I spent Sunday evening and Monday morning in Dalton, Georgia attending the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia General Assembly and Monday evening and Tuesday morning in Woodstock, Georgia attending the Georgia Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. More on that schizophrenic experience will come at another time.
Today I want to talk about the trip home.
What was left of Hurricane Ida was hovering over Georgia as I drove from Woodstock, which is a tad north of Atlanta, back to Fitzgerald, which is way south of Atlanta, so the trip was shrouded in rain accompanied by irritation.
My good wife had an understandable emotional reaction to being without me for two days and as a result came down with a bad cold. (The true phrases in the preceding sentence are “my good wife” and “came down with a bad cold.”) Being committed to making every effort at being a good husband, I decided to get off of I-475, the bypass that travelers on I-75 can employ to avoid the massive traffic characteristic of Macon, and go to the Fresh Market to buy her some roses.
The preceding sentence needs two explanatory notes.
Note #1: My good wife likes roses, especially yellow ones. When, in the middle of my Ph.D. work at Southern Seminary, I attended the 1984 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas—now referred to in the history books as the “Mother of all Baptist Battles”—and thus was away—far, far away--on our sixth wedding anniversary, I got the bright idea to call a florist in Dallas and order her a dozen yellow roses—thus, you see, yellow roses of Texas—which shows how smart I am since the florist in Texas of course called one in Louisville who in turn delivered some yellow roses of Kentucky to Debra .
Note #2, which is especially for you other romantic or romantic wannabe husbands out there, has two parts. Note #2A: Wives dig flowers, so buy them flowers. Note #2B: If you have a Fresh Market store near you, buy her roses at Fresh Market; they sell really nice ones for $6.95 a dozen—she’ll think you spent three times that much. Which reminds me—I think I paid $45 for that dozen yellow Texas/Kentucky roses back in 1984, which, given our financial status then as compared to now (and we’re nowhere near wealthy now), would be something like $4500 in today’s dollars. But I was (and am) in love and besides, she had given birth to our firstborn just four months before.
So I went to the Fresh Market in Macon and bought a dozen yellow roses which cost me about thirty minutes, which was time well spent, and $6.95, which was money well spent.
My mission accomplished, I got back in my rented Hyundai Accent (seriously) and headed south, enjoying the pitter-patter of rain on the windshield and the occasional good-humored splash from a passing semi.
It was somewhere between Cordele, where for some reason a rocket or missile of some sort sits serenely beside the Krystal that is just off the interstate (and I’ve been looking at that rocket/missile for over thirty years now and have never cared enough to find out why it’s there), and Ashburn, where they have a Fire Ant Festival every March, that I spotted it: a gold minivan with a ladder fastened to its roof and a “Direct TV” sign on its side. Its appearance was interesting, but its behavior was downright mesmerizing; it was speeding up and slowing down, weaving from lane to lane, straddling the line between two lanes, veering over into the median, and generally taking what appeared to be completely unnecessary evasive maneuvers given that I saw no one in pursuit.
I watched it for a couple of minutes, trying to keep my distance, until I satisfied myself that the driver obviously had some sort of impairment, be it naturally or artificially induced, so I took out my cell phone and dialed 911. The operator came on and asked, “Do you have an emergency?” to which I replied, “It sure looks like it” and I then proceeded to describe what I was seeing. While I was still on the line, she contacted a Deputy Sheriff and then told me that they would be intercepting the dangerous driver; meanwhile I told her that the driver had pulled over to the median and stopped. I hung up.
I was driving along in the middle lane when the minivan came flying by me in the right hand lane. I watched him speed away and then I watched as it, as the commentators on the telecast of the Daytona 500, the only NASCAR race I ever watch, say, “got loose,” swerved hard to the left, crashed into the concrete wall that thankfully divides the southbound from the northbound lanes of traffic, and came to rest, smashed but right side up, in the middle lane. I, along with two other drivers, pulled over to see if we could help. While I called 911 back to report the crash, a lady went out to the wrecked vehicle to find, amazingly, the driver climbing out of the vehicle, showing no outward signs of injury.
Turner County sheriff’s deputies, Georgia State Patrol officers, an ambulance, and other rescue personnel soon arrived to take care of the driver and to work the wreck.
Several matters related to grace, mercy, and timing occurred to me as I reflected on these events.
First, given the usual traffic on I-75, it is remarkable that the minivan struck no other vehicles.
Second, given that there is not a dividing wall on every stretch of I-75, it was fortuitous that there was one on that stretch that prevented the minivan from crossing over into oncoming traffic.
Third, given the impact between minivan and concrete wall that I witnessed, it is amazing that the driver walked away.
Fourth, given that had I not stopped to buy a dozen yellow roses for my good wife I would have been nowhere near that minivan when it wrecked, it is worth pondering how one choice puts you in one situation while another choice puts you in another and how the possible combinations are apparently infinite.
Grace, mercy, and timing…three great, great mysteries.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Boss & The Preacher
Bruce Springsteen and I almost share a birthday—he was born on September 23, 1949 while I came into the world on September 24, 1958. We share another connection, too, but I’ll get to that in a little while.
Were I to give you a full accounting of my popular musical allegiances over the years you would likely suggest that I should hang my increasingly hairless head in shame.
The first musical act that I took seriously was The Monkees—and they were not even a serious musical act, at least not at their beginning. I took them so seriously that I even sent in fifty cents so that I could become a card carrying member of the Monkees Fan Club but I never received my membership credentials, probably because I put two quarters in an envelope and mailed them off so we can probably assume that they met one of three fates: (1) they arrived postage due, (2) they cut through the envelope, or (3) they were taken by some desperate postal worker who just had to have a pack of cigarettes or two cokes.
In 1973, I pieced together enough savings from my grocery store job to buy an album and, after much consideration, chose Golden’s Earring’s Moontan over Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, which I guess means that I thought Radar Love was of a higher and more enduring quality than Gimme Three Steps, I Ain’t the One, Tuesday’s Gone, and Free Bird—for Pete’s sake, Free Bird! To my credit, I long ago foisted my copy of Moontan off on somebody (if it’s now a priceless collector’s item, I frankly don’t care) and bought a vinyl copy of Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd at a used record store in Daytona Beach.
While my friends and companions were going to concerts by such hometown (we lived only 45 minutes from Macon) heroes as The Allman Brothers and Wet Willie, I talked my parents into taking a few friends and me to a concert in Macon, too—a concert featuring Rare Earth and the Goose Creek Symphony.
I thought that Mark, Don and Mel of Grand Funk Railroad were at least on a par with Eric, Jack, and Ginger of Cream.
I know, pity the boy---sad, sad, sad.
I’m happy to report, though, that things got better as I matured. While I listen to virtually no contemporary artists, I do lend my ears regularly to some of the still living and still performing classics—Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash, to name a few—and, of course, The Boss.
