153 reasons

It’s the month of thanks, or, if you’re born anew, a continuation of the theme.

Here I’ll raise mine Ebenezer and join the family sing-a-long. You might want to settle in, mine’s got 153 verses.

It starts with a story. Once upon a Galilee morn, seven disciples crowd into a boat with hopes set high for a good catch. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. All night long and not a single bite. Mind you, these are experienced fishermen and they get nada. Zero. Squat.

Their leader is the most confused. Peter grouses, “What in tarnation is happening here?” He’s known how to do this since a paidíon. This was second nature to him. Must he fail at this too?

The early April morning is suddenly cleaved by a voice from the shore.

“‘Mornin’ lads! Any luck?”

There’s a cute moment embedded in the story: Jesus asks them if they’d had any success through the night. He wants to know if they’ve caught any prosphágion. Don’t anyone tell me Jesus didn’t have a sense of humor. The word he used means a side dish, not the main course. He was trolling them!

“Hey fellas, you got anything to nibble on?”

Groan.

Peter squints through the mist and sees the shape of a man. A hundred yards off, it’s difficult to tell who yon figure is. And yet the Voice sounds familiar…

There’s fish, and then there’s fish

“Try your nets on the right side,” the Man on the shore suggests.

“You’ve got to be kid—”

You pretty much know the next bit if you’ve been to Sunday school or raised up in the Word.

The seven knackered disciples throw the nets starboard and look on in amazement as the sea comes alive. The fish practically school themselves right into the nets! The startled men never saw such a haul!

Our narrator, John (aka, “the other disciple”) describes the moment the catch comes in. He chooses the word ichthúos to supplant their fruitless all-nighter. Now, we’re talking game fish, big fish, what you’d serve at a banquet!

Count ‘em. 153. (you best believe fishermen wouldn’t lie about something like that) That’s almost 22 family-sized fish per disciple. And the net didn’t break. Not a single ichthúos was lost!

Tell me, if you were in the boat that morning, what would you do? What other response could there be but to recognize Jesus in the moment and hurdle every obstacle to get to the feet of the Lord? That’s what Peter was thinking too. Casting off restraint, Peter jumps out of the boat.

While Peter doesn’t exactly walk on water, he throws on his tunic over his bare bottom and swims to shore, leaving the great catch behind. Just Jesus, only Jesus, always Jesus.

Charcoal fires

What does he find when he gets to shore? Jesus sitting beside a fire of coals and a ready-made breakfast. Pardon the quick side trail, but do you remember when we last saw a charcoal fire? That’s right. Simon Peter stood by one at night, warming his hands, denying he knew the Man Jesus.

Quite niftily, John adds this bit of trivia into the gospel record. Mind you, it’s there for more than just atmosphere. His deft narrator’s eye catches the detail of fire burned down to the coals, owing to the fact the Savior’s been there a long while.

The seaside breakfast tells us Jesus is waiting for us to simply “Come.” Whether we’ve failed, lied, or trampled on his name, the sizzle tells the story. The aroma doesn’t lie.

Hear this, beloved: that the fire’s been set in the morning reminds Peter — and us — it’s a brand new day. The veil of that awful night of scandal has been lifted and the mercies of Christ are fresh as the dew.

There’s dying, and there’s living

Conversation ensues. There’s a fascinating back-and-forth between Jesus and Peter regarding agapáō and philéō and something about Peter’s not-so-flattering future. But then Jesus looks at the reeling disciple and says, “Walk with me.”

It’s not a metaphorical invitation. Jesus quite literally stands up from the group and motions for Peter to follow. The two start a stroll along the beach, away from the others. We can skip for now the bit about John getting up to follow after and Simon Peter’s protest.

Here’s where I wanted to take you today: I’d wager Jesus wanted to speak life into Peter, privately teaching him about agapáō and feeding sheep and lambs and why charcoal fires and the significance of 153 fish. And a whole lot of other stuff too, perhaps. Cool to think about.

Someone counted all of the encounters Jesus had with individuals in the gospels and came up with the number 153. I haven’t proven that, but I’ll take it on face value. It wouldn’t surprise me if that number were accurate. That’s 153 Jesus stories in the gospels.

Those seven Galileans in that gospel johnboat had 153 gospel stories that day, enough to spend the rest of their lives talking about them and writing about them. Peter, soon-to-be leader of the global spread of the gospel, surely did his share.

How many Jesus stories might you have? I bet you could come up with at least 153. That’s a lot of fish tales!

