Tasting, Seeing, Touching Christmas

Taste Christmas!

This is the season to throw diet to the winds and to eat our way through this happy season.  Because America truly is the “great melting pot,” the foods of all our various national heritages have marched right onto the Christmas table, bringing our roots together while at the same time, making each family’s celebration unique.     

Italian families may add pastas and fabulous sauces to the Christmas menu, while Swedish families insist on including gubböra (an egg and anchovy mixture), vörtbröd (a rye bread), and lutfisk to the traditional ham and potatoes.  For the Irish descendents, potatoes are not an option and soda bread will be a staple, as well.  A breakfast favorite of the South, having made its way to us via France, is “chocolate gravy” over homemade biscuits.

Whatever our family histories might be, food is a vital part of Christmas and kitchens are bound to be the place to be, while fruit cakes, Christmas cookies, cream pies with meringue, mince tarts, turkeys, hams, roasts, winter vegetables, and special breads are pulled from the ovens or simmer on the stove.     

Some of the best gifts of the season are those from the kitchen.  Baked goods wrapped in colorful boxes, homemade and canned jellies, jams and chutneys, delicious breads and pies are sure to get grateful responses from neighbors, mail carriers, teachers, and business associates.    

Some of my favorite tastes of Christmas are those sipped steaming hot from a mug or cup: hot chocolate, wassail, rich coffees, chai or Christmas teas, and warmed fruit juices and punches.  At our house, we have a special golden yellow earthen-ware pitcher and a set of gigantic matching cups and saucers lettered on the sides with the word “chocolat.”  This special set is saved for one special purpose: hot chocolate with a melting marshmallow for children that come in half-frozen from sledding on the hillside.        

I guess when I think of it, Christmas is, for one thing, a giant season-long tasting party.  From home to home, family to family, we find ways to say: “Christmas is love.  Taste and see!”

See Christmas!

Ever since the shepherds were overwhelmed by a sky full of singing angels and said to themselves: “Let’s go see this thing that has come to pass”, Christmas has been a wonder we just have to see with our own eyes!    

The sight of a baby, born in a stable, resting on a nest of hay made these same shepherds race out into the surrounding villages “glorifying and praising…God for all that they had heard and seen”.      

The wonder of Christmas is something we still want those around us to see.  “Come over and see the tree,” we say to our friends.     

“Would you like to drive around with us to see the lights?” we invite our kids and grandkids.      

“Hey, how about going with us to see the celebration in the city square?” we phone our neighbors.

 “Have you seen the great display of Gingerbread Houses the county kids have built at the Minnestrista Center?” we mention to someone at church.      

“Would you like to go with our family to the Live Nativity Pageant at the country church near Noblesville?” we ask another mom after rehearsal for the Christmas program.  “We could stop afterward and see the Christmas tree on the Circle and get some hot chocolate.”

Lights, wreaths, pageants, angel choirs, stars, garlands, sparkling centerpieces, beautiful packages, colorful displays, street decorations, light shows… so much to see at Christmas that the whole world is eye-candy. 

What child hasn’t stood in awe to see the lights catching the crystals of freshly fallen snow and in them see “fairies dancing on the night”?  Or watched in wonder as the skaters glide like angels over the ice at Rockefeller Center, while magical snowflakes land on his tongue or catch in her eyelashes?    

So much to see.  Christmas is a carnival for the eyes.  Come, look through the Kaleidoscope of Christmas!

Touch Christmas!

What a wild circus of textures Christmas is!  Come, let’s “feel our way” around the glories of this tactile celebration!

First feel the soft skin of a baby, who is God-made-most-touchable, most-vulnerable for us who “were afar off.”

Touch a baby; tenderly embrace a child to honor Him who was Love in a baby blanket…. in our arms.

Touch the rough texture of a well-worn wooden manger and the prickly straw that fills it.

Touch the moist noses of the cows and horses that stand, curious, around.  Feel the night air.

Then touch the celebration that has gradually come to surround this “most touchable” happening.  Feel the needles of the evergreen tree and boughs that announce that because of Jesus we shall always live!

Touch the snow that covers the ground and remember the “covering” – the atonement – that makes us “whiter than snow” in the eyes of God.

Touch the red berries on the branches we gather and put in all sorts of containers, remembering that this child would one day shed his blood, that its life-giving qualities could fill us all no matter the shape, size, or condition of our containers.

Touch the lights as they burn warm, string them everywhere.  Light the streets and the houses, the cathedrals, and the back streets with them, for the chill of death has been replaced by warmth and light.

Touch your children, your neighbors, the community with reconciliation.  Take someone a warm cake; extend a warm handshake; offer the thawing warmth of forgiveness.

Hold and ring the gold and silver bells.  Ring out the news that the Creator of the galaxies has touched us.  Yes, ring the bells and pass them on!  Touch someone else.  We are not alone!

The Incarnation is the most immense mystery we will ever try to wrap our hearts and minds around! Let’s use every avenue we have to say to the children, and to each other, something that transcends our comprehension. Our lives depend on it!

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Sensing the Mystery of Christmas

I like to think of the mind as the city center into which flow five major highways: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. It is by way of these thoroughfares that we experience life in all its complexity. It is by the senses that we learn, gain insights, and internalize all that is true and helpful for life. 

If ever there was a truth that needed to be internalized in every way, it is the amazing story of a God who spoke all things into existence and continues to sustain creation with His breath, yet who loved His creation so much that He Himself came as a helpless baby to touch us at our point of need. When we weren't understanding the immensity of His love for His creation, He spoke His love in terms we could comprehend: the sound of a baby's cry on a cold night, the smell of a lowly, animal-filled stable, the rough texture of a feeding trough filled with coarse straw, the brightness of a new star in the dark night sky, and the taste of the Bread of Life to feed the souls of us all. 

Since that night more than two millennia ago that divided time itself into B.C. (before) and A.D. (after), those whose lives have been changed by this baby boy have created dozens of symbols and traditions in their efforts to express an event both human and divine. All the senses have been called into play by the deep longing to share the very personal experiences of a cosmic and eternal change-point.

Light, warmth, belonging, satisfaction of deep un-nameable hungers, fresh and eternal life, spiritual pilgrimage, the divine gifts, the return of the Song of Life...all these need the ladder of symbolism to even begin to approach and express the depths of Redeeming Love!

Each of us has been the recipient of a rich heritage of traditions and symbols given by others so that we can experience and communicate to our children the unfathomable love of God—the God who came to walk with us, to touch us where we are broken, to feed us the true water and food of the Spirit, and to be His love made visible.

