Lent: Becoming A Better Person

Yesterday I talked about the tradition that many Christians have of "giving up" something during Lent, and focused more on the reason why this tradition developed.  Today, I want to take that same thought another step further, thinking about what the goal of such an endeavor is or should be.

Let me start off with a question.  Why do you want to become a better person?  I honestly think that, if you give some thought to it, the answer isn't always as easy as we might think.  For some, it may be because you see how some particular thing affects you in a negative way.  Think about someone who gives up sugar or soda for Lent.  It's likely that they want to cut down on those fattening things, and recognize that they might lose a little weight and feel better for doing so.

Or, someone may want to give up some bad habit because it affects how others see them.  Think about the person who gives up their habit of making excuses for why they don't do things, or who gives up blaming others for the mistakes and problems of their lives.  They see that other people take up a negative view of them because of this, and so they seek to change how others see them.

Now, I'm not going to go through all the reasons that someone may give up something during Lent.  However, here's what I want to focus on.  For whom do you give up something?  Just looking at the two situations I listed out above, who is the primary beneficiary of the change in life?  It's the person who is doing the "giving up."  A lot of the time, when I hear the things that people give up during Lent, they are focused primarily on that person's own life.

Which leads me to this observation.  The tradition of giving up something during Lent in making ourselves a better person is an admirable thing.  It is always good to improve ones' self.  However, if we ourselves are the only ones who benefit from the change, then I would go so far as to suggest that we have still missed the point.

Becoming a better person should not be focused only on ourselves, but upon everyone that we interact with.  In a sense, we become a better person because it benefits our neighbors, and shows our love to our neighbor as ourselves.  In closing, I'll share a bit of a personal example.

A few years ago, I took up the habit of running.  At the time, I had suffered an ankle injury playing basketball, and had to give up my basketball days.  But I realized that I was getting short of breath when I would preach, and that I didn't have the stamina to get through our regular Sunday morning schedule without getting tired.

I knew that couldn't continue, or that, if it did, then the people of the congregation would suffer just as much as me.  So I took up running because I saw that it not only gave a benefit to me (better health, etc), but it also improved my ability to interact and lead the people of the congregation.  I made a personal change that was for the benefit of my neighbors.

So in closing, I'll simply leave you with this thought, and hope that you think a bit about it today.  How is your personal thing that you are giving up in Lent also serving to benefit your neighbors, and to show that you love your neighbor as yourself?

What did you give up for Lent?

In quite a few Christian traditions, the season of Lent is seen as the time in which you "give up" something.  I've heard about a number of different things that people have given up over the years, such as pop, sugar, snacks, a bad habit, and other such things.  Also, in recent years, there seems to have been a realization that it's not good to only give things up, but perhaps you can even replace them with something good, and so people now add something that they want to incorporate into their life during this season.

This traditional practice is something that can be easily misunderstood.  From an outsiders point of view, it may simply appear that a Christian is trying to make one part of their life better.  While an admirable thing, there is nothing particularly "Christian" in wanting to improve your life.  You'd be hard pressed to find many people who want to destroy their lives, and so most people in the world are trying to find some way to improve their life, whether by giving up something harmful, or by taking on a habit or practice that is beneficial.

This is where it's helpful to look back at some of the history of this season.  Back when the Christian Church fell mostly under one "organization", there was the thought that there were seven deadly "sins", sins which needed to be dealt with on our part in order to have grace from God.  So, during the Lent season, Christians were to prove that they were worthy of Christ's sacrifice by "giving up" one of these seven deadly sins.  Of course, one of the easiest ones would be the deadly sin of gluttony.  After all, giving up some kind of food for a period of about 7 weeks doesn't seem too bad, and might actually be doable.

Thus, the origin of this "practice" is in the battle against the sin that lives within all people, Christians and otherwise.  Giving something up was designed to be a battle against one particular sin that vexed the Christian in his or her life.  Perhaps they would be able to gain a sense of control over that sin, and the Church year provided a forum to work on that particular sin.  Also, since Lent is a season where we focus on Christ taking away our sin, the thought was there that we could give Him "less" sin to have to carry to the cross.

