Category Archives: Encouragement

April 23, 2025 · 6:39 pm

Love and Hate

I don’t think that republicans were either stupid or mislead in November. Trump’s character wasn’t a hidden secret. I think that they were motivated by hate and contempt. The hate of Maga had been fanned into flames for years on Fox and right wing radio, just like Rwanda in the 90s.

And they found someone who hated the same people they hated. And that was that. It didn’t matter that he had no character, no morals, no ability, no leadership, and no ideas. Hate was all that mattered. Now we reap the results.

But here is what bothers me. I fear for the future of our country. I fear for the immigrants, the women, the minorities, the children. It will continue to be a hateful, ugly mess for years to come. It might even destroy us unless someone stops it.

I have been fearful of that, and that is reasonable. But I’m starting to fear something else. I am starting to fear that those whose eyes are opened to this frightful mess will become hateful and contemptuous themselves, and the cycle will never end.

I see it in my own soul. I see the hatred blinding those who used to be friends and I get angry. Is my anger turning to hatred? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I worry about it and pray about it.

I think maybe I need to spend less time following the dumpster fire. Not that it isn’t important to be involved and know what is going on. Social media has a very important role to play. Outrage can change politics and force action.

The question is how to express that outrage without becoming that which you despise…I don’t know if I have the answer.

But maybe after the outrage we should turn off the computer, pet the cats, watch the birds, have a scotch, read a poem, smile and wave towards the neighbors.

What good does it do to save humanity if we lose our humanity trying to save it?

I think that might be the lesson of the Republican Party. They became driven by hate for others and Donald learned how to tap into that hatred. It is all that matters.

But what good does it do to gain the whole world and win elections when you lose your soul doing it?

Now they cut art and music and libraries and healthcare, and help lines. As long as it is only the people they hate that are dying, they don’t care. It isn’t about budgets, it is about ugliness and contempt and revenge. The hatred that I have watched in the churches is now being acted out on the national stage.

So many conservative churches preach about the hatred of God for people they don’t like. They will preach on John 3:16, but the sermon is usually mostly about how it doesn’t mean what it says.

And it fires me up. Blasphemy and hatred and hurting image-bearers makes me really angry.

But in my anger, I need to remember beauty. That the one I am angry at is also an image-bearer of God. I want them to stop the hatred, but I want them to turn and learn about beauty and love.

But it isn’t easy, especially when those you love are being hurt, when children are separated from parents, when foreigners are targeted and criminals are celebrated and we live in the upside down.

But I think the only way to show the world that the country right now is upside down is if we refuse to be upside down ourselves.

So protest – but don’t forget beauty.

Picket – but feed your neighbor.

Withdraw from your MAGA congregation – but don’t let their evil consume you.

Learn to brush the dust off of your feet and not bring the uncleanness of the devil’s kingdom into your own home. You walk on holy ground.

I think this might be what Paul means when he said, “Be angry, and sin not.”

Don’t let the dust consume you.

Remember that there are always more with us than there are with them. There will be weeping for a night. There will be helplessness and hurt and pain and sorrow. There will be indescribable injustice. And who knows when God will deliver us from this evil time.

But the church has frequently been in hiding, so in hiding we might go. That’s OK. Jesus goes with us. It is the nature of this age. Resurrection comes, glory comes – but only after crucifixion.

Revelation 12:10–12 (NIV)

10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.

11They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

12Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”

His time is short. That is why he is so angry. Be patient. Protest, protect, picket – but be patient.

The funny thing will be all the people who will respond with fury, contempt and hatred trying to convince me that they are not full of fury, contempt and hatred. Funny how that works.

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September 1, 2023 · 5:17 pm

Hierarchy, patriarchy and the veil

The centerpiece of worship in the Old Testament was the Temple in Jerusalem.

As you travel to Jerusalem, you are singing the Psalms of Ascents with the other pilgrims. No matter where you are coming from, you are going up. Anywhere towards Jerusalem was considered up.

You walk towards the place where David offered the sacrifice that stopped the God’s angel from destroying any more Israelites. It was in that place that Abraham’s arm was prevented from offering Isaac as a sacrifice.

