The SwitchPoint

The Only Aim In Life

2010-08-29T12:55:00.007-04:00

I read something rather in a news magazine the other day that I found disturbing. It was quoting Freud from his 1920 essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he said, “The only aim in life is death.”

There was a time in my life when I might have agreed with Freud. There is something simple and elegant about this statement. It is sort of like the phrase, “The only sure thing in life is death and taxes!” Our destiny is death (and we pay some taxes along the way), so it would seem that Freud was on to something.

In his original essay, Freud painted a picture of humanity struggling between two opposing instincts or drives: Eros, which worked toward creativity, harmony, sexual connection, reproduction, and self preservation; and Thanatos, which worked toward destruction, repetition, aggression, compulsion, and self-destruction.[1] According to Freud, this second drive, or death instinct as he called it, explained certain behaviors.

When I reflected on Freud’s claim, though, I realized that it would be a mistake to think it is true just because Freud said it. It would be foolish to accept it as right just because it was in a print.

As Christians, we are called to use our minds to discern right from wrong and truth from falsehood in the world around us. When Jesus gave us the greatest commandment, he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”⁽^a)[2]God wants us to use our mind to understand what is true and right.

Jesus is the only Author of Truth and is the only One who is Right. As we reflect on that, we realize that Freud was dead wrong. The only aim in life is not death. The only aim in life is life! Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”^{^[3]} He also said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”^{^[4]} Jesus wants us to live our lives as fully as we can in fellowship with him and one another. Our aim is not death, but life! That is our true destiny.

That is where faith comes in. While the psychologists and philosophers try to understand the struggles of life, their view is typically two-dimensional at best. It is flat. When faith enters the picture, it is like adding a third dimension to the frame that the world’s experts could never see.

As Christians, we are in the world but are not meant to be of the world. Faith opens our eyes to something previously unseen and our hearts to something previously unknown. And as we grow in faith, we grow in life. Abundant life. Resurrected life. Eternal life. That is the promise of our Lord.

The only aim in life is not death. It is life. As Jesus asked his disciples, “Do you believe this?”

[1] http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/concepts/life_death_drives.htm

(a) Deut. 6:5

[2] The Holy Bible : New International Version. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Mt 22:37

[3] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Jn 10:10b

[4] The Holy Bible : New International Version. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Jn 11:25-26

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Why is the Sky Blue?

2010-06-06T17:06:00.002-04:00

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world” (Matthew 13L34-35).

If you are a parent or have ever worked with children, you know that there is a certain age where they start to ask “why” questions. Why is the sky blue? Why does it get dark at night? Why can’t I have ice cream for breakfast? These questions begin innocuously enough, but eventually they wear you out. It is no wonder that adults resort to statements like, “Just because!” and “Because I said so!”

Consider how difficult it is to answer a child who asks, “Why is the sky blue?” Where do you go with that? As an engineer, I tried the scientific approach with my daughters: “Well, white light is made up of different colors with different wavelengths and the longer wavelengths pass right through the air while the shorter ones get scattered by atmospheric molecules. Blue has a short wavelength and gets scattered in all directions so that is why the sky is blue.”

My daughters stared at me as if I was crazy. Then, one of them asked the next logical question. “Why is the sky red during sunset?”

“Just because,” I replied.

How can we explain the physics of nature to children? How can we explain how light behaves when all they know is what they have seen and touched in their short lives? We must simplify our explanations by linking them to something they understand. In my case, I finally showed them how the little glass crystals that hang in their windows become prisms that cast rainbows all over their rooms. While I was only able to offer a partial explanation, at least I could give them a glimpse into how the world worked.

Jesus had a difficult task before him when he came to earth. How could he explain the true nature of God to his children (and we are all God’s children, after all)? How could he explain what the kingdom of heaven was all about when all we knew was what we had seen and touched on this earth? Jesus had to simplify his explanations. He had to make the incomprehensible comprehensible. He had to connect with us in a way where we could catch at least a glimpse into the eternal.

Our Teacher accomplished this by using parables. He began most of them saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” and then went on to tell a story using a real life situation that listeners could understand. (Modern Christians have the added burden of first connecting to the example before interpreting it. Not many of us grew up as shepherds or watched mustard trees grow in our backyard.)

Once he connected with his listeners, Jesus would say something shocking that knocked people off balance. Take the Parable of the Weeds, for example. Any good farmer knew that weeds were bad and needed to be pulled from the field. Yet Jesus said that the wheat and weeds must grow together to avoid uprooting the wheat when pulling the weeds. That is crazy talk! Or is it? Perhaps Jesus was telling us that God was willing to go to any length – even permitting weeds to grow in this world (and in our hearts) – if it enabled him to save even one stalk of wheat. Jesus was telling us something very important about God and the kingdom of heaven. He doesn’t shock us for fun. He simply gives us a glimpse into the kingdom of heaven, and that is shocking enough on its own.

Jesus often said, “He who has ears, let him hear.” May we all have ears to hear as we explore the parables of Jesus.

Many thanks to Chris Gabriel for sharing this example as a way to explain one of the purposes of the parables.

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Happy Pentecost!

2010-05-23T17:07:00.005-04:00

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. (Acts 2:1-3).

Merry Christmas! Happy Easter! Happy Pentecost!

Happy Pentecost? Wait a second. Have you ever seen anybody wish another person a Happy Pentecost? Have you ever seen a present under the Pentecost Tree or children participating in a Pentecost Egg Hunt? Have you ever heard Pentecost carols or observed a Pentecost character in the mall akin to Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? I sure haven’t. Pentecost somehow gets short-changed in the grand scheme of things, and yet it is a big day in the church calendar. It is the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Disciples after Christ’s resurrection and gave birth to the church. That is a big deal.

Like all things in the Christian faith, Pentecost (meaning “count fifty” or “fiftieth”) actually has its roots in Hebrew Scripture. Mosaic Law called for three separate pilgrimage feasts: the Feast of Unleavened Bread (aka Passover), the Feast of Weeks (aka Harvest or FirstFruits), and the Feast of Trumpets (known today as Rosh Hashana or the New Year). These feasts celebrated various aspects of Israelite history and their relationship to God.

Passover, for example, commemorates the freeing of the Israelites from their Egyptian masters and represents a cleansing of the community through the blood of the lamb. As Christians, we believe that Christ was the ultimate Passover lamb, sacrificed so that we might all be free from the slavery of sin and cleansed of our wrongdoing.

Pentecost, as it turns out, has an equally powerful connection to Hebrew Scripture. Moses established the feast himself. In Deuteronomy 16:9-11a, he said, “Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. And rejoice before the Lord…”

The Israelites at the time had a lot to celebrate. God had given them land – the Promised Land – and that land produced sustenance, prosperity, and even the people’s identity. The land came to represent the life that God had given them. That was a big deal, and the Feast of Weeks was all about celebrating that big deal. By offering God the firstfruits of one’s land, people were offering God the very best of their lives in gratitude for the life he had given them.

