God of the Vessel

You've probably heard someone say they're having a "spiritual experience." Living on a mountaintop, totally in touch with the eternal, on fire for the Lord, fully confident in His love for them. In fact, most of us have been there at some point in our lives of faith. These are the restoration weeks, the conferences, the challenges that we don't want to come home from. 

But what if that's not what's going on? 

We think we are human beings who sometimes have these incredible spiritual experiences that draw us closer to the original creation, to who we were meant to be, to the way that God really designed things. But what if, as the old saying goes, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but instead, we are spiritual beings having a human experience? 

That is closer to the truth. 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth to hold the experience that He was going to give us. After He filled them with day and night, light and darkness, land and water, birds and animals, He bent down into the dirt and formed the first human being. 

But the first human being wasn't anything; Adam was just dirt. That's even where his name came from - Adam comes from the Hebrew root for "dirt." And the dirt there laid lifeless - formed, but lifeless - until the Lord breathed the breath of life into it, until He filled it with His spirit. 

The body is just the vessel that God created to hold the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:46).

Think about it for a second. You probably have a number of dishes in your kitchen right now that are named for the kind of food they are intended to hold - a coffee cup, a cake plate, a soup bowl. But if you're anything like me, you're just as likely to drink tea, not coffee; to eat chicken nuggets off the "little" plate; to pour cereal into that "soup" bowl. 

The question then becomes...is it still a soup bowl if it's filled with cereal? 

And the answer, of course, is that it was never a soup bowl to begin with. It was simply a bowl, merely a vessel. Until it was filled, there was nothing else we could legitimately say about it. 

So it is with our bodies. We have these physical bodies, these vessels, but until they were filled, they weren't anything at all. Until there was something spiritual in them, they were just dirt. When that day comes and the spiritual leaves them, they will be just dirt again. 

This human body we live in is just the vessel, holding the true essence of who we are. 

Which means...those "spiritual experiences" we keep having? That's the real life we were meant to be living. That's what we're made of. Those are the moments that really are getting us closest to the original design. It's no wonder we don't want to leave them. It's what we were created for. 

From formless and void to formed but lifeless to the fullness of God's design itself, this is who we are meant to be. 

God of Peace

Relationships are messy. Communities are hard. Trying to accomplish anything with other persons is a challenge. 

Just ask anyone who has ever been in on a group project. 

There's research that says that more and more, we are a people who listen to respond, not to hear, and that we're all just waiting impatiently for our own chance to speak. And in our short-attention-span, 3-second-soundbyte, everything-at-our-fingertips world, it's not that hard to believe. 

But we're not the first generation to be like this. This is a problem that goes way back. 

Check out 1 Corinthians. 

Paul is giving the church at Corinth instructions on how to control the chaos that has broken out in their fellowship. Everyone is showing up and jockeying for position, arguing over everything, speaking over each other, tripping over each other, trying to push their way into the center, trying to shout over the noise, and Paul steps in with his letter and says...this isn't the way. 

God is not a God of disorder, but of peace (14:33). 

Or, put another way, with this much chaos among you, you do not look very much like God's people. 

And here we are, nearly two thousand years later, and in our short-attention-span, 3-second-soundbyte, everything-at-our-fingertips world where we're listening to respond, ready to be outraged, and constantly passing judgment on the smallest glimpses of someone's not-so-private life, we do not look very much like God's people. 

God's people are marked by their love. Or, they're supposed to be. That's what the Bible tells us - they will know we are Christians by our love. (And if you come from my religious tradition, you probably just sang that last sentence.) 

Not just love, but other good things, too - peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Think about these things for a second and think about how often - or how seldom - you see them in many arenas of our postmodern lives. Think about how often - or how seldom - you demonstrate them in your own postmodern life. 

Think about how countercultural these things are right now and think about what you'd have to think, what you'd have to wonder, what questions you'd have to be asking, if you saw them in someone. 

How are you not stressed? How are you not angry? How are you not hurried? How are you not bothered? Where does this peace in your life come from? 

If ever we were to find it, and everywhere we found it, we would have to conclude only one thing: it must be from God. 

After all, this is what He said we're supposed to be like. So He must be the one, then, that makes it possible. 

On Running

When you think about what it means to run, you probably think that it means setting out from a start line and moving at a certain speed until you've either reached a finish line or you simply can't go any further. 

And you would be right. 

In recent years, there have been a lot of attempts to change the definition of running, but it really depends on what you're working toward as to what kind of definition works for you. 

Right now, something called "Jeffing" is increasingly popular. This is the idea that you can accomplish a further distance, usually in a very reasonable time, by actually incorporating walk breaks into your run. A lot of folks will complete an entire marathon by running for a few minutes, then walking for a few minutes. "It's a great way to meet your goal." 

And yes, it can be. It isn't always, but it can be. It depends on what your goal is. 

The problem, for me, is that this approach changes the demands that the "running" puts on your body. So if your goal is cardiovascular endurance and long-distance stamina, then jeffing is not the ultimate goal. You don't want to be able to run and walk; you want to be able to run and endure. 

If, on the other hand, your goal is simply to cross the finish line of a long-distance race, then maybe jeffing is what gets you there...and keeps you able to walk the next day. (Actually, if you train correctly, you should be able to properly run even a marathon and still walk the next day.) 

To me, too many folks are selling themselves short on what they are capable of when they let themselves walk during a run. If you train yourself to put easy things in the middle of hard things, you'll never truly know how many hard things you can do. And that might come back to bite you some day when you're stuck in a hard thing you can't get out of.

I mean, we've all been there - in the middle of a hard season when all we want to do is breathe for just a minute but life as we know it won't let us. What do you do when you can't "jeff" it? 

See, that's what I'm really talking about - what does it mean to you to "run"? What's the goal? What are you trying to build in yourself? 

If you're building stamina and endurance and strength and resolve, then you need to run. If you're looking for something you can depend on when you can't control the circumstances, then controlling the circumstances isn't going to help you. 

I've been a runner for 11 years. Some days are harder than others. But over the course of these 11 years, I have trained myself to be able to push through whatever life throws at me...at a pace that I don't always control. And that, to me, is invaluable. That's why I got into running - to build the ability to do this. 

Jeffing can be helpful in the right circumstances, but let's be clear - jeffing is not running. It requires something different in you, builds something different in you, works different muscles (both physically and mentally). 

At the end of the day, only you can decide what works for you and what's getting you to where you want to be. For me, I'm a runner. 

And as ideas like these gain more and more ground, there are fewer and fewer of us left.  

God of Creative Care

Have you ever marveled at the human body? It's truly a wondrous thing. 

For the most part, your eyebrows know to stay over your eyes; they never take over you whole forehead. If you lose your vision, your hearing gets better to accommodate for the loss. When you're sick, your healing cells know just what to attack and what to leave alone. You can live a whole life with one kidney, but you have two for some reason. Just like you have an appendix, but you can live without it, too. 

And this is not specific to you - this is the design of the human being. All the way back in the beginning, when there was formless and void and God had only His incredible imagination, He knelt down into the dirt and crafted this. This body that is bone wrapped in muscle wrapped in skin that somehow knows how to take care of itself and every part knows its function and works together with all the other parts to make us beings capable of, well, worship. 

That's the goal, right? We were created to worship. To glorify and to love and to live and to hope and to forgive and to show mercy and to give grace and to praise and to worship. 

Guess what? 

The same care that God put into creating the human body, He also put into creating the body of Christ - the church. 

1 Corinthians 12:18 says that "in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be." 

Think about that for a second. 

Your toes are created the way they are to give you the right balance and to help you move; that guy standing next to you who can't sing a note on pitch to save his life is also there for balance and movement. 

Your liver and kidneys are designed to help eliminate toxins from your body; that woman who doesn't share your opinion of someone else or joins a different small group is also there to help eliminate toxins from the body. 

Your hair is made to cover your head and creates a stunning beauty; that fella over there? Creates stunning beauty in your fellowship. 

There are persons in your church who make you flexible, who make you strong, who make you attractive, who make you clean, who hold you together or build you up or shake you down. And every single one of them was put there by God, just as He wanted them to be, with the same tender, loving, creative care that He used when He first formed the dirt into something living, breathing, and created to worship. 

