Teacher: Good Or Bad?

Hey, Y'all,

Hope your week's coming to a successful conclusion with a restful weekend on the horizon. Today's RST is brief but powerful and is based on a statement by Jon Walker of PurposeDrivenLife.com...

We may be good teachers or we may be bad teachers,
but teachers we all are.

Got me thinking...those are words to live by, and really where the rubber meets the road for this whole "Christianity-as-philosophy-of-life thing"--i.e., the counter-intuitive and totally revolutionary 'kingdom' Christ demonstrated and set as our example: overcome evil with good (not escalation), selfishness with selflessness (not more self-seeking narcissism), loving our enemies (not just our loved ones) and doing good to them that hate us (not just those who do good to us). Pretty hardcore, huh?

And check out the last part of Galatians 5 (hey! gotta get out a quick 'oft-discussed-passage-shout-out' to the fellas from the men's group--can't wait to get goin' again this summer, brothers! OK, back to our regularly scheduled RST) for a quick summary of the life lived with me at the helm versus the one I'm aspiring to live with God on the throne: that's some stuff there. Hmmm...also reminds me of a favorite (and sometimes painfully convicting) saying:

People may forget what you said,
but you can bet they'll remember what you did.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control--regardless of circumstances...
How am I doing?

You've been prayed for today...

Where, O Death, Is Your Victory?

Hey, Y'all,

Another quiet, contemplative RST today...

Got some more sad news over the weekend, that my cousins Todd and Michelle unexpectedly lost their father...And again the question presses in--what do you say? What can you say when words are so hopelessly limited in the face of that kind of loss? Reminds me of a quote of Max Lucado's that talks about tears being messengers that tumble from our eyes and down our cheeks to splash on the floors of our hearts where crippled words can not go.

Primos, Amanda, others of you traversing the valley of the shadow of death--there are no words, there really aren't. The only thing there is, is the belief that this is NOT all there is...

God will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.
There shall be no more pain,
for the former things have passed away.
Revelation 21:4

I also think of Paul, almost defiant in his insistence, looking forward to that day when his quoting of Hosea in 1 Corinthians 15 will finally ring true and not hollow...

Death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?

So, you've all been prayed for today as always, and that prayer contains not a little of the closing of Revelation 22, the very end of the Bible...

He who testifies to these things says,
"Look! I am coming quickly."
So be it! Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.

Amen.

Reply: On Dust And Reality

Warning: puns aplenty in the first part of this RST (and a little alliteration as well) --- yikes! somebody stop me! :-) First is a reply on the last RST from Ronnie (thanks, brother).

Nothing like a "fresh" reminder to bring me "back down to earth." Ahhhhhh, "dust"...I thought there was something vaguely familiar and comforting in thinking how good it feels to admit to myself and to God what a real, genuine "dirt bag" I am! [ed.: it's probably just me, but sometimes I'm much more "dusty" or "dirt-bag-ish" than others :-)].

Got me thinking about other people who've commented on our weakness and "dust-like-ness"--including Job, David, and Paul.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,The moon and the stars, which You have made; What is man that You take thought of him,And the children of men that You care for them? Psalm 8:3,4

Lord, what are human beings that you should notice them,mere mortals that you should think about them?For we are like a breath of air;our days are like a passing shadow. Psalm 144:3,4

We do not have a High Priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:15,16

But here, for my money, is the punchline:

"He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' ... So when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9,10.

His grace is sufficient, and my acknowledgment of my my weakness, of my need, enables Him to exercise His power on my behalf (it's my lame and at times downright counterproductive efforts at "being strong" that interfere with His work--interesting, huh?). When you are weak--and realize it--then you are strong because you've asked for His presence, His influence, in your life. Good deal.

You've been prayed for today...

The Real Me, The Real Him

Hey, Y'all,

Today we're checking out another thought of Yancey's on prayer...

"We must lay before Him what is in us,
not what ought to be in us."
C.S. Lewis

It occurred to me one day that though I often worry about whether or not I sense the presence of God, I give little thought to whether God senses the presence of me when I pray. When I come before God in prayer, do I bare the deepest, most hidden parts of myself? Only when I do so will I discover myself as I truly am, for nothing short of God's light can reveal that...Prayer invites me to bring my whole life into God's presence for cleansing and restoration... Underneath the layers of grime lies a damaged work of art that God longs to repair and restore...

Do I trust God with my real self? Foolishly, I hide myself in fear that God will be displeased, when in fact the hiding may be what displeases God most. From my side, the wall I erect seems like self-protection; from God's side it looks like lack of trust. In either case the wall will keep us apart until I acknowledge my need and God's surpassing desire to meet it. When I finally approach God, in fear and trembling, I find not a tyrant, but a lover...

"He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are from the earth,
so great is His love for those who fear Him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him;
for He knows how we are formed,
He remembers that we are dust."

Psalm 103:10-14

You've been prayed for today...

Back To Prayer

Hey, Y'all,

Well, another week is upon us--hope you're well-rested and good-to-go ('cause one way or the other, Monday's coming :-) Today's RST is short and sweet and segues us back to Yancey's book on prayer. It's a familiar text, Romans 8:26, a favorite verse of mine, 'cause, as we discussed in Sabbath School yesterday, I don't have all the facts. Not even close. I wish I did (I think); I often interpret circumstances and make decisions as if I do; but the truth is, I don't. Ever. So it's reassuring that God cuts us some slack (again :-) and meets us (more than) half-way:

God's Spirit is right alongside, helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.