An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.
A.W. Tozer

Dear reader, I pray you have some breakfast conversations with Jesus in the coming days. I’m going to ask him to lovingly explain some deep stuff to you, marvelous things that equip you for your next assignment. I hope you hear the sizzle and smell the aroma of the fish on the fire. He’s waiting for you now.

I finished John’s gospel in my daily reading yesterday and wrapped up my welling emotions over this final text with a thanksgiving prayer from my journal. Here’s what I wrote, in part:

I’m actually sitting with you this morning … You are the Risen Christ and I’m sitting with you. And you’re listening. You’re reading along with me. I love you, Jesus.

Thank you for my disability. May I use it for your glory today.

Thank you for all my close calls with death and for your Resurrection Life in me. Thank you for all my sicknesses and hospitalizations. You have been faithful and kind to me. You are my shepherd and I follow you in my wheelchair, wherever you lead me. I trust you.

Thank you for the “153” great fish you’ve given me, Father. I seem to always pine for only a handful, a bucketful, of “snack-sized” fish and have never been successful. Thank you for the “haul”, the supernatural “catch”…through my weakness, my inadequacy, my need. Thank you for the charcoal fires and for the already-cooked breakfast I didn’t labor for.

Thank you for inviting me to sit with you and serving (!) me. Bless you, in Your endearingly gracious name. Amen.

Selah and amen.

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why your “why” matters

Which of these is true:

Your life is temporal and ultimately lacks meaning and lasting value
You are imperfect at best so do what you can with what you have
You were created for a divine purpose and your Heavenly Father will perfect your calling and transform your life into a beautiful work of grace
Only the really important people can do the really important stuff

If you’ve been paying attention, you picked ‘C.’ As we saw in the last post, Sunday school teachers, lowly monks, maids, wives, sisters, whoever and whatever, can rise to their calling and find their “beautiful works” (καλὸν ἔργον) remembered forever in the logbooks of Glory.

The Lord of heaven pays attention even to the littlest of mites and smallest of lunches…and leaves space for each in his trophy case. He calls them “beautiful.”

As we discussed prior, a “beautiful” work (also Matt 5:16) is something that is selfless, sacrificial, motivated by love, and blesses the heart of God.

That’s what a beautiful work is, but what does it do? How does it move the needle?

🔸a “beautiful work” brings a bit of heaven to earth

John adds this pleasant detail inside his account of the story: “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” And so it is when we offer anything of loving sacrifice to our little worlds. The echoes of glory reach into that sacred space; the luster of heaven shines where it happens.

The ancient scene before us takes place in a village called “Bethany.” I’ve always thought that name was so lovely, so feminine. It sounds like someone you would want your son to marry. But then you study the name, what it means. You find out it is a combination of two words translated, “house” and “depression.” House of sorrow, if you will.

Now when you see what Mary did that evening, by filling the entire house with the aroma of sweet sacrifice, you begin to understand how “beautiful works” can bring heaven to earth.

In her book, ‘Suffering and the Heart of God,’ Diane Langberg describes a place outside Cairo called “Garbage City.” The streets and roofs of houses are made of compressed garbage and the stench gets in your hair and sticks to your clothes and skin. Rats skitter about your feet. There is no sewage system to wash away the filth.

Garbage mounts and rises to the sky in hills and small mountains. Pass through the streets and they’ll take you to an area about half the size of a football field where trash that can’t be recycled is burned in incinerators. The smell is sickeningly exacerbated; it hangs low and heavy in the air.

But just past all this is an area pristine and clean, with gleaming white walls and floors. “You see a room where woven handbags, rugs, and placemats are displayed,” Langberg writes. “Hanging on the walls of another room are quilted wall hangings, comforters, and pillow covers. Women are there sorting rags according to color and placing them in different baskets. Others work at two looms to create beauty out of the garbage.

If you continue down the steps you will hear the sound of water in large tubs as bags of shredded paper dissolve into pulp. Women in rubber aprons spread the mush into sieves, pull the sieves out of the vats, and stack them into the press where the new paper is drained. The paper is then dried in the sun and cards are made with gold embossing and marbled designs. More beauty created from garbage.

She continues:

There is a Coptic Church in the garbage community that began as a Sunday school nineteen years ago…you will enter one of two cave churches built on this mountain. The larger cave seats 10,000 and rivals the Red Rock amphitheater in Colorado in its dramatic beauty. Thousands of people gather – people whose lives are full of garbage, people who work with garbage, people who smell of garbage – for praise and preaching service. It is beauty in the midst of garbage.
Diane Langberg, Suffering and the Heart of God, 329-ff

🔸a “beautiful work” is borne from the fruit of personal sacrifice

When Mary broke the seal of her perfume, Mark described it by using a graphic term, συντρίβω. It means to to crush or strike together; to smash against, like a ship run aground, battered by the waves. That young woman in our story could not, would not bring her Master something that did not come at great cost.