God chose this day 2000+ years ago to give us another gift – the gift of the Holy Spirit. Like the gift of land before, this gift was (and is) a gift of life. It was a gift of knowing that God was not only with us as the Christmas message teaches us, and for us as the Easter message teaches us, but also in us. It is the gift of a relationship with God so that we know we will never be alone. In addition, that relationship produces within us peace, comfort, strength, courage, wisdom, discernment, grace, and love, to name a few things. That is a big deal! By offering God our very best (our firstfruits), we are actually offering him our lives in gratitude for the life he has given us.

The Christian faith is a Christmas faith: God is with us. The Christian faith is an Easter faith: God is for us. And, equally important, the Christian faith is a Pentecostal faith: God is in us.

Let us celebrate! Happy Pentecost, everyone!

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Alone in the Pit, Part 2

2010-05-02T19:34:00.001-04:00

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. ⁴⁶About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45-46).

Last week, I told the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two climbers who faced near certain death on Siula Grande, a 21,000-foot peak in the Peruvian Andes. What struck me about the story was how desperately Simpson wanted to get off the mountain so he wouldn’t be alone. He had shattered his leg in a climbing accident; was exhausted, dehydrated, delusional, and cold; and had fallen 100-feet into a glacial crevasse with no apparent way out. Yet, despite his dire situation, he forced himself to keep moving so he wouldn’t have to die alone. His deep desire to be with others superseded every other human emotion and physical need that he had.

The need to be with someone is at the very core of our human condition. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since we are created in God’s image, and God is a God of relationships. By that I am referring to the triune God, which refers to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. When God refers to himself in Genesis 1:26, he does so in the plural: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” God is a God of three persons, and we believe that those three persons have been in direct relationship with one another throughout all of eternity.

Imagine, then, how Jesus must have felt on the cross. He had been in constant communion with God the Father since his birth and even before he ever came to Earth. His mission, though, required him to take on the sins of the world, and God cannot look at sin. So what happened on the cross? In that moment in time, God did the unimaginable: He looked away. For the first time in his life – and for the first time in all of eternity – Jesus was no longer in direct relationship with God the Father.

Jesus died completely and utterly alone. His pained cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” carries a spiritual appeal that we can never fully comprehend. He was facing death and the pit of darkness without his Father.

Joe Simpson fought to survive so that he wouldn’t be alone. His remarkable story reminds us that our need to be in relationship with others is more fundamental than food and water. What Simpson didn’t know at the time, though, was that he was never alone. He may have felt a million miles away from another human being, but in that glacial crevasse – that dark pit of despair – God was still with him.

Jesus died with our sins on his shoulders so that we may live. He died utterly alone so that we may never be alone. He died without God so that we may always have God. Now that is good news worth sharing!

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Alone in the Pit, Part 1

2010-04-25T13:44:00.001-04:00

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18).

Do not let the floodwaters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me (Psalm 69:15).

In 1985, two climbers, Simon Yates and Joe Simpson, set out to climb the nearly vertical west face of Siula Grande, a 21,000-foot peak in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson chronicled their adventure in his book, Touching the Void, which was later made into a movie.

They made their attempt alpine style, which means they set out to climb the mountain in one big push rather than setting up a series of camps along the way. Their journey from base camp began with a difficult, five-mile traverse across a boulder field and glacier. When they reached the face of the mountain, they began their vertical ascent up a series of tricky ice flutes that required significant technical skills. It took several days to make the ascent, but they finally made the summit.

Their celebration was short. They had run out of fuel to melt ice for water and knew they had to descend quickly to avoid further dehydration. As they descended, Simpson slipped and fell. The rope that had tethered the two men together saved him from falling to his death, but not before he had crashed down onto his leg, smashing his lower leg bone into his upper bone and shattering his knee in the process.

Simpson knew he had a problem. They were at 20,000 feet with no way of a possible rescue. Yates had to help him down or he would die.

The men decided to tie two ropes together which allowed Yates to lower Simpson about 300 feet at a time. The process was excruciating because the rapid slide down the steep face jostled Simpson’s shattered leg in all directions. Still, they knew they had to continue if they were going to survive.

They made great progress until the unthinkable happened. Yates lowered Simpson right over a ledge leaving Simpson dangling in the air. He couldn’t swing back to the face of the cliff, and his efforts to climb the rope failed. 100 feet below him was the gaping mouth of a crevasse – a giant ice hole that forms in a glacier.

Yates couldn’t understand why Simpson hadn’t taken his weight off the rope, the process they had used to allow Yates to catch up with Simpson on the descent. Wind and distance made communication impossible, so he sat precariously in an ice seat that was slowly crumbling away while waiting for Simpson to move. His hands were frost-bitten, he was exhausted from days of strenuous activity, he was dehydrated, and he was confused. Why hadn’t Simon relieved the weight?

Yates finally decided that something had gone terribly wrong. Not completely sure what had happened, he reached into his knapsack and found a pocketknife. Believing it was his only way to survive, he cut the rope. He then made his way down the mountain and over the difficult terrain to reach base camp.

As it turns out, Simpson wasn’t dead. Instead, he was dangling on the end of the rope that Yates had just cut. He fell 100 feet into the mouth of the crevasse and crashed through a shelf of snow and ice. Miraculously, he survived the fall. However, he was now resting on a narrow ledge with no way to climb back up (he tried, but it was impossible with a shattered leg). A bottomless pit loomed below him.

I am recounting this story as a preamble to what happened next. Simpson was angry, desperate, and scared. He was exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. He had shattered his leg and it was excruciatingly painful. But, above all of these things, he felt terribly alone. Sadly, Simpson realized at that moment that he didn’t believe in God, and that realization only heightened his sense of loneliness.

Simpson knew he was going to die, but the striking part about his thought-process was not his fear of death but his strong desire to avoid dying alone in that crevasse. That single thought drove Simpson to do the unthinkable. Knowing he couldn’t climb out of the crevasse, he actually lowered himself into the blackness with the hope that he could find a tunnel or some other way out. Amazingly, he did find a way out of the bottomless pit, and from there he began a multi-day struggle to drag himself off the mountain. He literally crawled back over the glacier and the boulder field. All along, he fought the pain, dehydration, and delusions (not to mention a disco song stuck in his head) with the prevailing desire to avoid dying alone.

Simpson’s story underscores a fundamental truth about the human condition: We do not want to live or die alone. We need something or someone to be with us. We need God. We need each other. We need relationships. Our longing for divine and human company resides at the very core of our souls. It is more fundamental than food or water.

We have an opportunity to be in relationship with God through Jesus Christ and with one another through his body. Thanks be to God for those relationships! The thought of living or dying alone in this world is utterly terrifying. The opportunity to be with Jesus and one another is one of the greatest gifts God gave mankind.

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Easter Pizza

2010-04-11T13:35:00.003-04:00

⁹Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:9)

My parents used to take my siblings and me to an old-fashioned pizza parlor when we were growing up in California. We did not go out to dinner very much at all, but when we did, we would go to this particular place. It was an odd, little establishment that sat up on a gentle hill apart from anything else. It even boasted its very own organ, which always struck me as a bit random. Despite these idiosyncrasies, the pizza was truly phenomenal, or at least that is how I remember it today. My parents might tell you it was truly awful, but in my mind’s-eye it is still the finest pizza in the world.