He lifted up his eyes and saw a ram caught in a bush. “In the Mount of the Lord, It will be Provided”.

And now you are heading towards the Temple. When you arrive, you first enter the court of the Gentiles. This is where anyone could enter. Tourists, gentiles, all who wanted just a quick glance at the Great Temple.

But Gentiles, the unclean, the lepers, the emasculated, those who touched dead bodies – could enter no further. Barriers and signs were up. No Gentiles allowed. No admittance. Unclean.

If you were clean, you could proceed into the court of the women. Here the women and children would gather and pray.

But only the men could go any further. In the outer courts of the temple, the sacrifice was offered, the great basin for cleansing sat waiting for the cleansing of the priests, and the men could watch the priests come and go.

In the temple itself, the outer room was the Holy Place. Only the appointed priests could enter there, and then only if they had business there and were wearing the right garments and had cleansed themselves by water and blood.

And in the center of it all was the Holy of Holies, the most holy place of all. It was here that the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud representing the presence of God settled, and God dwelt with his people. But only the High Priest could go in there.

And only one time a year. The rest of the time a thick veil separated the Ark of God’s Covenant from the world of sinful man. God’s face was hidden, only to be hinted at by the mediation of priests.

No one just walks into God’s throne room, where he “dwells between the cherubim”.

The whole form of worship was an enforced hierarchy. The way into God’s presence was hinted at by shadows and types, but not yet made clear.

We all long to be part of something great, something beyond ourselves. We naturally long for the exclusive clubs, the inner circles, the greetings in the marketplaces.

No one wants to be kicked out. No one desires to be excluded.

Many of us know the feeling of being on the outside. When large groups gather, like after worship on Sunday Morning, circles form. Friends laugh and joke. And some (like me) would try to join the circle. But it would tighten up. My brother or his friends would move to block my access.

Eventually I gave up and pretended it didn’t matter. But it still hurt and I still feel that hurt, because we all long to be a part of something, to be included.

Admit something to me. When you were reading the description of the temple, did you feel as if it wasn’t fair that the gentiles, the unclean, the women, the children were kept out?

This is the emotional response to your yearning to be in God’s presence, in the holiest place of all. No matter how close you could go, you couldn’t just walk past the veil. Imagine the longing to see, the longing to be where all of mankind longs to be.

When men and women were kicked out of Eden, they were removed from God’s presence. “No one looks upon my face and lives”.

THIS is the longing. And no amount of exclusive clubs, golf resorts, circles of friends, membership cards can ever solve it.

There is only one solution. The way to God’s presence must be revealed to us.

When Jesus died; when he cried out “It is finished”, that veil that separated the Holiest Place from sinful humans was torn in two.

The hierarchy was smashed. The gatekeepers were out of work. Eventually the temple of stones was destroyed because God now dwells in the hearts of his people. YOU are the temple of the living God.

And how do you enter into his presence? Just come. Everyone is invited. The blood of Christ has made that way clear.

Yes, God is still holy. Yes, we are still sinners. But Christ has covered you with his blood and washed you with his spirit, and calls you right into his very presence.

19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Heb 10:19–22.)

But here is the difficult part for so many people. If all of this is true (and it is) that means that anyone at all who wants to come in may enter. No one will be denied. Everyone has access to Christ, therefore everyone has access to the throne room of God through the way – the blood of Jesus.

Which means that it isn’t exclusive to men. It isn’t exclusive to the rich, the white, the Jew, the ruling class, the righteous, the religious.

It means ANYONE can come.

And so, so many people refuse to truly come to Christ because they see the riff-raff and say, “Nope.”

And they desperately try to build the hierarchy again. The try to sew that veil together so that – even though they can’t really get to God – at least they can get closer than those people who are outside.

So they step over the velvet barricades held up by the stanchions that they erected and say, “See you, suckers”.

Look at all the losers outside.

But if the temple they are entering is exclusive and shuts out the riff raff, then it isn’t the temple of God.