As we celebrate Christmas, let's use all the senses—every avenue we have—to embrace this amazing Story. And as we do, let's remember to always tell and retell the reason for every tradition, giving thanks for the reality we celebrate! Let's promise each other that every highway to the soul will never become a bypass.

Smell Christmas!

 If all I could remember of Christmas were just the smells of the season, I would still be rich with memories.

• The real cedar tree my grandfather cut in the Michigan woods and brought with fragrance into the old farmhouse.

• The smells of cranberries simmering on the stove, Grandma’s bread baking in the oven, popcorn popping to string for the tree, spicy pumpkin pies cooling on the kitchen counter.

• The fragrance of clean sheets and blankets from the cedar closets pulled tight up around my neck as I was tucked into bed to wait for far-away Christmas morning.

• My daddy’s Old Spice and mother’s Max Factor powder as they held me on their laps to read the sweet story from Luke 2.

• The warming smell of hickory logs burning in the pot-bellied stove that heated the seldom used “front room” through these special days of celebration.

The Sounds of Christmas

         Music defines Christmas–not just the music of Christmas carols filling the house and the age-old story set to a hundred different tunes, but the music and rhythms of life:

• The giggles and whispers of children keeping secrets.

• The sound of bells coming from the Salvation Army bell ringers in front of the grocery store.

• The crinkling sound of paper being folded around surprise packages.

• The sound of carolers outside in the crisp winter night.

• The music of the traffic in the streets rushing home with gifts.

• The sound of the logs crackling in our kitchen fireplace and the hot bubbling of chili simmering on the stove.

         Who can keep from humming along to this harmonious song of Life?  This is one time when everything stops down for a magical moment to sing and retell the “Greatest Story Ever Told.”  The Giver of the Music, after all, started the whole world singing this song at first with an angel chorus, and the Song will never be satisfied until all creation sings it at the greatest Homecoming this world—and the whole Cosmos—has ever known.

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Thanksgiving - National and Personal

There is something about harvest time in Indiana that makes me feel that I should finish something. Perhaps it is the threshing machines cleaning up the rows of wheat and spitting the swollen ripe kernels of grain into the waiting grain trucks to be taken off to storage bins in preparation for winter.  Maybe it is the wide plows that turn the traces of corn stalks and dry soybean plants under, leaving the fresh, black earth like a velvet carpet laid in neat squares against the Kelly green sections of newly sprouted fields of winter wheat. Or could it be the squirrels skittering around the yard stuffing acorns and walnuts into their cheeks, then racing off to bury their treasure before the snow falls. Or maybe it’s the last of the apple crop being pressed into fragrant cider or baked with cinnamon and brown sugar before the frost comes.

 Whatever the reason, this is the season to finish things, to tie up loose ends, to save and store, to harvest and be sure there is enough of everything that matters to last us through the hard times.

 And how does one finish a season of the heart? How may we harvest and store the bounty of the spirit and save against the elements the fruits we cannot see?

 The Pilgrims knew the answer.  They said, “Thanks.” They knew there must be a taking of account, a time to stop and be aware of the beauty that fills our lives—a time to realize and verbalize and celebrate the things that have been growing all along. Yes, gratitude is the instrument of harvest. It ties the golden sheaves in bundles. It plucks the swollen kernels from the chaff and cuts the fragrant grasses to be bound in great round bales.  It picks the crimson fruit and digs the rounded roots that sometimes have made the difference between life and death.

 And I am thankful!  Thankful for plenty—plenty and more—of things to eat and wear, of beauty like art and colors and textures, of means of transportation like cars, bikes, vans, buses, planes…and feet.  I am thankful for things we cannot buy like tenderness and inspiration and revelation and insight; I am thankful for ideas, words, songs, discussions, and silent messages of the heart.

 I am thankful for health, health that we take so for granted that we schedule our lives, assuming that things will be normal, that legs will walk, that eyes will see—to read, to experience, to learn. That ears will hear-- the music, the instruments, the warnings, the blessings, the sounds of nature.  That bodies will function—that food will digest, energy will be generated to perform daily tasks. That minds will comprehend—the beauty, the concepts and ideas, the dangers, the failures.  That hands will work—to reach, to hug, to write, to drive, to rake leaves, to sweep floors, to fold clothes, to play instruments like pianos, flutes, violins, drums, and oboes.

 I am thankful for family, family with individual personalities, gifts, needs, and dreams—for family immediate and family extended, all feeding into what I am and what I will become--even family departed who have lived out their part and left their heritage of hard work, integrity, grit, love, tenderness, faith, and humor.

 I am thankful for friends, for stimulating, vivacious, provoking, disturbing, encouraging, agitating, blessing, loving, forgiving friends.

 I am thankful for hope and love and a deep assurance that God is in control of our lives, an assurance that is not threatened by fear of nuclear annihilation or national economic failure.

 I am thankful for children who give us new eyes to see, new ears to hear, new hands to touch, new minds to understand all the old things.

I am thankful for courage to go on trusting people, risking love, daring to believe in what could be, all because of the confirming experience of daily trusting God and finding him utterly trustworthy.

And because the seasons are built into the very fiber of our being, I am thankful for harvest time, a time for finishing what’s been started, a time to be aware, to pay attention, and to realize the life we’ve been given. Because I know that if we harvest well, there will be seeds for planting in the spring.                             

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Knowledge and Wisdom

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
JAMES 1:5

Do you know how some people can make you feel really stupid when you ask for information or seek advice? Well, God doesn't play those kinds of games. And He knows everything. He wants us to ask, and He wants us to know what we long to know. He doesn't enjoy putting us down.

But it would be really stupid to act cocky with God. Like I said, He knows everything, so for us to act like we're hot stuff makes Him sick. He not only knows the truth, He is truth--pure, like a diamond or a piece of pure gold. When His truth--when His Word--penetrates us, we are infused with illumination. We understand what is true. His truth in us keeps us from sinning because sins are lies, lies against our bodies, our minds, our souls, and our spirits. Truth won't allow them.

When we need wisdom or any other specific thing, it is fine for us to ask God for that.  He will not play games or belittle us for the asking.  But I am learning from years of praying for things, from my own insufficiencies to needs of those I love, to seek above all else more of Christ himself, more sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

 If I can widen my capacity to listen, to see, to sense the provision that comes with His presence, the specifics of today’s needs will be made clear.  Wisdom will come when it is demanded.  Peace and contentment will be given in the middle of the crisis because the solution doesn’t depend on my little powerhouse.  The bonus result is JOY! And joy and peace are always the product of secure relationship and the earmark of the believer.