I’ve been to a few more concerts since my immersion in the seven or so songs that Rare Earth played in the Macon Coliseum all those years ago; Debra and I have seen Linda Ronstadt, Anne Murray, Kenny Rogers and the Oak Ridge Boys, and Gordon Lightfoot—yeah, we’re wild ones, we are.
Joshua and I saw Aerosmith in Nashville and Dylan in Augusta, although frankly Junior Brown (You’re Wanted by the Police and my Wife Thinks You’re Dead) stole the latter show. And, in one of the great concert experiences of my life, Debra and I took our then middle schooler Sara and a friend to experience—and I do mean experience—Hanson; I mean, how can you top 15,000 elementary and middle school girls screaming at the top of their lungs?
By going to see Bruce Springsteen, that’s how, which brings me back around to my other connection with The Boss, which is that on Saturday, September 12, 2009, I was for three hours just a few short yards away from the man.
My friend, church member, fellow traveler, and current Deacon Chairman Eric Stone is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan; I mean, I’m the kind of fan who owns a bunch of his albums but Eric is the kind of fan who has seen him in concert lots of times in lots of places. So I told Eric that, hey, I wouldn’t mind going to a Springsteen concert some time and the next thing I knew, we were driving from Fitzgerald to Tampa on a Saturday to watch a concert that would last from 8:00-11:00 p.m. after which we would and did drive back to Fitzgerald which meant that I got to bed around 4:00 a.m. on Sunday and had to get up to preach the next morning on Senior Adult Sunday which somehow seemed appropriate since Springsteen, who was less than two weeks from turning sixty when we saw him, had just appeared on the cover of the AARP magazine.
People told me I did a good job preaching that morning. Go figure.
We had pretty good seats, if you call the second row behind the pit where the “lucky” fans who stood in front of the stage were positioned “good,” and you do call them good, my friends, you do.
Bruce and the E Street Band walked out at 8:00 p.m. and started playing; when they hit the first notes of the first song, Badlands, it seemed that a wave swept over the crowd gathered in the Ford Amphitheatre and it also seemed that just about every person was singing along. It continued that way all the way through the concert, through Out in the Street, Spirit in the Night, The Promised Land, and Born to Run, not mention through the encore set that started with Hard Times and wound its way through Rosalita and Dancing in the Dark until they finally finished for good with Thunder Road.
I’m not much on idolizing folks and I don’t idolize Bruce Springsteen—but I do admire him. I admire his productivity—he’s still writing and recording because he still has something to say. I admire his work ethic—he and his band worked very hard the night I saw them and I understand that’s the case at every show. I admire his body of work—he has amassed quite a catalogue of songs, such a vast catalogue that he has his own channel on satellite radio. I admire his passion for what he does—it comes through in his every move and in his every word when he is on stage. I admire his attempts to help—he supports and urges his audiences to support the hunger relief efforts of the Second Harvest Food Banks.
As a preacher, I think I can learn from Springsteen; at least, he caused me to wonder.
When I am in front of my congregation, do I do admirable work? Am I still writing and speaking because I still have something to say? Am I still giving it my all every time that I go out there? Am I still developing and presenting my body of work—am I appropriately returning to the great themes that have characterized my work while still being creative? Am I still feeling and showing passion for what I do and for the One and for the ones for whom I do it? Am I helpful?
He’s The Boss. I’m A Preacher.
He shares real words that speak to real people in their real lives, and you get the idea that they receive it as good news.
I hope that I share real words that speak to real people in their real lives, too—and I hope that the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ comes through.
Were I to give you a full accounting of my popular musical allegiances over the years you would likely suggest that I should hang my increasingly hairless head in shame.
The first musical act that I took seriously was The Monkees—and they were not even a serious musical act, at least not at their beginning. I took them so seriously that I even sent in fifty cents so that I could become a card carrying member of the Monkees Fan Club but I never received my membership credentials, probably because I put two quarters in an envelope and mailed them off so we can probably assume that they met one of three fates: (1) they arrived postage due, (2) they cut through the envelope, or (3) they were taken by some desperate postal worker who just had to have a pack of cigarettes or two cokes.
In 1973, I pieced together enough savings from my grocery store job to buy an album and, after much consideration, chose Golden’s Earring’s Moontan over Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, which I guess means that I thought Radar Love was of a higher and more enduring quality than Gimme Three Steps, I Ain’t the One, Tuesday’s Gone, and Free Bird—for Pete’s sake, Free Bird! To my credit, I long ago foisted my copy of Moontan off on somebody (if it’s now a priceless collector’s item, I frankly don’t care) and bought a vinyl copy of Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd at a used record store in Daytona Beach.
While my friends and companions were going to concerts by such hometown (we lived only 45 minutes from Macon) heroes as The Allman Brothers and Wet Willie, I talked my parents into taking a few friends and me to a concert in Macon, too—a concert featuring Rare Earth and the Goose Creek Symphony.
I thought that Mark, Don and Mel of Grand Funk Railroad were at least on a par with Eric, Jack, and Ginger of Cream.
I know, pity the boy---sad, sad, sad.
I’m happy to report, though, that things got better as I matured. While I listen to virtually no contemporary artists, I do lend my ears regularly to some of the still living and still performing classics—Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, and Crosby, Stills, & Nash, to name a few—and, of course, The Boss.
I’ve been to a few more concerts since my immersion in the seven or so songs that Rare Earth played in the Macon Coliseum all those years ago; Debra and I have seen Linda Ronstadt, Anne Murray, Kenny Rogers and the Oak Ridge Boys, and Gordon Lightfoot—yeah, we’re wild ones, we are.
Joshua and I saw Aerosmith in Nashville and Dylan in Augusta, although frankly Junior Brown (You’re Wanted by the Police and my Wife Thinks You’re Dead) stole the latter show. And, in one of the great concert experiences of my life, Debra and I took our then middle schooler Sara and a friend to experience—and I do mean experience—Hanson; I mean, how can you top 15,000 elementary and middle school girls screaming at the top of their lungs?
By going to see Bruce Springsteen, that’s how, which brings me back around to my other connection with The Boss, which is that on Saturday, September 12, 2009, I was for three hours just a few short yards away from the man.
My friend, church member, fellow traveler, and current Deacon Chairman Eric Stone is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan; I mean, I’m the kind of fan who owns a bunch of his albums but Eric is the kind of fan who has seen him in concert lots of times in lots of places. So I told Eric that, hey, I wouldn’t mind going to a Springsteen concert some time and the next thing I knew, we were driving from Fitzgerald to Tampa on a Saturday to watch a concert that would last from 8:00-11:00 p.m. after which we would and did drive back to Fitzgerald which meant that I got to bed around 4:00 a.m. on Sunday and had to get up to preach the next morning on Senior Adult Sunday which somehow seemed appropriate since Springsteen, who was less than two weeks from turning sixty when we saw him, had just appeared on the cover of the AARP magazine.