I liked the pepperoni pizza the best because they cooked it with the pepperoni on top of the cheese. That way, the pepperoni would curl up and burn ever so slightly, enriching the flavor. I would pick all of the pepperoni off and stack them on my plate to savor at the very end. I can still taste it.

What strikes me today is how worried I would get about the pizza running out before I could get my fill. I would devour my first few pieces as quickly as possible so I could snatch a third or even fourth piece before my brother and sister got to them. My father often chided me to slow down, but that just made me eat faster because I thought it might his ploy to reserve the last slice for himself! He must have sensed my reaction because he started to say, “If we run out, we’ll just buy another pizza.” I don’t remember him ever buying another pizza, but it did take the edge off of my anxiety.

I think life can be like that pizza experience sometimes. I am turning 40 in a couple of months and often feel like I am racing through life in an effort to devour as much as possible before time runs out. I have never had more on my plate than I do today, and I tend to add more with each passing year. Consequently, the burdens I carry and stress I feel are far greater than anything I experienced in the past.

What I fail to remember – as do we all when we worry about the future – is that we have a Father in heaven who says, “When life runs out, I will give you a new one.” That is what the Easter story tells us. God confirmed his promise by raising Jesus from the dead and telling us he would do the same for us. This life is just preparation for the next. It is the appetizer. Yes, we want to make the most of it, but why do we give ourselves heartburn in the process? People who tell us we only have one life to live are wrong.

I don’t honestly remember if my father on earth ever bought another pizza to satiate my temporal appetite, but I know with certainty that our Father in heaven has prepared a banquet for us all to enjoy through all of eternity. May we live each day and week as Easter people who know the best is yet to come.

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God’s Ultimate Masterpiece

2010-03-21T13:47:00.001-04:00

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known – John 1:18.

My previous post on God’s masterpieces reminded me of a story I heard about a little girl drawing a picture. It wasn’t clear what she was drawing at first, so her mother leaned over and asked for an explanation. The little girl replied that she was drawing a picture of God. Her mother gently pointed out that the Bible tells us that nobody actually knows what God looks like. The little girl looked up and replied, “They will once I am finished!” [Source: Jim Singleton, First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs].

We may be God’s masterpieces, but God painted one other picture for us, too – a picture of himself. He wanted to reveal himself in all of his glory, and he did it through Jesus Christ. Jesus was the ultimate masterpiece.

Many have attempted to depict Jesus through paintings and sculptures. These fire our imaginations and challenge us to wonder what Jesus was really like. We can spend hours studying the artist’s work as we try to glean some insight into both the art and the artist who created it.

The Bible offers an even more complex picture of Jesus, and it challenges us far more than any painting ever could. We can spend a lifetime studying what Jesus said and did as we try to glean some insight into God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit.

There is so much to learn, and yet we often fail to realize that this amazing masterpiece is right in front of us. Like the mother who reminded her daughter that nobody has ever seen God, we can fall into the trap of thinking we have never seen God, either. Philip did. In the final days of Jesus’ life, he said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). Jesus told Philip – and all of us – that he had already done it. “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9a).”

We see and know God through Jesus Christ. May we all take the time to study God’s ultimate masterpiece.

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God’s Masterpieces

2010-03-07T23:15:00.001-05:00

The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. – James 3:6.

My children’s school hosted an art market and auction a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I went to the opening party, which was partly a social event and partly a chance to see what some of the local artists had created.

I found myself talking to a friend as we looked at a particular piece of artwork. “What do you think?” he asked. I examined the painting more closely. It wasn’t really my cup of tea, and rather than seek the good in it, I started to criticize it. The colors were wrong, I said. The proportions were off. The scene wasn’t inspiring. I ran my mouth for a minute or two, clearly impressing myself at my brilliance. What I didn’t realize was that the artist was standing nearby. I was mortified when I learned that she probably heard most of what I had said.

Criticism is a dangerous business. I can’t imagine how hurt the artist must have been when she heard my toxic words. Who was I to critique her work, anyway? It’s not like I am some sort of expert. In fact, I am quite the opposite. Yet, for some reason, I felt the urge to cut her work down. By doing so, I was actually cutting her down as the creator of that work.

We can be critical creatures. I have listened as family and friends – and dare I say, as I – have said the meanest things about other people. Maybe we don’t like the way someone looks or what clothes they wear. Maybe we don’t like the way they sound or how they live their lives. Whatever the reason, we feel superior when we make someone else inferior through our criticism.

The sad thing is that every single person on earth is a work of art, and our Creator is the artist. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,” and the writer of Psalm 139 verses 13-14 acknowledges God’s masterful work by saying, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Aren’t we all God’s masterpieces? Aren’t we all his tapestries, fearfully and wonderfully made? How often do we sing the praises of our fellow people? How often do we praise God for his works of art? How hurt he must be when we criticize one another, for we are doing nothing less than criticizing the Creator Himself.

I pray that we all learn to appreciate God’s handiwork, starting by biting our tongues when the desire to criticize tempts us.

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Beware of the Yeast of the World

2010-02-21T14:42:00.003-05:00

When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” – Matthew 16:5-6.

The passage above falls during an interesting sequence of events in the book of Matthew. Jesus has just used seven loaves of bread to feed four thousand, not including women and children. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of leftovers. It had to have been an incredible thing to witness. The Son of God was once again providing manna from heaven.

In an ironic passage that follows, the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and asked for a sign from heaven. Here Jesus had just fed four thousand with miraculously provided bread, and they want to see a sign from heaven! What more did they need to see?

Jesus used this as a teaching opportunity. After leaving by boat, he turned to his disciples and said, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” The disciples, having forgotten to bring any bread with them (somehow, none of the seven baskets made it on the boat), thought they were in trouble. Didn’t they just watch Jesus work a miracle with bread? Did they really think he was looking to them to provide more? Now they were acting just like the Pharisees and Sadducees.

It is rare that Jesus ever did anything physically that didn’t have spiritual underpinnings, and while the feeding of the five thousand or four thousand might seem like a spectacular miracle, there was more at play. In this case, he was pointing out that God could feed an infinite number of people through a single loaf of bread, the Bread of Life, Jesus himself. Recall what Jesus said to Satan in the wilderness, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4 quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).

Meanwhile, false teaching, the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees, could expand just as quickly, like the yeast in a loaf of bread. In fact, directly related to this story, I have heard people explaining it by saying people pulled food out of their pockets to share with others. A loaf of bread here, a candy bar there, and soon everybody was contributing to the cause. I, for one, feel like this devalues the miracle and misses the point of the story. God is God after all. If we can believe that, why is it hard for us to believe that he can’t make a little bread on demand? False teaching can expand just as rapidly as the Truth.