So, rather than ask the question that I used as the title of this post, I'll ask another question.  Why did you give up/take on something for Lent?  Was it to improve your life?  Was it to demonstrate faithfulness to God?  Was it to give Jesus less of a burden on the cross?  Or have you ever really thought about it? 

Lent: The Misunderstood Season

This past Wednesday, many Christian churches observed the beginning of the season of Lent.  That Wednesday is called Ash Wednesday, and I shared a little bit about it in a previous post. 

As we go into this Lent season, I've noticed over the years that there are a number of misunderstandings about this season of the church year.  So I would like to take up a few posts and speak to some of the things that you may or may not know about Lent, in the hopes of clearing up some of those misunderstandings.

The first one for today is that Lent is all about focusing on our sins, and basically, just making ourselves as miserable as possible.  In the eyes of some, Lent almost seems to be a time to wallow in how poor and miserable we are as sinners, to take every sin and turn it over in our minds, so that we get downright miserable thinking about our sin.  I'm not sure, but perhaps the hope in this is to make our sin seem so repugnant that we simply stop doing it.

So let's clear up this misunderstanding.  It is true that we tend to have a focus on our sin during this Lent season, but for many churches and Christians, it is not more focused than at other times of the year.  The thing with Lent is that we think about our sin because we realize that we have been bought at a price, that of Christ's own suffering and death on the cross, and His victorious resurrection from the dead.  So we think about our sin, not to make us miserable, but because we recognize that Jesus died to take away that sin.

Now, another part of the Lent focus is one that is actually also found throughout the year in so many Christian churches.  As we recognize that Jesus has died to forgive our sins, and that He gives us that forgiveness freely, part of our response is to battle against that sin in our lives.  Here's where it gets a little tricky, though.  Because sin is a much deeper problem than just what we do or fail to do, because it is a condition in which we are born in this world, we will never overcome it, no matter how hard we may try.  We may have times in our lives where we seem to have it under control, and then it will suddenly reassert itself.  We can never overcome it on our own, which is where the cross of Jesus comes in.

But the real reason we focus on it is because the season of Lent points us to a very important truth for our lives: God is a God of forgiveness.  God's idea from the very beginning was that no single human being would have to suffer judgment and condemnation for their sin.  If you read John 3:16-17, you see that God sent Jesus in order that the world would be saved and forgiven.  Thus, when we focus on our sin during the season of Lent, it is always to point us to the fact that we have been forgiven by God through Jesus and the cross for that sin, no matter how bad it may have been, and no matter how much we may continue to struggle with it in our lives.

So the focus on our sin isn't to wallow in misery, but to recognize our forgiveness in Jesus.  So as you journey through this Lent season, I pray that you are reminded of your forgiveness which Jesus has purchased just for you, and which you share with every other Christian in the world!

Another of God's Lessons

Please forgive me if I don't make a point very quickly to this blog post.  It's one of those things that is a pretty difficult concept to put into words and to make it make any kind of sense.  So please bear with me.

Yesterday, I was driving from my gym back up to work after my run.  I happened to get behind this white car with a neighboring state license plate.  This car was going a few MPH under the speed limit, and didn't seem to really be paying too much attention to the road.  When we came up to a stop sign, the driver waited for another car to go through, even though the white car had the right of way.  And then, to make matters worse in my eyes, this car was going almost exactly along the same route that I was taking back to work.

I admit that I was very frustrated.  The driver of the white car didn't seem to be too aware of the rules of the road.  That driver also didn't seem to really care much about how his/her driving impacted others, at least in my eyes.  But I remember a thought entering my mind right about the time we pulled up the four way stop, a thought that really unsettled me.

Isn't that exactly how we must seem to God?  Think of it.  He created us, and in doing so, He established a number of "rules" of life in how we should live with each other.  And yet, as you venture through life, don't you come across a number of people that just seem like they aren't aware of the rules of life?  And even if they happen to be aware of them, how many seem to still do their own thing, regardless of the situation or who may be around?

To send Jesus not only to live among people who are like that, but to actually be patient with them, to want them to know that they are His very own, and that He loves them, seems to defy any kind of sense of logic.  I have to admit that I will probably never love the driver of that white car.  And yet, God is so very patient with us when we are like that driver.  When we don't seem to know the rules of life, God is still patient with us.  When we do our own thing and don't really care how it affects other people, God still looks to be patient with us, and to forgive us.