People told me I did a good job preaching that morning. Go figure.
We had pretty good seats, if you call the second row behind the pit where the “lucky” fans who stood in front of the stage were positioned “good,” and you do call them good, my friends, you do.
Bruce and the E Street Band walked out at 8:00 p.m. and started playing; when they hit the first notes of the first song, Badlands, it seemed that a wave swept over the crowd gathered in the Ford Amphitheatre and it also seemed that just about every person was singing along. It continued that way all the way through the concert, through Out in the Street, Spirit in the Night, The Promised Land, and Born to Run, not mention through the encore set that started with Hard Times and wound its way through Rosalita and Dancing in the Dark until they finally finished for good with Thunder Road.I’m not much on idolizing folks and I don’t idolize Bruce Springsteen—but I do admire him. I admire his productivity—he’s still writing and recording because he still has something to say. I admire his work ethic—he and his band worked very hard the night I saw them and I understand that’s the case at every show. I admire his body of work—he has amassed quite a catalogue of songs, such a vast catalogue that he has his own channel on satellite radio. I admire his passion for what he does—it comes through in his every move and in his every word when he is on stage. I admire his attempts to help—he supports and urges his audiences to support the hunger relief efforts of the Second Harvest Food Banks.
As a preacher, I think I can learn from Springsteen; at least, he caused me to wonder.
When I am in front of my congregation, do I do admirable work? Am I still writing and speaking because I still have something to say? Am I still giving it my all every time that I go out there? Am I still developing and presenting my body of work—am I appropriately returning to the great themes that have characterized my work while still being creative? Am I still feeling and showing passion for what I do and for the One and for the ones for whom I do it? Am I helpful?
He’s The Boss. I’m A Preacher.
He shares real words that speak to real people in their real lives, and you get the idea that they receive it as good news.
I hope that I share real words that speak to real people in their real lives, too—and I hope that the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ comes through.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
I Am Grateful for Jesus
[A sermon based on Luke 17:11-19 for Sunday, November 8, 2009]
When I was a boy I liked to watch the Officer Don show on one of the Atlanta television stations. Officer Don was a guy who dressed up in a policeman’s uniform, talked to a dragon puppet named Orville, and showed Popeye cartoons. The show also featured a live audience made up of elementary aged schoolchildren seated on some bleachers.
Each telecast also featured games the winners of which would get toys and board games as prizes; my favorite was the ooey-gooey bag game. If the winner, upon receiving her prize, said “Thank you” then she was awarded another prize. If she said “Thank you” again she’d get yet another one (they did cut it off at three).
Even as a child I remember being amazed at the fact that the vast majority of the children who won would not say “Thank you.” And I also remember that it seemed that so many of the children who did say “Thank you” seemed to say it because they meant it and seemed genuinely amazed that they received more gifts in return.
Even as children some apparently already felt a sense of entitlement while some already felt a sense of genuine gratitude.
It’s almost Christmas so I guess I can use a Christmas story. My home church had a big Christmas shindig on the Wednesday night before Christmas featuring special guest Santa Claus—right there in the sanctuary—and the giving out of Christmas presents. I of course was a regular at church and so got several presents.
For some reason at one of those Christmas gatherings when I was about nine years old a school classmate, a boy named Bubba, showed up and sat on the pew right in front of me. I wondered why he was there; he didn’t come to Sunday School or church—he didn’t even play baseball with the RAs. Contingency plans were in place to handle such a situation; presents were provided for unexpected visitors.
Bubba got a puzzle.
He kept turning around to show his puzzle to me, a big grin on his face. I remember wondering what he was so happy about; he got only one present. And I remember wondering as I sat there with my pile of presents why I wasn’t nearly as happy as he was. Had my sense of entitlement already, at the tender age of nine, robbed me of genuine gratitude that comes from a sense of genuine surprise at the great gifts that drop unbidden into my life?
Ten lepers there were, ten sick men. To make matters worse, these ten men had a sickness that made them social outcasts. They had each other because misery loves company and because a common problem will cause people to band together and forget those things that would have otherwise divided them. And so there was a Samaritan leper among the Jewish lepers, an outcast among the outcasts.
Jesus healed them all.
That’s the way it happens, you know. It is certainly not only people of faith whom the Lord heals; it is certainly not just good people whom the Lord heals; it is certainly not just people who deserve it whom the Lord heals. Jesus healed them all.
But it may be exactly right to say that while all ten lepers got healed only one of them got saved [that’s the way Fred Craddock sees it in Luke, Interpretation Commentary (Louisville: John Knox, 1990), p. 203]. Only the Samaritan leper came back to say “Thank you” to Jesus and to praise Jesus for what he had done in his life. Only the Samaritan leper’s heart was opened up by what the Lord had done for him so that he could be made whole in the ways that matter far more than physical wholeness.
Maybe one key to being able to be saved is arriving at a sense of gratitude for Jesus. Maybe it is gratitude to Jesus that allows your heart to be opened up to him so that you can be saved.
And maybe one of the reasons that more people don’t get saved is that they are too much like cats. As a character in a work by Mavis Gallant said, “What is the appeal about cats? I've always wanted to know. They don't care if you like them. They haven't the slightest notion of gratitude, and they never pretend. They take what you have to offer, and away they go.” The nine were like cats—they took what Jesus had to offer and away they went.
But the one—ah, the one—he took what Jesus had to offer and then he came back to Jesus, his heart bursting with gratitude and thanksgiving, and he then took what else Jesus had to offer. And that made all the difference.
I am grateful that Jesus blessed me until somehow, miracle of miracles, my heart said “Thank you” and my soul said “Praise you” and Jesus said, “Your faith has made you whole.”
Those children on the old Officer Don show who felt gratitude and demonstrated it by saying “Thank you” received even more gifts in return but, as I said, the limit was three. When your heart becomes strangely warmed by the gratitude you feel toward Jesus for all the blessings of help and healing and wholeness that have come into your life undeserved and as a result your awareness of your dependence on Jesus stops you in your tracks, spins you around and sends you back to Jesus just so you can fall on your face in thanksgiving, then begins a flow of blessings and gifts that is limitless and endless.
Then you can “go on your way,” knowing that “your faith has made you well.”
When I was a boy I liked to watch the Officer Don show on one of the Atlanta television stations. Officer Don was a guy who dressed up in a policeman’s uniform, talked to a dragon puppet named Orville, and showed Popeye cartoons. The show also featured a live audience made up of elementary aged schoolchildren seated on some bleachers.
Each telecast also featured games the winners of which would get toys and board games as prizes; my favorite was the ooey-gooey bag game. If the winner, upon receiving her prize, said “Thank you” then she was awarded another prize. If she said “Thank you” again she’d get yet another one (they did cut it off at three).
