Category: humility

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Reflections

A couple of days ago I celebrated another trip around the sun, my 64th. It was good to be with family.

There’s a lot to reflect on as I look back over the years. Our country has been through quite a few military conflicts, none as important to the world as WWII, although a couple have lasted much longer. We have bounced back and forth between conservative and liberal administrations and seem to have lost the center, as the two major parties move further away from each other.

The evangelical wing of the church is becoming as divided as the parties, with one group siding with the Republicans and one group throwing their lot in with the Democrats. We have forgotten that we are not to depend on government to “deliver” us, but only on the Savior who gave his life for us.

I reflect back on my own life, how so much of what I was absolutely sure of as a young person has faded away and how what I don’t know may be greater than what I do know. I still hold to the core beliefs of my faith in Jesus, but that is more and more being distilled down to loving God with every fiber of my being and loving others as Jesus loves me.

Physically, I am feeling the effects of getting older. I move a lot slower than when I was younger, and the only way I can touch the rim on a basketball goal now is by climbing up a stepladder. I can no longer eat the way I used to, and sometimes I forget and misplace things.

All in all, with all the changes, there is not much I would change and very little that I regret. While there are things I might have done differently, I believe that my steps have ordered by a gracious and loving Heavenly Father and that he has and will continue to work everything for my good. To quote one of my favorite stories, “How goes the world?” “The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes.”

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Blast From the Past: Still More

When we last left our hero, he was wondering what was going to happen next.

I was without work. I thought I was going to realize the fulfillment of a long held dream of coaching college basketball. So, I sent out resumes and waited. I talked to every coach I knew. And I waited. The summer came and went and still no coaching job. In fact, there were no jobs at all on the horizon. We didn’t feel free to move to another area because my parents and my wife’s parents had moved here to be near us and they were in declining health and needed our help. The search continued. As all this was going on, we had to give our Cocker Spaniel to the pound because he was old and had too much wrong with him for us to afford to have him treated. It was not a fun summer. About a week after we gave our dog away, I was out on yet another job search. As I drove past the animal shelter, I lost it. I began to pray, cry, and yell at God. I even cussed (I know that shocks some of you, but that’s the way it is). I told God that if I had anywhere else to go, I’d chuck this whole Christian thing. I realized that, like the disciples, I had nowhere else to go, that Jesus was the only one worth following.

In September of 2005, I was hired by a tour bus company to drive. I was glad because it would give me a chance to travel. As it turned out, the majority of the job consisted of leaving the house at 4:00 AM, driving to a National Guard camp eighty miles away, and shuttling troops back and forth from the camp to a nearby army base so they could be processed for active duty in Iraq. Most of the day was spent sitting on the bus and waiting for the soldiers to get their paperwork in order. I would usually arrive back home sometime after 10:00 PM. Because of this schedule, I usually only worked three days a week, so the income wasn’t real good. The company also had no health insurance for their employees.

At first, I wondered what I had done wrong, wondered why God had “put me on the sidelines”. I felt like I was in a desert. Sitting on the bus gave me plenty of opportunity to read, think, and pray. God began to teach me about trust and patience. He reminded me that he was the most important one in my life, and that my identity was in Jesus, not in being a teacher or coach. I began to rethink even more of my assumptions about God, church, and life. At the same time, God was teaching me increasingly to trust him. Jan and I saw God provide for us again and again.

In January 2006, I walked out of the desert. I was hired as a teacher’s assistant in a self-contained special education class at a public middle school. The kids I work with all have learning disabilities, some more severe than others. Many of them are from low income families. Quite a change from the Christian schools previously worked in, although not as much as I would have thought. Kids are kids wherever you go.

Also in January, both my mom and my mother-in-law went into a nursing home. Jan’s mom suffered a stroke, and my mom was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. Our ministry to our parents changed somewhat, as we were visiting our moms and essentially being there for our dads. It was hard to go into a place full of people who were essentially waiting to die and visit Mom, knowing that she would never leave in this life.

I’ll give your eyes a rest and write more later.

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Hurry Up and Wait

“Hurry up and wait” is a phrase that some who have served in the military my be familiar with. It is also a phrase that describes something that those who have Huntington’s Disease or care for someone who has it have to keep in mind in their day-to-day.