Because that's what this body is for, too. 

God of Unique Gifts

One of the most frustrating of human experiences is realizing that other persons are not like you. 

You usually run up against this reality when you are in close quarters with other humans - through marriage or family, through work relationships, in community. For me, every time I clean out the refrigerator in the break room at work, I realize how very different others are. (There are other things, too, that remind me of this.) 

At the same time, I am often reminded how different I am from other persons. I will do something that seems very natural to me, like recalling a piece of information or creating a piece of art, and someone will inevitably look at me and say, "How do you do that?" 

I don't know, I always say and shrug. It's just how God made me. 

And that's the thing that is often hardest to remember when we're frustrated by someone who isn't doing things the way we would be doing them - God made each one of us different. 

Most often, when we talk about this in a Christian context, we talk about being complementary, about how we are all one body made up of different parts, and how we need teachers, encouragers, givers, hopers, pray-ers, administrators, etc. among us to function properly as a body. And yes, true. That's all well and good. 

It's just a lot harder to remember when we're trying to do the same task in the same space and those kinds of differences and complements aren't clearly obvious. 

When someone is frustrating me, I confess that I very rarely (okay: never) think to myself, "Gosh, God has created them in a such a beautiful and unique way with an incredible gift that I don't understand right now but I'm sure it's contributing to His glory even as I'm about to pull my own hair out." 

Yup. Never. 

But all of those things I'm never thinking are still true, even if I'm not thinking them. 

Paul actually sums up this human experience quite well in 1 Corinthians 7:7. He says, "I wish everyone were like me, but they're not. They're just the way God made them instead. They each have their own gift."

And that's a good reminder, especially when I really wish everyone else had my gifts so that, you know, they wouldn't do annoyingly dumb things that don't make any sense at all and would instead adopt my awesomeness, efficiency, and logic because it just makes so much more sense than whatever they're thinking right now, if they're even thinking at all. 

See? Here I am again. 

The way God made each of us is a gift, even if it's hard for us to remember that sometimes. Which is why, I guess, we need the reminder from Paul that we're not alone. 

I wish everyone was like me, but they're not. They're just the way God made them instead, with their own gifts. 

And that in itself is a gift for all of us. 

God of Wisdom

We often say that wisdom is earned by living, that the older you get and the more experiences you have the world, the more wise you'll be because you have navigated so many things, learned what works and what doesn't work, tried and failed and tried again. 

And maybe that's one way to think of it, but it's not God's way to think of it. 

To God, wisdom has always been there. It's woven into the very fabric of all creation from before creation even began. When there was just formless and void, God ensured that wisdom was right alongside Him as He spoke all things into being. Even as He knelt down into the dust to breathe life into the first man. 

So wisdom is not earned by living; it is encountered by living. At each broken turn, we run right up against it and, if we're paying the right kind of attention, take notice. 

Even Paul says this is the true nature of wisdom when he's writing to the Corinthian church. He says that they are preaching wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that this world talks about - not the kind that comes from this age or from the experience of just living your life and learning some things along the way. No, Paul says, all the folks who are trying to live by that kind of wisdom are "coming to nothing." 

It's the kind of wisdom that God holds that holds the real key to life and love and faith (1 Corinthians 2:7). 

This kind of wisdom is imparted by the Spirit and nothing else. It is encountered in the wild because it is woven through every fiber of creation. It comes from running right up against it over and over and over again until you can finally see that it's not an obstacle and it's not a hindrance and it's not foolishness, but it's actually a better way. 

The kind of wisdom that exists in creation will demonstrate for you how to handle this world, if you'll let it. On your own, you will stumble and fall and fail again and again and you will try to recreate the wheel to figure out how to get through this life, but wisdom is already winding its way through this life and it will show you the path if only you follow it. 

We're just so stunningly terrible at following it. 

Then, we stumble upon it all over again and think that we have found something. That we have learned something. That we have finally figured it all out. When, in fact, it was already figured out from the very beginning...we just missed it. 

The truly wise among us know that they can take no credit for their own wisdom, even if they seem to have gained it over a hundred years of living. Because they understand that they never really gained anything; they only stumbled upon it over and over again until they finally figured out just to follow it through. It was then they discovered that what they thought was wisdom was, in fact, only leading them to "nothing." 

True wisdom, which was there all along, leads them to life. 

God of the Foolish

God chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, and the unimportant to shame the self-important (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). To shame them, of course, into recognizing their proper place in the world and hopefully, recognize His. 

This is a popular verse, one that's fairly well-known. And most of the time, to understand it, I need to look no further than the mirror. 

In the mirror, I find both of these things staring back at me - the foolish and the wise, the weak and the strong, the unimportant and the self-important. 

If you were to look at my life from the outside, you would say it is, at best, improbable. I'm not the person you would think would be an example of anything. And yet, the testimony of my life is all of the things - God's goodness, God's mercy, God's forgiveness, God's grace. God has truly done a marvelous work in me and as easy as it would be for the world to write me off because they think I'm foolish, they think I'm naive, they think I'm weak, they think I'm unimportant, I just keep showing up and making the kind of difference, the kind of impact, that undeniable says that something special is happening here. 

To be clear, that something special is God's goodness, not mine. 

At the same time, at the very moment that I start to understand that God really is doing a good work in and through me in the most unlikely of ways, the moment that I start to settle into a little bit of the bigness that God has expanded my life into, someone else comes along and puts me in my place. Someone that I would find easy to write off as being younger, less experienced, more naive, uneducated, or whatever. 

I have 40+ years of experience, to date, of being me and of being truly loved by God and living this miraculous sort of life and being the weak one who shames the strong...and yet, God constantly reminds me that I'm not as wise as I think I am, nor am I as strong or truly important. And He uses folks who have absolutely 0 minutes of experience being me. 

So there's that. 

I remember one time I went over to a neighbor's house where she was struggling to move a piece of furniture, and I offered to help. She looked right at me and said, "You're too small. You can't help." So I picked up that piece of furniture in one motion and carried it where it needed to go. I shot her a small smile in playfulness and said, "I'm small, but mighty." And I've said that a lot over the years - in physical contexts and non-physical ones. 

And yet, here I am also listening to others tell me the very same thing. I look at them and think they cannot possibly be as mighty as I am, have as much life experience, have developed as much resilience and strength, and I'm always wanting to protect them from trying to do things too big for them. And I look over and see the same kind of smile that I'm prone to flash, and I can see it in their eyes - they're small, but mighty, too. 

And all over again, I am put to shame. Mostly because I remember what it's like to be written off and here I am doing the very same thing. 

But then, I smile, too, because God is so very good to all of us, really. He uses our small, broken, weak places to remind the world how big, strong, and loving He truly is. And, well, I need reminded of that just as often as I need to remind others of it. 

Truth and Love

I actually write a lot about truth and love, but this post is going to take a bit of a different turn. Because I've been thinking...even I don't know what's true any more. 

Now, it was just six months ago or so that I played a game of "beat AI" and did, in fact, beat AI - correctly determining which in a series of images were AI-generated and which were real. I scored 100% and totally knocked the guy's socks off. 

What I'm thinking about more lately isn't fact vs. fiction. It's more....story vs. narrative. 

For example, we currently have a space shuttle in orbit with four humans on board. It has been in the works for a long time and they have been up there 9-ish days or so already. They have successfully orbited the moon and sent back photos of "earth rise" and all the cool things that we want them to be doing in space. 

Then, suddenly, over the last day or so, I've been seeing all kinds of stories pop up about former astronauts "sounding the alarm" over potential heat shield failures. About NASA memos, secret NASA memos, expressing concern about the same. About science-y folks claiming we should never have put humans on this shuttle with its "known" heat shield issues. About how the re-entry, which is coming up later tonight, is almost indefensibly dangerous. 

And it just strikes me as strange that this is the story now. I mean, to me, that's the kind of story you blast everywhere before you supposedly put four lives in mortal danger from a problem science is supposed to be smart enough to solve. 

So it raises the question in my mind: are there really problems with the heat shield? Or are there problems with NASA and space flight and public buy-in that they need to create a narrative that entices more persons to "tune in" to watch the landing, to talk about it, to celebrate it? 