Even as a child I remember being amazed at the fact that the vast majority of the children who won would not say “Thank you.” And I also remember that it seemed that so many of the children who did say “Thank you” seemed to say it because they meant it and seemed genuinely amazed that they received more gifts in return.
Even as children some apparently already felt a sense of entitlement while some already felt a sense of genuine gratitude.
It’s almost Christmas so I guess I can use a Christmas story. My home church had a big Christmas shindig on the Wednesday night before Christmas featuring special guest Santa Claus—right there in the sanctuary—and the giving out of Christmas presents. I of course was a regular at church and so got several presents.
For some reason at one of those Christmas gatherings when I was about nine years old a school classmate, a boy named Bubba, showed up and sat on the pew right in front of me. I wondered why he was there; he didn’t come to Sunday School or church—he didn’t even play baseball with the RAs. Contingency plans were in place to handle such a situation; presents were provided for unexpected visitors.
Bubba got a puzzle.
He kept turning around to show his puzzle to me, a big grin on his face. I remember wondering what he was so happy about; he got only one present. And I remember wondering as I sat there with my pile of presents why I wasn’t nearly as happy as he was. Had my sense of entitlement already, at the tender age of nine, robbed me of genuine gratitude that comes from a sense of genuine surprise at the great gifts that drop unbidden into my life?
Ten lepers there were, ten sick men. To make matters worse, these ten men had a sickness that made them social outcasts. They had each other because misery loves company and because a common problem will cause people to band together and forget those things that would have otherwise divided them. And so there was a Samaritan leper among the Jewish lepers, an outcast among the outcasts.
Jesus healed them all.
That’s the way it happens, you know. It is certainly not only people of faith whom the Lord heals; it is certainly not just good people whom the Lord heals; it is certainly not just people who deserve it whom the Lord heals. Jesus healed them all.
But it may be exactly right to say that while all ten lepers got healed only one of them got saved [that’s the way Fred Craddock sees it in Luke, Interpretation Commentary (Louisville: John Knox, 1990), p. 203]. Only the Samaritan leper came back to say “Thank you” to Jesus and to praise Jesus for what he had done in his life. Only the Samaritan leper’s heart was opened up by what the Lord had done for him so that he could be made whole in the ways that matter far more than physical wholeness.
Maybe one key to being able to be saved is arriving at a sense of gratitude for Jesus. Maybe it is gratitude to Jesus that allows your heart to be opened up to him so that you can be saved.
And maybe one of the reasons that more people don’t get saved is that they are too much like cats. As a character in a work by Mavis Gallant said, “What is the appeal about cats? I've always wanted to know. They don't care if you like them. They haven't the slightest notion of gratitude, and they never pretend. They take what you have to offer, and away they go.” The nine were like cats—they took what Jesus had to offer and away they went.
But the one—ah, the one—he took what Jesus had to offer and then he came back to Jesus, his heart bursting with gratitude and thanksgiving, and he then took what else Jesus had to offer. And that made all the difference.
I am grateful that Jesus blessed me until somehow, miracle of miracles, my heart said “Thank you” and my soul said “Praise you” and Jesus said, “Your faith has made you whole.”
Those children on the old Officer Don show who felt gratitude and demonstrated it by saying “Thank you” received even more gifts in return but, as I said, the limit was three. When your heart becomes strangely warmed by the gratitude you feel toward Jesus for all the blessings of help and healing and wholeness that have come into your life undeserved and as a result your awareness of your dependence on Jesus stops you in your tracks, spins you around and sends you back to Jesus just so you can fall on your face in thanksgiving, then begins a flow of blessings and gifts that is limitless and endless.
Then you can “go on your way,” knowing that “your faith has made you well.”
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Good Grief
[A sermon based on Matthew 25:1-13 & 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 for our All Saints' Day Memorial Service]
I was raised going to church with a boy named Ben Henry. Ben was three years older than I so I had no memories of life that did not include Ben. One Sunday afternoon Jackie and Peggy Strickland were visiting our home, probably because Mama had been sick. The phone rang and I answered it. Someone was calling for Jackie and Peggy because their son Darryl had been in an automobile accident. He and Randy Berry had been taken to a hospital. Ben Henry, who had been driving, was killed. Ben was sixteen. I was thirteen. I often hung out with those guys but I hadn’t that day. The following Tuesday I served as a pallbearer at Ben’s funeral.
I was raised in the little house in Barnesville by my mother and father. I had no memories of life that did not include both of my parents. Mama was diagnosed with cancer when she was forty-six and I was nine. She was in the hospital again, as she had been so many times before. One Saturday morning my father and two of my aunts went to see her in the hospital in Macon. I was working at my grocery store job. When my lunch hour rolled around I went to the Dairy Delite, bought some lunch, and took it home to eat. Aunt Clara was cleaning the house. Aunt Dot was crying. Daddy put his arms around me and said, “Son, Mama’s not coming home.” “How long?” I asked. “The doctor said twenty-four hours to two weeks,” he answered. She died at noon the following day. A couple of weeks later her father and my grandfather died. I was sixteen.
In the intervening years there have been, of course, many, many more.
I tell you all of that just to say that I am acquainted with death and grief. I don't have firsthand experience with a lot of the things about which I preach, but I do have firsthand experience with this.
Today we have called the names of twelve people for whom First Baptist Church was their spiritual home. We want this memorial service to honor their lives and to offer encouragement to their families and friends; we also want this service to help all of us because we all either have experienced the deaths of loved ones or we will have that experience.
Death is a universal human experience; therefore grief is a universal human experience. Unfortunately, good grief is not a universal human experience. I want our grief to be a good grief. What do I mean by good grief?
Well, a good psychologist would teach us that good grief is grief that is properly lived through and processed. Andy Lester, drawing on the work of Wayne Oates, has described the six “psychological phases” through which one will move if grief is to be experienced so as to lead to a meaningful life. Here are those phases [Andrew D. Lester, It Hurts So Bad, Lord! (Nashville: Broadman, 1976), pp. 81-84, drawing from Wayne E. Oates, Anxiety in Christian Experience (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955), pp. 51-56.
1. Shock. In this initial phase our mind cannot absorb what has happened. We experience disbelief and denial.
2. Numbness. This is a type of natural anesthetic; our bodies cope with the shock by slowing us down and deadening our senses.
3. Fantasy versus reality. Our mind might conjure up fantasies that enable us to pretend or to wish that our loved one was still alive and with us.
4. Flood of grief. Here reality crashes into our consciousness and we are overcome with grief. This phase can be characterized by periods of uncontrolled weeping. Unfortunately, sometimes Christians fail to let this phase happen because they incorrectly think that such crying indicates a lack of faith.