The temple of the living God dwells in the heart by faith, not by position, wealth, genders, status or selective morality. It is Christ’s righteousness or it is none at all.

This is what bothers me so much about the patriarchalism of modern America and the dominionism of “Christian” politics. It is absolutely dependent upon building the curtain to separate us from them.

The sinners, the women, the children (who are to be beaten until they become useful to me), the immigrant, the poor, the ignorant, the foolish, the sinners – no thanks. If that is what this is about, I’m out of here.

Matthew tells us that Judas made the deal with the Sanhedrin when Jesus told him to leave Mary alone. “She is anointing me for my burial”. If that public display of completely inappropriate behavior, that waste of good money, that lowering yourself to the level of a woman who is a sinner – is what this is about, count me out.

And for all who say, “If God’s grace is for the wrong kind of sinners, I’m out” – eventually the door will be shut.

You stayed away from the feast and couldn’t even sit down to eat because there were too many sinners there. So now you are outside, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Notice that the anger hasn’t diminished. Even outside the feast, the anger continues, the unfairness of it all.

I’ve worked and I’ve slaved for you and you never gave me anything.

But you are going to feast with THAT GUY???

Don’t you know that he doesn’t vote right? Don’t you know that she is a woman and is supposed to wait for her man? Don’t you know that children are vipers in diapers and not worthy of the feast?

If you are tired of the continual jockeying for position, Jesus says, “Come unto me and rest.”

And he also said, “Whoever comes to me, I will never, ever under any circumstances, cast them out.”

Instead of being angry that Jesus eats and drinks with sinners, it should cause us to rejoice greatly. For that means he eats and drinks with you and me.

That is exactly what the gospel is.

Quit trying to sew the veil back together.

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come”.

Yes. Sinners. Yes. You. Yes, your children.

Yes, you who have been outcast and excluded, who know the pain of being cast out, who know what it is like outside the camp.

Go outside the camp. Inside the camp is where they are frantically trying to keep you out. They are sewing up veils everywhere to block access.

But outside the city there is a cross and an empty sepulcher. And even greater than that, outside the city is Jesus. He is gathering together all of the outcasts and building a new city. And all you need to do to enter that city is come.

And yes, when you get there there will be sinners and other riff-raff there. Just like you. But they have been washed, cleansed, justified, and made beautiful by the Lamb of God – Just like you.

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July 11, 2022 · 5:34 pm

You’re doing it wrong

Several months ago, a friend who is very near to me asked me this question, “Why are unbelievers generally so much kinder and friendlier than Christians?”

And I thought about it. I gave her a pretty standard mumbling about “common grace”, and I do believe that is true.

I also believe that all humans are created in God’s image and have an understanding of kindness and friendship and love. We should be thankful for that.

But I thought about it.

I know this friend. I know that he was raised in the church, quite similar to my own circles and so his concerns echoed with me. I also have found that in general the people who treated me with the most contempt, rage, anger, and dismissal have been fellow professors of Christ. I have never had an unbeliever treat me as badly as one who broke bread with me at the Lord’s Table.

Why is that? If we are to be known by our love, why is it that we are mostly known by our contempt and anger against everyone?

And once again, you can deny it. I have had many believers try to prove that they aren’t bullies by threatening me, slandering me and cutting off all contact with me for saying that they were bullies.

You know what I am talking about. If you don’t, then maybe it would help you to learn to listen to those who have left the church. So many souls have been trampled on and abused by conservative evangelicals!

So I thought about it.

I think that there are two things that are deeply engrained in our evangelical culture.

First, fear is deeply engrained.  We were raised firmly in the belief that coming into contact with the “world” would destroy us. We were taught throughout the 70s and 80s and beyond that “secular humanists” were out to take away all of our rights, persecute us, change our way of life, and destroy churches.  “Left Behind”, Youth Camps, Bill Gothard – all of them painted quite the horrifying apocalypse if the unbelievers ever get power. If “these people” get their way, we will lose everything this country stands for! We will lose our place and our nation.

It actually was for this very reason that the leaders of the Jews delivered Jesus to be crucified. They thought that if he continued, the Romans would destroy their way of life and their positions of power (John 11:47-48).