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Fully Alive

One morning, on my way to get my hair trimmed, I stopped for breakfast and a cup of hot coffee at the local pancake house. I intended to steal a moment to be alone before the day began and its many demands crowded my time and took their bite of my energies.

"Just an egg and a homemade biscuit," I told the waitress, “And a coffee, please." I handed back the menu and turned to the book I'd brought to jumpstart my mind.

I had barely finished the second page before she returned with my breakfast. Fast, I thought. She poured the coffee and asked if there'd be anything else. "No, I'm fine, thank you," I answered, my eyes really looking into hers for the first time. She smiled. "Enjoy!" she said, then hurried back to deliver someone else's order.

"Enjoy!" Her final word hung in the air above my corner booth like a blessing--and more. It was a sermon of sorts. The taste of a fresh egg and a warm biscuit. The warmth of a cup of hot coffee in my hands on this Winnie-the-Pooh blustery day. The colors, the textures, the aromas, the voices.

It was a choice she had offered me. I could go through this day oblivious to the miracles all around me or I could tune in and "enjoy!" Her invitation returned again and again to bless my day. As I lay back at the shampoo bowl, I noticed the fresh green apple smell of the conditioner; I "enjoyed" the scalp massage and the warm water-right from the tap— that was "blessing" my head, a luxury unknown in much of the world. 

"Mamaw!" Grandson Jesse's happy voice greeted me as I got out of the car. His strong little arms were already around my neck, and he was covering my face with the kisses he'd recently learned to aim at a chosen target. I could hear, I could feel, I could see this precious, sturdy child who blessed my days with the joy of being adored as only an innocent child can adore. I was his "Mamaw"!

I looked out the window above the sink at the spring rain bathing the lilac bushes and just-planted pink geraniums around the lamppost. Two pairs of cardinals darted through the grape arbor and landed on the birdbath, where they tossed water drops up to blend with the drops still falling from the sky. "Enjoy!"

Bill came in the back door and dumped a pile of mail on the counter.  "Got any soup left?" he asked, lifting the lid on the pot that simmered on the stove. He barely took a breath before he shared his excitement about the way the new video he was editing was coming together. Tears welled up in his eyes as he described how powerful the spontaneous testimonies were at our last Homecoming filming. "God is doing something bigger than all of us," he said with awe in his voice. "We're just privileged to be at the right place at the right time to see it."

Enjoy! I thought.

Jesus intended for us to be overwhelmed by the blessings of regular days. He said it was the reason He had come: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

Each day, each moment is so pregnant with eternity that if we tune in to it, we can hardly contain the joy. I have a feeling this is what happened to Moses when he saw the burning bush. Maybe Yahweh performed laser surgery on his eyes so he could see what was always there, and Moses was just so overwhelmed with the glory of God that the very ground he stood on became infused with holiness, and the bushes along the mountain path burned with splendor.  Whatever happened, the burning bush experience also sharpened Moses' awareness of the pain of his people in the light of God's presence.

Bill's dad was always reminding us that, "This ain't the rehearsal, kids. It's the real thing. Don't miss it while it's happening." Pain and pleasure, laughter and tears are all around us, too, if we can see them and respond to them.

Several years before, we had written a song that went through my mind again that day as I sipped my coffee and watched the rain streaming down the window: Fully alive in Your Spirit; Lord, make me fully alive!  I'd heard a lot of sermons in my day, but the best sermon I'd heard in a long time was preached in one word by a busy waitress as she poured a cup of coffee. God has given us this day. I don't want to miss it. Enjoy!

Don't let me miss all the glory around me
Waiting for heaven someday to come;
Open my eyes to miraculous Mondays,
And make my feet march to eternity's drum.

Fully alive in Your Spirit;
Lord, make me fully alive!
Fully aware of Your presence, Lord,
Totally, fully alive!

Don't let me wait for some far-off forever
To say what I feel to the ones I hold dear,
Risking the pain and the joys of loving,
Keep me awake and alive while I’m here!

Help me to see in this moment my calling;
Don't let me wait for some "field far away."
Cries in my street, lives that are broken—
Lord, let me see them and touch them... today!

Fully alive in Your Spirit;
Lord, make me fully alive!
Fully aware of Your presence, Lord,
Totally, fully alive!

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Hindsight and Foresight

Gospel songwriters have been accused of writing songs mainly about two topics: getting saved and going to heaven. To that I would have to plead guilty. The reason for that is that once a person finds a valid answer to the big questions, "Why am I here?" “Where have I been?” and "Where am I going?" the rest of life can be lived with meaning and direction. The daily stuff that tends to be in our faces can gain some perspective. The great songs encourage that.  Take for instance Wm. B. Stevens’s song:

Farther along, we'll know all about it
Farther along, well understand why.
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We'll understand it all by and by.*

Or Stuart Hamblem’s “Until Then”:

But, until then, my heart will go on singing;
Until then with joy I'll carry on!
Until the day my eyes behold the city,
Until the day God calls me home.**                                                         

I love the book of James because it is so practical.  James’s letter reminds us how fragile and precious life is, how much we don’t know, and how we need to depend on the light of the Lord for each step.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that. (James 4:13-14)

History informs the present and helps us make wise decisions for the future.  Someone has said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.”  We all want to live the best life we can while we have this wisp of time.  We need to study the past so we can make wiser decisions for the future and not make the same mistakes.

When the big issues of life are settled, we can live the rest of life. We can live like we’ve got “nothin’ to lose”. 

But what would that look like today, if we knew this was close to our last day?  Where would I wish I had taken my family if I knew I “was leavin’ today”?  What letter would I write? What would I do with my bank account or my time schedule or the energy I have today?

Whom would I invite to dinner; to whom would I offer the guest room or a ride to church or a trip to the grocery store?  Whom would I take on a fishing trip or a shopping trip or a cruise? Where would I volunteer my skills, my expertise, my hours, my knowledge, if I knew time was running out.

The beauty of the Christ-centered life is that we do know that time on this earth is limited and that nothing else except the relationships we treasure and nurture will survive this life or time itself. We also know that beyond time there is more--much more—and the quality of that “more” depends on the soul investment we make today.

The greatest decision we can make in the present is to follow the One who invented time and gave us a piece of it.  Only He can whisper wisdom for each day we have, and He will teach us to see the “eternity” in the moment, and to give ourselves away for things that last forever.