I have to admit that I will never fully understand that attitude of God toward us.  Sure, in my life, I'll find glimpses of it coming to life.  But then, I find myself looking for that opening so I can just get away from the white car drivers of my life.  I may not hold it against them once I'm past them, but while they are in my sights, I sure don't seem to be very caring or compassionate or patient with them.

Can you relate to that?  Does thinking about how God would react toward that other person affect the way you react toward them? 

Ash Wednesday

Today is the one day of the year that you are somewhat likely to see someone at work, school, or walking down the street or in the store with a big cross of ashes on their forehead.  Why is that?  It's because today is the Christian holy day known as Ash Wednesday.

What is Ash Wednesday?  Well, for starters, it's the day that kicks off the season of Lent for many liturgical based Christian churches.  Every year, on the Wednesday that comes 40 days (not counting Sundays) before Easter, the Christian church enters the season of Lent.  Over the next few days, I'll further explain a bit about this season of the church year.

But what is Ash Wednesday, and why the ashes?  Well, it all begins with how God was at work when Jesus suffered and died on the cross.  In that action, Jesus (being both the one true God and fully human at the same time) died with the sin and sins of the entire world.  All the sin and sins of the world died with Him as He carried them into death.  And then, in rising back to life, Jesus declared Himself to be more powerful than our sin and even death itself.

So first of all, Ash Wednesday is a reminder that God has dealt with our sin.  In several places in the Bible, God speaks of Himself as a consuming fire, and as a refining fire.  Basically, what gets consumed in God's presence is all that is sinful.  Sin is burned away and reduced to ash when it comes before the God who calls Himself a consuming fire.

As Christians, we understand that God has consumed our sin in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.  In that action, our sin has been consumed, as though it is now ashes in the sight of God.  Therefore, the ashes that many Christians wear on their foreheads today is a mark of our full and complete forgiveness in the sight of God, because of Jesus and the cross.

That's ultimately the meaning of the cross of ashes.  The person who wears them is declaring to the world that they are one whose sins are as ashes in the sight of God.  By wearing those ashes in the shape of the cross, they are also declaring that God has done this for them through Jesus and the cross, and that they are forgiven sinners because of that loving action.

Radical Grace

I regularly get the opportunity to speak with individuals about the Bible.  This is one of my greatest joys, especially when I get the chance to meet regularly with a person or group of people, where we can build upon the things that we talked about before.  And one thing that I really take a lot of joy in is talking about God's grace that He gives so freely to us.

As I've read more of the Bible, and as I've come to a greater understanding of God's grace, I've also come to realize just how radical and even controversial that grace can be.  The root of the word that we translate as grace comes from the Greek word "charitas", from which we get our word charity.  Just imagine if you were to read through your Bible, and every time you encounter the word grace, you replaced it with charity.  Do you think that it might make a difference in how you understand those different Bible verses?

That's the thing that I have grown to see about God's grace, and that I still find myself struggling with.  Grace is, by its nature, undeserved.  We never do anything to deserve charity.  Instead, it's something that is given to us because we have such a need.  When this comes from God, it means that God gives us freely of those things that we do not deserve.  God forgives us, even though we have done nothing to deserve it.  God makes us His own people, even though we are rebels and sinful and want to exalt ourselves.  God gives us an inheritance of a life that never ends with Him, even though we daily sin by our thoughts, words, and actions, and even though, at the heart of who we are, we are sinful.

To believe that we do absolutely nothing to receive God's grace is downright humbling, and even offensive to us as humans.  We want to believe that we do something, even if it's simply choosing to believe in God.  We want to think that we have to understand God and His grace before we can receive such grace.  We simply cannot stand that God would give love and forgiveness freely, without any action or activity on our part.

Grace isn't so difficult to understand, at least in terms of what it is.  That God freely gives His grace to usis really what is so challenging.  And that's why, in the end, it has to be that way.  You and I, as humans, simply cannot fathom that God would give such priceless treasures so freely, and so the only course left open to God is to give them in that way.  Thanks be to God for His grace!

For God, For Others, Both, Or Neither?