Actually, that's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately - is this the story that's unfolding before me...or is it just a narrative that's being told? 

Honestly, in today's world that is all about marketing, it's really hard to tell sometimes. Especially with the limited perspective we are often given. And it's enough to turn any one of us - maybe every one of us - into a cynic. 

That's why I think love is so important right now. 

In love - real, Christ-like love - I'm not crafting a narrative. I'm telling a story. His story. A story about how beautiful, wonderful, treasured, cherished, noticed, honored, and known you are. That's it. It's the one pure thing that we have left in the world because no matter how much we tarnish it or twist it, real love cannot be tarnished or twisted. When you've really been loved, you know it. 

And so if the only thing I do today is love someone, really love them the way that Christ would love them, then I've done something that all the narratives in the world could not possibly spin. I've told the Story. 

And that's good news.  

God of Life and Death

There is a place where, if you're not paying close attention, it seems like the Bible contradicts itself. 

In the Old Testament, God tells us that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then uses this to say that He is the God of the living, not the dead. He, too, is alive and active and this is a reason to worship Him. 

Then, we get to Romans, and we are told that Jesus died and came back to life so that He could be the Lord of living and the dead (14:9). 

So which one is it? 

The answer is that it's both and that these statements are not contradictory. 

When God names our ancestors and says that He is the God of the living, not the dead, He is referring to the relationship He had with those who have formed the foundations of faith in us. Their legacy lives on in the way that they passed faith into us, and in that sense, it is a living faith and they are living witnesses - through our lives. 

When Paul says that Jesus died and came back to life so that He could be the Lord of the living and the dead, Paul is saying that Jesus's death reached back across time to gather together those who died before the promise was fulfilled, even before there was a promise at all. At least, before there was a promise they could understand. So God has become the God of the dead who died in faith when faith meant something different than it does on this side of the Cross. 

These two truths about God work together to create a beautiful story, one that continues even today. 

You see, God is still the God of the living and not the dead. His story is still passed on through those of us who have the legacy passed down into us, whether that was from our blood relatives or from the intentional ministry of someone who helped to establish it in us. We carry the living and active God in our witness, in our lives and our love, and we demonstrate how it is that this God of the living changes the lives of the living. 

At the same time, our Lord still crosses the lines of life and death to gather to Himself those who died without the promise. Those who didn't know what they were looking for. Those who hadn't heard or whose hearts hadn't grasped or whose lives hadn't held onto the living testimony of faith. 

Because Jesus is for everybody and God delights in all of His creation and He seeks to restore everyone to Himself. 

So God is the God of the living. And the God of the dead. And the God of life. And the defeater of death. 

And we, who are doing our best to live while we're dying, can only be tremendously thankful for this. 

God of Mercy

There's a parable that is perhaps the most difficult for many of to swallow. It's the parable of the hired workers. 

This is the one where the owner of the property goes out in the morning and finds some workers and agrees to pay them a day's wage to come and work for him, so they do. Then, a few hours later, he goes out and finds some more workers and agrees to pay them fairly, so they come, too. A few hours later, he does the same thing. Finally, an hour before quittin' time, he goes out and finds even more workers and agrees to pay them fairly to come and help finish up the work, so they come. 

When it comes time to pay them, he starts with the guys who have been there for maybe an hour or so, and he gives them a full day's wage. And then the guys who have been there a little bit longer, they get a day's wage, too. All the way down to the ones he first hired, who also get a day's wage and start grumbling, but he reminds them - that's what you agreed to work for. His generosity to others is none of their concern. 

And yet, we are concerned. Aren't we? 

We are concerned when the drug addict wanders into the church off the street and a few weeks later is adding his voice to the praise band. We are concerned when the single mom starts serving in the nursery. We are concerned when the poor family who doesn't have two cents to their name starts working as greeters. We are concerned when the things that we think we've "earned" by investing our lives in faith and in the church are suddenly open to everyone. 

We're concerned when the Pharisee who was trying to kill all of us, who threatened our way of life, becomes a leader in the church and claims to have a message of hope and good news. 

We like to say that the church is open to everyone, but we really mean like...persons like us. Nice persons. Good persons. Clean persons. Not this riff-raff. 

Then, we have this parable. And we have passages like we find in Romans 10, where Paul says that to God, there is no difference between persons. Everyone who believes has a place with Him. He chooses who He gives mercy to, and those persons He chooses don't fit in our categories all the time. 

And we wrestle. And we struggle. And we question God's wisdom because how could He? 

And then we hear that we aren't in everyone else's categories, either, and we think that must be yet another problem with them and another reason why they don't deserve God's mercy...because look at them, over there judging us. Of all people! US! We've been doing this faith thing for a long time; they're the newcomers. 

Therein proving yet again that God does indeed give mercy to whoever He chooses, to everyone who believes. 

Even us. 

God of More

A few days ago, we said that God doesn't need the law. Now, just a few pages later in the Bible, Paul tells us why: 

Because God does more than the law does (8:3). 

Because the law is limited by our flesh. That is, it can only do what we are capable of doing. It can hold us accountable for the places where we fail, but it accepts that we will fail. It can teach us how to atone for our wrongs, whether they be against persons or against God. It can give us guidelines for how to live with one another. 

But it can never put our broken pieces back together. 

The law does not eliminate our brokenness. It does not eliminate our sin. It does not make us whole. 

It can never redeem us. 

That's why God is so far above the law. God does what the law cannot. 

The law makes us pay for our failures; the Lord washes us clean. The law teaches us to make up for our shortcomings; the Lord makes us whole. The law requires payment, atonement on our part, some kind of sacrifice; the Lord took the sacrifice upon His own shoulders. 

In this verse, Paul even says the law is powerless. And he's right. 

But the Lord....the Lord is powerful. The Lord loves us into doing things the law could never convince us of. 

All things considered, I'd rather have the Lord than the law. And I think that's what Paul was getting at. 

For so long, the law guided the lives of the faithful. The law taught them how to live. But in the life of the Lord Himself, Jesus, all of that changed because the ministry of Christ, the sacrifice of the Son of God, the resurrection and the empty tomb, it doesn't teach men how to live; it teaches men how to love. 

And love is better. 

God of Good Works

One of the things we struggle with the most is faith itself. What does it mean to believe? What does believing require of me? 

We think that if we believe, then we should act in certain ways. And we're absolutely right. Having faith in Christ should change the way that we live our day-to-day, the way that we respond to the challenges in this world, the way that we love one another. 

But the more that we let our faith change the way that we live, the easier it is for us to shift our minds to believe that the way we're living justifies what God should give us in return. In other words, slowly over a life of faithfulness that produces good works, we are drawn into the temptation that our good works are our faith. 

We start to believe in the good things we do. 

The New Testament spends a good amount of time refuting this kind of thinking. In Romans, Paul says that if you work, it's easy to think of your wages as compensation - this trap that we're all so prone to falling into. It's easy to think that if you work, God owes you for that work.

But, Paul continues, without the works, it's faith itself that is credited to you as righteousness (4:5). That is, faith is what really matters before the Lord, who looks at the heart of a man. 

And on some level, don't we know that this is true? 

Look at Christ Himself. 

In His ministry on earth, He did many good works. He did them because He believed in the One who does such things - who gives sight to the blind, sound to the deaf, voice to the mute, movement to the lame, washing to the unclean, life to the dead. His faith told Him these things were possible, but His works put them on display. 

Yet, the greatest example of Christ is not His good works. Yes, they are great. Yes, we are thankful for them. Yes, we would love to go into the world and do likewise. But the testimony of the life of Christ is the testimony of incarnation, of relationship, of trust, of hope, of faith. 

The example Christ set for us is not one of doing miracles; it's one of believing in miracles. It's one of sneaking off and stealing quiet moments to pray. It's one of knowing the Scriptures and studying the story and entrusting yourself to something bigger than you. It's one of knowing the Father and being known by the Father. It's one of surrender and acceptance, of humility and embrace. It's one of walking softly, speaking tenderly, proclaiming boldly, and being unafraid. 