We read in Matthew, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” Instinctively, Mary knew the death of Jesus was close at hand and what did she bring him? Her broken heart. Consequently, that broken-and-spilled-out-sweet-smelling sacrifice filled a house, surrounded by sorrow and depression, with the aroma of resurrection life.

Beloved, whether you are bedbound, homebound, working a third shift job, raising children, supervising workers, answering phones all day, teaching a Sunday school class, living in a childless marriage, fighting off chronic illness, leading presentations at work, standing in front of church congregations and expounding the truths of God’s word each week, blue collar, white collar, or T-shirt and jeans, tenured or part-time, single or hitched, wherever you fall in the spectrum of life, you can spill the goods knowing whatever you do, even if goes unnoticed or criticized, you do it for the applause of heaven.

🔸a “beautiful work” disarms folks and exposes their heart orientation

Mary received some startlingly negative feedback after she offered her service. First off, how dare she? and second, what in the world?? Imagine looking to buy something on Amazon and seeing every reviewer giving one star because there was no option for zero. That would be the disciples in the room. Then imagine a single raving review of 5 stars! That would be Jesus.

Side note: sometimes ‘the church gonna church’ but Jesus is the only vote that counts.

2 Cor 2:15-16 tells us we (the people of “good works”) are are an odorous folk who either make people sick to death of us or drawn to the Life of Jesus in us.

Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God…
2 Cor 2:15, The Message

Just as Mary discovered, you too will find not everyone will be a fan of your beautiful deeds. Some will assume the worst. You weren’t sincere. You did it to be noticed. You want something in return. I wouldn’t have done it that way…

Do it anyway. Let them question. Let them criticize. So what if you don’t get the result you hoped for. One thing is certain: every “beautiful work” is seen and remembered in heaven.

🔸a “beautiful work” receives the approval of the Master and reaps eternal rewards

Which brings us to my favorite, most mind-blowing part of the story:

…wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.
Mark 14:9

The gospel story has been published and preached in thousands of languages, spanning two millennia. Every continent and country has heard the good news in some form….and everywhere it’s been told, this woman’s “good work” has been remembered.

Imagine! Having yourself offered special mention in the gospel story! Having future generations talk about your story being instrumental to the global spread of the gospel!

Astounding!

Hey you. Doubting lamb. God has written you into his great gospel story, too.

You are his masterpiece, created for good works.

You are an aroma of grace.

There is a shine inside of you that only gets out when you realize you are nothing without Christ, eternally indebted to him, and yearn to be “wasted”on him for no other reason than he is your “Why.”

Perhaps your story won’t be mentioned worldwide, but many years from now, your children and your children’s children and their children will point to a photo of you and say, “That’s my grandad. That’s my dad’s great-aunt. They loved Jesus and that’s why I’m a Christian today.” Others will pick through stories of your life and marvel at how you loved and they will be pressed to pick up the mantel and, in so doing, find their “Why” too.

May your story (and mine) always be a story of prodigal love. Selah, beloved.

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can i have your attention, please?

Luke 18 is all about being heard.

First, in Jesus’s signature story-form, we find a widow hanging on to her last thread of hope; unfortunately, her hope is found in a Gentile judge (not a picture of God, btw) who has little time for her. Nevertheless, through persistence, she at last gets a hearing and a judgment…in her favor.

We transition to a true-to-life episode that contrasts two worshipers at the Temple. One is in his customary pew, spouting off all the religious jargon of a prig (C.S. Lewis’s word), while the other won’t dare set a foot inside the narthex lest he be struck by lightning. One expects he will be heard (he is not), and the other only dreams of being heard (he is), at which we find he gets, not a day in court, but a seat at the table.

Next we see playful Jesus bouncing babies on his knee. The disciples lose their bleep and try to whisk the little hooligans off to their mothers. In no uncertain terms, the Lamb of God lets his men know they had best leave well enough alone. In fact, if they resist the bleatings and shovings of little lambs to be under the watchful eye of the Shepherd, they’d find themselves outside the pen.

Widows need justice.

Tax collectors need mercy.

Children need time.

All need Jesus.

And all just want the ear of the King.