5. Selective memory and stabbing pain. Things—pictures, songs, events—trigger memories that bring the person back to our consciousness and create painful feelings. Crying may occur at such moments. But we are remembering reality and coming to terms with the loss.
6. Acceptance of loss and reaffirmation of life. In this final phase we come to accept the loss of our loved one and to reaffirm the life that God has for us to live.
Acceptance and reaffirmation—that is what results when our grief is a good grief, when it is a grief that enables us to move forward with our lives in a positive and creative fashion. Grief in itself is a normal human reaction. Grief becomes bad (that is, negative and counterproductive) when we fail to process it and get hung up in it.
We Christians, though, have the God-given ability to experience good grief because we can grieve with hope which is an assurance that comes from God’s faithfulness in keeping God’s promises. Even though we will always miss our loved ones who have died, we can accept their leaving us because we trust in the promises of God. We can move on with our lives because we know that they have certainly moved on with their lives; they lived in Christ, they died in Christ, and they will be raised in Christ. We who are left are still living in Christ and one day we will die in Christ and another day we will be raised in Christ.
Our grief is a good grief when we understand that we all, we who have died in Christ and we who are living in Christ, are in this together; we are all awaiting the return of our Lord and the resurrection that will accompany his return. Because Jesus was resurrected he is with us now and we have been raised to new life now and we live in fellowship with him now. Because Jesus was resurrected our loved ones who died in him are, though absent from us, present with him and they live in fellowship with him now. And because Jesus was resurrected, when he returns all who are in him, whether they are still living or whether they have already died will rise to welcome him back. Then, in the best news of all, “we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
While our loved ones who have died would certainly expect us to miss them, they would also want us to keep living full lives and since we live in Christ we certainly can do that. We want to be like the five wise bridesmaids who had their lamps all ready when the bridegroom came. We want to be living lives that are based on and empowered by our personal relationship with Christ. We want to live in hope, to live in faith, and to live in love. We want to live not in bitterness but in gratitude, not in loneliness but in fellowship, not in anger but in peace, and not in paralysis but in productive activity. We want to keep doing whatever God has for us to do for as long as we are here to do it.
Those who have gone are living in Christ; we who are left are living in Christ. But one day a reunion is coming--a reunion of our Lord, our loved ones, and us.
Good grief, what a day that will be!
I was raised going to church with a boy named Ben Henry. Ben was three years older than I so I had no memories of life that did not include Ben. One Sunday afternoon Jackie and Peggy Strickland were visiting our home, probably because Mama had been sick. The phone rang and I answered it. Someone was calling for Jackie and Peggy because their son Darryl had been in an automobile accident. He and Randy Berry had been taken to a hospital. Ben Henry, who had been driving, was killed. Ben was sixteen. I was thirteen. I often hung out with those guys but I hadn’t that day. The following Tuesday I served as a pallbearer at Ben’s funeral.
I was raised in the little house in Barnesville by my mother and father. I had no memories of life that did not include both of my parents. Mama was diagnosed with cancer when she was forty-six and I was nine. She was in the hospital again, as she had been so many times before. One Saturday morning my father and two of my aunts went to see her in the hospital in Macon. I was working at my grocery store job. When my lunch hour rolled around I went to the Dairy Delite, bought some lunch, and took it home to eat. Aunt Clara was cleaning the house. Aunt Dot was crying. Daddy put his arms around me and said, “Son, Mama’s not coming home.” “How long?” I asked. “The doctor said twenty-four hours to two weeks,” he answered. She died at noon the following day. A couple of weeks later her father and my grandfather died. I was sixteen.
In the intervening years there have been, of course, many, many more.
I tell you all of that just to say that I am acquainted with death and grief. I don't have firsthand experience with a lot of the things about which I preach, but I do have firsthand experience with this.
Today we have called the names of twelve people for whom First Baptist Church was their spiritual home. We want this memorial service to honor their lives and to offer encouragement to their families and friends; we also want this service to help all of us because we all either have experienced the deaths of loved ones or we will have that experience.
Death is a universal human experience; therefore grief is a universal human experience. Unfortunately, good grief is not a universal human experience. I want our grief to be a good grief. What do I mean by good grief?
Well, a good psychologist would teach us that good grief is grief that is properly lived through and processed. Andy Lester, drawing on the work of Wayne Oates, has described the six “psychological phases” through which one will move if grief is to be experienced so as to lead to a meaningful life. Here are those phases [Andrew D. Lester, It Hurts So Bad, Lord! (Nashville: Broadman, 1976), pp. 81-84, drawing from Wayne E. Oates, Anxiety in Christian Experience (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955), pp. 51-56.
1. Shock. In this initial phase our mind cannot absorb what has happened. We experience disbelief and denial.
2. Numbness. This is a type of natural anesthetic; our bodies cope with the shock by slowing us down and deadening our senses.
3. Fantasy versus reality. Our mind might conjure up fantasies that enable us to pretend or to wish that our loved one was still alive and with us.
4. Flood of grief. Here reality crashes into our consciousness and we are overcome with grief. This phase can be characterized by periods of uncontrolled weeping. Unfortunately, sometimes Christians fail to let this phase happen because they incorrectly think that such crying indicates a lack of faith.
5. Selective memory and stabbing pain. Things—pictures, songs, events—trigger memories that bring the person back to our consciousness and create painful feelings. Crying may occur at such moments. But we are remembering reality and coming to terms with the loss.
6. Acceptance of loss and reaffirmation of life. In this final phase we come to accept the loss of our loved one and to reaffirm the life that God has for us to live.
Acceptance and reaffirmation—that is what results when our grief is a good grief, when it is a grief that enables us to move forward with our lives in a positive and creative fashion. Grief in itself is a normal human reaction. Grief becomes bad (that is, negative and counterproductive) when we fail to process it and get hung up in it.
We Christians, though, have the God-given ability to experience good grief because we can grieve with hope which is an assurance that comes from God’s faithfulness in keeping God’s promises. Even though we will always miss our loved ones who have died, we can accept their leaving us because we trust in the promises of God. We can move on with our lives because we know that they have certainly moved on with their lives; they lived in Christ, they died in Christ, and they will be raised in Christ. We who are left are still living in Christ and one day we will die in Christ and another day we will be raised in Christ.
Our grief is a good grief when we understand that we all, we who have died in Christ and we who are living in Christ, are in this together; we are all awaiting the return of our Lord and the resurrection that will accompany his return. Because Jesus was resurrected he is with us now and we have been raised to new life now and we live in fellowship with him now. Because Jesus was resurrected our loved ones who died in him are, though absent from us, present with him and they live in fellowship with him now. And because Jesus was resurrected, when he returns all who are in him, whether they are still living or whether they have already died will rise to welcome him back. Then, in the best news of all, “we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
While our loved ones who have died would certainly expect us to miss them, they would also want us to keep living full lives and since we live in Christ we certainly can do that. We want to be like the five wise bridesmaids who had their lamps all ready when the bridegroom came. We want to be living lives that are based on and empowered by our personal relationship with Christ. We want to live in hope, to live in faith, and to live in love. We want to live not in bitterness but in gratitude, not in loneliness but in fellowship, not in anger but in peace, and not in paralysis but in productive activity. We want to keep doing whatever God has for us to do for as long as we are here to do it.