You don't have to cast out demons to demonstrate your faith. Your faith is shown when you stand your ground and cause the demons to flee. Do you see the difference? 

Just believing is the work. Just believing is the manifestation of faith. 

And this, Paul says, is credited as righteousness. 

And it's what makes us go and do good in the world in the first place. 

Ignorance and Stupidity

This week, man launched a new mission to the moon. Many are excited about the possibilities of such an endeavor. 

I'm...concerned. 

I'm concerned because of the way that our attitude toward science has changed, even in my short lifetime. Because our confidence in some things has grown, but so has our arrogance. Because we are now certain in things we do not know. And I think that's dangerous. 

Sixty years ago when we were looking at the moon, we were ignorant. We didn't know much about the moon, if we knew anything at all. We didn't know what it was made of. We didn't know what kind of gravity it might have. We didn't know what kind of surface it might have. We didn't know what might happen if we were to approach it. 

But we knew that we didn't know. 

Our ignorance sparked our curiosity, and we approached the moon with more questions than plans. More exploration than intimidation. More wonder than domination. 

Today, we're in all of the other categories. We're back at the moon because of the plans we're trying to make, because of the ways we want to shape it to meet our own needs, because we're ready to dominate the moon and turn it into our launch pad for further space. 

We aren't ignorant any more, we tell ourselves. We know things about the moon. 

But do we know as much as we think we know? 

I don't think we do. And that changes our ignorance into stupidity. We are going to do some very stupid things in space because we're too arrogant about things we don't know. 

Science has a bad track record in this. Take, for example, the practice of carbon dating. Scientists studied for a very long time the way that carbon works across time, and they determined that by looking at the carbon in a thing, they could figure out how old it is. Which sounds really neat. Except that scientists also tell us that the world has changed dramatically in its history - in periods of great temperature fluctuation, in the movement of land masses and bodies of water, in the creation of mountains and valleys (so...changes in elevation), and all kinds of other things. And when they're looking at carbon for dating purposes, they do not account for how carbon must have acted under other circumstances. There are so many unknowns - when was this place hot? how hot? when was it cold? how cold? for how long? how much has its elevation changed over time? how much has it migrated closer or further from some other landmark, like the equator? 

We guess, but we do not know, and so we don't account for the things that even we say are true because we can't account for them because it's all theory and conjecture and guesstimations made off things observed in a relatively short period of time. Then, we say with "confidence" that a thing is such-and-such years old based on the carbon, but...what carbon? 

We're setting ourselves up the same way in space. One of the proposed uses I have heard for the moon is that it will become a waystation and a launch pad for further exploration to Mars. Which, if you're into that sot of thing, sounds really neat. But we do not know whether it's possible to launch something so powerfully off the moon. We don't know if the combustibles will work in the atmosphere of the moon. We don't know if the gravity that holds the moon in tandem with earth is strong enough to withstand such a launch. We could absolutely, worst case scenario, try to launch a rocket off the moon and change its trajectory by mere thousandths of a millimeter and end up throwing our entire planet into chaos. 

And all that science will tell you right now is "that's not going to happen." How do they know? They actually don't. They learned a few things about the moon a little more than 50 years ago and since then, they've been claiming they know more than they do. We have moved from ignorance, which inspired us to approach with questions, to stupidity, which inspires us to approach with arrogance. 

Even when we can't get space toilets right. 

I'm not saying that I'm hoping for a mission failure for Artemis II. Failure at these magnitudes is catastrophic. But I am hoping that we run up against something that reminds us how ignorant we are...and how stupid we're being. 

We all need the reminder sometimes. Myself included.  

God is Lawless

When we read the Old Testament, we read a lot of rules. Laws, they tell us. Everything about what to eat, what kind of fabrics to wear, how to deal with mildew in the house, what to do about your neighbor's donkey. And on and on the list goes. And our interpretations over the many years have told us this is "God's law." 

But it's not. 

It's not God's law because 1) God doesn't have a law. God doesn't need a law. These are not the rules that we follow because these are the rules God follows. God doesn't need rules about fabrics or mildews or biological human realities. 

And it's not God's law because 2) God doesn't need the law to save us. There's not some magical amount of following all of these rules that suddenly makes us acceptable to God. 

Paul says, in his letter to the Romans, that through Christ, God's righteousness has been made known to men apart from the law (3:21). Which means the law might have taught us something about God once upon a time, but the Son of God taught us more. 

It means that even if we had never had the law, Christ still would have shown us what we were missing. Which, by the way, we were still missing even with the law. 

It means that God's righteousness is enough to reveal Him to us. Without a bunch of rules. Without a bunch of regulations. Without us tiptoeing around a bunch of do's and don'ts. 

In fact, there is no tiptoeing with Christ. There is lining the streets and shouting out amidst the crowds and cutting holes in strangers' roofs and bursting into dinner parties uninvited with jars of nard and pushing unclean through the crowds for a chance just to touch Him. 

All of those things (and more), by the way, that would completely not be allowed by the law. 

But again, the law was never the thing. 

Love was. 

So if you're stuck in a faith that's trying to do things "by the book," there's nothing wrong with starting there. But flip a few pages forward and find the greater revelation. 

Because God's righteousness is even more revealing than His rulebook. And that's the kind of thing you can truly build a life on. 

God of Nations

The resurrection is for both the righteous and the unrighteous, and that's a tough pill to swallow for many Christians. If we're all going to be resurrected and restored, then what's the point of living the life of a believer? 

But then again, God's never been quiet that this is His plan all along. 

When God first called Abraham, all the way back in Genesis, He made it clear that all the nations would be blessed through him. That he would be the man whose descendants would make God's name known for all persons in all places across all time. 

The prophet Isaiah, in one of his prophecies, referenced both Assyria and Egypt as God's possession and people. 

Then Christ comes along and says that He's come to give life to all, and He spends His entire ministry erasing the lines that men have drawn and making the circle bigger - with women, with the unclean, with the deformed and defamed, with the outsiders, with the Gentiles, even with the Romans. 

And in case you've been missing it through the thousands of years leading up to this point, it's the end cap in Acts, as well - the first book to talk about evangelizing the whole world with the Gospel of Christ. God sent His salvation to all nations (28:28). 

All. 

Period. 

This becomes a great rebuttal to those who cannot fathom a God who destroys even one speck of His creation, who would send anyone to Hell, who decides what is good and what is bad - and who is good and who is bad - in the world and treats those things differently. It's the common objection: how can a loving God even have a place outside of His love for anyone or anything? 

Yet here we see, again, that He doesn't. His entire plan was the entire world from the very beginning for the entire eternity. 

Does it make it harder for us? Sometimes. It can be easy to sit back and ask what the point is, then, of being an "insider" - of being the faithful, of being a believer, of trying to live God's way - if everyone from all nations is welcome and will be restored in the end. 

But the question that we have to ask ourselves is not whether it's worth it in the eternal sense, but whether it's worth it today. Is God making your life better today by being an active part of it and by you being an active part of His plan? Are you better off as a Christian - are you more happy, more generous, more loving, more joyful, more merciful, more gracious? Do you have more rest in your life - real rest? Are you able to let go of more things? Do you have a place and a plan for the anxieties of this world? 

Jesus said that He came that we might have life and life abundant. Not eternal, but abundant. This life. Right now. 

Salvation is for everyone, but the abundant life...that's for the faithful. So, then, is it still "worth it?" 

As for me and my household, the answer is a resounding yes. 

God of Resurrection

There's been much written in apocalyptic literature, even that claiming to be Christian apocalyptic literature. Many Christians have been taught to look forward to that day when Christ comes back and the righteous are swept up into the heavens while the wicked are "left behind" to toil and suffer and perish. 

So, then, it's always been important to make sure that when that day comes, you're one of the ones that Jesus is going to take with Him. 

But what if...Jesus is taking everybody? 

There are probably as many theories of resurrection and heaven as there are human beings - believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, one of the great challenges that unbelievers have when considering the Lord is the notion of a God who can choose between persons and send some to eternal hellfire while saving others. What kind of God does this? 

But Paul says, in one of the many defenses that he gives for himself over the course of the book of Acts, that he believes, as many others believed at the time, that God will raise all people from the dead - the righteous and unrighteous alike (Acts 24:15).