There is a lot of false teaching in the world today. Open the newspapers or magazines and read all about them. Our society teaches us that money, power, and status will give us what we need. We know that none of this secular “bread” will ever fill us, but that doesn’t stop the yeast from expanding.

Scarily, false teaching can happen in churches just as easily as it can in our media. I have heard preachers say the most judgmental, unloving things that cannot possibly be from God. I have also noticed that adult Sunday schools can stray from God’s Word. I have had the good fortune of teaching in dozens of classrooms, and it always makes me a little sad when I see a room devoid of a single Bible and lessons that fail to reference Scripture. Not surprisingly, I get an amazing response when I teach from the Bible, but I know it isn’t me. It is a response to God’s Word.

For that reason, I have recently endeavored to start a new Sunday school class, selfishly so that I can be in the Word and in fellowship with others, and unselfishly so that God might sprinkle a little yeast into the world through me (or so I pray). I hope that you, too, will continue to focus on God’s teaching – yeast from the true bread of life – rather than the yeast of the Pharisees.

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Death by Four Nails and a Trillion Pinpricks

2010-01-31T17:24:00.004-05:00

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. – Isaiah 53:4-5.

I was supposed to fly to Washington D.C. last Sunday, which was a bummer because I don’t particularly care to start my business week on Sunday on any occasion. Severe storms delayed my flight by 30 minutes, and then an hour, two hours, and three until finally my flight was cancelled. I stood in an aggravatingly slow line to learn that I had been rebooked on another flight leaving in two more hours, although odds were good that it would be delayed too. I finally decided to call it quits and figure out how to do the meeting another way, which was the best decision I made last week given the flight finally landed in D.C. at 2 a.m.

An afternoon at the airport was only the beginning of a long week filled with a series of problems. I was on the phone nearly every waking hour dealing with issues while problematic emails seemed to flood my inbox. I couldn’t even find solace at home because my three kids were in prickly moods, no doubt responding to mine.

Problems, mistakes, mishaps, bad behavior – things just kept coming at me like an endless stream of needles pricking me, with each one feeling sharper than the last. It was like death by a thousand pinpricks. Anything and everything set me off by the time Friday rolled around. I had had enough. I cracked.

I am sure you have dealt with this in your own life. We have the capacity to recover from one stress here and there, but our nerves cannot tolerate the pain. With each subsequent stressor, our fuse gets shorter and shorter until we just can’t take it anymore.

It occurs to me that Jesus must have felt the enormous stress of our sin on his shoulders when he faced the cross. Everything we had ever done wrong as humankind and everything we will ever do wrong as individuals was like a pinprick against his holiness. Scripture tells us that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

What a horrible burden Jesus had to carry – the sins of the world. How did that feel? The process of having nails driven through his hands and feet had to be the most awful physical experience of his life, and yet it probably paled in comparison to the trillions upon trillions of spiritual pinpricks he felt at the same time. His suffering is unimaginable. And yet, through it all, despite death by four nails and a trillion pinpricks, he did not crack. The thought of what he endured leaves me absolutely speechless - and thankful that our God is so great.

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Where is God in All of This Suffering?

2010-01-17T14:39:00.006-05:00

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ – Matthew 25:37-40.

The earthquake that struck just outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, this past Tuesday measured 7.0 on the magnitude scale. That is the equivalent of 32 megatons of TNT. The damage is incalculable, and the human cost is nothing short of tragic. Over 50,000 dead have already been pulled from the rubble, and the latest estimates suggest the number could top 100,000 before it is all over.

What makes this even more devastating is that the country of Haiti was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. The 9.5 million people on the island have an average annual income per person of only $560. 55% of the population makes less than the international poverty line of $1.25 per day, 42% lacks access to clean drinking water, and 81% does not have access to improved sanitation.[1]

It is hard to imagine how something so awful could happen to a country in such bad shape. Where is God when a disaster like this strikes? How could he let something like this happen? Even more cynically, we could challenge the benevolence and omnipotence of God just as French philosopher Voltaire did after the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755. That earthquake, estimated to be a 9.0 on the magnitude scale (1000x more powerful than the Haiti earthquake), killed over 30,000 people. Many of them were in church given it was All Saints Day.

The Bible does not provide a thorough solution to the problem of suffering. That is cold comfort after something as tragic as the Haiti earthquake. But, when we look past the words on a page and see God for who he really is, don’t we find what we are looking for in Christ? Isn’t he the God who felt the pain of being rejected, persecuted, unfairly judged, tortured, nailed to a cross, left alone, and killed? Isn’t he the God, in his resurrected state, who answered Saul of Tarsus that he was “Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” thereby identifying with us (Acts 9:4)? Isn’t he the one whom the prophets called Emmanuel, or “God with us” (Matthew 1:23)?[2]

God never promised that bad things wouldn’t happen, but he did promise that he would be there when they did. He doesn’t ignore us when we suffer, but rather he shares our sufferings with us.

We can see Christ at work in Haiti in the search and rescue, medical, and relief teams. We can see him in the billions of dollars that have already been given to support the effort. We can see him in the trillions of prayers being uplifted. I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

Where is Christ? He is right there in the rubble with us.

Allow me to offer a final thought: While we can’t all be there in body, we can be there in spirit by lifting up our prayers to the millions of people affected by Tuesday’s earthquake. And, if you haven’t done so already, I highly encourage you to consider making a generous donation to one of the relief agencies that are working to get food, water, and medical treatment into Haiti. Here are a few options vetted by the Wall Street Journal and President Obama.

American Red Cross (www.redcross.org)

UNICEF USA (www.unicefusa.org)

CARE (www.care.org)

Mercy Corps (www.mercycorps.org)

Direct Relief International (www.directrelief.org)

Partners in Health (www.pih.org)

AmeriCares (www.americares.org)

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund (www.clintonbushhaitifund.org)

[1] Unicef (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_statistics.html)

[2] Stott, John R. The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press, 2006), pp. 326.

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Inspired

2010-01-10T16:44:00.002-05:00

“The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” – Genesis 2:7

One of my favorite words in the English language is the verb “to inspire.” It comes from the Latin, inspirare, which literally means “to breathe into.” When something inspires us, it breathes something special into us, like love, joy, harmony, courage, peace, and so on.

There are a lot of things that can inspire us: a great song, a great movie, a great book, a great speech. Powerful music and stories often reach into our hearts and move us in unexpected ways. Inspiration motivates us to act, mend, seek justice, and to spread beauty and truth. Who hasn’t listen to Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech” and not wanted to make this world a better place? That is inspiration at work.

The list of what can inspire us is endless. My wife, for example, finds tremendous inspiration in architecture and design and has even been blogging on the topic for several years. Appropriately, she calls her blog Things that Inspire. I, on the other hand, find inspiration in God’s creation. I love nothing more than to hike through the mountains on a summer day, or stand at the ocean’s edge and watch the waves crash onto a sandy beach. Flowers and trees, rivers and lakes, and clouds and sky all captivate me.

What strikes me is that inspiration – whether man-made or God-made – is ultimately a gift from God. After all, he made us in his image and then breathed into our nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). He fashioned us from dust and then inspired us with the ultimate gift: Life itself.