* P.D. usually credited to Wm. B. Stevens
** Copyright ©1958 by Hamblen Music Co. used by permission

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Unstoppable Praise

There is nothing new about praise and worship. David experienced it on the hills of Judea or wherever he was overwhelmed with God speaking. And we’re commanded to encourage each other with songs and praise to God. But it’s very important that we know what it is we are praising him for—that we get a running start at praise.

Praise is always a result, not a cause. Praise is not a way to coax God into bringing the results we want or manipulate Him into giving us things we ask for.  It is, instead, a result, not a cause--a result of our lives interfacing with something that God is—an encounter with one of the life-changing experiences of raw faith. When the theological truths we talk about become personal for us, the result will be praise! Praise happens as a result of being forgiven, or finding an incredible insight, being filled with the Holy Spirit, or just experiencing the joy of our salvation. We can’t just conger up praise up and make it happen. But when we experience God’s faithfulness, we can’t stop praise from pouring forth. It is not a posture or a position. It is the result of God’s reality breaking through to our dull awareness and making us new again and again. It is removing the obstacles in our own communications with God so that He can be the loving Father he always is. It is gratitude for what God is in our lives this day.

Probably no greater praise and worship song has ever been written than “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” We keep singing it and keep singing it, and somehow, we don’t ever get tired of it, because it is so immensely true.

I think of the Sunday at our church when we were singing a bunch of new songs.  There were young kids standing with their hands in the air and the worship team was swaying to the rhythm. This big farmer was sitting in front of us in church.  He had his arms crossed and his body language said he was not getting it.  Whatever we were singing was not penetrating his worrisome expression. The back of his neck was all sunburned from being out in the field, and I happened to know that he had a daughter at Anderson University. He was worried about the crop, and he was worried about her tuition, and whether or not they were going to have enough corn to pay her college bill.  I don’t know if that’s what he was thinking about, but he was certainly not thinking about what we were singing.

About that time our music director started this song we’ve sung a million times: “Summer, and winter, and springtime, and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.”  I saw his shoulders kind of loosening up, and he uncrossed his arms, and you could see in his body language him processing, “You know God’s always been faithful before.  We’ve always paid the rent.  We’ve got her this far in school...” Then we got to the chorus: “Great is thy faithfulness.  Great is thy faithfulness.  Morning by morning new mercies I see.  All I have needed Thy hand has provided.  Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord, unto me.”

I don’t know; maybe it’s because we live in the Midwest, and we are in the middle of corn fields and soybeans; but, that praise song connected, yet again, all these years after it was written with a farmer and a college student in the middle of Indiana.

I only hope to write a song that one day will connect like that, that will sometime down the road, intersect with real life issues of some farmer, or some worn-out mom, or some confused teen-ager, or some little child right at the reality of their moment and fill them with an awareness of God’s all-sufficient provision and turn turbulence into gratitude and unstoppable praise!

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Why Harmony?

Music is so much a part of all that brings us joy, like gathering around a piano somewhere to sing in harmony the songs that renew the commitments made to God, to each other, and to our great country or sitting around the campfire with a guitar or autoharp and teaching parts to the children the favorites you first sang as a kid.

We believe there is an important reason —even a theological one— we must sing in harmony, whether in families or in the family of God: we are not one because of our consensus, but because of our commitment. Indeed, we are so different and have so many viewpoints, it's hard to get a consensus at the dinner table let alone in the church or in the broader community of believers. No, we are not one because of our consensus, but because of our commitment to something bigger than our individual opinions. It is our commitment to God and thus to each other as necessary parts of His body that makes us one. We each bring our unique identities in Him and join our voices in expressing our allegiance to Him. Amazingly, what results is beautiful harmony but one song. Oh, sometimes for a line or two we may sing in unison to emphasize some major statement, but mostly it is our very diversity that God uses to make His music.

Let's gather the children, the young people, the patriarchs and the matriarchs, the newcomers and veterans and sing our hearts out the messages that define our identities in Him, in harmony.

And there's nothing better for singing our roots than the hymns and gospel songs that have outlived us all, surviving trends and fads, good times and hard times. Great songs have been tried in the fires of human experience and have emerged true. Let's pass these pure gold gifts on to our children so that when life drops them into water over their heads, these bits of portable theology, these truths wrapped in music will be a lifeline when they're needing one in the worst way.

What we embrace in the inner sanctuary places of our hearts, what we protect in the secret places of our minds, will determine our victory or defeat. When what is unclean is exposed to the light, it will shrivel and die, for it will not grow in the light. Like fungus or mold (no roots, no nutrition for the spirit), evil needs the moist, dark places to live and multiply. But goodness and right thrive in the light. When we let God's Word enter our inner sanctuary, the beauty grows and blooms. When we sing out what we've embraced in the inner sanctuary that is good, it takes root in others as well and brings life and hope.

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A Colony of Believers

I am fascinated by two metaphors the apostle Paul used to help us understand the Kingdom of God and our relationship to Christ and to each other.  One was used to tell the story to “insiders”, the Hebrews, and it followed the amazing list in Hebrews 11, recalling their history with God.  These were people whose faith looked forward and for whom this risk of belief got them flogged, tortured, beheaded, and imprisoned.  They died for a faith that was promised, unfinished, and unconfirmed.  Their questions were addressed by phenomena of nature—floods where floods had never been, seas that parted leaving dry land, mountains that belched fire and ash, walls that fell because of sonic vibrations God told them to cause, pregnancies of an old woman and her old husband that resulted in a nation, and a man that walked off into eternity without dying. These God used to tell them in disturbing ways to let them know that He up to something that could not be explained by their human understanding.

For these “insiders” with this history, Paul used the symbol of a mountain, not a mountain of fire and ash, but a living mountain, the fulfillment of all their history had hoped for, believed in, and embraced in faith.  This mountain, Paul says, is not one “that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to the blackness and darkness and tempest....But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God...to God the Judge of all, to the spirit of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.”(Hebrews 12:8,22-24)

So what about us who consider ourselves insiders? What is this mountain we are to consider our destination--this Mount Zion?  It is a mound, a heap, a tall, formidable thing that makes the smoking volcanic mountain of superstitious religion pale in its presence. Mount Zion is not a mound of decayed and acidified matter; it is a living thing--the towering and irresistible magnetic field of God Himself and the presence of His awesome reality; and it is the essential reality of all the saints who have ever made it through this life by faith in His power to make them perfect in Him. Now, in Him and perfect, they are the awesome draw of Mount Zion. We, too, are invited, not just to visit and stand in awe, but to become, to move in, to be a part of this living Mountain.

