While Grace Is Still Counting

The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy.
Numbers 14:18

Hell is God’s justice, heaven His mercy, and the earth His long-suffering.
Anonymous

The goodness of God leads you to repentance.
Romans 2:4

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the children of men is fully set in them to do evil.
Ecclesiastes 8:11

All the day long I have stretched out My hands unto a people disobeying and opposing.
Romans 10:21, Darby Translation

My stars, this is painful.

It’s like I’m watching a train wreck about to happen.

I can see a horrible collision unfolding but am helpless to stop it. I can warn the train: The bridge is out! I can jump up and down, wave my arms and yell, but the train keeps barreling down the track, unconcerned about the impending danger to itself and others. There will most certainly be a violent end, a cacophony of twisted metal and burning flesh. And there’s nothing I can do to prevent it from happening.

I’m not speaking curses here, I’ve just stood around enough tracks to see how these things turn out. Be not deceived, we are told, God is not mocked; whatever a man sows, the same he will reap. Oh, how I wish this time could be different, yes I do, but this is an immutable law of life and those who refuse to learn from the past are destined to repeat it. Continue reading While Grace Is Still Counting

Either Way…I Still Praise Him.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
(David, Psalm 139:5)

We are distressed/hard-pressed/troubled/squeezed on every side…
(Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:8)

Nobody puts ‘Baby’ in a corner.
(Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing)

I’m feeling ‘hemmed in’ these days. Diminished. Limited. Grounded, like a teenager: no keys, no car, no friends. Just school, then home.

On top of that, I feel cornered. Outnumbered.

It’s redolent of a scene in Thor where the Viking hero and his compatriots infiltrate the Frost Giant’s lair and are met by a relentless enemy in wave after wave, each giant becoming more formidable than the last and more numerous than before.

Yeah, that captures it nicely.

On every front a vexing battle is being waged and it seems like I am losing ground.

Ministry.

Family.

Finances.

Friends.

Health.

Some fronts are more like skirmishes while others border on “Shock and Awe.” These days I look like the Arizona border, Iraq (in March, 2003) and Afghanistan all rolled into one. Continue reading Either Way…I Still Praise Him.

Father’s Day From A Prodigal’s Perspective

Today I propose we do a little what if-ing. Let’s “what-if?” the story that contains the prodigal son. It pretty much leaves us with some open-ended questions, I know.

Did Dad ever want to wring the son’s neck? Ever?

Where was Mom in all this?

What happened six weeks or six months later?

Did the kid suffer a relapse?

Questions.

So…let’s pretend.

Imagine if Father’s Day fell a week following the prodigal son’s return. No, check that. Let’s pretend it occurred about six or seven months later. On that morning, the father—let’s call him Chanan (Hebrew for gracious)—awakens from a dreamless sleep and rubs his eyes so as to roust them from their hours of inertia. It is still dark, but an oil lamp casts a coppery glow inside the master’s bedroom, and he looks at the pleasing, sleeping form of his wife—oh, may as well: Chana. Hannah. Grace. Continue reading Father’s Day From A Prodigal’s Perspective