The purpose of The SwitchPoint all along has been to inspire discipleship in Jesus Christ, to serve as a “switch” that puts all of us on the right track as we develop a deeper, more intimate relationship with God through his Son. I pray that this is a year where we all look more often to our original inspirer, God Himself.

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A Fresh Start

2010-01-01T21:39:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year! I hope you had a safe and fun New Years Eve, and pray that God will bless you fully in 2010.

You may have noticed that I took a sabbatical from writing this past summer. I had intended to get back to the SwitchPoint when the school year kicked into gear, but that never happened. Not surprisingly, it became increasingly easier not to write with each week that I skipped.

At the same time, my personal faith journey took a slight detour this past fall. I spent less time with God in prayer, less time at church, and less time in the Word than I would have liked. It is funny how easy it is to let our relationship with God stagnate. Skip a prayer here, sleep in on a Sunday there, put the Bible back on the shelf over there… Soon, we are back on the road to nowhere in particular.

I am recommitting myself to the disciplines that foster growth in my faith. For starters, I am back in the Word using a Bible called The Daily Bible, which presents the Bible in chronological order through 365 daily readings. I just reread Genesis 1:1! As I progress, I will be looking for what the Word has to say about God, about us, and about the world in which we live. I hope to share some of those thoughts this year – with a bit more regularity, I hope.

January 1^st marks an inflection point every year – a switch point, you might even say. What does it mean for you? What does it mean for your faith? I pray it means a renewed focus on our faith for all of us.

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Why Doesn’t God Clean Up This Mess?

2009-08-16T19:08:00.002-04:00

A friend recently posed this question to me: Why doesn’t God just come down and clean up the mess we have created in the world? I have often wondered the same thing. It seems like life would be a lot easier if he’d come down in might and power to sweep away all of the evil and suffering. That would be neat.

I can see it now. God’s first act would be to zap all of those who are evil with a bolt of lightning or two. The fireworks would be satisfying to watch, that is until I saw the bolt coming my way. I fall short of his holiness, after all. Ok, that wouldn’t be so good.

But, let’s just say God showed some leniency for those of us who try hard to be “good.” You know, those of us who live by the rules and treat others well. Surely he could focus his bolts of lightning on the truly evil folks – such as the Adolph Hitlers of the world. Then he could sit on his throne in Jerusalem in a blaze of light and glory and rule the world with an iron fist. That could be good.

How might you and I respond to God after he did this? Here’s what comes to mind for me:

Some of us would be bitter because God just zapped some of our less good relatives. I am sure Hitler Junior would be pretty upset, for example.
Some of us would respond to his power with fear and reverence. I, for one, might cower and keep my head down like a dog that has been beaten too much to avoid further punishment.
Some of us would get excited by his power and might even try to emulate it, zapping a few people in his name. Come to think of it, people around the world do things in the name of God already. This is true in Christianity as well as other religions. What comes of it? War. Violence. Oppression. Judgment. Hatred. People break the 3rd Commandment found in Exodus 20:7 all the time: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

This whole notion of God cleaning up the mess by might and power doesn’t really sound very good after all, does it? Well, I suppose he could use his power to reprogram us. All he would need to do is strip us of our free will and self-centered natures and all would be well. Or, more accurately, we’d be the Stepford People, a race of automatons destined to behave because we have no choice. Hmmm. This is looking less good all the time.

When you really think about it, the notion of a God using his might and power to fix our mess doesn’t hold water. Who would want to worship such a God?

I, for one, can’t imagine worshiping any other God than the God of the Cross – the one who submitted himself to everything unjust that humankind had to dish out, died as a result, and produced the one thing that can fix this world: grace. It is the reality of that grace that sets us free from our self-centered natures and enables us to respond to evil with love. There is more might and power in his grace and love than any bolt of lightning could ever produce.

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Visit www.theswitchpoint.blogspot.com

Trigger Bill Says...

2009-07-19T15:01:00.005-04:00

I recently picked up my oldest daughter from Cheley Colorado Camps(1), a fabulous, four-week camp just outside of the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. I attended this same camp as a child, as did my father and grandfather. I enjoyed walking around and remembering my own childhood experiences as I listened to my daughter share hers.

Placards cover the walls in the camp’s lodges with sayings from Cheley’s very own spokesperson, a cowboy named Trigger Bill. Each saying is a truism of some sort. For example:

· Speed gets you nowhere if you are heading in the wrong direction.
· The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
· Some folks are like wheelbarrows… They never get anywhere unless they are pushed.
· All fires are the same size at the start.

I always liked these as I was growing up. They inspired me to live better and more fully as a youth. 25 years later, I realize they aren’t just neat sayings, but that they also reveal something about Cheley itself. Frank Cheley founded the camp in the 1920s, setting out to build a place that would “inculcate in boys and girls that spirit of honesty, purity, unselfishness, love, alertness, determination, and courage which is the foundation for all that is big and fine in American life and character, and more than this, the Summer Camp aims to help boys and girls cultivate the ability to act spontaneously in the right.”

To this day, Cheley is a place that builds character; it is evident in everything they do. Campers must work together as a community, whether it is cleaning up their cabin each morning, encouraging one another on a hike or ride in the mountains, or celebrating the day’s accomplishments during campfire. Trigger Bill’s sayings don’t just inspire better living, but actually become part of who you are after living at Cheley for a few summers.

We often think of Jesus as the Great Teacher and spokesperson extraordinaire. He didn’t sit up on a horse like Trigger Bill, but what he had to say was powerful. Here are a few of his sayings from the book of Matthew:

· So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
· No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. (Matthew 6:24)
· Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:1-2)
· You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:43-44)

This last one is the most difficult. It comes from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said a lot of difficult things, like “Anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment,” “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” and “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

How easy it would be to get caught up in these sayings as a new set of rules by which to live. But that would miss the point, and we wouldn’t get far before falling short, anyway.

Jesus isn’t telling us how we are supposed to behave. He is revealing who God is. And, thanks to his amazing grace, he is telling us who we will become, not because we try to live by the rules, but because we allow Christ to live within us.

The Bible challenges us to move beyond the catchy sayings and into a real relationship with God where he can work the truth of those sayings into the very core of our being.

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(1) As an aside, I highly recommend Cheley to anybody interested in camps. It had a profound impact on my life, all while I was having the time of my life climbing mountains, backpacking into remote territories, and riding horses through the pine forests. Some of my closest friends to this day are friends I made at Cheley. For more information, visit http://www.cheley.com/ or contact me directly.

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Be Good for Goodness Sake

2009-06-21T12:28:00.001-04:00

Over the years, I have taught my children to pray at night. We began when they were young with the standard “Now I lay me down to sleep…” As they have gotten older, I have taught them to speak more from their heart.

We typically begin by thanking God for the blessings of the day. Then we move on to asking for forgiveness for the various ways we have gone astray. Next we petition God on behalf of those on our prayer list, and we complete the prayer by asking God to be with us in the coming day.