One of the more interesting discussions that I have with people tends to revolve around the reason that we do good thing in life.  As you can imagine, every person seems to have their own idea on why they do the good that they do in life.  For some, it comes from their desire to please others, or to do what others expect of them.  For others, it comes from a desire to do the good that God would expect of us.  And yet, for others, they may not actually care too much one way or the other if they do good, or if it impacts others.

This is actually a line of thought that I have been having for some time.  So I'll start out by posing a brief question, and then showing the different ways that we could answer it.  The question is: Do we do good things for God, for others, for both, or for neither?  How we answer this question says a lot about how we understand God and how we understand life.

If we tend to do our good things for God, then usually we try to tie up those good things in some way with proving that we are good to God.  We do something nice for our neighbor, and we expect God to "reward" us, or think that we have earned some kind of points in His eyes.  The reality is, there are a number of places in the Bible that we could look to support this view.  We hear Jesus saying that if we give a cup of water to one of His followers, we have done it for Him.  That would seem to suggest that the good we do is done for God.

At the same time, we could also say that we do good for the benefit of our neighbor, and not necessarily directly for God.  After all, does God need that cup of water that we give to someone else?  That hardly seems likely.  Therefore, we did something good for the benefit of our neighbor.  God doesn't "gain" anything from our action, and so the primary beneficiary is our neighbor.

Of course, there is always someone out there who will say that the same action of giving a cup of water is done both for God and for the neighbor.  While God does not directly benefit from the cup of water, it fits in line with His desire that we love our neighbors as ourselves.  It directly benefits our neighbor because it is an action of love and care, which helps to build up the community in which we live.  It shares godly love with others, which is something that both God and our neighbor desire.

There are always those who will try to answer this in another way, though.  They are the ones who say that God has made them right through Jesus, and that's all that matters, and so they don't "have" to do good for their neighbor.  While it is true that faith in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is what makes us right with God, having security in that relationship does not excuse us from our earthly relationships with one another.  This is where we don't do them directly for God, but a refusal to do them is also to live in such a way that is contrary to how God created us to live life together, which is simply another way of saying that we live in sin.

So why do you do good in life?  I hope these thoughts help you think that question through and bring a little clarity into the difference between doing good for God and doing good for others.

Reaction to the News: When the Goverment places Demands on Faith Life

Let me start off by saying that, in my own personal mind, as well as that of the church body that I represent, I/we typically prefer not to have to make statements about governmental type issues.  With that said, every once in a while, there are particular issues that simply cannot be left without giving input, insight, and sharing my/our thoughts without betraying my/our conscience.

For those who keep up with political things, you know that universal health care has been a goal of the government for quite some time.  Our current President has been seeking that goal as part of his term in office, and this is an admirable thing.  However, when the governing officials seek to put parts of that program in place which go against the faith and beliefs of people, our particular belief is that they then have overstepped their boundaries.

The current issue that is at hand is not that the government wants to provide universal health care.  That effort is applauded.  The issue at hand is when there are provisions in that program which clearly betray faith and belief.  Can you imagine passing a health care law that would require the Amish to bring in surgery and other technology into their society, and then having them simply accept that without any protest?  Hardly.  And so the same thing goes when the government includes the necessity of providing abortion-causing provisions into their health care plan.

I and my church body commend the government for wanting to provide for the needs of everyone in our country.  However, when that same government forces individuals and groups to include things that go against their faith and practice, they must be resisted.  As I and my church body believe that God creates life when conception first takes place, being forced to provide drugs that would kill that new, precious life simply cannot be accepted.

I applaud the leader of my church body for making a statement before Congress today to express our beliefs and consciences.  My prayer is that our elected leaders hear the cry of many Christians (and perhaps many others) and recognize that they can achieve their goal of universal health care without including provisions that betray the conscience of many.  I had to admit that I will always remain skeptical of their ability and willingness to do this, and simply hope and pray that our God will continue to shower His grace upon His people, who seek to follow in the way that He created us.

Being Truly Human

As I've mentioned before, I do a lot of reading.  Some of it is required reading, especially those books that I have to read as I study for my Doctor of Ministry degree.  Over the past week, I just finished a fascinating book, called "Theology is for Proclamation" by Gerhard Forde.  For those who want to take a deep look at the relationship between systematic theology and preaching, this is a good (albeit academic) book.