And in fact, I believe this, too. 

I believe that when this is all said and done, we will all meet Jesus. We will all see God face-to-face. We will all see the accounting of our lives. 

But unlike what has become recent traditional teaching in Christianity (fairly recent, in the 2000 years of Christian history, anyway), I believe that when we meet God, all of the things that He never created in us will be burned away like chaff. We will be purified and restored to the being that we were created to be and restored to the Father who loves us. 

All the broken things of this world, all the trauma, all the defense mechanisms, all the pain, all the meanness, all the rebellion, all the evil that has gotten into us on this side of Eden will be burned away. For some, that may take a long time. It will be more excruciating for some than for others, depending on how we have led our lives here, but it will happen.

That's also how Jesus can say, in Revelation, that everyone will be given the name that only He knows - they will become the creation He envisioned in them when it all began, and they will see and know themselves for the very first time in wholeness and goodness and yes, "very goodness," just as Genesis said it was always meant to be in God's eyes. 

He will rest again and so will we, together. 

And if that bothers you - if you're right now thinking about that person that you don't think deserves to go to Heaven - then try to imagine it. Try to understand what it might mean to know them as a restored being, fully and wholly as God intended them and, well, not broken. And you not broken, either. 

For Paul said it, the early church declared it, Christians across the ages have believed it until very relatively recently - God will raise all people from the dead. 

Rejoice! For this is very good news indeed. 

God's Chosen

I am unlikely as far as Christians go. That is, if you had looked at my early life, you would not have imagined I would ever step anywhere near a church, let alone belong to one, let alone praise the Lord for the kind of life I'm living. 

But here I am, 40 years on, and I don't just praise God; I point others toward God. I take God into the dark places of the world and whisper Him in the quiet places and shout Him in the loud ones and have been called to do His work in a way that I never could have imagined looking in the mirror. 

And every time I think about where I am and how far I've come and how much hope I have for the future and what an absolute miracle my life is, I'm blown away by the realization that God chose me for this. God chose me for this long before I ever chose Him, and He's been guiding my steps through all the hard places to come to this one. That doesn't mean that somehow, I've reached an easy place, but that I recognize that the place where I am right now is exactly the place God has for me...

...the place He's had for me since before I knew there was a place for me at all. 

This is how God works. This is how God has always worked. 

He chooses us long before we choose Him, and He plans out some of the cool things that we're going to get to do long before we even think about doing cool things, and there's something beautiful in the way our lives are going before we ever understand there's anything beautiful at all. 

Flashback to the book of Acts: 

There's a young Pharisee named Saul who applauds the persecution of these new Christian folks, who aren't even called Christians yet. He prides himself on defending the name of the Lord and fighting for the law and the way things have always worked in God's economy, and then he's blinded on the road on his way to persecute Christians in another town, and God leads him to this devout guy named Ananias, who first objects to having anything to do with Saul because he knows it may put his life in danger, but then goes and gives the young Pharisee his sight back through the power of the Holy Spirit and is there for the moment that Saul becomes Paul - the same Paul who will go on to evangelize much of the known world at the time. 

In Acts 22, Luke tells the story about the encounter, through Paul's words, and he says that Ananias told him that God chose him from a long time ago to fulfill this specific mission. God knew, when Paul was still Saul and even before Saul came to be, that He was going to transform this man from a Pharisee to an apostle and send him out into the world.

He knew this before there was a fall, before there was a flood, before there was a king, before there was a prophecy, before there was a virgin, before there was a cross, before there was a tomb, before there was a resurrection, before there was a Gospel, God knew that He would make this man and change him in this way and give him this mission and that he would fulfill it. 

And He knows the same about your life and story. He knew before you were born what you were going to do in the world, how He was going to form you, how He was going to shape you, how He was going to change you, what He was going to send you into the world to do. 

And everything in your life is leading toward that vision He has. 

Lean into it, enjoy the ride, and think about the folks you meet along the road. 

Policy and Procedure

There's a way that we do things. And there are reasons that we do things the way we do them. And there are consequences to doing them that way. 

There are things we consider when we're deciding how we do things and things that we don't consider and things that we consider, then decide not to consider any more and things that we haven't considered that end up surprising us. 

I am fairly fond of saying that it doesn't much matter to me what we do as long as we're consistent about it. When I see policies and procedures being violated, my conclusion is that we either need to enforce the policy that we have or re-evaluate and change it to match what we're actually doing. It's hard to function in the world when you don't know what it expects of you, what it requires of you, and where it restricts you. 

And yet, there are also times that I basically scream that we must re-evaluate what we're doing, but honestly, I'm screaming into the abyss. 

In just the past week, I've run up against both. 

I've run up against breaches of policy that have caused me to push and say that we need to either enforce or evaluate because that's going to be valuable for how we function in that space. But then, just a few days later, I came up against policy that we desperately need to re-evaluate because it's hurting folks. Real folks. Real hurt. 

Maybe that's the deciding factor for me - are we hurting anyone or are we just creating chaos? If we're just creating chaos, then let's step back and decide what we want to do about it. But if we're hurting folks, let's throw the whole thing out and try something different. 

The truth is...things in this world can change. The effects of our policies can change. The impact of what we're doing can change. And it's not enough to sit back and say, "We already thought about this and made a decision, so there's no point in revisiting it or considering a different decision." Sometimes, there is a point in that. 

For example, if you give someone a certain responsibility and it later becomes apparent that they are not capable of handling that responsibility, then it is a failure of the system to sit back and say, "We already decided to give them that responsibility. There's no need to reconsider any of that." This assumes we don't live in a changing ecosystem. It assumes that things are static and persons are reliable and that nothing is ever deceptive or broken. 

Our due diligence requires us to always be re-evaluating our policies and procedures. (And not just the formal ones.) The reality of living in a fallen, broken world is that we have to keep playing it by ear for as long as we're living here, able to adapt and change and make adjustments as necessary for the outcomes that we want, whatever we determine those to be. Because the road that gets you there today might need a little tweaking a couple of years from now to get you to the same place. You might have to make a little fork in that road tomorrow. You don't know. 

But you have to be ready for that. You can't just sit back and say, "That's the policy. That's what we decided, so that's what we're doing." Because it won't take long before what you're doing will take you some place you don't want to go, and you'll end up there without even realizing that's where you're headed, and then you'll look around and wonder how it happened...and it happened because you were more confident in the policy than you were invested in the outcome. 

So be flexible. Reconsider things. Take new information into account. Make a new decision. Alter your course. Do what it takes to get you where you're going. Invest in your outcomes. Take ownership of your decisions. 

And...do something good and beautiful in this world. 

God Beyond

A few years ago, my cousin had a baby. When her baby turned one, she asked for everyone to send him a letter to read on his 18th birthday. Any letter. Sealed, addressed to him. She thought it would be cool. 

I haven't seen this cousin in at least 30 years, and I haven't met her son. And I might never meet her son. 

But I wrote him a letter to open when he turns 18. 

And in that letter, I told him that we've probably never met - maybe once (a family funeral, perhaps). I told him that doesn't matter. I told him that the world is full of friends you haven't met yet in places you've never been. And as I wrote that letter, I was thinking about all the wonderful persons I have met in my life in strange places, in unexpected ways, at just the right moment when I needed them. 

Like the six-foot-six white guy with dreadlocks that I met in the middle of a cornfield when I was traveling a long distance by myself for only the second or third time in my life. That guy was a God-send. 

But then, God already knew that. 

The apostle Paul knows what I'm talking about. 

When Paul was traveling in his ministry, he came up against some severe opposition in Corinth. He was feeling the pressure, feeling attacked, unsure if he wanted to continue, and God came to him with reassurances. 

God said, "Don't worry about it and don't back down in fear. I have more people here than you can see right now, and you are surrounded by folks who will support you because they love me" (Acts 18:10). 

In other words, "Paul, there are good persons all over this world, and you're about to find out how powerful that truth is." 

At just the time when Paul needed a friend, God had one for him. God actually had many for him. In strange places, in unexpected ways, at just the right moment, God says...I got you. I've got you surrounded with all the support and love and protection you're gonna need. 