The second metaphor, Paul uses when speaking to those who do not have an “insiders” history with God, those who are new to this community of believers.  For new believers he uses the metaphor of a building with Christ as the sure foundation and cornerstone, and the stones, of which the building is constructed, being alive!  They function as individuals doing the individual tasks of a stone in a strong building, but they also interact as part of a great structure dependent on each other and remaining viable because of the certain foundation on which they are built. Are individuals important?  Remove one of the stones about half-way up the building and see how important the individuals are to the strength of the building!

I like to think of a colony of living organisms in a tide pool, each living on its own, but not viable unless they live connected to each other in this fresh water, replenished each day by the ocean tides. Each separate cell is a pulsating, ingesting, eliminating individual, and the cells are connected to form a community that is also alive because of its living cells operating as one. When a predator attacks one of the individuals, the body corporate releases its defense mechanisms protecting the assailed member, too weak and simple in its makeup to defend itself. I think of children and abuse victims and the elderly when I read this—so defenseless and vulnerable. But God knows we are all weak and vulnerable in some way, and the truth is, we really do need each other. As a living community, we protect, nurture, and grow because as a whole, with Christ as the head, we are one body, one living colony,  one building.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

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There is a Stirring in My Soul

Father, there is a stirring in my soul
that began years ago about who You really are
and how that reality can be shown
to the people in our town,
in our world.

Even in America
most of our children's friends
have no experiences with belief in You
that affects choices
and how life is lived on a daily basis.

My generation had parents who loved us,
or grandparents who could bring us home to faith
when we were buffeted by life.

For my children's generation
there isn't even a grandparent.
They, too, are often divorced
and fragmented with no stability.

This generation of kids
creates their own pseudo-family relationships
because they are so starved for belonging.
This may be living with a boyfriend,
hanging out with groups of other damaged kids,
or following some strange spirituality
in order to belong somewhere, anywhere.

I go to church,
and though I am so familiar
and comfortable with the form
because I've grown up with it,
I am not comfortable
that all the houses we pass to get there--
even if we go the back roads through the country--
are full of people who are working in their yards,
yelling at their kids,
or sleeping in 'til noon.

Church shouldn't just be a place we go.
It should be something we are to those
who are detached from our Sunday morning,
the ones across the street,
at our workplace,
the university,
the office,
the parent-teacher conferences.

What should being church look like?
Maybe like a backyard cookout?
A coffee house on Tuesday midmorning
after the kids are delivered to school?
A hunting trip?
A girls' night out at the cabin in the woods?
A bonfire after soccer?

When the Body of Christ is there, isn't church
anywhere discussions are taking place about Jesus in our lives
and what the Bible says about our source of joy?

Isn't it breaking bread together-
even if that bread is a hot dog bun-
if His Body is present?

I have a feeling church isn't just something we "go to";
it should be the folks themselves
who go from our gathering times
refreshed and inspired
to give themselves away
for something that lasts forever.

Are You troubling me, Lord?
Is there something You're crowding me into?

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I Do Believe

I CAN'T STOP MY MIND, Mom! I can't stop my mind." Our ten-year-old son was grasping the sides of his head with his hands and pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor.

Bill and I knew what he was saying was true. His head was so full of tunes and ideas and questions that he couldn't get them to organize themselves into any form he could articulate. At ten he wasn't yet able to verbalize all that was churning in his mind, even if he had been able to call it into any kind of order.

Creative since the day he was born, our Benjy had been given piano lessons so that he'd have a way to get some of the music out of his head. Then he'd gone on to the drums. After school he would go straight to the soundproof drum booth we'd built for him, put on his earphones, and practice the rhythms he heard on recordings. He also painted with strong strokes and colors and had begun taking guitar lessons to school his fingers in the positions of the chords that echoed through the corridors of his mind.

And questions--he always had questions. I could identify. All my life I'd been plagued with questions too, about everything from the laws of the universe to the workings of the natural world— from the psychology of human behavior to the assumptions of society. And more than anything I had questions for God about human suffering, original sin, the destiny of mankind, and the complacency of the church.

So there wasn't a question our son could ask that I hadn't already asked. I also knew there was no question I could ask that someone before me hadn't asked.

To this day I am thankful that I had a mother who never belittled, condemned, or ignored my questions. When other parents shamed their young people for their questions, my mother encouraged me to bring mine to the table. "Go ahead ask," she would say. "Do you think your mind is capable of asking anything that would upset God? He created the mind you're using to ask the questions, so you can be sure He's pretty much heard it all before."

We hope we've been that wise with our children. I do know that as young adults they are still asking questions and pursuing a God that invites our honest quest of Him and all that He has made.

But I am coming to believe that no matter how long or intense our search, how deep our digging into the realm of truth, or how wide the terrain of exploration, sooner or later, if we are honestly seeking the truth, we will fall headlong into the arms of God. And when we get there, I believe we will find that the answer to our most ardent questions will be not a fact but a face; not a formula but a relationship; not just a proposition, but a person: Christ Himself.

There are still days when, like Benj, I find myself holding my head, saying, "I can't stop my mind; I can't stop my mind." There are days I wish I could, days I wish I could be content to fade into the swamp of the status quo and just be content with pat answers, simple solutions, and easy formulas for life. But most days I'm glad I can't. Most days I'm thankful for the deep conviction that it's in the quest that the adventure lies, and that the process even if it's a struggle-—is more important than a product. In fact, I'm coming to believe that the "product" is not even my problem but is the work of the One who promised to complete what He started, not what I started.

So I choose to trade safety for satisfaction. I'll give up guarantees for adventure, and I'll savor relationship over accomplishment. I choose to rest in the unexpected and to find my home in the great Heart that beats for the love of His life.

I Do Believe

Some say faith is just believing;
Others say it's self-deceiving,
Inventing childish dreams to get us through.
But deep inside me there's a yearning
For true wisdom, not just learning;
I'd trade all my clever questions
For one answer that is true.

I do believe You are the One –
The home I've longed to find,
My only hope, God's only Son.
I do believe, I touch, I see
That all along You've longed to be
My Lord, my God.

Lord, you know I need some answers
Questions eat at me like cancer;
Make me once again a simple child.
Help me take the risk of losing,
Lose it all to find in choosing
To believe You are the answer—
Earth and Heaven reconciled.

Words by Gloria Gaither
Music: William J. Gaither
Copyright ©1980 Gaither Music Company

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Tribute to the Nelon Family

Good-bye is such a hard word to say to a family with such a long history in gospel music.  Nor is this the first time the Homecoming family of singers have had to use this word.  Rex Nelon left us in England the night before the London Homecoming taping in January of 2000. We wondered then how we would go on.