So we react with the world through fear. We are terrified of everything. Rock music, Hollywood, Disney, ABC, Starbuck coffee, Harry Potter, women getting out of control! We need to be continually steadfast and vigilant!

We act as if God is just waiting for us to let our guards down and then punish us for not being vigilant enough.

(On a side note, this is why the teaching that Adam sinned by not guarding the garden from the invasion of the serpent bothers me so much. Not only is that nowhere in the text, but it puts an impossible standard on people that no one can meet. How could Adam have been everywhere at once? Should he have built a wall? Trained his sons to be armed border patrol?)

But I digress.

God has not called us to fear. We are complete in Christ and safe in him. God is not waiting for us to mess up so he can gleefully punish us. He delights in us as dear children and nothing can ever take us out of his hand.

2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

So quit being afraid of everything. If your gay neighbors get married, it won’t damage you or your relationship with God at all. Put the pickets down. Learn to delight in people and stop being afraid of them.

So that’s the first thing.

The second problem is this one – we cannot resist the opportunity to inform someone that they are doing something wrong.

Are you grieving loss? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you trying to come to terms with your childhood? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you living in terror? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you ready to report your sexual assault? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you happy about a promotion? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you having a party to celebrate an accomplishment? You’re doing it wrong.

Are you proud of your family? Raising your children? Pregnant? Breastfeeding? Bottle feeding? educating your children? Disciplining your children?

You’re doing it wrong.

I can’t speak for everyone, but in my circles I know where this tendency comes from.

We have a long, long history of being told that only Christians are knowledgeable on every single subject. Only Christians have the TRUTH and so only Christians can rightly teach history, child-rearing, marriage and family, math, economics, healthcare – and we have found bible verses to prove it all.

We are the experts in trauma, depression, anxiety, discipline, raising children, marriage, ADHD, ADD, gender roles, constitutional law, statute law, common law, race, economics – and it is our sworn duty to explain to the whole world that YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!

Don’t you know that “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” (Kuyper). And this, of course, gives me the right as a Christian to explain to you again in all Christian love that YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!!

If we do not explain carefully how everything you are doing is wrong, how on earth can you possibly repent from doing it wrong? And if you don’t repent from doing it wrong, how can you expect God to bless you.

Just quit doing it wrong, do it the other way, and then you will know God’s blessing in your life and all of your problems will disappear.

And then it follows – if you don’t stop doing it wrong, we are going to have to force you somehow.

Whew. And if we miss one opportunity, then the devil gets in the garden, our wife goes out wandering, and next thing you know all hell breaks loose again.

It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

And then we discover that what we thought was right and good wasn’t Christianity at all. In fact, it wasn’t much different than any other autocratic religion.

I wonder what would happen if we just stopped…

What if we just assumed that people who are truly doing it wrong probably already know that and those that don’t are probably just different than you are and that is OK.

Or maybe it’s not OK and they really are doing it wrong.

I’m probably doing it wrong too.

I grieve wrong. I get anxious over things. I forget things. I grumble when I shouldn’t. I don’t love as I ought.

What I am doing is simply trying to make it from one day to the next day the best I can, walking in God’s love and limping along towards the heavenly city.

Or maybe Jesus is carrying me the whole way. Or maybe I’m limping.

What I know for certain is this – he won’t ever let me go, even when I do everything wrong. And he will lead me by his Spirit and gently guide me exactly where I need to go and so I can just stop.

I wonder what would happen if we just sat with the grieving?

I wonder what would happen if we just listened to the one trying to process trauma?

I wonder what would happen if we just rejoiced when our neighbor got married?

I wonder what would happen if we were proud that our friend was proud of their work and cracked a cold one with him in his garage?

I wonder what would happen if we just stopped that impulse to tell everyone that everything that they are doing is wrong?

Maybe then people wouldn’t ask, “Why are unbelievers so much kinder and gentler than believers?”

Maybe we should listen.

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February 20, 2022 · 6:05 pm

the childless woman and the miracle child

by: anonymous – guest post

I am very thankful for this guest post by a brilliant woman, a Mother in Israel, who wishes to remain anonymous.