One point that Forde made has really made me think quite a bit.  He talks about Jesus being true man.  We confess that belief in the Apostles' Creed, where we confess that Jesus is both true God and true man.  But I found his thoughts on what it means to be true man (for Jesus) utterly fascinating.

When God created man, the first man and woman "knew" who they were in relation to God.  God was the creator, and was "above" them.  But when they were tempted by the serpent, he caused them to think that they could strive to be like God.  After all, that was the temptation.  "You could be like God, knowing good and evil."  By taking that step, the man and woman "fell" into sin by over-reaching their role in relationship to God.  Previously they had been His loved and perfect creation.  But now, in their lives, they sought to be like God, thus exalting themselves to a place that was never intended for them.

Here's where Jesus being true man then really strikes home.  In His entire life, Jesus never once sought to be more than what He was in relation to God the Father.  Jesus was the Son, and never sought to rise above that.  Jesus was completely human, and never sought to be more than that as He lived in this world.  Even when it came to the Father's will for Him, Jesus did not question if the Father really knew better than He did about what was best for Jesus.  Instead, Jesus willingly accepted what the Father's will was, even though it meant being betrayed, abandoned, persecuted, beaten, and put to death.

That's what it means to be truly human, at least as I understood it from Forde's thoughts.  And that actually makes a lot of sense to me.  When we question God, in one respect, we are trying to tell God that we know what's good for us better than He does.  When something happens in life and we complain to God about it, we're saying that we know what God should and shouldn't do in our lives.  Each of these, and there are many more examples of things we do like this, show that we simply cannot remain merely God's created, loved creation, but instead, we strive to be God in our lives to some degree or another.

Being truly human means that we recognize that we live completely at God's mercy and by God's grace.  Our trouble is that we simply cannot see what God is accomplishing when things happen in our lives that we don't like.  If we knew what God was accomplishing when we were suffering, or when a family member was hurting or dying, we'd probably be a bit more able to accept our place in our relationship with God.  However, because sin has cut us off from that connection, we are left with no alternative but to seek out the place of God.

As I said, I'm fascinated by this thought.  I've tended to think about Jesus becoming like us as a human being, and have rarely given thought to the fact that Jesus came to be truly human, and what that means for us.  I'm thankful for Forde for making me think about things like this.

Doctoral Reading

This summer I am scheduled to take my next two classes toward my doctoral degree.  This year, my time for reading is going to be a little shorter than before, as Carrie and I are expecting our first child in early May.  My classes are the last two weeks in June, so I want to have everything done prior to that birth.  Believe me, it will mean some good time reading in the next few months.

Think about the many books that you have seen about faith matters.  Have you had some that have been more inspirational than others?  How about some that have simply been informative?  I typically get at least one or two things out of every book I read, even if I disagree with the author. 

The thing that I always strive to keep in mind is that the reading of all these books will never take the place of the simple message of God's Good News.  Only the book which conveys God's Word to people can make true changes to people's life and faith.  All these other books, no matter how helpful, simply are not God's Gospel message.

This isn't to say that reading is a bad thing.  On the contrary, I believe in being well-read simply because it makes you clarify your thoughts and beliefs more than if you never encountered those other things.  The danger, of course, is that we start to slip because of a persuasive argument on the part of an author, or when we start putting knowledge ahead of God.

So go ahead and read.  In fact, I would love to hear about the many books that you all are reading.  From time to time, I'll ever share some on here with you (in summary fashion, of course), and whether or not I recommend them.

What Really Happened? Sunday School Endings

For those of us who grew up in Christian churches, it's very likely that we attended Sunday School.  In those classes, we probably learned a lot about a number of Bible stories.  However, as I have grown up and looked over those same stories, I've noticed that our Sunday School lessons tended to end with a happy ending.  However, the actual Bible stories often didn't end so nice and neat.

So today, I'm just going to put a few Sunday School stories up here.  Your task is to see if you know the true, grisly ending of these.  (If you need to consult your Bible, that's okay!)

Elijah and Mt. Carmel: Elijah challenges the Ba'al prophets to a showdown.  While they wail around for their god all day, Elijah taunts them.  Then he dumps a lot of water on his altar, and fire from heaven consumes the sacrifice.  What is the next interaction between Elijah and those false prophets?