Rex and Judy Nelon’s wedding

Then on Friday before departing for the Homecoming Cruise to Alaska, this wonderful family of singers gathered around Autumn and Jamie, trying once again to come to grips with how we could possibly say good-bye before we’d even said hello to the 2100 passengers that would be boarding the ship expecting a week of joyful singing. And how could we surround the two of them with the love and support they were going to need as they planned to head back home to the reality of this tragedy.

Yet both that night in London and the Friday morning of July 26th—and the many good-byes in between--we have found God to be present and faithful.  We’ve also learned that “good-bye” is not the operative word here.  We have found that the veil between here and there is very shear, and it really doesn’t matter on which side of it we are singing.

We are acutely aware that there were three more precious lives that were lost on that plane for which there have been other celebrations. They, too, have families and dear friends who will have to find a way to go on without them present. 

But all four of those we gathered to celebrate were singers.  They were all about the music.  We all know the Nelon name and their history as singers, but Jason and Nathan were singers, too, from the time they were little boys.  I’d like to tell you the kind of men they were to Bill and me with two recent moments.

The Nelon group came to our home in Indiana not long ago to learn a couple of new songs and to hammer out their parts in the studio.  One of the songs was brand new song Bill and I had written, “Angels Hover Near You”, which eventually featured Autumn on a spoken part I wrote especially for her.

While they were working out parts, Nathan and I had a two-hour breakfast at a local pancake house. We talked about many things from theology and his work at the Capitol in Washington to art, literature, and music.  We were discussing at one point the profound and enduring words to the classic hymn “The Love of God”, and the question, “Is there a limit to the grace and mercy of God?”  We focused particularly on the most familiar verse:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen could ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care
God gave His Son to win—
His erring child he reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

We wondered whether the thousands who had sung these words actually knew that “the guilty pair” in this verse were Adam and Eve, and whether those who sang it really believed that the blood of Christ reaches clear to the beginning of it all to redeem the first persons God ever created.

I mentioned a piece of art, an engraving from the early 16th Century by Albredt Durer that depicts the Christ, descending into hell itself to rescue Adam and Eve, then reaching even further to pull from the pits a figure who, the artist is reported to have said was him, himself.

I pulled up on my phone an image of the engraving on wood and showed it to Nathan.  A few weeks later Amber and Nathan sent me—by some amazing technology—an engraving on wood of this very piece of art, which I immediately had framed and hung in our family room by the bookshelf of classic literature. Nathan was that kind of man.

Now, for Jason.  Bill and I have always found Jason to be an artist who “got it”, got the deeper things of the spirit, got what it takes to get something done—the hard behind-the-scenes work it takes to make something happen in music and in life. He loved the scriptures and got how it applied to real life and was a good writer in his own right.  He was such a hard worker, too, and was willing to help in any way. 

Most of you know that singers are not morning people, and they are not famous for getting up early, mainly because they often sing late into the night and have to rest their voices to do it all over again the next night.  And there is a 3-hour time change for most of us when traveling to Alaska; even so, the schedule called for us to do two concerts the afternoon and evening we arrived, and there was a devotion on the schedule for 7:30 the next morning.  Jason knew that and also knew that I was scheduled to speak for one of the morning devotions, but did not know which morning.

I got this text from him a week before we were to leave:

If you need a special song before you speak on the morning session at cruise, please don’t hesitate to ask us.  We are here to serve.

I responded:  Is there any way one or some of you could sing “Through”?

This was not a song the Nelons had recorded, and I wasn’t even sure they knew it.

He responded:
Send it to me and we’ll have it ready.”

I sent to him the Vocal Band recording of the song and a lyric sheet including a second verse that had never been recorded.  Jason’s response was:

We can do this.
Beautiful and powerful!

Only then did he ask:  What day do you speak?

I told him Friday. He only said:
Got it!

That was Jason.  Ready and willing and understanding what was needed, even at 7:30 am with a three-hour jet lag.

Kelly—You all probably know this strong woman best.  She has been in our lives in a public and private way since she was a youngster singing with her dad.  But she was also an attentive mother, wife, and companion in all things Nelon.  She knew the business and was not only beautiful but involved.

But Amber. This child has been in our lives literally, since she was born.  She was on the first Homecoming Kids video and from then on was a joy magnet.  She could sing her heart out with an energy that made her a stand-out anywhere.

Early on at around six-years-old, she sang the song “Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House.”  This became her song.  She owned it. She sang it again as a 12 or 13 year old on the Heaven video. And I’m sure had she been with us on the Alaskan Cruise, someone would have requested that she sing it.

I want you to hear her sing it now, but before she does, let me just say this.

Those good-byes that are so hard to say, don’t really need to be said. That Friday, those on that plane never stopped singing.  They are singing now—with us all—only just on the other side of a very shear veil.

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The Care-less Road

Okay, let’s admit it.  Life gets weightier as we grow into the responsibilities life demands.  The load we pick up is part of being an adult, a spouse, a family member, a part of a community, a citizen, an employee, or employer.  As we live into the very things that make life rich, we can also become encumbered with the choices we make enticed by the call of accomplishment to compromise our values.  The load gets heavier with our own entanglements.

Speaking to the responsibilities of life like marriage and family, Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says this: “I want you to be without care.”  Even as we take on responsibilities, Paul’s implication is that we should be unencumbered so that we can be effective followers of Jesus in the culture.  “Salvation” means to be relieved of the burden of past choices (good or bad), and freed up to simplify, breathe deeply, and notice the joy as it flies.

Then, it is God's intention that we live without care and never be fretful or full of anxiety. The great news is that God invites us to trade our load-carrying single harness that is hitched to our cart of responsibilities, for a double "yoke" in sweet partnership with Jesus himself. It is our privilege, at His invitation, to continually shift the heavy stuff of life to the One with the strength. As we walk, He wants to be in partnership with us. He wants us strong, but not to show our brawn--how foolish to flex our scrawny muscles in the face of Him who holds the world in His hand—but to have no ulterior motives as we care for others.

He (how amazing is this?) longs for our presence with Him, to have us present to Him. This, then, is the partnership; He supplies the power and strength and wisdom; we supply the joy of being in His presence, the delight in this carefree journey!

This is the day that the Lord has made--and carries! I will rejoice and be glad in it! That is my reasonable service! I will play in the sun! I will be full of gratitude and joy! He will take my load, and I will enjoy His gift of freedom from heaviness.

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The Apple of His Eye

“For thus says the LORD of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye." (Zechariah 2:8 ESV)

When I was growing up, I always thought my mother had eyes in the back of her head. She seemed to be able to smell a bad attitude or a lie a mile away.