When Jan and I went to the Huntington’s symposium last year, one of the speakers told a story of speaking with a man with HD. He would ask a question and the man wouldn’t answer right away, so the speaker would ask him a further question to clarify. The man again wouldn’t answer right away. After a few minutes of this, the speaker asked the man if he was getting frustrated and the man told him that he indeed was getting very frustrated. The man said that the speaker kept setting his clock back. When asked what he meant the man described his thinking process as a hand on the clock. As he tried to process each question, the hand was moving from twelve o’clock toward six o’clock. Each time the speaker asked him another question, the hand was interrupted in its movement and had to reset back to twelve o’clock.

Hurry up and wait is one of those aspects of the new normal for those affected by HD. The processing of questions, ideas, etc. is slowed down. As the disease progresses, the person may lose a great deal of the ability to carry on conversations because of the length of time needed to process. This can lead to frustration for the one who has HD, the ones who are caretakers, and friends and other family members. Hence the reminder to hurry up and wait. Patience is needed by all involved. Those with HD can be just as frustrated, if not more so, than others around them.

As we journey together through this new normal, we are having to learn to be patient. I am learning that the answers will come if I am patient enough to wait. Jan is learning to be patient with me when I just think about the “hurry up” part of the phrase. Even though it is not easy, I think it has given me a greater appreciation of Jan as my wife and as a human being with worth, regardless of whether or not she comes up with a quick response.

I would appreciate your prayers as we journey down this back road together.

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Fear

Franklin Roosevelt famously said, “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” as he tried to encourage the American people to see the future as full of possibilities rather than full of terrible, fearful things. Not as famously, he also stated that the “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.” I think what Roosevelt was saying that the economic problems in the country at the time were not the most important thing, that there was something greater. That something was the spirit of the American people to pull together to do what needed to be done, including defeating the greatest worldwide threat the world had seen.

Centuries before, Jesus said to his followers, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” He could easily have also said that difficulties they would face are not the important thing, that they paled in comparison to the kingdom. For at least a few hundred years, Jesus’ followers went about their day-to-day fearlessly; facing rejection, misunderstanding, persecution, torture, and death. They were able to do so because they had confidence that the kingdom had been give to them, that they were subjects of the King of Kings, and that everything he had was theirs. They knew that absolutely nothing could separate them from their Father’s love. These early Christians also could live fearlessly because they knew that the sufferings they did endure somehow were what the King used to bring kingdom on earth as in heaven. As Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Today, I look around and see a group that is fearful. All it takes is some time spent on social media to see the fear that controls a great deal of what people say and do. Whether it’s fear of a certain political party taking away freedoms, fear of the other side waging a war on Christians, or fear of a certain group coming and taking away jobs or our lives. This fear can lead to saying and doing things that hurt others, ruin relationships, and cause the name of Christ to be slandered. We can easily tend toward fear in our day-to-day as well. We fear that disease will strike us or those we love. We fear that we may lose friends. We fear that we can’t do our jobs well. We fear that we simply aren’t good enough, that eventually people will see through our charade and reject us.  This fear drives us to perfectionism, to overwork, to self medication. We hide behind masks because we fear that others will reject us if they learn the real us. Sometimes we fear facing ourselves.

There is much that can make us fearful. But, as FDR said, those are only material things. Those are things that are inconsequential compared to the kingdom. Compared to the great inheritance that is ours, all of the things of this earth are nothing. Compared to the life that we have been given, the life we fear losing is nothing. Because Jesus died and was raised, the new creation has begun. We are citizens of a kingdom that will never be defeated, that will never pass away. The King has come! We don’t always see his reign in this life, although we do catch glimpses now and then, but he is in control. All the stuff of life that hits us, all the things that our enemy throws at us has already been overcome. We need to live from that reality. Will we still experience bad, even terrible things? Yes we will. But, those things can not wrench us out of our Father’s hands. They can not ultimately harm us because our destiny is settled. It’s hard, I know. I have to remind myself constantly that the things of this world are not the kingdom. Let us all continually remind each other of who we are and whose we are, and of the glory that will be revealed in us when the King finally comes to sett all things right.

Fear not, because your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.        