Jonah: Jonah refuses to go to Ninevah.  Instead, he gets on a ship going the other way.  When a storm arises, Jonah is thrown overboard, to be swallowed up by a big fish.  He's then vomited out on the beach, and this time goes to Ninevah.  He preaches, and the people repent.  How does Jonah feel about this?

Daniel and the lion's den: Daniel ignores a command to only pray to the king.  He gets caught and spends the night in the lion's pit.  The next morning, he's still alive, and the king is overjoyed because he cares for Daniel.  What happens next, especially to the people who caused Daniel to be thrown in the lion's pit?  What about their families?

As you look at these answers, you'll probably find out that the Bible isn't the cute little story that we learned as children!

Reaction to the News: The Powell Story

By now most of you have probably seen at least one or two news stories about the recent house explosion in Washington state, bringing something of an end to the two year old story of a missing woman in Utah.  (Yes, the story really won't 'end' until they find her body, but a lot of the mystery of what happened to her seems to have come to light with the events of the weekend.)  Living in Utah, this story has frequently cropped back into our news from time to time.

First of all, I have to say that my thoughts and prayers are with so many different people in this story.  Grandparents, relatives, family, friends, but also people such as all the law enforcement officers who have worked so diligently on this story, as well as all of those who had to make legal decisions that were, undoubtedly, not so easy to make.

One thought I have had since the house explosion story came out on Sunday is just how unfair many people may be toward people such as the judge(s) who allowed home visitation, or the officers who seemed to know what happened, but didn't have enough evidence to secure an arrest warrant.  It's very easy to look back and ask why they didn't see all the signs and take steps to prevent such a tragedy.

Yet, I would also like to say this.  If the authorities had stepped in and prevented a father from seeing his children without enough evidence to go to trial, those same people would likely be crying out about the miscarriage of justice in not having enough proof to prevent the man from seeing his kids.  Basically, I believe our expectations can sometimes put those in authority in a no-win situation.

It's refreshing to read the meaning of the fourth commandment in its brief explanation in my church's catechism.  The commandment says to "honor your father and mother."  The explanation goes on to say that we should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them. 

In a big way, that means that we understand that the authorities have a difficult job to do, and what we may think is black and white often is grey in their eyes.  With the level of the burden of proof that we insist upon as a nation in order to arrest and imprison someone, their jobs are not always easy.  Often they probably know things that we don't, but cannot prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.  That's usually when we get upset that they didn't take action, when the reality is, we have placed such a high level of proof on them that they simply cannot take action.

I watched the reactions of several law enforcement officers to the explosion.  At least two called this action "evil", to which I agree.  The presence of evil, not to mention the presence of sin, can cause practically anyone to do things that we seem to be shocked by.  In this case, I believe that there was a good deal of evil at work in many different ways.

This is why my Lutheran church body has always had prayers asking for God to thwart the working of the evil one.  Over the past couple of days, I have been reminded of why we are encouraged to pray such prayers.  I hope that you will join with me in asking God to do His good and gracious will of overcoming Satan and his companions.

Grace that Spills Over

...my cup overflows...  King David, written in Psalm 23

...the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life... Jesus in John chapter 4

Near where I live, there used to be a natural spring that you could see from the road.  In fact, that spring was literally within about 30 feet of the road.  It was a natural spring, which means that it couldn't be capped.  Every day when my wife and I would drive by it, we'd see it bubbling out.  At one point, the property owners had even put a hose on it, and had it spraying over this tree.  I have to say, it looked pretty cool in the winter when the water would freeze up all around the tree.

The thing with that spring is that you could never stop the water from flowing out of it.  If you were to dig a pool around it, the pool would fill up, and then would overflow.  The water from the pool would spill over all around the pool.  Anything near that pool would be touched or drenched by the water from that living spring.

I picture God's grace in a very similar kind of way.  King David noted that God would fill his cup so full that it would overflow, even in the presence of his enemies.  In the other saying above, Jesus spoke to a woman by a well, telling her that He would give water that would spring up inside and lead to eternal life.  In both of those instances, we are hearing, in some form or fashion, about God's grace.

