Christianity Archives - Page 2 of 2

this too shall pause

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again, some other day…

We sang that tune as children, hoping that rain wouldn’t ruin our summer plans. As adults we hope and pray our family trip to the ballpark won’t be rained out. We won’t mind if there’s a deluge on the way home, but just don’t rain on our chance to watch our favorite team play.

And so it is in the weather patterns of life. As much as we want “rain, rain go away,” we’ll gladly settle for a break in the clouds.

I have sympathy for the Gen Z-ers who’ve been dropped onto an Omaha Beach of constant extremes. The news of the day never seems to quiet for them; everything is mass hysteria and one outrage after another. For them it’s like the London blitz every day.

Winston Churchill told the people of London in 1942, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” As the nation sagged beneath the rubble left behind by German war planes, its leader comforted them with (I’ll improvise here), “We’re grieving and angry and sad, but we’re still here; we’re alive; we have today. There may be more woes to come but at least we don’t have to endure what is past anymore. We have discovered this day that we are made of better stuff than we realized.”

Bless God for pauses. They allow us to catch our breath; reassess. Sure, the forecast is bleak. Bills will again come due, your reverie will get interrupted, a recent victory will be short-lived, chances are you will get sideswiped out of nowhere. But for now, in this holy moment, hear God say, “I got you. It’s okay.”

The night is long, but the sun will shine. It may be fleeting; the afternoon may bring bad news yet again. But that sunrise means new mercies and is a reminder that God was present.

The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning;
It’s time to sing Your song again.
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me,
Let me be singing when the evening comes.

Paul had a friend named Onesiphorus who visited him in prison often. The apostle put the experience of having such a man in his life into a letter, describing him as “a breath of fresh air.”

The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my ^[a]chains
2 Timothy 1:16

Long ago I spent some time meditating on that word “refreshed” and imagined Paul as a farmer ploughing on an oppressively hot day. As he stands in the middle of the sun-baked clay, he removes his farmer hat and wipes the glistening sweat from his farmer brow. The air is still and unbearably close. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there’s a breeze. It blows in quietly and gently wraps him in its embrace. Finally, air! He can breathe; he is instantly refreshed, if but for a moment. This was what Onesiphorus’s encouragement did for God’s man in the heat of his crucible.

Long seasons of hardship have us crying uncle, but it seems like no uncle is coming to rescue us. How many times have we felt drowned beneath the waters of oppression? We gasp, desperately needing a chance to to come up for air. Just when we right ourself enough to tread water, it drags us down, pushes us under, grabbing and holding us. Please, God, air!

This morning our pastor led in a prayer of confession and repentance and as I was quietly opening up to the Lord the warring in my soul, a kind woman walked over to me and asked if she might lay a hand on me and pray. Of course I said yes. She prayed silently, and when the pastor said amen, Rachel said amen and removed her hand. I thanked her and for the next hour I could feel where her hand rested on my back. She blessed me with hope.

A good night’s sleep, a meaningful verse, a gentle hand on your shoulder, a smile from a stranger. These are things that can aid us in moving forward, even if it’s in shuffling half-steps. I pray whatever you’re going through, it is the end of the beginning. I pray for the refreshing wind of God to wrap you for a time and give you strength to put your next foot forward. I hope the sky opens up and gives you some breathing room.

We know it’s not the end, but at least we can reckon that it’s the end of the beginning, and that’s good enough…for now. I can’t wait for the heavenly-mandated full-stop of suffering of all kinds, when every teary eye is dried, and there’s no more pain, no more curse. But for right now I give thanks for when God hits the pause button.

SPEAKING OF PAUSES…I’m not going to be posting quite as regularly for the next couple months or longer. I’m not dormant; I just completed a couple of smaller writing projects and now I’m part way through a bigger one, one that’s consuming most of my writing energy. I humbly ask for your prayers to finish well. Selah, beloved.

called to smaller places

“O, Theophilus…” Acts 1:1

I was recently in a conversation with a close friend and regular reader (and commenter) here, about how our respective ministry lives have shrunk down and how to make peace with that.

I remember telling my friend “I must rededicate myself every day to the prospect of making an eternal impact on a single individual if that’s all I’m called to do for that day or for the rest of my life.”

This is quite a turn of events for someone who has preached to audiences of mega-churches and statewide youth rallies and professional ball clubs and national conferences. It’s not a gig I would’ve signed up for 40 years ago, but here we are.