And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!”

But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

— Luke 11:27,28

Those tedious bits of the Old Testament, the genealogies, make a final incursion in Matthew and Luke before they disappear from the Bible (Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38). All the difficult-to-say names, often of obscure children born to obscurer parents, culminate here. They are bewildering, breaking up the narratives — but each name represents two hands gripping a promise. A promise to Eve, and later to Abraham, of a child (Genesis 3 & 15). Miraculous births, beginning with the birth of Isaac, whispered of this miraculous baby to come (Galatians 3:16); but I think Israel’s hope in the coming child is especially poignant in the book of Ruth.

Ruth begins in a time of famine — a woman loses her home and country, then her husband and sons, until finally, past childbearing years, she straggles back to Bethlehem. She has no future — no heir, no one to redeem the land heritage that used to belong to her. She has only a bereaved and childless daughter-in-law, for whom she cannot provide. When women from her hometown come out to greet Naomi, she tells them not to call her by her name, but by a name that means “bitter”: “Mara” — “I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty… the Lord has testified against me” (Ruth 1:21).

But somehow a tale that begins with flat tones of famine and a parched life ends in the rhythms of harvest — and in greetings of blessing from the same women to whom Naomi spoke of the Lord’s curse (4:14). What has taken place between the beginning and the end, that transforms the story? The same thing that took place unobtrusively in the first chapter, in the land of Judah, transforming it into a land of plenty: the Lord has “visited his people” (1:6). The form of the Lord’s visitation (as the tale winds up with a genealogy) is a child.

I can almost trace Naomi’s features through the genealogy in Matthew. The people in that list successively sinned away their blessings until they scattered in exile. They lost the Davidic monarchy, and had no one to redeem their heritage. But the lineage straggles back to Bethlehem, and culminates in a miraculous birth.

Matthew and Luke write the last biblical genealogies because the last name they record is the name of the promised child. The Lord “has visited and redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68 ).

The dilemma of the barren or childless woman disappears with the genealogies. It is associated throughout the Old Testament with the theme of the miraculous birth. Surely there were many childless women in Israel in Jesus’ day, but the gospels contain no record of anyone coming to him to lament their childlessness — though he was the place where God tabernacled with men, the place Hannah went to lament her childlessness. Perhaps women did come to him with this trouble: what else should we do with troubles? And God has a special care for the heartache of being childless (Psalm 113:9). But it has no further episode in the Bible, after Jesus comes.

Because the longing for a child in those Old Testament stories is all mixed up with the longing for this child. The joy of the miracle birth is all mixed up with this joy. Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) is like a voice carrying back through time in a hall of echoes (1 Samuel 2:1-10, Psalm 113).

When Jesus comes, we read about him interacting with women without even being told if many of them have children: we presume the singleness of several. Their lack in this area never arises between him and them. It is not something they are recorded as being disturbed with in his presence. It is a point made as unobtrusively as the visitation of the Lord which changes everything, in the opening verses of Ruth.

Jesus never took a wife, nor did he father children. Not in the Old Testament sense. But the creation mandate takes on new aspects in the second Adam, when Jesus speaks of fruitfulness for those who abide in him. This is not the fruitfulness of natural fertility, per se. Motherhood is the image of fruitfulness in that which is female (the church) to Christ; and one of the forms fruitfulness takes in individual women (1 Timothy 5:10). But the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22,23).

This may and often does take the arduous and devoted form of bearing and rearing children; and it may and often does take the form of bearing eternal children. So Ann Judson had only two little ones, both of whom died very young; but she helped to share the gospel with unreached people.

Yet the fruitfulness of abiding in Jesus does not necessitate being able to bear children, or traveling to distant lands. It is more immediate and spiritual, more immanently eternal: it is Jesus’ image formed in us. His miraculous life born in us even though we were dead in sins, already erupted into our bodies with a quality of resurrection. The Lord has visited his people.