Those who have gone are living in Christ; we who are left are living in Christ. But one day a reunion is coming--a reunion of our Lord, our loved ones, and us.
Good grief, what a day that will be!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Teach Us to Pray, Pt. 2: Prayer in the Context of a Disciplined Christian Life
[On Wednesday nights I'm leading a study called Teach Us to Pray: Building a Life with God. This is Part 2: Prayer in the Context of a Disciplined Christian Life]
Prayer, simply put, is communion and conversation between God and us. That simple definition, though, assumes something very important, namely the existence of a relationship between God and us; after all, one talks to and listens to someone else, to someone that one knows.
That relationship is the context within which our prayers are to happen. We need, then, to consider the nature of our relationship with God.
God’s desire is to share a close and intimate relationship with us. We see God express this desire in the Old Testament in, for example, Exodus 29:43-46; we see Jesus express it in beautiful and powerful words on the night that he was betrayed (John 15:14-15). Now, if God desires to live among us, and that desire was certainly proved when Jesus came into the world, and if Jesus called his original disciples and by extension calls us as his present disciples his friends, then we have an amazing opportunity, don’t we? It is the opportunity to live in a vital, intimate, dynamic relationship with God.
But do we? Or do these lives that we are supposedly living in relationship with God seem, in the words of Paul Scherer, “too trivial to be true”? (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 24) Are our lives characterized by passionate longing like what we see expressed in Psalm 42:1-2b: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”? If we are developing a deep relationship with God then such longing will be great. Is it?
I’d like to name two related steps/moves that will help us to develop the kind of relationship with God that God wants us to have and that, whether we realize it or not, we want to have, too.
1. Embrace the true nature of our Christian life
The true nature of our Christian life is that it is a life! Many people tend to think of salvation in terms of a past event, as in “I was saved in 1966.” While that is not an inaccurate way to think or talk, since there was a time in the past that we first put faith in Christ, such a way of thinking and talking is incomplete. It is incomplete because it does not say nearly enough. We need to also say: (a) the Christian life has no end (because it encompasses our entire earthly sojourn and our subsequent heavenly sojourn) and (b) the Christian life has no limit (because it encompasses every facet and part of our lives).
The true nature of the Christian life is that it is Christ’s life in us! Scripture teaches this in, for example, 1 John 5:11-12 and Romans 5:10. Dallas Willard has powerfully argued that while salvation certainly involves the forgiveness of sin, we need to think of it more in terms of the imparting of life:
God’s seminal redemptive act toward us is the communication of a new kind of life, as the seed—one of our Lord’s most favored symbols—carries a new life into the enfolding soil. Turning from old ways with faith and hope in Christ stands forth as the natural first expression of the new life imparted. That life will be poised to become a life of the same quality as Christ’s, because it indeed is Christ’s. He really does live on in us. The incarnation continues. (p. 38)
Because the crucified and resurrected Christ lives in us, because his life has been imparted to us by the grace of God, we really can live his kind of life in the world.
Which leads to the second step/move that will help us develop the kind of relationship with God that we need:
2. Practice Christian discipline
Willard also points out that we can only expect to develop the kind of life that Jesus lived if we do what Jesus did; such emulation of Jesus is modeled for us by many of the great Christian saints down through the years and we can learn from them, too. We can and we need to do what Paul told Timothy to do: “Train/exercise yourself in godliness” (1 Tim 4:7).
Jesus was the Son of God in a unique way; he was human and divine—and yet he trained himself to live the kind of life that he lived. By observing the life of Jesus and the lives of those who have learned from Jesus we can learn to follow what Richard Foster has called “the path of disciplined grace” (Celebration of Discipline, p. 7).
Next time I will say some more about what some of the disciplines are that will help to train us and that will put us in a position to be changed by God so that we grow in grace and in faith and in service. For now, I end with an illustration about the value of the regular practice of such disciplines.
One thing always bothered me about Popeye the Sailor, whose cartoons I greatly enjoyed when I was a child: why did he wait until he was in a crisis, such as being pulverized by Bluto, to eat his spinach? I mean, wouldn’t he have been better served if he had eaten a well-balanced diet that included regular helpings of spinach rather than having quickly to devour some just before it was too late? Besides, wouldn’t eating spinach regularly have put an end to his practice of carrying a huge can of it around in his shirt, which couldn’t have been very comfortable? And wouldn’t a little exercise have helped, too?
It seems to me that we Christians are too often like Popeye. We wait until a crisis arises before we get serious about our relationship with God. When the crisis comes, then we get around to praying or reading our Bibles or seriously seeking God. Aren’t we better off if we engage in the disciplines of the Christian life in a devoted and regular way? When we do we build up our strength over time so that when the crisis arises we have a storehouse from which to draw. That’s so much better than trying to find help in a big hurry just in that moment when we must have it or else.
Popeye is just a cartoon character, of course, but real life teaches us the same lesson. Moreover, Jesus in his life models for us the exercise of spiritual discipline all along the way so that he could face the tremendous crises of his life, culminating in his crucifixion, with strength and faith.
Conclusion: Prayer will be the vital communication and communion with God that it is supposed to be when we live out the truth that salvation is Christ’s life in us, that is a total way of life for us, and that we can grow in that life through exercise and discipline.
Prayer, simply put, is communion and conversation between God and us. That simple definition, though, assumes something very important, namely the existence of a relationship between God and us; after all, one talks to and listens to someone else, to someone that one knows.
That relationship is the context within which our prayers are to happen. We need, then, to consider the nature of our relationship with God.
God’s desire is to share a close and intimate relationship with us. We see God express this desire in the Old Testament in, for example, Exodus 29:43-46; we see Jesus express it in beautiful and powerful words on the night that he was betrayed (John 15:14-15). Now, if God desires to live among us, and that desire was certainly proved when Jesus came into the world, and if Jesus called his original disciples and by extension calls us as his present disciples his friends, then we have an amazing opportunity, don’t we? It is the opportunity to live in a vital, intimate, dynamic relationship with God.
But do we? Or do these lives that we are supposedly living in relationship with God seem, in the words of Paul Scherer, “too trivial to be true”? (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 24) Are our lives characterized by passionate longing like what we see expressed in Psalm 42:1-2b: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”? If we are developing a deep relationship with God then such longing will be great. Is it?