The same is true today. 

I don't know what my cousin's kid might think when he reads that letter I wrote him, but I hope he at least considers that it might be true - that this might be a world full of friends you just haven't met yet in places you haven't been yet. That there is more good around you in this place than there is danger or anxiety or fear. That there is a way to move through the world without being scared of it and, if you're not busy being scared, you might just find something beautiful. Something that might be the best thing to happen to you in a long time. 

Someone, I might say. 

Because God's got people all around you, whether you can see them right now or not. 

God is Sufficient

Most of us have never worshiped an idol - not in the way that we imagine worshiping an idol might look like, not in the way that we worship the Lord. We have never made a graven image and bowed down to it and burned sacrifices and offered a portion of our lives to it in exchange for its kindness and favor. 

Certainly, we do this with all kinds of things without a conscious awareness of it, but we have not made shrines in our homes for the express purpose of worship. 

So it's hard for us to understand how very different from other gods the God of Israel really is. 

The world has always had its multitude of gods. Gods for everything - for the heavens, for fertility, for farming, for building a home, for raising kids, for the water, for the wind, for whatever. And it doesn't matter what god you're talking about, there is one basic rule: 

You have to keep coming back and feeding it. 

You're not allowed to forget these gods. You're not allowed to neglect them. You're not allowed to go too long without sacrificing to them or they get angry. Really, they get hungry and being hungry makes them angry. Yes, the gods of the nations have, for thousands of years, been...hangry. 

If you don't feed them, they don't eat, and if they don't eat, then they can't act like a god and do whatever they're supposed to do with whatever they're supposed to do it with. The fertility gods cannot create you a baby if they're hungry. The gods of the harvest cannot grow a seed if they haven't eaten themselves. 

So in worship of these gods, there's this constant pressure, this constant balance, this constant searching for what you can feed them and how much and how often and how much to their liking so that they can be the gods they are supposed to be and you can get what you want to get from them - their favor, in whatever arena they propose to be god over. 

Therefore, when the God of Israel comes and says that He doesn't need our sacrifices, that raises eyebrows. When He says our sacrifices are not His food, but our surrender, that's revolutionary. When we get to forget Him, ignore Him, neglect Him, reject Him and He still gets to be God, that's unheard of. When He does not depend on us, it makes it harder for man to know what to do with that. 

Because, well, we have always thought that we controlled our gods, but the Lord makes clear that we do not control Him. 

He's God. He's God with or without us. (He prefers to be God with us.) He doesn't need anything from us (Acts 17:25). We don't have to feed Him. We don't have to appease Him. We don't have to cater to His ego. He's just God. 

So very different from all of the other gods. 

God's Discretion

The church has never been far from scandal, even as far back as its very beginnings. In the early days, the biggest scandal facing the church was...the Gentiles. 

For as long as they had considered themselves God's people, the Jews had believed that God was theirs and theirs alone. Then, along comes this Jesus guy who says that it's not just for them; it's for everybody (which is actually what God first told Abraham all the way back in Genesis, when He said that He was going to bless the nations through the faithful man). And the early Jews-turned-Christians spent the first several decades of the church trying to figure out exactly what 'everybody' meant. 

Does it mean everybody? Like, even the Gentiles? 

To demonstrate that everybody means everybody and that yes, that even means the Gentiles, God comes and gives the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles in exactly the same way that He gave it to the disciples and the Jews who gathered early. 

And the faithful are like...wait, what? Can this be real? Is this really what God is doing? 

But God acts at His own discretion. He does what He chooses to do, whether it fits our human understandings or not. Whether we agree with it or not. And that's really the conclusion that the early church comes to - 

God does what He does, and who are we to argue? He gives to those He chooses to give to in the ways that He chooses to give to them and invites who He wants and welcomes who He wants and the only thing we can do with that is agree and go along with it (Acts 15:8-9). 

Two thousand years later, this is still hard for us. 

It's still hard for us when the person we don't think is worthy clearly gets what we think they don't deserve. It's still hard for us when someone we think ought to be on the outside ends up somehow on the inside. It's still hard for us when someone we don't agree with still manifests the love of God somehow, and we can't argue with that. 

It's still hard for us when we're so busy trying to draw lines and God is still drawing circles. 

But if we look at what's actually going on, if we step back and really consider it, there's actually not much to argue with. If we, who were present to receive the Holy Spirit, see someone else receive the same Holy Spirit, how can we keep trying to draw lines around that? If we, who know God's love, see someone else come to know that same love, how can we say they don't deserve it? 

Have we looked in a mirror lately? 

God acts at His own discretion. He is good and welcoming and loving and merciful and gracious and kind to whoever He chooses to be those things to, and it's not up to us and it's not up to our understandings and it's not up to our traditions and it's not up to our doctrines or our dogma or our bylaws or our opinions. It's not up to us. 

And thank goodness it's not or even we might not be on the receiving end of His love. 

God Cleanses

The Bible gives us a lot of rules about what (and who) is clean or unclean. Beef and pork and lamb and rock badgers and two different fabrics and mold and mildew and blood and emissions and periods and death and sacrifices and all the things. And God's people spent a really long time - thousands of years - trying to live by these rules, trying to keep themselves from unclean things, separating themselves from the community until morning, engaging in ritual bathing, cutting out the mold, burning the offending substance in fire. Again, all the things. Because there are a lot of rules about what (and who) is clean or unclean. 

Christ only has one rule:

Everyone is clean. 

Everyone is clean until they choose not to be clean and even then, it's kind of iffy.

See, until Christ, nothing unclean was ever made clean by being touched, but after Christ, that all changed. Before Christ, if you touched a bleeding woman, her blood might get on you; after Christ, His blood gets on everything. Before Christ, if something died, the death, the offense of lifelessness, might spread to you; after Christ, death walks right out of the grave. Before Christ, you had to really scrub the walls of your house to try to get the mildew off; after Christ, everything has been washed and made clean. 

Do you get it yet?

Peter really struggled with this. He was a guy who had spent his whole life keeping the commandments, separating himself from unclean things, following all of the rules. And then Christ comes to him and tells him that He wants the young apostle to go to the Gentiles, and Peter's like...what? The Gentiles? 

Do you know how unclean it is over there, Lord? 

And Christ gives him all kinds of visions to show him...it's not unclean over there (Acts 10:28). Under the blood of Christ, what's clean and unclean has changed. While it's still true that nothing unclean becomes clean again by being touched by someone clean, it's more true that what was once unclean becomes clean by being loved. 

And that's what God is sending Peter to do. 

Go love them. 

Go love them in the Gospel and tell them about Me and tell them about grace and tell them about mercy and show them about love. 

Show them that blood is catching, but this blood makes them clean. Show them that death is defeated, that we walk right out of the grave. Show them that they not only can be washed clean, but they have been. 

Don't worry about getting a little Gentile on you; worry about getting Me into the Gentiles. 

And that's still the mission for the rest of us today. There is no place in the world left unclean if we are willing to enter it with love. With grace. With mercy. 

With Christ. 

The Rules

I am, by my nature, a rule-follower. Tell me that's the policy, and I'll do my best. Give me an exception to the rule, and I'll remind you what the rule is. Especially in the field in which I work, the rules are the rules for a reason (most of the time); they protect safety and dignity. 

But I'm also a logical person, so if something doesn't make sense to me, I will work diligently to prove it's a flawed system even while I continue working within it. 

So the rule is the rule...until I can prove that it's doing more harm than good and can get it changed to something better. 

I was working on a project in this vein just this week. 

Then, this morning, I was reading in 1 Samuel. 

Saul is king, and the armies of Israel are set up against the armies of the Philistines, and it's one of those stand-off type arrangements, though before the most famous one with Goliath. There's a rocky ravine and an army on either side of it and Saul's son, Jonathan, decides he's tired of all the waiting and crosses the ravine with his armorbearer and starts the fighting. Not only starts the fighting, but is decisively winning. Saul wants some of that action, and the armies mobilize, and victory is certain. 

Now, while Jonathan is away doing the actual fighting, Saul is back with the rest of his army, making silly rules. He tells them, for example, that no one is allowed to eat until they defeat the Philistines. 