It seems that some of the prayer has become disappointingly rote (my kids can fire through the prayer list of 20-30 people in one breath!). But the one section that is never rote is when they ask for forgiveness. My children always have something that needs forgiving!

The other night, my oldest asked God to forgive her from the things she did wrong to her sisters, and then to forgive her for the things she did wrong toward her mother. She threw a few other people in the mix after that, and when she was done she looked up at me and said, “At least I didn’t do anything wrong to you!”

I thought about this for a moment. It is true that she hadn’t done anything wrong to me directly, but I had been upset by her behavior all day. I replied, “Actually, you did wrong me. You see, I love your mommy and sisters very much. By wronging them, you wronged me. By hurting them, you hurt me. By being mean to them, you were mean to me. I want you to be good not because you have to be good and not because it is our family rule. I want you to be good because you love me and you love your family. That is reason enough.”

Isn’t God the same way? He is our heavenly Father, and he loves everybody in his family no matter how we may feel about them. Doesn’t he want us to be good toward them because we love him?

Jesus once came across a rich man who asked about what good thing he must do to get eternal life. “‘Why do you ask me about what is good?’ Jesus replied. ‘There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments’” (Matthew 19:17). He went on to remind the rich man what the commandments were, and when the rich man persisted, Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

Now Jesus was getting to the core of it. It wasn’t just about trying hard to be good or following the law. It was about following Jesus – the person of Goodness.

Dorris Day once said she only loved God as much as she loved the person she loved the least. How true! When we wrong our family, are we not wronging God? When we hurt our brothers and sisters, are we not hurting God? When we are mean to our neighbor, are we not being mean to God?

God doesn’t ask us to be good because we have to be good. That would be legalism. He wants us to be good for his sake – for Goodness’ Sake. He wants us to be good because we love our heavenly Father and spiritual family. That is reason enough

Have a Happy Father’s Day!

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Our Inheritance

2009-06-07T22:25:00.002-04:00

I taught a Sunday school class the other day on this whole notion of being adopted children of God. When we got to the part about being heirs, I asked the group, “What exactly do we inherit as heirs?” One man spoke up immediately and said, “Everything.”

Everything! That is what Jesus told us in the story of the prodigal son, too; “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours’ Luke (15:31).”

So what is this everything that we inherit, exactly? What does it mean?

When my grandfather died, his will dictated that his estate be split among his four children, including my father. Each got some financial portion of my grandfather’s worth. It put a little extra in the bank for my parents, which has enabled them to live just a tad more comfortably than they had before.

I wonder how we’d live if we knew we had a massive inheritance coming our way? I am talking the inheritance worth billions of dollars. In fact, why stop there. What would happen if our inheritance was trillions of dollars, or even a zillion zillion dollars as my kids would say? How would we live differently today knowing that our bank accounts would someday reflect immeasurable wealth?

For one thing, we wouldn’t worry about giving money away. Who would mind handing somebody $100 or $10,000 if we knew we had access to an unlimited fortune? Who would worry about the market falling 25% in one year, reducing our portfolio from a zillion zillion dollars to, well, a still robust zillion zillion dollars? If we knew all the riches in the universe would be ours, who would really care about temporal wealth? Our bank account would runeth over.

The same goes with our emotional bank account. Who would care if somebody wronged us or hurt us in some way if we knew we had access to more emotional power than we could ever fathom? Who would hold a grudge or seek vengeance if we knew we would be made whole in the end? Who would worry about taking time to help others if we were inheriting infinite time? We wouldn’t, not if we knew that God planned to give us everything through his will.

We do know God’s will, don’t we? We know his will dictates that as his children, we will be heirs to everything. His riches, power, and glory. His love, joy, and peace. His kindness, humility, and perfection. But none of those compare to what we really inherit when we inherit God’s kingdom. The thing we get, the thing we can enjoy even in this lifetime, is Him. God’s will stipulates that we receive Him as heirs to His kingdom.

Now that is quite an inheritance.

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Adopted Heirs

2009-05-24T14:01:00.001-04:00

In my last entry, I wrote about how God adopts us into his family by his grace and love. This week, I’d like to explore what it really means to be God’s adopted children.

In Roman law, a family without an heir could adopt another person to carry on the family heritage and to serve as an heir. Unlike modern, infant adoption, Roman adoption was typically of a grown man who had already proven himself worthy. It was a practical solution to a tricky problem in a paternalistic society.

We see a great example of this in the 1959 classic film, Ben-Hur, where Charlton Heston plays a Jewish prince who crossed the Romans and found himself made into a slave. He later saved the life of a Roman commander, Quintus Arrius, who had lost his own son somewhere along the way. The Roman Emperor gave Ben-Hur to Arrius as a slave, but Arrius found Ben-Hur to be a man of honor and worth. In a poignant moment in the film, Quintus Arrius adopts Ben-Hur, gives him his family ring and publicly calls him “son.”

This scene reminds me of the verse found in Galatians 4:7, “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” Judah Ben-Hur became heir to Quintus Arrius, carrier of the name, and rightful heir of the estate.

In this story, we can catch a glimpse of what it must be like to be adopted into God’s family. First, we see that it means we have an adopted heritage that comes with certain responsibilities. Those responsibilities include pleasing our Father, living up to our family Name, and ultimately, bearing some family resemblance through how we live our lives.

Our adoption also comes with a promise – the promise that comes with being heirs. The question is, heirs to what? What does God’s estate look like? The story of the Prodigal Son offers some insight into this. As we know, the younger son took his inheritance and left home to squander it in a far off land. Upon his return, his father restored him into the family as a son – not as a slave as the younger son requested, but as a son. Meanwhile, the elder son became jealous and angry. “Why does he get the big party,” he complained in so many words, “especially since I have been here slaving away this whole time?” His father’s response says it all. “My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours” (Luke 15:31).

Everything I have is yours. Could it be that this is what God wants for us, too? Everything he has? That would mean we are heirs to his entire kingdom and glory. Even more importantly, as God’s adopted children we are co-heirs with Christ of the most amazing inheritance possible: eternal life with our Father in heaven. Wow! That is quite an estate to share.

Paul confirms this, writing, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:15-17).

We are all heirs, my adopted brothers and sisters. May we live up to the Name we share and look forward to our inheritance of eternal life with God.

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Adopted by Faith

2009-05-10T17:37:00.003-04:00

66 years ago this month, my grandmother took her four-year old son to a friend’s house for dinner. My grandfather, Bob Street, promised to join shortly. He was in the middle of repairing a broken sump pump in the basement and wanted to finish the job. A little while later, he asked the housekeeper to turn on the power so he could test the pump. Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong. Electricity arced from the pump and killed him instantly.

This story has always haunted me for a variety of reasons. For starters, Bob Street was younger than I am now, dying only five days before his 32nd birthday. Even sadder, my grandmother was two months pregnant with a little boy. Seven months later, my father was born fatherless.