I’d like to name two related steps/moves that will help us to develop the kind of relationship with God that God wants us to have and that, whether we realize it or not, we want to have, too.
1. Embrace the true nature of our Christian life
The true nature of our Christian life is that it is a life! Many people tend to think of salvation in terms of a past event, as in “I was saved in 1966.” While that is not an inaccurate way to think or talk, since there was a time in the past that we first put faith in Christ, such a way of thinking and talking is incomplete. It is incomplete because it does not say nearly enough. We need to also say: (a) the Christian life has no end (because it encompasses our entire earthly sojourn and our subsequent heavenly sojourn) and (b) the Christian life has no limit (because it encompasses every facet and part of our lives).
The true nature of the Christian life is that it is Christ’s life in us! Scripture teaches this in, for example, 1 John 5:11-12 and Romans 5:10. Dallas Willard has powerfully argued that while salvation certainly involves the forgiveness of sin, we need to think of it more in terms of the imparting of life:
God’s seminal redemptive act toward us is the communication of a new kind of life, as the seed—one of our Lord’s most favored symbols—carries a new life into the enfolding soil. Turning from old ways with faith and hope in Christ stands forth as the natural first expression of the new life imparted. That life will be poised to become a life of the same quality as Christ’s, because it indeed is Christ’s. He really does live on in us. The incarnation continues. (p. 38)
Because the crucified and resurrected Christ lives in us, because his life has been imparted to us by the grace of God, we really can live his kind of life in the world.
Which leads to the second step/move that will help us develop the kind of relationship with God that we need:
2. Practice Christian discipline
Willard also points out that we can only expect to develop the kind of life that Jesus lived if we do what Jesus did; such emulation of Jesus is modeled for us by many of the great Christian saints down through the years and we can learn from them, too. We can and we need to do what Paul told Timothy to do: “Train/exercise yourself in godliness” (1 Tim 4:7).
Jesus was the Son of God in a unique way; he was human and divine—and yet he trained himself to live the kind of life that he lived. By observing the life of Jesus and the lives of those who have learned from Jesus we can learn to follow what Richard Foster has called “the path of disciplined grace” (Celebration of Discipline, p. 7).
Next time I will say some more about what some of the disciplines are that will help to train us and that will put us in a position to be changed by God so that we grow in grace and in faith and in service. For now, I end with an illustration about the value of the regular practice of such disciplines.
One thing always bothered me about Popeye the Sailor, whose cartoons I greatly enjoyed when I was a child: why did he wait until he was in a crisis, such as being pulverized by Bluto, to eat his spinach? I mean, wouldn’t he have been better served if he had eaten a well-balanced diet that included regular helpings of spinach rather than having quickly to devour some just before it was too late? Besides, wouldn’t eating spinach regularly have put an end to his practice of carrying a huge can of it around in his shirt, which couldn’t have been very comfortable? And wouldn’t a little exercise have helped, too?
It seems to me that we Christians are too often like Popeye. We wait until a crisis arises before we get serious about our relationship with God. When the crisis comes, then we get around to praying or reading our Bibles or seriously seeking God. Aren’t we better off if we engage in the disciplines of the Christian life in a devoted and regular way? When we do we build up our strength over time so that when the crisis arises we have a storehouse from which to draw. That’s so much better than trying to find help in a big hurry just in that moment when we must have it or else.
Popeye is just a cartoon character, of course, but real life teaches us the same lesson. Moreover, Jesus in his life models for us the exercise of spiritual discipline all along the way so that he could face the tremendous crises of his life, culminating in his crucifixion, with strength and faith.
Conclusion: Prayer will be the vital communication and communion with God that it is supposed to be when we live out the truth that salvation is Christ’s life in us, that is a total way of life for us, and that we can grow in that life through exercise and discipline.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A Prayer for Sunday
This is the day you have made, oh God, and what a day it is—for it is the Lord’s Day!
Of the manifold blessings for which we praise you, we praise you most of all for our Lord Jesus Christ, for his life of perfect obedience to you, for the death he died on the cross, and for that Sunday morning miracle in which he broke the bonds of death.
We praise you on this Lord’s Day because it is the day on which we commemorate and celebrate hope, the hope that is real for us and for all your creation because of the resurrection of Jesus.
Please, oh God—fill us with the resurrection life that we might live in hope for this world and for the world to come; fill us with the resurrection life that we might rise above our struggles even as we live through them; fill us with the resurrection life that we might live every moment of every day in trust and in assurance; fill us with the resurrection life that we might live out your presence in us in these days even as we will live in your presence one day.
On this Lord’s Day, oh God, remind us in this service of worship that we are filled with resurrection power and cause us to remember as we go out into the world that we walk every moment in that resurrection power.
In the name of our crucified and resurrected Lord,
Amen.
Of the manifold blessings for which we praise you, we praise you most of all for our Lord Jesus Christ, for his life of perfect obedience to you, for the death he died on the cross, and for that Sunday morning miracle in which he broke the bonds of death.
We praise you on this Lord’s Day because it is the day on which we commemorate and celebrate hope, the hope that is real for us and for all your creation because of the resurrection of Jesus.
Please, oh God—fill us with the resurrection life that we might live in hope for this world and for the world to come; fill us with the resurrection life that we might rise above our struggles even as we live through them; fill us with the resurrection life that we might live every moment of every day in trust and in assurance; fill us with the resurrection life that we might live out your presence in us in these days even as we will live in your presence one day.
On this Lord’s Day, oh God, remind us in this service of worship that we are filled with resurrection power and cause us to remember as we go out into the world that we walk every moment in that resurrection power.
In the name of our crucified and resurrected Lord,
Amen.
I Am Grateful for Me
(A sermon based on Psalm 139:13-18 for Sunday, October 25, 2009; this is the first of three sermons on "Gratitude.")
Several years ago, as part of the process of applying for a promotion, I had to put together a file on myself. I asked my dean, “What am I supposed to say?” He replied, “Just tell us how great you are.” When I set about trying to do that, I found the task to be very difficult. It was hard for me to say flattering things about myself. Perhaps my reluctance sprang in part at least from an appropriate sense of humility. But perhaps it also sprang in part from a life-long sense that I really didn’t have all that much of which to be proud.
Maybe you have such doubts about yourself, too. Whether you were born with it or whether you had it beaten into you by people or by circumstances, maybe you have always harbored a deep sense of worthlessness and insecurity. Outward appearances don’t tell the tale, either. Sometimes those with the most chutzpah and bravado are often the most insecure; they’ll put up any front or put on any mask to keep you from seeing who they really are or who they are afraid they really are.
Into our lives breaks the wonderful good news of this psalm: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (v. 14). I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. All God’s children are fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to get hold of the fact that our very existence is a miracle; that is a wonder that we are. It should give us chills just to think about it.