Childlessness was a reproach because it was a dead end. It was the bitterness of Naomi, cut off from her inheritance in the land; her children buried without issue, without hope of any further part in the promised one. These shadows are swallowed in substance when a child is born to us (Isaiah 9:6), and we inherit God (Psalm 16:5,6).

So even David in the Old Testament can say that the greater blessing than children is to awake in God’s likeness (Psalm 17:14,15). And the reproach in the New Testament is not for the widow who has never given birth, but for the widow who is “dead” while she “lives” — living only for what makes her feel alive in this world (1 Timothy 5:4-6). The true “dead end” is spiritual unfruitfulness: every branch that does not bear fruit is removed (John 15:2).

I have been married a couple decades now, and am unable to have children. It is doubtful if I can adopt, and I won’t credit myself as the agent of anyone’s salvation. Over the years, I have been told in general and even in particular that my childlessness is a reproach in God’s ongoing economy. I’m grateful for my church family: unless I bring it up — my childlessness never arises between them and me. That is one way my brothers and sisters are like Jesus.

After wrestling through some hard years, I have nothing but delight in other women’s joy or in their children that race around me. We all have our fair share of sorrow (it is poignant to think of the sorrow that came to Rachel, Rebekah, to Samson’s mother, to Elisabeth & Mary even after they had children). But the above truths have comforted me. And there is a further wonder, which I would have liked to share with those who told me the childless woman still stands in the church as a symbol of reproach. We no longer overhear her prayers or her praises, but the childless woman doesn’t exactly vanish from the New Testament. She is transfigured. In one of those bewildering reverses of grace, the Old Testament shadow shifts, and she becomes the symbol of a miraculous hope. It is she whose inheritance Jesus redeems. This is the woman Jesus marries (Isaiah 54:5).

—Maybe that’s the thing you stand for in your community, if you are a reader who wonders why God works in other women’s bodies but not in yours; why God hears other women’s prayers, but not yours; why you should stand there year after year overlooked, and whether you will have to die childless (& for many, husbandless). Maybe you are standing there in the midst like a symbol of more staggering hope.

The new creation mandate that Jesus gives to his bride is to go and make disciples of all the nations: it turns out that all along, the childless woman has been Eve, come again. Eve, the mother of all living. The barren one has become the mother of us all (Galatians 4:26,27). She is the church. And all her children are miracle children — born when their mother was desolate, carried to her on the shoulders of kings and queens (Isaiah 49:20-23).

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July 6, 2021 · 1:49 pm

Why did Lazarus die?

Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
  2 It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
  3 Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”
  4 When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
  5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
  6 So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. (Jn. 11:1-6)

As I was reading this over my coffee this morning, it struck me. (Funny how that works – I’ve read this countless times, and I didn’t exactly miss it before, but it didn’t strike me like it did today).

Because Jesus loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha;

And because he heard that Lazarus was sick…he waited two more days.

Think about that. Lazarus is dying. Jesus can heal him. But instead, Jesus delays. Lazarus dies. And he loved them.

This is astounding. Imagine what Mary and Martha were going through. For days and days they wait for Jesus to show up. Jesus delays. He dawdles. He stays two more days. Lazarus gets sicker.

Finally Lazarus dies. Mary’s heart breaks. Martha’s heart breaks. Where was Jesus? Why didn’t he come? Does he not care?

(If you have never asked those questions, have you really lived on this earth? How often do we wonder the same thing. How much more? How much longer? Why won’t he stop this? Why won’t he heal?)

But at the beginning of it all, Jesus tells them why. “That the Son of God might be glorified through it.”

There is something about Jesus that hadn’t been revealed yet. He hadn’t been “glorified”, that is, he hadn’t been seen for who he truly was – the Resurrection and the Life.

They all thought that not even Jesus could do anything about death. Lazarus is dead. It’s over.

And then Jesus says, “Lazarus, come forth!”

When God allows the pain to take hold; when God allows yet another thing to strike a blow; when God allows the devil to ravish and devour; when God allows us to go as low as we think we can – and then he takes us even lower –

It isn’t because he hates us. It isn’t because he hasn’t forgotten us. It isn’t because he is negligent or evil.