It makes no sense at all to make your army weaker. God didn't tell Saul to make his army fast. Saul didn't know that the battle was already starting; he honestly didn't know when it might get actually started. He's just making arbitrary rules that he thinks sound good - nobody gets to eat. 

Then Jonathan, who is off doing the actual work, comes back into the fold of the camp and someone catches him tasting a little bit of honey that he found, and all of a sudden, Saul is ready to even kill his own son for breaking the rule. 

The rule that was not grounded in anything reasonable and that Jonathan didn't even know about because he was busy working while Saul was making policy decisions. 

And if that isn't the world we live in sometimes, I don't know what is. 

Some of us are out there working and others are sitting back making policy decisions without even thinking them through. Then, we show up in the midst of things and just do what we're doing, do what's shown to be effective, all but secure wins for our groups or families or organizations, and someone inevitably steps in and says, "Hey, you can't do that. There's a rule about that." 

There's a rule about that? That you made while I was busy doing the actual work and you all were just sitting around talking about it? A rule that you want to hold me accountable to even though I didn't even know it existed? So weird. 

Thankfully, the army came to Jonathan's defense and refused to let Saul kill him, God stepped in with mercy, and the whole army moved on. It doesn't always happen that way for us in the real world, but it does happen that way in God's world. 

So at least there's that. 

No point, really. Just something I'm thinking about right now. 

God Plus You

One of the greatest things on this side of heaven is the community of God's people. We are part of His plan for each other, and we're all better for it when we lean into that. 

Fairly early in the book of Acts (chapter 9), Saul is on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. It was one of his favorite things to do; it made him feel good about himself and what he was doing for the name of God. But along the way, he was blinded by a tremendous light that came with a thundering that everyone heard. All of a sudden, this young man standing so tall in his own confidence was groping around in the darkness, still trying to find his way forward. 

God was already ahead of him on that one, too. God went on to the place where Saul would end up and found Ananias and told him that Saul was coming. The plan was that Ananias would meet Saul, lay his hands on him, give him his sight back through the power and plan of the Lord, and be a part of the transformation that would spark an incredible explosion of the Gospel throughout the region and beyond. 

Here's the thing: God didn't need Ananias. 

He didn't. God blinded Saul all by Himself. He could have restored the man in exactly the same way, all by Himself. One act of God could have been followed by another and the story might have remained much the same - Saul would still have become Paul, would still have traveled throughout the region, would still have written his letters, etc. 

But something essential would have been missing. 

Namely, the way that God partners with us for His will. 

This is a really important part of our relationship with God...and His with us. It's something we absolutely have to understand if we ever hope to understand, even a little bit, this Lord we serve. Yes, there are plenty of gods in this world who act autonomously, who do whatever they want in their own power because they can. They like to demonstrate how great they are by showing what they can do without us, just because they are so much bigger and stronger and greater than us. 

Not so with the Lord. Because our God isn't drunk on His own power; He is overflowing with love. And love...requires a partnership. Love requires a relationship. Love requires not a power dynamic, but something much greater. 

So throughout the Scriptures, we see God over and over again partnering with us to accomplish His will and purposes. 

Abraham has to climb the mountain before there is a ram in the bushes. Noah has to build a boat before his family is saved. The priests have to step into the raging waters before God parts them. Israel has to march around the city before the walls fall. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have to go into the furnace before God joins them there. 

The entire story of the Bible is not just God's story; it's our story with Him. It's His story with us. It's what is accomplished by invitational love - the kind of love that keeps bringing us in to do beautiful things with it. With Him. 

The only question, then, is...what is Love trying to do with you today? And...will you join Him? 

God Made All

If you've read the Old Testament, then you know just how long it took Solomon to build the Temple of the Lord. And if you've kept reading, you know how long it took Nehemiah to restore it. And if you've read after that, you know that Israel spent most of their history trying to rebuild and maintain the Temple of God because that was where God came to dwell among them. His presence, His glory, filled the place, and that's where they knew He was with them. 

When you're a people who have put so much work into a project like that, it's easy to take credit for it. It's easy to make it the shining piece of your own history, the thing you've done so much for, a testament to your own faithfulness and steadfastness. Look! We have created a beautiful Temple that God Himself lives in. 

But never forget that the entire Temple was God's handiwork, not ours. He gave us the blueprint down to the very cubit, and in that sense? We were merely the labor. 

Then you get to the New Testament, and we are told that we are the Temple of the Lord, the place where God dwells. Right here in our hearts. And certainly, there's no way we can take credit for our own creation; Genesis is clear that God made us with His own hands, too. He knelt in the dirt and formed it together and breathed into it the breath of life and of His spirit. 

After, you know, He flung the stars into the heavens and separated the waters and formed the light and filled the earth. After by His own hand, He created everything else. 

And it is this to which Stephen is referring when he faces the accusations of those who are not happy with his theology, who are threatened by the perspective that he has on God's world. He says, plainly, didn't God make all this? 

Or, more accurately, he speaks as the Lord Himself - Has not My hand made all these things? (Acts 7:50)

It is the quickest way to put everything - including ourselves (and the Pharisees who think they are better than us) - back in its proper place. If God made everything, there's nothing you can take credit for. If it's all God's handiwork, then it's not your shining achievement. If God did it by His very hand, then you, my friend, did not, and the only thing you can do is humble yourself and be thankful that you get to be part of it. 

By the grace of God, we sometimes get to get our hands dirty in the work, but do not be fooled - it is still God's work. Still His design, right down to the very cubit. We are here only because, by grace, He invites us into it. 

We would be wise to remember that. 

Has not My hand made all these things? It has, Lord. It has. 

God Goes In

In Acts 5, the apostles are put in jail by the leading priests and Pharisees for preaching the Gospel - the good news of Jesus Christ, who the leading priests and Pharisees thought they had killed and finally put to rest. 

Also in Acts 5, by a mighty act of God, the apostles are freed from the jail in the middle of the night and found preaching again the next morning by those who were coming to persecute them. The apostles just sort of shrug and say, "We have to preach Christ. What else would we do?" 

And for many of us, this is a story about the bravery of the apostles in the face of persecution, an example for all Christians everywhere to choose the path God has called them to regardless of what the world says or what obstacles might be in their way, regardless of the personal cost. 

But as I read this story again recently, what jumped out to me was not the apostles; it was the angel of the Lord. 

How many folks do you know that will break into jail? 

That's the crux of the story. It's not the apostles' bravery or resolve or whatever; it's the fact that here is God, yet again, sending His messenger into the hard places, right into the heart of the imprisonment. It is God who shows up and opens those cells. It is God who sets the prisoners free. 

The same God who goes into the fiery furnace to walk around with three faithful men from Israel. He didn't even rescue them; He never opened the door or pulled them out or anything. He just walked around with them. 

The same God who parts raging seas to let His people cross on solid ground. He's the One who steps into the waters. 

The same God who takes our nails in His hands and hangs our shame on His cross. 

Yeah, the apostles are cool, but I have a God who breaks into jail for me, into all the places where I'm captive. If there ever were a damsel in distress moment in my life, if I had even a little bit of damsel in me, my God is a God who comes to rescue me, wherever I'm at. 

In the top of the tallest tower. Behind the dragon's keep. Across the moat. From east to west. In the fiery furnace. In prison. Wherever. God is breaking in to get to me. 

And that's a really cool part of this story that we don't give enough credit for. 

God Speaks

It's a magical thing when you hear the Gospel in your own language. 

One of the hardest things about seeking God is walking into a gathering of His people and not knowing the language. I'm not necessarily talking about the spoken language; I'm talking about the rhythms of worship of any particular congregation. 

You walk in, and it seems like everyone else knows when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel, when to move, when not to move, when to bow their heads, when to take their bathroom breaks, when to break the bread.... It's a choreographed dance that you haven't been to any rehearsals for, and it feels like you're messing it all up. 

I've been there. I get it. 

But it's always been that way. Even from the very beginning, there were those who knew the rhythms and those who didn't. Those who understood what was going on and those who didn't. Those who were paying attention and those who weren't. 

