news of her divine pregnancy, Elizabeth called her “Blessed!”

Allow me to put an ❗️on this post by pulling from another author I greatly admire. Picking up on Elizabeth’s same exuberant emotion, Brennan Manning applies it to all of us who are caught in the thrall of Christmas grace:

You are blessed! God’s desire is for you. And Jesus is the incarnation of God’s furious longing. He is your supreme Lover. It’s true. You are blessed. Your soul’s winter is over. The snows are over and gone. Flowers are blooming inside of you. The season of joyful songs has come. To you. You are blessed! The love of God is folly. No one is excluded. All (really!) are called to the banquet table. Come, and be filled. You are blessed! You can pray like a child, and enjoy God. You are blessed! Heal, and be healed…Amen. Amen. Amen.
Brennan Manning, The Furious Longing of God

Selah, blessed and beloved!

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