The story takes a happier turn a few years later. A man named John Browne returned from World War II and married my grandmother. He adopted my uncle and my dad, but allowed them to keep the Street name out of deference for the Street family. They had a child of their own a few years later, and took in my grandmother’s niece a few years after that when her own parents proved incapable of raising her properly.

This part of the story has always impressed me. Despite the way his family came together, and despite having three different surnames in the house (although my aunt took the name Browne at some point), John Browne treated all four children like his own. He loved them, nurtured them, and disciplined them just as any other father would. He expected them to respect and honor the family, just as any other father would. All four called him “Dad,” and all four thought of themselves as siblings (including the requisite sibling rivalry)!

The Apostle Paul wrote about our inclusion in God’s family in Ephesians 1:4-6. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”

Did you catch that? Out of love God has adopted us into his family. We are God’s children. He is our Father. These aren’t just nice terms to throw around in church. They are the basis of our entire relationship with God. Jesus is the one and only begotten Son, but we are God’s adopted children. We have the same duties and responsibilities that a natural child might have: to honor his name, to carry on his traditions, and to live lives worthy of our family relationship.

Sadly, many of us pay little attention to this incredible honor God has bestowed upon us. We take it for granted, or ignore it all together. This is tragic, for it is the very essence of our faith. The great 20th century theologian, J. I. Packer, wrote in Knowing God, “A Christian is one who has God as Father.” He went on to point out that this wasn’t some abstract notion or title as other religions might claim, but rather a deep, intimate, and personal relationship with our heavenly Father – our heavenly Papa or Daddy. He added, “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.”

That is a very serious question. How do we answer it? How well do we understand our adoption into God’s family? How well do we honor the name of the One who adopted us? How do we treat the rest of our family? The strength of our faith may very well depend on how we answer these questions.

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God's Discipline

2009-04-26T19:11:00.000-04:00

Friday was a really bad day for my wife. Our three girls are usually fairly well behaved and can even be a source of positive inspiration for our walk with Christ. On Friday, though, they showed us the darker side of our shared human condition.

The girls had the day off from school, and my wife had a few errands to run, including a trip to the grocery store. Our youngest decided she didn’t want to go and threw a temper tantrum of gargantuan proportions. She became obstinate, disobedient, and downright mean. My wife had to drag her to the store, and she continued to cry and fuss throughout most of the trip. It was embarrassing, frustrating, and disappointing.

Later that day, my wife took our girls to a birthday party. It was actually a combination birthday party for all of the girls from our daughter’s fifth grade class who celebrated their birthday in March or April. This meant it was our daughter’s party, too. The idea of joining forces with other parents seemed like a good one at the outset, but the actual party devolved into a nightmare. My daughter became irrationally angry when she learned it would be a hip-hop party (not her favorite genre of music), and once she realized she had to go anyway, she broke down into tears and behaved like a spoiled brat. She spent half of the party in the bathroom wallowing in her own, self-absorbed, graceless sorrow. It was embarrassing, frustrating, and disappointing.

My wife called to report all of this to me late in the day, and as a father, I couldn’t help but to share her embarrassment, frustration, and disappointment. I was utterly disgusted with my children.

I wonder if God often feels the same way about us. We are his children, after all, and we do tend to behave badly at times. He asks us to follow Him, but we don’t want to go. Instead, we argue, fight, and cry over not getting to go our own way. God asks us to do certain things, but we don’t want to do them. Instead, we behave like spoiled brats, hiding in the proverbial bathroom and wallowing in our own, self-absorbed pity. Surely God must feel embarrassed, frustrated, and disappointed in us.

We aren’t the first to stray from God’s commands. Abraham strayed by having a child with Hagar. Moses strayed by killing the Egyptian. David strayed by lusting after Bathsheba and putting her husband, Uriah, in a position where he’d be killed. There are plenty of stories of Bible characters straying, and we do the same.

The beauty is in how God responds. He is not a capricious god who metes out punishment arbitrarily and angrily. He is a loving God of mercy, justice, and grace who uses our waywardness as an opportunity to bring us back into the fold. He allows us to feel some pain and then nudges our conscience to get our attention. This is how he disciplines us, just as our parents used to discipline us.

We should be glad for this discipline, for God does it out of His love for us. As Proverbs 3:11-12 says, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”

My wife and I disciplined our daughters (we had our oldest write apology letters to everybody she offended, an act that took her many hours on Saturday morning). Our girls learned how to behave, grew a little stronger (we pray), and understood our authority as parents. Discipline from our loving Father in heaven gives us the opportunity to learn how to live, grow in character, and become closer to Him. Let us give thanks that we have a Father in heaven who cares enough to teach us his ways.

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Smelling Jesus

2009-04-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

I was out for a run the other day on a business trip when I came across some marshy grass. The smell of dewy grass and boggy mud instantly transported me back in time to my childhood home in Connecticut. My brother and I used to go down to a pond to catch tadpoles or ride our bikes in the nearby cul-de-sac. The smell of the marshy grass was the same as the smell of that pond, and the instant it hit my senses I was a kid again, with all of my hopes and dreams and future lying before me.

There is a restaurant in Houston that takes me back as well. When I walked through the front door the first time it was like walking through the front door of my grandmother’s house. Warm smells emanating from the kitchen transported me back to a time and place when my siblings and I played with our cousins at her house during the halcyon days of summer.

Smell, perhaps more than any other sense, has the ability to provoke incredibly strong memories that leap to the front of our mind even if we haven’t thought about them in years.

I wonder what the upper room smelled like? I can imagine the dusty smell of stone walls imbued with the oily exhaust from lamps they burned in those days. Maybe on that last supper night, the aromatic smell of broken bread and the sweet smell of wine filled the air in the room. I suspect the disciples remembered that night vividly every time they came across that smell later in life. Instantly, they were back in the place where Jesus said of the bread, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

I wonder what Golgotha smelled like? I can imagine the smell of Jesus and the two thieves nailed to their crosses. Blood and sweat from three men dying would have mixed with the pungent smell of death from others who had been executed on that hill before them. I suspect every time the disciples came across the smell of life being poured out through blood and sweat, they were transported back in time to the place where the bread of life was broken.

What smells take you back in time? What smells take you back to Jesus? It could be the smell of your childhood church, or the youth room where you first accepted him. Maybe it is your bedroom where you first fell on your knees, or the crisp air at the top of a mountain where you looked over God’s creation. Whatever the smell, whatever the place, God wants us to remember him. He wants us to remember what he has done for us. He wants us to remember that we owe our lives to him. The next time you smell that smell, remember our Christ who said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

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God's Handwriting

2009-03-22T22:24:00.000-04:00

Lent is a time of preparation and self-denial that occurs during the 40 days prior to Easter. I love how it falls in the transition from winter to spring. There is something powerfully symbolic about spring blossoming out of the deadness of winter.

That transition has already begun here in Atlanta. The dead and dormant are giving way to new life. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding, and birds are hard at work in their nests. The air carries a certain crispness in the morning that evolves into a gentle breeze by afternoon. Renewal is all around.