A friend of mine was once very ill, at the very point of death, but he recovered enough to go home. A mutual acquaintance said of him, “He’s a walking miracle.” I got to thinking about that phrase “a walking miracle.” Doesn’t the phrase accurately describe us all, particularly if we substitute the word “living” for “walking”? If we have life we’re a miracle of God because were it not for God we would not exist. Acknowledging our creation by God is the first step in living a life defined by gratitude. It is a miracle that we are, that we exist. So praise God that we are!
G. K. Chesterton famously said that “the worst moment for an atheist is when he/she feels grateful and there is no one to thank.” We know who to thank! And how it changes things when we acknowledge that God made us and when we incorporate the wonders of that miracle into our thinking.
We are a part of what God has always been doing through God’s creative activity. “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (v. 15). God made me and that connects me with all of those whom God has ever made.
That verse also reminds us that we are fashioned by God in minute and wondrous detail. What a miracle it is that this body works, and that is true even when some of it stops working as well as it used to work. We are made by God in intricate detail.
The psalm further reminds us that we are made by God for a purpose. “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed” (v. 16b). God has purposes that God is working out and we are created to be a part of that purpose. It’s all a miracle! Our lives should be a celebration!
So we’re special because we’ve been created by God. But it is a personal relationship with God that makes us aware of just how special we are. Over and over the psalmist declares in wonder that God knows him and sees him. Now in some ways this is the case whether or not we acknowledge God and whether or not we love God and whether or not we have a personal relationship with God. But there are wonderfully positive possibilities for those whom God has also adopted into his family. We are the ones who understand God’s knowledge of us and presence with us not as a threat but as a blessing. We understand that the facts that God sees us and is with us make it possible that we may in fact become what God intends for us to be.
When I was a teenager a couple joined our church who had a small adopted son. His mother decided to use the process of potty training as an opportunity to teach him something important. So every time that he was involved in the process of potty training his mother had him say, “I’m special because I’m adopted.” The timing is not as strange as you might think. Perhaps it registered with the boy that his being adopted was absolutely natural and significant and necessary and indispensable to him. He was special because he was adopted.
So are we. Because we have been adopted into God’s family through the saving work of God’s only Son Jesus Christ we celebrate God’s presence rather than dread it; we welcome it rather than try to escape it. God’s presence is basic and essential and indispensable to our lives. How wonderful it is to know that God knows our thoughts before we think them and our words before we say them and our paths before we take them. How magnificent it is to ponder the fact that no matter where we go and not matter what we go through God is there.
It is because we are in a personal relationship with him through his adoption of us in Jesus Christ that we can pray with confidence rather than fear the closing words of this psalm: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv. 23-24). That really can happen if you belong to God! You see, I’m grateful for me because it’s finally not about me; it’s finally about God. In Christ, I really can be who God has made me to be. How can we not live our lives in gratitude if God is so working in our lives? As Paul put it,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us…. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:3-8a, 11-12).
Amen.
Several years ago, as part of the process of applying for a promotion, I had to put together a file on myself. I asked my dean, “What am I supposed to say?” He replied, “Just tell us how great you are.” When I set about trying to do that, I found the task to be very difficult. It was hard for me to say flattering things about myself. Perhaps my reluctance sprang in part at least from an appropriate sense of humility. But perhaps it also sprang in part from a life-long sense that I really didn’t have all that much of which to be proud.
Maybe you have such doubts about yourself, too. Whether you were born with it or whether you had it beaten into you by people or by circumstances, maybe you have always harbored a deep sense of worthlessness and insecurity. Outward appearances don’t tell the tale, either. Sometimes those with the most chutzpah and bravado are often the most insecure; they’ll put up any front or put on any mask to keep you from seeing who they really are or who they are afraid they really are.
Into our lives breaks the wonderful good news of this psalm: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (v. 14). I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. All God’s children are fearfully and wonderfully made. We need to get hold of the fact that our very existence is a miracle; that is a wonder that we are. It should give us chills just to think about it.
A friend of mine was once very ill, at the very point of death, but he recovered enough to go home. A mutual acquaintance said of him, “He’s a walking miracle.” I got to thinking about that phrase “a walking miracle.” Doesn’t the phrase accurately describe us all, particularly if we substitute the word “living” for “walking”? If we have life we’re a miracle of God because were it not for God we would not exist. Acknowledging our creation by God is the first step in living a life defined by gratitude. It is a miracle that we are, that we exist. So praise God that we are!
G. K. Chesterton famously said that “the worst moment for an atheist is when he/she feels grateful and there is no one to thank.” We know who to thank! And how it changes things when we acknowledge that God made us and when we incorporate the wonders of that miracle into our thinking.
We are a part of what God has always been doing through God’s creative activity. “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (v. 15). God made me and that connects me with all of those whom God has ever made.
That verse also reminds us that we are fashioned by God in minute and wondrous detail. What a miracle it is that this body works, and that is true even when some of it stops working as well as it used to work. We are made by God in intricate detail.
The psalm further reminds us that we are made by God for a purpose. “In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed” (v. 16b). God has purposes that God is working out and we are created to be a part of that purpose. It’s all a miracle! Our lives should be a celebration!
So we’re special because we’ve been created by God. But it is a personal relationship with God that makes us aware of just how special we are. Over and over the psalmist declares in wonder that God knows him and sees him. Now in some ways this is the case whether or not we acknowledge God and whether or not we love God and whether or not we have a personal relationship with God. But there are wonderfully positive possibilities for those whom God has also adopted into his family. We are the ones who understand God’s knowledge of us and presence with us not as a threat but as a blessing. We understand that the facts that God sees us and is with us make it possible that we may in fact become what God intends for us to be.
When I was a teenager a couple joined our church who had a small adopted son. His mother decided to use the process of potty training as an opportunity to teach him something important. So every time that he was involved in the process of potty training his mother had him say, “I’m special because I’m adopted.” The timing is not as strange as you might think. Perhaps it registered with the boy that his being adopted was absolutely natural and significant and necessary and indispensable to him. He was special because he was adopted.
So are we. Because we have been adopted into God’s family through the saving work of God’s only Son Jesus Christ we celebrate God’s presence rather than dread it; we welcome it rather than try to escape it. God’s presence is basic and essential and indispensable to our lives. How wonderful it is to know that God knows our thoughts before we think them and our words before we say them and our paths before we take them. How magnificent it is to ponder the fact that no matter where we go and not matter what we go through God is there.
It is because we are in a personal relationship with him through his adoption of us in Jesus Christ that we can pray with confidence rather than fear the closing words of this psalm: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (vv. 23-24). That really can happen if you belong to God! You see, I’m grateful for me because it’s finally not about me; it’s finally about God. In Christ, I really can be who God has made me to be. How can we not live our lives in gratitude if God is so working in our lives? As Paul put it,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us…. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:3-8a, 11-12).
Amen.
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