It isn’t that I don’t get opportunities here and there to mount the platform and proclaim the word. I’ve probably preached more in the last six months than I did in the previous 10 years. This, too, is a mercy of God. Just three days ago I sat in front of a packed house of highschoolers and laid myself bare with a message on brokenness. It was glorious. And (dare I say) fun. I say ‘fun’ because this is what I’m wired for and called to.

But this morning, my heart’s ‘check-engine’ light came on as I found myself settling in for a fresh rereading of Acts. No, it wasn’t an angry red flashing light but rather an amber light informing me I needed some routine maintenance; an oil change, if you will, to insure I’ll be fit for the next 3,000 miles.

So, yeah, the book of Acts….

….written by Dr. Luke, the eminent travel secretary and personal physician of Paul.

This one single man contributed to nearly HALF of the New Testament and that fact alone blows my mind.

Think of it: half your New Testament is the private correspondence between two people!

The good doctor never attained apostle-status as he was not an eyewitness of the Resurrected Lord, but he is always mentioned in the same breath as those who founded the Church, especially God’s choice apostle, Paul.

He may not have been at the tomb or touched the hands and side of Jesus, but he was in the front row of many of the most critical events and “greater things” of which Jesus told his followers they would participate.

Here’s what hit me, and why I want to share it with you today. I’m imagining that you might be reading this having memories of times when you were able to use your gifts more regularly and that they felt necessary, and appreciated, and beneficial to the Kingdom.

Today, or in this season, not so much. The luster is buffed out and you feel you may be a forgotten commodity and way past your prime. You can remember a time when your name came up in conversations and when stuff needed to get done, you were the go-to guy or gal. But now you’re rusting in a corner, feeling more of an afterthought or anachronism.

You are most definitely NOT.

I hope you hear this. If you can, understand you are in maintenance mode (from which you will be updated and glitch-free); in a holding pattern (from which you will most certainly land); in a winter of unseen, unfelt growth (out of which Spring will come again); God is not finished with you; he may just be redirecting you to where – and to whom – you will do HIM the most good.

Case in point….Luke.

What struck me about this amazing servant of Christ was a note I put next to the first verse. The verse reads:

Acts 1:1
In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach,

And this is what I wrote:

Luke wrote his two tomes for one man (“lover of God”), so it could be said that a greater portion of the NT was written to convince a single man of the nature and validity of the Gospel! Thus, Luke was one of the most ardent disciple-makers in the NT.

That’s what I call a ‘SINGLES’ ministry!

Most certainly, Luke routinely disconnected from his wider ministry alongside Paul to make sure there was a single man properly discipled from new birth to seasoned faith. There could have been literally scads of letters exchanged between the two over a long period of time. We just have these two preserved in canon.

Luke’s gospel was a primer for Theophilus to better understand the Christian faith, and his chronicles of Acts were a user’s manual Theo could carry about so as to discover for himself life in Christ through the operation of the Holy Spirit.

I hope you’re as encouraged as I am! Being a physician by trade, Luke was more familiar with one-on-one ministry anyway, but as a skilled researcher and writer, it was necessary for him to accompany Paul and other early ministry teams in their travels. He saw the really cool stuff. He wrote about it all.

Thank God for the preserved record, the intimate details of Christ’s suffering sweat-drops of blood and the first-hand testimony from those who experienced Pentecost! Just remember, he did it ALL for a single individual.

**Dr. Luke made a huge difference in the one, and we are all the better because of it.**

In the past decade I’ve come to accept that I can do perhaps even more good off the platform, investing in the few. These days, a living room or a cozy corner in a coffee shop is my nave and I’m seeing the kingdom play out just fine in the lives of a handful rather than a crowd.

I recall the story of Jesus praying alone when Peter & Co. interrupted, informing him he was needed elsewhere. They wanted their Messiah to finish up (?!?) and giddyup and go. Bigger fish to fry, they told him. Jesus brushed that notion away and said something that goes against the grain of our American ‘event-driven-crowd-gathering-go-big-or-go-home’ ministry ideal.

Jesus told them he needed to go to the smaller places too. (Mark 1:37-38)

Theophilus was Luke’s “smaller place.”

Lydia was Paul’s “smaller place” (Acts 16:13-14) and from that encounter the Church at Philippi was birthed – one of the apostle’s most enthusiastic supporters.

The Ethiopian eunuch was Philip’s “smaller place” when he was uprooted from a big-tent revival in Samaria (Acts 8:26) and whiplashed into the desert.

A single person.

Big ministry.

Great reward.