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Following Jesus: Part 3-Loving Others

The second of the two commandments Jesus said summed up the Law and the Prophets is love your neighbor as yourself. This is another way we follow Jesus. In John 15, Jesus gave a new command. He said we were to love our brothers and sisters as he loved us.
The love that Jesus commands us to practice is a love that puts others first. It is a love that sacrifices for others, even to the point of laying down our lives. It is a love that does the same for others that Jesus did for us.

One of the primary reasons the early church turned the world upside down was their love, for each other and for their neighbors. The first Christians were well known for the way they cared for their brothers and sisters and the way they looked past social, racial, and other differences to form a family with God as their Father. They were also known for caring for their neighbors, often  putting themselves at risk. No matter what else was said about the early followers of Jesus, it was obvious that they loved others in a way far different from the culture around them.

It seems as if those who of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus are known more for what we are against and our fighting than for our love for others. We seem to be quite willing to forget the command to lay down our lives in exchange for what we think is power and influence. At times our worship seems to be more about ourselves than about the One who gave his life for us. The things that capture our imaginations are many times antithetical to the Kingdom and are self-centered instead of others-centered.

Loving others as Jesus loved us means giving up our “rights,” our interests, our wants, for the good of others. While we may be willing to step in front of a bullet for someone, how willing are we to give up our time, comfort, or possessions? How willing are we to essentially become nothing so that Christ might be glorified and others benefited?

Following Jesus can be distilled into two commands. We love God with every fiber of our being, and we love others. Everything thing else flows from that. It is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it is impossible if we try to do it in our own strength. If we belong to Jesus, we have his Spirit in us giving us the ability to love as we are called to love.

May we again be known for our love.
Part 1
Part 2 

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Fruit of the Spirit: Love

I want to take some time the next few posts and look at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 and ask ourselves how much the Spirit has been producing in us.

The first fruit is love. Love is more than just a warm, fuzzy feeling that you can just as easily get from swallowing a caterpillar. It is an inward feeling, true, but it is one that manifests itself in outward actions for the good of another. Jesus tells us that we are to love others as he loved us. That love is a sacrificial love that is concerned with the well-being of others. Jesus said that the greatest love is to lay down our lives for others.

It is good to ask ourselves from time to time, “Do I put others first?” “Do I work for the good of others?” “Am I willing to lay down my desires, my wishes, my agenda?” “Am I willing to compromise (without sinning) for the good of another? In short, “Am I willing to give my life for the well-being of others, regardless?”

I know that this is something that I sometimes struggle with, at least as far as motivation goes. That’s why community is vital. We need the encouragement and examples of others. I am thankful for what I see in so many of my brothers and sisters.

Let us continue to encourage each other to follow Jesus more closely.

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Blast From the Past: “Come To Me, and I Will Give You…”

This was first posted on June 14, 2011.

Rest? I know that’s what Jesus said, but how many of us really live like he has given us rest? How many of us have learned “the unforced rhythms of grace,” as The Message puts it. For many of us, the first thing we learned when we became a Christian was that there were certain expectations that we were to live up to in order for God to bless us, or at least in order to stay in the good graces of the group. Some still live that way, and are burdened by a load as heavy as the one the Pharisees put on the Jews of Jesus’ day. Others have broken away from that bondage but taken on another heavy burden, the burden of “proving” how free they are in Christ. Even if we are not burdened by Pharisaical rules or by a need to prove our Christian liberty, we may have a hard time simply resting in God’s grace and mercy.

One of the things that the Father is teaching me is that he loves me, my family, and my friends dearly, and that his heart is good toward them. He takes care of his children. Even though I have seen the hand of God numerous times as he takes care of us, I am having to constantly be reminded by my Father that we are all in his arms, and that it is not my job to do what only he can do. I can only do what God has called me to do as a husband, father, and friend. I cannot change anyone’s heart. I cannot make them do what I think they should do. I can’t heal anyone. I can’t provide jobs. Only the Creator of the universe can do that.

I am learning that the only thing I can do is love them, pray for them, and give them any help that I can. As I do those things, I have to rest in Abba’s love and grace and trust him to do what is good. When I am able to do that, it brings a peace and contentment that is not there when I try to do God’s job or worry about how he is carrying it out. As many times as I’ve seen that played out, you’d think I would have learned that lesson well. I am learning it, but I still have a ways to go.