But she also was always trying to catch me doing something good. We had a close and loving relationship, and although I knew better than to ever lie to her, I always knew she was my greatest advocate. She adored me, not with any sort of silly indulgence, but with a genuine pride in what she knew I could and would become. Any discipline--and there was little--was to move out of the way anything that could keep me from being the terrific kid she knew I was at heart.

I am so grateful to her. It has never been hard for me to understand that God, too, not only is sad when we violate the safety laws, he put in place to protect us, also keeps track of every positive thing we've ever done and brings them up every chance He gets when we get discouraged with ourselves. "You are the apple of my eye," are the words our Father is most likely to say about and to us. He sacrificed His own Son so that He could say it more.

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Want to Be a Worship Leader?

The Tribe of Levi did not get a portion of the land divided up between the sons of Jacob, but were designated to serve in the temple, making music, leading worship, and guarding the temple. They were dispersed among the other tribes for this calling and these duties, supported by the resources of the those who had land and a source of income. They were to be pure and respected as community leaders.  Could even the music itself be part of the defense of the temple, helping to dispel any spirit that would be opposed to worship and helping to create an atmosphere for entering into the presence of the Most High?

You can imagine, then, the warning from Malachi about the judgement that would come to those trusted with this responsibility, including the priests, who might be dishonest with their support or use their leadership rolls in the community to take political advantage for dishonest personal reasons. Hear this from the prophet:

But who can endure the day of His coming?  And who can stand when He appears?

For He is like a refiner's fire and like launderers' soap...He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness. (Malachi 3:2-3)

So we want to be praise and worship leaders? Well, there must be a meltdown first, of pride, of phony professions, of arrogance, and a refining of the soul of us until all the stuff of life--attitudes, possessions, habits, lifestyle--proclaim the glory of the Lord. The scripture from the prophet Malachi goes on to say:

"Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the Lord ... as in former years."

Because of God's distillation, we who lead worshipers to the throne will, through testing, be full of hope and character and perseverance and most of all, full of love that has been poured out by the Holy Spirit. By then, we and the whole congregation will have something to praise about, and pure, true praise will come as result of a dynamic history with God.

Oh, Lord, please make us worthy to lead the hungry-of-heart into your refining presence!

Let Freedom Ring

In the last century, perhaps the greatest symbol of people’s passion for freedom was the partitioning of East Germany after the communist takeover.

Because of the amount of land taken out of private hands and forced into collective control and the repression of private trade in the German Democratic Republic (as East Germany was called in 1958) thousands of refugees fled to the west.  In 1959, 144,000 fled.  But when the forced collective went from 45% to 85%, the number of refugees rose to 199,000 in 1960.  The first seven months of 1961, 207,000 left Eastern Germany including a huge number of the Nation’s brightest minds – doctors, dentists, engineers, and teachers.

By 1961 it is estimated 2.7 million had left since the German Democratic Republic had been established in 1949.  In June of 1961 alone, 30,000 refugees fled.  On August 13, 1961, a Sunday morning, under the communist leadership of Erich Honecker, the GDR began to block off Eastern Berlin with paving stones, barricades, and barbed wire.  Railway and subway services to West Berlin were halted, even for the 60,000 or so commuters who worked in West Berlin.  In a few days the barricades began to be replaced by a concrete wall. 

One year after the first barricades went up, a young 18-year-old man named Peter Fechter was the first of more than a hundred to be shot and killed while trying to escape.  The higher the wall was built, the more guards stationed to watch, the wider the “death area” behind the wall, the deeper the trench to stop vehicles, the more attempts there were to escape.  In Berlin, the wall stretched 107 kilometers, but many escaped by tunneling under the wall. Before the houses were evacuated that bordered the wall, many leaped from the windows of buildings into nets or to the pavement.  Soon the windows of buildings were bricked shut; next the houses were demolished.  Patrol trucks, watch dogs, watchtowers, bunkers and trenches were added to the border area.  Then, behind the wall, a second wall was constructed.  Yet people continued to escape.

The Berlin Wall

Two families secretly bought small amounts of nylon cloth, enough to eventually sew together a hot air balloon.  They waited until midnight then drove to a deserted field and launched their balloon; it remained aloft for 23 minutes before the burner died, but that was long enough to carry four adults and four children to their freedom.  Back in East Germany, the sale of nylon was restricted and there was a ban on the sale of rope and twine. 

No one knows exactly how many people escaped in the twenty-eight years the Berlin Wall stood.  The wall became a symbol of all obstructions to freedom instead of stopping the free flow of people and ideas, it provided a tangible object that epitomized the barriers which the human spirit felt challenged to conquer.

Brandenburg Gate

It was a sentence from President Kennedy’s speech when visiting Berlin in June of 1962 that gave words to the struggle for freedom.  Throwing out the speech given him by speechwriters, Kennedy wrote a new one while riding through the streets of West Berlin where between one and two million Germans roared and cheered for four hours.  At checkpoint Charlie he climbed alone up to the viewing stand.  Suddenly, in a far-off window in an Eastern side apartment three women appeared waving handkerchiefs – a dangerous and risky gesture.  Kennedy, realizing their risk, stood in tribute to those three.  Then he squared his shoulders and began the speech that let the world know how deeply innate is the conquering spirit that longs for freedom, the speech ending with the historic words: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  He was saying that we were all are Berliners at heart because we all long to be free.

Twenty-five years later Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall in the midst of a cold war that felt like the whole world was walking a tight-rope of fear and anxiety. While West Berlin prepared to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin, and East Berlin demonstrated against a wall that had stood for a quarter century, Reagan delivered some lines that had been opposed by most of the American diplomats but had been insisted on by President Reagan.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come
here to this gate.  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Two years later the wall was torn down by the people who wanted freedom.

Down through history, dictators and philosophies have attempted to enslave the human spirit.  Blood has flowed like a river in the fight to regain human dignity.  The Magna Carta, The Bill of Rights, The Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation have taken their place with other great instruments of liberation that bear testimony to the human passion for freedom.  The official seals of governments have burned onto these documents that have deeply affected our own way of life.

But never has there been a document of freedom with the power to alter the course of history and change human lives like the declaration that bears the bloodstained brand of a cross.  And this seal is burned, not on a piece of paper, but on the very soul of every spirit enslaved by sin.  The document reads as a simple invitation:  “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Prison bars, heavy chains, dungeons, concentration camps and shackles:  none of these can hold a candle to the bondage of the human soul devised by the father of lies.  But no release, no emancipation, no pardon can bring freedom like the freedom bought at Calvary.  That is freedom, indeed!  Let freedom ring!