Where is your smaller place? It may be that you are resisting going there because you feel (sorry not sorry) too gifted, too called to bigger things. You’re missing something quite beautiful right under your nose.

That lone eunuch evangelized an entire African kingdom.

Sometimes…big things come in small packages.

Edward Kimball paid a visit to a young man in his Sunday school class at his workplace and shared the love of Jesus with him. Young Dwight Moody got saved and became one of the eminent gospel evangelists of history. Through a line of converts spilling from Moody’s ministry came J. Wilbur Chapman, Billy Sunday, Mordecai Ham, and Billy Graham. And it all goes back to a man with a burden for a single young man. Moody was Kimball’s “smaller place.”

Don’t let the earlier point mist away from view: we have the Gospel of Acts and the Chronicle of the Acts of the Early Church because Luke followed his Lord’s example and went to the “smaller places” too. Remember that the next time you hear a sermon from his gospel or read a devotional from his other letter.

It started when Luke got a burden for one person and decided to write him a couple letters. You don’t need a microphone or a following or a reputation. You just need a big, small heart, a single purpose, and maybe a pen.

Remind me to tell you about “Puavo Fivre”….

the sixth estate of mary

But this is the one to whom I will look:
(s)he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word. Isaiah 66:2

The cries of ‘fake news’ co-opt the headlines and such affrontery to our nation’s fourth estate has them screaming to the hills and college coeds to their safe places.

It seems there’s no end nor coming out from under a hodgepodge of hot mess issues these days:

Collusion.

Sexual predation.

Tyranny.

Police brutality.

Virtue signaling hashtags.

Twitter rants.

Evergreen.

The fourth estate is in the middle of every one. We have the Europeans to thank for introducing the world to the idea of ‘estates’ (or powers) to divvy up the socio-cultural economy of the realm. As they saw it, clergy were the first estate [!], nobility came second, and commoners got slotted at the bottom. These were the people with varying degrees of power, from most to least.

Modern tweaking of the estates has added a fourth: a nation’s free press. Pardon me while I stifle a giggle to their being regarded as lower than the low. Now still a fifth estate has been added to accommodate for bloggers and such (yay me!).

Side note: I’m pretty sure clergy in this post-christian era are bound to get a rethink in the rankings.

That’s all well and good but there’s another estate few talk about – outside the Bible, that is. It’s a level so low it has to look up to see bottom. Even the dregs and dreck of social media score higher than these misfits.

Who are the sixth “estate”? Before I answer, let’s go back to the fourth and fifth estates where we find the press, the expanded media, and self-acclaimed journos. In the Christmas story these would include the lowly shepherds who first saw and reported the fair and balanced story of the Incarnation. (The priests, the puppet governor Herod, and upperclass of Israel had their moments in the story too)

The biblical ‘fourth and fifth estate-types’ were not congenial, gentle, cuddly guys, mind you. They were rough-and-tumble blue collar herdsman, branded unclean and unfit for public life. But kudos to them on this day: they got the story first and they got it right, which is why we love putting shepherds in our church plays.

But there’s yet a lower estate. Probably the most important figure in the nativity story other than Jesus puts herself in this category. Here’s how Mary self-identifies:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. (Luke 1:48)

“Humble estate.”

This is Mary’s place in the Kingdom. The word she uses, translated to Greek, means to be ‘(forcibly) bent,’ carrying about the weight of humiliation. Her world had pushed her down, a bent reed in the footpath of the self-absorbed.

“Why me?” indeed.

Young Mary was a nobody, underfoot, and flattened by oppression and injustice – first as a Jew, then as a woman, and finally with no estate but a Nazarene bloodline. All the other estates stood atop her, over her, apart from her. Even the fourth/fifth estate were dazzled by an angel choir and an audience. Mary was serenaded by the gentle lowing of farm animals. The shepherds rejoiced and told the news. Mary sat and “pondered.”

But may I suggest yet another estate? This one – and this one alone – belongs to Jesus. His is the seventh estate, for,

…though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Selah, beloved. Even if you’re in the first through third estates, ‘tis nobler to share in the sixth with Mary, which is the spirit of Christmas faith, only made possible – and lifted up – by the Seventh.

IN RESPONSE

What do I do with this, I’m asking myself. How do I apply this? What is ‘this’ you ask? Put simply, identifying with Mary’s estate (Isa 66:2).

How must I walk it out? The answer beckons me to deep repentances and costlier amens than I’ve ever known. Will you pray for me? And, if you’ll ask, I’d be honored to pray for you.