It is because we close our eyes and think we can solve all of our own problems. We can fix this, if we do just one more thing.

But when death occurs, when we reach that point where there is NO fixing it, NO coming back, NO solution – THAT is when we begin to see Jesus for who he is.

Not even death can stop the power of the Son of God.

Not great sin, not great despair, not great pain or great illness – not even death.

We have a hard time seeing it until we do. And that is worth everything.

If the Son of God can be revealed in our suffering and weakness, our pain and sorrow, then it is worth it all. No one falls through the cracks. He never fails.

The day will come when he will call you out of this tomb as well. And there will be no more tears and no more curse.

When we’ve seen the tears and the curse and know what it is to suffer great loss, then we are the first to shout for joy when victory comes.

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April 23, 2021 · 4:15 pm

Whispers

There is much that we could get worked up about.

It doesn’t take special insight to know that this world is twisted, broken, oftentimes ugly.

But briefly there are glimpses of justice. Not much, but enough to remind us of perfect justice to come.

Briefly, there are glimpses of beauty. Never enough to quench our thirst, but enough to remind us of beauty beyond our imagining.

Briefly, you might glimpse like a shifting shadow out of the corner of the eye – an echo of Eden. A reminder that God has not cast us off.

An ethereal tune that you can’t quite catch, but it causes deep sighs of longing.

A touch of a lover that reminds you that you are desired

A shimmer of a cool breeze with the hint of jasmine that reminds you of spring

The hint of another country never traveled

The whisper of citrus and plum and berry on the nose of the wine…

The grandkids are laughing.

When you look at the glimpses from one angle, you might be tempted to think that they are God, rather than gifts of his bounty.

You miss the good because you are always searching for the better.

But from another angle, you might miss those glimpses because you are too angry that the world isn’t what it is supposed to be.

So the jasmine goes by unnoticed.

The music goes unheard because you don’t like her politics.

The wine isn’t French or Napa so you miss its bouquet…

You’re too afraid of lust to notice that her hair is shimmering in the sunlight.

You’re too afraid of catching sin to smile and be kind.

You miss the joy of the kids because you demanded idols to justify your wisdom and strength, and instead you got kids with their own minds who mystify you.

Don’t miss the joy. Don’t miss the beauty.

It isn’t God. But it is from God.

It points to God.

Jesus will come again and when the marriage supper of the lamb is served it will be perfect.

Justice will be perfect. Beauty will be perfect. Contentment will be perfect.

Fellowship will be perfect.

So smile. Listen to that beautiful music. Sit and smell the jasmine. It fades quickly.

The whispers go away quickly. We fade and die. But He remembers our frailty…

So teach us to number our days.

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January 15, 2021 · 9:37 am

What a day might bring…

Today you might not accomplish what you want to accomplish.

Today, you might be anxious and fearful.

Today, you might hurt and just want the pain to stop.

Today, you might be consumed with past failures that whirl around your head like a favorite blankie in a clothes-dryer.

Today, you might be consumed with fears of a future that you can do nothing about.

Today, you might be rushing off to somewhere so fast that you forget to breathe.

Or-

Today might be a good day

Today you might accomplish a long-time dream

Today, you might remember to breathe

Today, you might remember to smile.

Whatever a day may bring, Jesus still rose from the dead.

Whatever a day may bring, He remembers that we are dust.

Whatever a day may bring, He still raises the dead.

Whatever a day may bring, He still raises kings and deposes kings.

Whatever a day may bring, you can’t hurry enough to outrun his mercy and goodness.

So slow down. Breathe. Look at the mist drifting through the trees. Taste the coffee.

Brew a cup of tea properly. That can’t be rushed.

And no matter what you do or do not accomplish, you cannot add or subtract anything from the infinite love of Christ for you, and you personally. He knows you by name. He loves you and gave his life that you might have grace and peace forever.

So slow down. Breathe. Rest.

When Sunday rolls around, go into his presence, wherever you are. Join with the congregation of the Lord Jesus, whether online, or outdoors, or wherever they meet together.

In his house is peace forevermore.

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