We may have a tendency to think about God's grace simply filling up our cups.  We recognize that God does great things for us, and that these cover us completely.  God's forgiveness covers our sins.  God's compassion and healing covers our wounds.  And yet, it seems that there is even more to God and His grace.

Just imagine that you are His cup which is overflowing with grace.  Just like that natural spring I described earlier, you are leaking grace everywhere you go.  That's the kind of picture that God seems to paint of us, His people.  Our cups overflow with His grace, and that grace then spills out from us to everyone that we encounter.  We are, in a sense, God's fountain of grace to others.

I think that's a rather neat picture, and something that I need to constantly keep in mind as I encounter others.  There is never a time in my life where God's grace will not be overflowing into my life, which means that there is never a time where I cannot share that same grace with others around me.  My hope and prayer is that I remember that daily, and that I go forth as God's cup of overflowing grace toward others.

Being Right and Showing Compassion

Every once in a while, I find myself in an argument with my wife or other important people in my life.  I have come to realize that I have a very strong desire to show that I am right in what I'm thinking when these kinds of situations arise.  This is, perhaps, even more pronounced when I know that I'm right about something.

The thing is, I often find that it seems to be more important to prove that I am right to the other person than it is to help them know things rightly.  Now, I realize that this seems to be a confusing statement, so please allow me a moment to explain.

Let's say that I'm right about something, and you are wrong.  From a purely selfish motivation, I want to prove that I am right because that also proves that you are wrong.  In a way, that puts me a step above you, and I really like having that 'high road', so to speak.  So my intention can be to prove that I'm right and you are wrong simply because it exalts me over you in some way.

Now, let's contrast that with this.  Let's say that I'm right about cigarettes being harmful to your health, but you are insisting that it's okay for you to smoke.  Instead of proving that I'm right and on a 'higher road' than you, what if I were trying to show you the problems with smoking because you are so special, and because I don't want you to lose out on the impediments that smoking will likely bring on your life.  I want you to get the most out of life, and to be around to see your grandkids, and not to have to go through challenges that could arise with lung cancer.  I don't want you to have to feel short of breath all the time, and I want you to be able to do everything you want in life, and the best way to do that is to show you that smoking will keep you from those things.

Do you see a major difference in those two approaches?  One is primarily focused on me and my need to be correct.  The other is looking to your good and benefit.  Even though I'm right in both cases, you're probably going to be much more receptive to the second approach than to the first.

Sadly, I think that there is a lot of that first approach by Christians toward one another, and especially toward those who aren't Christian.  In many respects, we want to show that we are smarter, or more faithful, or some other ego-feeding trait.  We want to exalt our knowledge, or our faith, or our way of life, and want nothing more than for others to see that we're right, they're wrong, and then to change so that they are more like us.

I can imagine that this approach probably won't win a lot of points with others.  But when we change that approach to one of compassion and care for the other person rather than for our own benefit, it would stand to reason that we could bear more fruit.  I'm not saying that it will suddenly change everything, but suggest that such a compassionate approach is more likely to have others hear us and listen to us, which then gives the Holy Spirit a greater occasion to do His work of changing and converting hearts and souls.

As I say this, I recognize that I'm also including myself in what I'm saying.  I don't have this down pat, by any stretch of the imagination.  But as that awareness grows within me, I know that I hope to change.  I don't want to be that person who is always trying to be right to feed my own ego.  I want to be that person that others say is so compassionate and really does seem to want what is best for them in their life.  In my eyes, that seems to open far more doors to the message of God's grace than if I'm simply trying to feed my own need to be right.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Arguments?  I'd love to hear them!

Simplicity and Complexity

Up front, I have to admit one of my faults.  I'm one of those people who can take a very simple idea and make it complex.  Someone may say something like, "Let's go rake the leaves," and I'll try to come up with the most efficient plan for doing it, as well as figuring out how to rake the leaves to a particular position in the lawn where they won't be subjected to the wind, and where we have to carry the disposal bins the least distance.  I can overplan something simple as this.

Over the last few years, I have read a number of church related books dealing with making things simple.  The primary author whose books I have been reading is Thom Rainer, president (I believe) of Lifeway, a Christian bookstore chain.  He has written a number of books on simplifying things, like churches, life, and everything in between.  And I have really started to appreciate what he has been writing about.