Got any wordless sighs or aching groans? God's right there with you. Don't know how to pray or what to pray for? God's right there with you. Just stop for a second and tell Him about it.

You've been prayed for today...

I Will Be With You

Hey, Y'all,

Kind of a more contemplative RST today...also a little longer than usual, but it's been a few extra days, and you're big boys and girls, you can handle it :-)

Been a difficult past few days (weeks, actually, now that I think about it)--not for me, though I have been crazy busy so it hasn't entirely been a walk in the park (taking some creative liberties with the image of my friend Maximus sweatin' and hollerin' at boot camp captures perfectly where I am and brings a wry grin to my face: "I'm full of joy this fine morning, Senior Chief!").

But definitely a difficult stretch for a lot of people I care about, hence making my "light and momentary trials" pale laughably by comparison. There's been way more than the usual turnover at the top of my prayer list these past few days and weeks, and not the good kind. Friends dealing with crazy stuff, some with really difficult stuff, relative near-misses in some cases, and painful bull's-eyes in others...I think especially of my good friend Amanda whose father passed away yesterday after an unexpected, brief, intense illness.

I was talking with another friend about this rough patch and she said, "I don't know what to say to these people." Don't know what to say. Think about it. Funny how utterly hollow and devoid of meaning all the elegant treatises we've read and heard on "The Problem of Suffering"* sound right now. Funny how all those well-reasoned arguments we've embraced in sunnier times leave us cold now. Yeah, I know, there are innumerable texts and passages that address the issue and may in fact bring comfort and peace and reassurance, but it's funny how the only passage repeatedly rolling around my head does not feature God giving us some magical incantation to make the problem go away, or some secret technique to dull the pain. Nope.

Funny, the only passage that brings any semblance of comfort doesn't fix the problem--it just reassures us that God is aware of us, what's more He cares deeply about us, He knows that we suffer sometimes, and He gives His word that He is never going to leave our side while we patiently endure and pass through these difficult times. Maybe that's why this text (Isaiah 43:2) is always the first one to spring to my mind, maybe that's why it's so thoroughly, deeply engraved in my head and heart. When we hurt we don't want to hear eloquent speeches. When we hurt we want loved ones nearby--what they say or fail to say is completely immaterial; we just want them close by.

"When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not consume you."

"I'll be with you," He says. Alright. I'm trusting You. I need You here with me. And I love how He responds; in the verses immediately preceding and following the above statement, He says, "This is what The Lord says, He who created you, He who formed you...For I am your God, your Savior." I will be with you. That's the kind of God I need.

You've been prayed for today...



*(For those who hadn't heard it put that way before, "The Problem of Suffering" takes many forms but fundamentally asks the question, "If there is an all-loving, all-powerful God, then how can there be suffering in the world? He must be either be incapable of preventing suffering--rendering Him less than omnipotent, or He must be unwilling to prevent suffering--which renders Him less than completely benevolent." Prickly problem--must be, 'cause it's been debated for millenia--and everyone at some point has to wrestle with it for themselves. My take on it has been to (try to) accept that I don't have all the facts; I need to add one more "all-something" characteristic of God's to the argument, and that is that He is all-knowing, that He can see every repercussion of every event everywhere, through all of time, and that He can see the end from the beginning, not only here on earth but everywhere in the universe, and thus He is the only one with the entire "Big Picture" in His head. He then tells me, "Trust me. I know this is painful, I know it's not fair, I know you hurt. But trust me. I know how The Story ends--yours, humanity's, the entire titanic struggle against evil. Trust me. I am your God, your Savior; this all works out in the end." So I trust Him, all the while trying desperately to remember that I don't have all the facts, and that even if I did, as a favorite quote of Ellen White's reassures me, "God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning." So I trust our heavenly Father, 'cause really, that's all you can do--when you don't have all the facts).

Not It

Hey, Y'all,

Hope you had a blessed Easter Weekend, rich in time with family and friends. Brings to mind memories of playing my trumpet as a kid in an Episcopal church in Miami (my first paying gig--sweet!) and how they would greet one another before (and say farewell after) the service with the give-and-response, "He is risen!" "He is risen indeed!" True, and for proof of that transcendent truth you almost don't need the empty tomb--His presence in our hearts and minds speaks volumes; Christ is risen indeed.

Here are some thoughts of Yancey's on humility and prayer...

In words that apply directly to prayer, Peter says, "'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." Note the progression: humility, the step down, makes possible God's lifting us up. By trying to be strong I in fact block God's power on my behalf...

As theologian Daniel Hawk puts it, "The basic human problem is that everyone believes that 'there is a God--and I am it.'" We need a strong corrective, and for me prayer offers that very corrective. Why value humility in our approach to God? Because it accurately reflects the truth. Most of what I am--my nationality and mother tongue, my race and my intelligence, the century in which I was born and the fact that I am alive and relatively healthy--I had little or no control over. On a larger scale, I cannot affect the rotation of our planet, nor the orbit that maintains a proper distance from the sun so that we neither freeze nor roast, nor the gravitational forces that somehow keep our spinning galaxy in exquisite balance with innumerable others.

There is a God, and I am not it.

You've been prayed for today...

Faintest Light

Hey, Y'all,

I really enjoyed letting today's short-and-sweet words-to-live-by RST rattle around my head all day yesterday, so I'm sending it out today--thanks Gladys!

"Even the faintest light pushes away the darkness."

How cool was that?
(BTW, you've been prayed for today).