Deep within, the heart has always known that there is freedom
Somehow breathed into the very soul of life.
The prisoner, the powerless, the slave have always known it;
There’s just something that keeps reaching for the sky.

Even life begins because a baby fights for freedom,
And songs we love to sing have freedom’s theme;
Some have walked through fire and flood to find a place of freedom,
And some faced hell itself for freedom’s dream.

Let freedom ring wherever minds know what it means to be in chains.
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain.
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key –

We can be free and we can sing,
“Let freedom ring!”

God built freedom into every fiber of creation,
And He meant for us to all be free and whole;
But when my Lord brought freedom with the blood of His redemption,
His cross stamped “pardoned” on my very soul!

I’ll sing it out with every breath and let the whole world hear it –
This hallelujah anthem of the free!
Iron bars and heavy chains can never hold us captive;
The Son has made us free and free indeed!

Let freedom ring down through the ages from a Hill called Calvary!
Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain.
Let freedom echo through the lonely streets where prisons have no key --
We can be free and we can sing:
“Let freedom ring!

Lyric: Gloria Gaither; Music: Bill Gaither
© Gaither Music Company 1982

Strangers in Our Own Land

Does not your heart often say: “I can’t get used to this world.  It breaks my heart; it makes me sick; it makes me restless; I don’t belong”?

May we never get used to it!  May we never get numb to the atrocities, the injustices, the greed and the violence.  Of such a culture, the prophet Micah said, “Arise and depart, for this is not your rest. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God,” and this is not it! This culture is destructive, says Micah. (Micah 2:10)

No, this is not our home. This is not the place to come in by the fire and rest. Don’t get cozy with it. Our only rest here is in the Ark.  Only in Jesus will our spirits be at rest.  But in the world is the flood, the storm, the raging winds. 

But God is in the process of redeeming what is fallen and setting right what Satan is intent on destroying. We are to be obedient to anything God is doing, but we should never be at rest in the world. 

“It’s only temporary” should be the way we feel about any provisions of earth: homes, land, cars, promotions, (demotions), accomplishments....  Our permanence is internal—and eternal. We can only be at rest in Him until we rest with Him.

Meanwhile, we must love with abandonment, hope with fervor, and invest our energies in things that last forever! Let’s live like we’ve got nothing to lose! Indeed, losing (by this world’s value structure) is the very way to win in God’s economy. 

Not So Simple Questions

I’m always intrigued by the questions Jesus asked.  They sound simple but almost never are. Some seem to have such obvious answers they almost seem not worth the asking.

If we think our kids were inquisitive, what must Mary and Joseph have thought?  We know that when Jesus got lost at twelve years old, they found him in the temple “confounding” the PhD’s in theology and scripture by his questions. And he never stopped asking questions that “confound”.  As simple as they seem, his questions tell the story of his ministry on earth.

--Who touched me?

--Who is my mother?  Who are my brothers?

--How much bread and fish do you have?

--Do you see these great buildings?

--Who do you say that I am?

--Can you not watch with me for one hour?

--Do you put a lighted candle under a basket?

--How long do I have to put up with you?

--Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?

The story of the pool of Bethesda and its surroundings provoke the most interesting question and instruction Jesus ever asked, and they reverberate to this day to our 21st Century ears.

The man Jesus singled out was there among scores of other disabled people, crowded under the porches held up by five huge pillars surrounding the pool. The expectation was that for whatever reason (angels? spirits? wind?) the water in the pool would ripple as if stirred by some force.  The first person to get into the water while it was “troubled” would be healed.  The obvious problem was that if one were blind, deaf, crippled, or too weak to get up, it would be nearly impossible to get to the pool at all, let alone first, unless there was a 24/7 helper.

The man Jesus zeroed in on was paralyzed and had been waiting by the pool for thirty-seven years. What a mess he must have been by the time Jesus showed up!  It was at this moment that Jesus asked either a stupid or very profound question:  “Do you want to be well?”

The man’s bewildered answer was that he had no one to help him get to the pool before someone else did or the pool quieted down.  Jesus’s solution was simple.  “Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk.”

The question Jesus asked gets to the bottom of our own universal problem.  Do we really want to be well and start behaving like a well person with no excuses and no one to blame? Or are we so addicted to our illnesses that they have become our comfort zone?

But that is not the end of the story that still echoes down across the generations.  The now walking man goes to the temple, as was the law, to have his healing verified by the righteous authorities there. But the righteous weren’t excited for this 38-year invalid, nor did they share his rejoicing for the beauty of his fresh ability to walk. No, it was the Sabbath, and they came down on him for “working on the Sabbath” by carrying around his mat on his way home as Jesus had commanded.

Okay.  Let’s just stop there.  That gives legalism the ugly connotation it deserves.  And if the poor guy had known who healed him, they’d have gone after Jesus, too, for healing on the Sabbath.

So let’s go on.  The man had no idea who Jesus was so wasn’t able to out him to the legalists.  But later on Jesus found the man at the temple and said an even stranger thing than the original question: “See, you’re well again.  Now stop sinning or something worse will happen to you.”

How could a cripple, lying on his mat for thirty-eight years, have been sinning, according to most people’s definition?   He didn’t drink or smoke or hurt anybody.  He didn’t carouse or go with wild women.  He didn’t rob anyone on the road or beat up his wife.

Oh, but no one saw (except Jesus) what had been going on in his mind--maybe all of the above and more. Hatred, anger, resentment, lust, avarice, greed....  These don’t need legs.  But given legs, there was no telling where this man’s mind might have taken him.  Jesus knew that, too. 

Then the man went and told everyone it was Jesus.  Yes, only Jesus....

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Father of the Rain

Father of the rain,
make me clean and help me not to duck for shelter
but to embrace the cleansing.

Help me to love Your rain in all its forms:

the mist that comes almost imperceptibly
bringing such gentle moisture to shriveled cells
that even the most fragile are not damaged
but irrigated and enlivened.

the fog, even more gentle than the mist,
enfolding the dry spirit
in a thick comforter of refreshment.

the steady rain that sets in during the night
and continues all day,
soaking everything to the very taproots.

the deluge that continues to wash away accumulations of debris,
that overflows the dams men have constructed
that reroute the streams on their way to the sea.

And, Lord, help me to even embrace the storms
that shake me from my attachments,
that bend and test me;
they make me realize I am at Your mercy.

It was Your mercy that placed me here in the first place,
and it is by Your mercy that I survive.
Rain on me, Lord.

Come, sweet rain.