When I think about the message that God shared with us through Jesus, one of the things I most enjoy about studying it is that it is such a simple message, but one with so much depth that we humans will never mine it to its depths.  That simple message is that God created the world perfectly, but that the very first man and woman disobeyed God, and that disobedience (the biblical word is sin) is now entangled in all of us, and is inseparable.    But God had compassion on the world, sending Jesus to take the sin and guilt of all of that, and kill it on the cross.  In God's grace, every single sin of this world has been conquered and destroyed, and God gives the promise of a new life where those things will never haunt us again.  We receive that grace through our faith in that action of God in Jesus and the cross and the resurrection.  Such a simple message.

But being humans, we have a tendency to take simple things like this and make them incredibly complicated.  Since we have such a hard time understanding how God could do all this by His grace, we want to find some way that we have a role in it.  Or, we start to say that people who are engaged in sinful activities (usually hand-picked ones that we like to get up on our soapboxes about) cannot receive that grace until they change their life.  (Think of the irony of that statement: you can't get God's undeserved love and favor until you show that you deserve it by changing your life.  Weird, eh?)  Or we try to discover some basic level of competence that you have to have in understanding the teachings of the church before you really have God's grace.  (Again, you can't receive God's undeserved love and favor until you "know" certain things, sounds almost like a gnostic heresy which was condemned way back in the life of St. John.) 

And what makes this even more incredible?  God still shows His grace to us in spite of our all too human efforts to make that simple message complex.  Even though we may try our best to show why we deserve God's grace the most, God still makes it clear that our faith in His loving action in Jesus, no matter how strong or how flickering it may be, is still enough to receive that gift.

So simple!  Only God, whose mind is truly far above ours, could come up with something so simple.

Memorization

We all probably had to do it at some point growing up.  We had to memorize something, whether it was the states and their capitals, some Bible verses for some program at our church, addition and multiplication tables, or something similar.  While some of us may have been better at memorizing than others, the reality is that we all had to do some kind of memory work at some point in our life.

Lately I have been awed by my wife.  She took a challenge last year of memorizing two Bible verses each month.  She would write them out on note cards and hang them on the mirror in our bathroom.  I can't tell you how many times I have read those Bible verses, and I know she worked hard to seal them all up in her mind.  Who knows, at this very moment, she might be able to recite them all!

One of the traditions of the church body that I belong to is memorizing some of the basic fundamentals of what we believe in the Christian faith.  These basics are outlined in a book called a catechism, which is from the Greek word which simply means something along the lines of instruction.  We spend time memorizing things like the Ten Commandments and some meanings to them, the Apostles' Creed and its meaning, the Lord's Prayer, and other significant things like the meaning of Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and Confession and Forgiveness (Absolution).

Each year, to hear the kids tell it, you'd think that this memorization was torture.  I hear it all the time.  "I can't do this."  "It's too long."  "Why do I need to memorize this?"  And yes, I have to admit that explaining the long term benefits of memorization to 7th and 8th grade students is pretty much a practice in futility.  For some reason, when we are that age, we have a hard time seeing the big picture.

Why do memorization work?  In part, I have come to believe that it really does give us a foundation for our faith, and somewhere to turn at any point during the day when we feel the need to call upon God's name for His help.  It's something like a piano player who learns his scales.  I've been told that many great players would spend time every day practicing scales, the very basics.  After all, practically everything they play is an extension of the basic scales that every first-time piano player learns and practices.

I don't know why we think of our faith in a different way than that.  Perhaps it's that we tend to think of God's saving action in Jesus as a one-time, 'it's all done' kind of thing, and so we don't have to worry about it.  However, the longer that I work in my career, the more I see that our faith really does have an impact on things that we do or experience every day. 

So as we come across those various points in our lives, having a foundation of what we believe helps us think about God's design and intention for what we do as His people in every situation.  Sure, not every situation in life will fit directly into the things we memorize and know.  However, when we think of what we have learned and memorized as the foundation, then we see that our life and experience merely builds on that foundation.

So what do you think you would benefit from knowing by heart as you live your Christian life?  What could you memorize to help build that foundation which gives you strength as you live your life?