Shortly after the final events of Jesus's life, the believers were gathered in Jerusalem, which you'd think would remember the hubbub of not that many days ago (we are at Pentecost at this point) when Jesus was crucified, then the tomb was empty, then He kept appearing to everyone. But somehow, all of a sudden, the believers are struck and start talking in other languages. 

Not unknown languages, but the languages of the persons around them. Persons who were also right there in Jerusalem. Persons who might have seen some of the events of Jesus's life play out, but not understood them. And all of a sudden, the stories of Jesus are being told impromptu right there in the gathering, in a ton of different languages (Acts 2:6).

For the first time, they were hearing it in their own tongue. 

For the first time, they were "getting" it. 

See, God doesn't have some mystical, magical, other-worldly language that He calls us to learn before we can understand His story. He doesn't have some rhythm set up that we haven't rehearsed. He isn't hiding behind a series of secret steps and movements and motions that we have to figure out in order to get to Him. 

He speaks our language. Whatever that is. Wherever we are. 

It's not gibberish. It's the language of our souls. (And, yes, our tongues.) 

I think that's important for those of us inside the church to remember, especially as we work to intentionally make ourselves welcoming to those who are seeking. To those who have maybe heard a few stories or seen a few things or caught a few whispers but who had never heard the Gospel in the language they actually speak. We have to be mindful about speaking the language of the lost. 

After all, that's what God Himself would do. 

He showed us that much at Pentecost. 

Problems

Recently, I was talking with someone who thought they had a problem with their home - a serious problem. In hindsight, they said they probably should have paid attention to it sooner, done more maintenance, etc. I said I wasn't surprised. 

Last week, I found myself in the emergency room for the first time on a new insurance plan. Not knowing how much it would cost me, I kept thinking to myself, "They'd better find something that makes it worth the cost." I'd been sent to the ER for suspected appendicitis, which would of course be worth the cost, but instead turned out to be something acute that was significant, but not yet "serious," but could turn serious.

Is taking your car for routine oil changes, maintaining your lawn mower, paying for a yearly service plan for your HVAC system, going for an annual dental cleaning...worth it? 

The truth is that most of us have trouble shelling out the money for maintenance when there's nothing wrong with what we've got. We don't even like shelling out the money if it's something small. We always think, "Maybe it's not a big deal. Maybe it will just get better. Maybe I'll get used to it." 

Then, we end up drowning in our serious problems because they suck everything we've got in reserve right out of us, and we look back in hindsight and wonder...should I have done something sooner? 

The question we really have to be asking ourselves at any given point is whether we're as willing to invest now to avoid a problem as we would be later to fix one? 

Are you willing to take what you have today and put it to use to make tomorrow better...or would you rather have what you have and cross your fingers and hope for the best? 

It's silly, really. We live in a fragile world that is even more fragile by the day. The stuff that is manufactured today is made to fail; everything has a shelf life. And yet, we all try to live like our stuff isn't falling apart. 

Like our lives aren't falling apart. 

Like we aren't falling apart. 

And then, things fall apart and we feel betrayed, but the truth is, we never did what we were supposed to do to keep this from happening. We couldn't, we say, justify the cost of maintenance when nothing was wrong, but now, the cost is astronomical because everything is broken and fixing it...is not optional. You can't just not have a refrigerator or an air conditioner. You can't just let your teeth rot right out of your mouth. You can't just let your appendix rupture. 

But as I was thinking about my non-appendix medical cost and wondering if it's worth it, I was really thinking about this. The truth is - we found a problem that was at a correctable stage. Do I feel like I was robbed of money because it wasn't life-threatening yet? Am I upset at having to spend so much only to find out it wasn't urgent after all? 

Is it worth it to me to spend that money to find the problem while I can still fix it without costing more - more time, more money, more energy, more risk, etc. - or does it feel like a waste because it wasn't already at that point? 

Is it worth it to you? 

Most of us would rather pay $700 every decade to replace an appliance we never maintained than spend $30-80 here or there to tweak the little things that would keep it running for far longer. It's just hard to get us to justify maintenance. 

And yet, good maintenance goes such a long way. 

In case you haven't figured it out yet, this is a post about stuff...and it's also a post not about stuff. And in both regards, the question I have for you is this: 

Would you invest as much today to avoid a problem as you would later to fix one? What do you need to be investing in right now? 

God Reveals Himself

After the Resurrection, something incredible happens: 

Jesus just keeps showing up everywhere. 

Right from the very beginning, He appears to Mary. Right there at the tomb. She thinks He's the gardener. 

He walks with some of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; they think He's a fellow traveler. 

He pops into the Upper Room while the disciples are gathered on more than one occasion. Some of them immediately know that it's Him; it takes some others a little bit longer. Some require a little more proof. 

He's hanging out on the seashore, grilling fish, while the disciples are out fishing. They spot Him from the boat and one of them says, "Oh my gosh - it's Him," and another one jumps into the water to get to shore faster. 

John tells us, in the latter chapters of his Gospel, just how often Jesus keeps showing up, appearing, revealing Himself to folks.

It's not the first time...or the last time. 

See, showing up has always been God's way. It was His way in the Garden, when He was strolling by even as Adam and Eve dove for the bushes. It was His Way by the Jabbok River, when He wrestled with Jacob. It was His way in the wilderness, when He dwelled with Israel in cloud and fire. It was His way under the broom plant when the prophet was famished. 

It's been His way from the very beginning, and it's still His way now. 

When you're least expecting it, there He is. Or, rather, here He is. Somewhere right beside you. Somewhere where you most need Him. 

Maybe He looks like the gardener. Or a fellow traveler. Or someone you know. Or someone you can hardly believe. Maybe He's just going about regular business, doing nothing spectacular or even something so plain as making breakfast. Yet, if you keep your eyes open, you see Him. 

You can't help but not see Him. 

Because God reveals Himself. Over and over and over again in the places where His people are living and loving and trying to dwell, where they're seeking grace and hope and faith, where they're trying to figure out what to do next, where to go from here, what just happened...here He is. 

Immanuel. Still. 

God with us. 

Forever. 

God Knows

Have you ever laid awake at night wondering if you actually did that thing you thought you did, or that thing that you went in the kitchen to do but might have gotten distracted? Have you turned back home to make sure you locked the door? Have you double-checked with a friend to figure out if you actually did something or only thought about doing it? 

This is the curse of being human - not knowing whether we've even done the things we intended to do, sometimes wrestling with the insecurity of not being able to remember. To know. Always wondering if there's one more thing or something we forgot or some new little detail that's going to pop up that will take what we think was a finished job and make it unfinished. 

We burn ourselves at both ends trying to accomplish things, but we never quite feel like our work is finished. Even if we did it one hundred percent right, there's something always nagging at us that we missed something. 

Not so with Jesus. 

Perhaps some of His most famous words were, "It is finished." These, He spoke as He breathed His last on the Cross. But He actually knew it was finished before He spoke it. 

John 19:28 says, "Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.'" 

I am thirsty. At the moment that Jesus knew that everything was finished, He did not say, "It is finished." He said, "I am thirsty." 

He knew it was complete before it was over. He knew He was done before He died. He knew that what He had been sent to do had been accomplished. Before the spear, before the tomb, before the stone rolled away. 

He knew it was finished. 

So He asks for a drink. 

It seems so strange, so casual to us. Think about finally being caught up on stuff, finally feeling like there's nothing too pressing, and grabbing a drink and a few minutes to yourself to relax. 

The death of Jesus was agonizing - that's how we portray it. But I think, in those last moments, it wasn't. I think that's maybe what captivated everyone around Him at that moment. He knew it was finished, so He settled into peace...before He settled into death. 

There was no question left in His mind. There was no hesitation. There was no wondering. He wasn't asking whether something else was to come, whether there was another shoe to drop, whether He missed a moment or mishandled one, whether He really had done everything He set out to do. He knew. He just knew, and this allowed Him to relax. To settle into peace. 

To ask for a drink. 

I want that kind of chill in my life. I want to be able to let go like that. I want that kind of confidence. To know that it is done, that I did what I was supposed to do, that there's nothing else I can do, and to be able to just let it go and settle into peace. 

His final, unagonized breath tells me it's possible.