As the chapter rolls out, nearing its end, a blind beggar is straining to be heard over the loud din of a gathered mob as the God-Man Jesus passes by. Blind “son of Timothy” (he’s so much an afterthought the poor fellow does not even warrant a name) is not seen and he is not heard – at first. Everyone around him tells the pathetic man to shush as the Holy Man cannot be bothered by someone who is so obviously a wretched sinner. He’s having none of it. The scripture tells us all the bluster just made him “call out even louder.” The man wanted to be heard.

I love the next two words that come next:

“Jesus stopped.” (Luke 18:40)

Let your ears rest on those words and dispel every other noise around you right now.

He stopped.

Earlier, God, as the father in the prodigal story, is seen running. Here, he stops in his tracks.

You have to remember Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on mission to do what he came to do. Earlier in this same gospel we learn Jesus “set himself to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51) and Isaiah adds color to this with his face being countenanced like “flint” – so hard and firm and resolute was his bent to go forward to Calvary.

He stopped his march,

his mission,

time,

everything.

In that sacred second all held their breath as Jesus turned his piercing gaze from the road ahead to the tragic figure on the fringe of the crowd. Those lyrical eyes looked past the religious, the zealous, the able-bodied, the excited, the would-be followers, all of the rabble, and found him.

The throng had no choice but to part like the Red Sea as the poor man was brought to the Healer. The exchange took all of forty-five seconds, maybe a minute.

After all, what’s a minute delay when there’s a chance to change a person’s life?

Pilate would wait for him.

Judas would have time enough to plan his dirty deed.

The High Priest could use the extra minute to consider his ways.

Barabbas would be cool with it, considering how his fate would turn.

But the Son of Timothy? This was his only shot, and he was going to be heard.

Something else I love about the story is that it sheds light on the earlier scripture about the widow and her repeated appeals to the “unrighteous judge.” If you wait a tick, you’ll find that Scripture interprets Scripture.

That passage you’re struggling to make light of, keep reading; the hidden will come to light. I have often puzzled over that story until one day I realized God is NOT the judge of that parable. Unfortunately, the caustic judge – to many – is exactly who God is to them: obstinate, uncaring, elusive, aloof, mean-spirited, vindictive. This is not the point of the parable, proven by this moment of mercy for the blind beggar on the road outside Jericho.

He called out more intensely on that roadside. He would be heard. He would not take NO for an answer. *That* is the point of the earlier parable. But rather than nagging, you just up the ante.

The key to being heard, to getting the attention of God, is not verbosity but intensity.

God is not listening for a casual, half-hearted, ritual, repetitive, obligatory prayer, but he will stop in his tracks for a cry from a wounded soul.

In 2009 I prayed again and again like a persistent widow for God to do something for me I couldn’t do for myself. Each and every prayer was important to God, and I know he heard, but was waiting to hear the shrill edge of my desperation. That came weeks later as I was “quiet-timing with God” in my van. I simply but straightforwardly said:

If you don’t, God, it won’t. I don’t want to live another day with this. Oh God, I don’t have the strength to ask for it again. I’m tired. I’m desperate. Please…

Do you ever get the inexplicable sense when something shifts in the atmosphere? That happened to me as soon as my prayer trailed off. I didn’t even want to add an amen. I just left it at the Healer’s feet and crawl into his lap. I called out one more time, and I was heard.

God stopped for me.

I can’t say that I’ve ever heard God audibly, but it came pretty close in the front cab of my van.

I’ve heard you, Scott. I will answer your prayer – you won’t like the way the way I do it, but you will give praise to me in the end. I am with you. Trust me, Scott…

It may not have been these words exactly, but you get the gist. I needn’t tell you that my cry was supernaturally, specifically, and spectacularly answered within a few very dark and grueling months. There were moments I felt abandoned and more than a few when I felt fearful of the outcome, but God won the day and my testimony stands as a ‘miktam’ (Psalm 16): archived in holy writ, penned in 24-carat gold. It is my story and I’m sticking to it.

What are you wanting God to stop and do for you? Sometimes the hardest part of ‘faithing’ is in the last half-hour, when it seems like God isn’t going to come through.

F. B. Meyer offers this counsel:

The lock of prayer sometimes turns hard, and calls for strength of purpose. The kingdom of heaven has to be taken by force. Let us pray so that our prayers may reverberate with repeated blows on the gates of God’s presence chamber.

“Repeated blows.”

Maybe, just maybe, the next blow that falls will stop God in his tracks and break the door down. Keep hammering away with your prayers, beloved. You’ll get his attention. I promise. I’ve got scripture and a testimony that proves it’s so.