It is during times like these that I find myself stopping more often to smell the roses. I am reminded of something Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”

God’s handwriting. What a neat concept. God’s handwriting is all around when you really stop to think about it. It is in the lilies in the field that are dressed in more splendor than Solomon himself (cf Matthew 6:26-29). It is in the luscious green buds on the tips of every branch. It is in the birds that fly with new fervor and cheerfully chirp as they work.

It would be easy to ignore God’s writing during these times. The papers and news channels report nothing but bad news. Bank failures, home foreclosures, and job losses have become routine. It would be easy to think that we are doomed to an eternal winter.

But there is so much more to read, and it is inscribed by God’s own hand in his remarkable creation. All we need to do is look around! As we prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Christ this Easter, let’s admire God’s handwriting and rejoice in its awesome beauty.

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Blueberries and Fruit of the Spirit

2009-03-08T18:03:00.002-04:00

My family started talking about the fruit of the Spirit while at the dinner table the other night. I asked my girls if they had learned anything about the fruit in their Sunday school classes.

“Yes,” they chorused together.

“Great,” I replied. “What are some of the fruit of the Spirit?”

My girls all looked at one another to see who would answer first. My youngest, confident in her response, blurted out, “Blueberries!”

I got a good chuckle out of that, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how on target she was. Blueberries are wonderful little fruits full of vitamins and antioxidants. They are incredibly nutritious and good for our bodies. They also happen to be one of my favorite foods in the whole world.

I remember my grandmother’s housekeeper once received three, giant boxes of fresh, plump blueberries straight from the farm. She planned to make blueberry jam out of them, but I decided to eat as many as I could before she caught on to my scheme. I dug in and ate them like candy until she finally swatted me away. I suspect she came up a few jars short when she made her jam that week.

The thing about a blueberry – and any other fruit for that matter – is that you cannot produce it on your own. Unlike candy, which we humans make in factories and can get anytime, not one of us can make a blueberry. It is impossible to produce apart from the vine.

The Apostle Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and blueberries (Galatians 5:22-23 with a little help from my daughter). What strikes me is how often we try to attain these things through sheer force of will, as if we could somehow produce them in our lives if we tried really hard. We want love, so we seek the feeling. We want peace, so we try to minimize stress. We want joy, so we seek happiness in temporal things.

In truth, we can’t produce the fruit of the Spirit any more than we could produce a blueberry. The only way for fruit to manifest in our lives is if we remain attached to the vine, and the vine is Jesus Christ. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener,” Jesus said. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me (John 15:1,4).

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control grow in our lives when we remain in a strong relationship with Jesus Christ.

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How Big is Your God? (Part 3)

2009-02-22T15:08:00.000-05:00

Forgiving somebody is one of the hardest and most painful things we will ever have to do. When somebody wrongs us, there is something deep down within us that demands that we get even. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Justice must be served. When we hurt, somebody must pay!

The thing about forgiveness that makes it tough is the cost. For example, I have watched family members make loans to other family members that they never got back. The individuals extending the loans could have gone after the debtors, but they chose to forgive them instead. That meant they had to absorb the cost – they never got their money back. In another example, I have personally been hurt by people who took advantage of my trusting nature. I could have made them suffer for hurting me, but I chose to forgive them instead (with great difficulty). That meant I had to absorb the cost. The painful truth is that the more we have to forgive, the more costly it becomes.

My last two entries explored the greatness of God by contemplating the majesty of the heavens and earth, and by examining the intricacy of the human body. What God accomplished in the beginning was truly spectacular. But God did not stop there. He did something even greater and more spectacular than the creation of the universe.

Scripture says that God came to this world as the person, Jesus. Instead of coming full of power and might, he emptied himself of God’s power and became fully man. He walked the earth for some thirty three years during which time he revealed the divine character of God. And then he did something extraordinary. He gave himself over to be crucified.

It’s a funny thing about Christianity. Why would God do this? I mean, once you get past all of the theology of Jesus being the ultimate sacrificial lamb, why couldn’t God have just forgiven us without the messy business of the cross?

I think maybe it all goes back to the cost of forgiveness. You see, we hurt God when we disobeyed him in the Garden of Eden. We hurt him when we decided to go our own way. We hurt him when we became self-righteous prigs. And we hurt him when we hated our neighbors. The hurt has been great, and we continue to dole it out – all 6 billion of us, every single day.

God could have sent bolts of lightning from heaven, destroyed a few cities, or made us endure all of the fire and brimstone that far too many still preach today. But God didn’t do that. Instead, he did something more difficult, more painful, and more incredible. He sent Jesus to walk among us, to teach us, to heal us, to restore us, and ultimately, to redeem us.

In his last 24 hours, when the temple guard came for Jesus, he gave himself up. When Pilate questioned him, he refused to fight back. When the soldiers flogged him, he just took it. And when they drove the nails through his hands, he accepted it.

The pain had to be excruciating, for it was the pain of our Father in heaven for all of the times we turned away from him. Jesus went to the cross to show us how much God was willing to endure on our behalf. In those six hours on the cross, Jesus suffered from more emotional, physical, and spiritual pain than any human before or since. By forgiving us, he was absorbing the cost for all of the times we have ever wronged God. That is a momentous act.

God has been wronged, and somebody has to pay. That somebody was Jesus Christ. Out of a deep and abiding love, God did the most difficult and painful thing he could have possibly done: He forgave us.

How big is your God?

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How Big is Your God? (Part 2)

2009-02-08T20:09:00.003-05:00

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

Last week we examined the incredible universe and contemplated its immensity and beauty. It is fairly easy to praise God for his creation when we look up at the stars at night and wonder at their size and scope. It is also easy to celebrate his creation when we look a little closer to home, perhaps when we visit the majestic mountains or beautiful oceans.

But how often do we stop to give praise for the amazing handiwork he did right here in our own bodies?

St. Augustine made an interesting observation on this point: “People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass themselves by without wondering.”

Every time we pass another person, we are walking past part of God’s magnificent creation. The Psalmist wrote, “ For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well” (Psalm 139:13-14).

What exactly is this fearfully and wonderful knit person that God made? Consider these remarkable facts about the human body:

Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
50,000 of the cells in your body will die and be replaced with new cells, all while I have been reading this sentence! (To put this in context, the cerebral cortex of your brain is made up of s a whopping 10 billion cells).
Your body has about 6 quarts of blood. This 6 quarts of blood circulates through the body three times every minute. In one day, the blood travels a total of 12,000 miles. That's four times the distance across the US from coast to coast.
In one hour, your heart works hard enough to produce the equivalent energy to raise almost 1 ton of weight 1 yard off the ground.
In a year, a person’s heart beats 40 million times (3 billion times in an average life).
One square inch of skin contains 4 yards of nerve fibers, 1300 nerve cells, 100 sweat glands, 3 million cells, and 3 yards of blood vessels.
One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world's telephones put together.
Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour.
The average human produces a quart of saliva a day or 10,000 gallons in a lifetime. (I think my dog out-produces the average human on this one!)
We are born with over 300 bones. As we mature, they fuse together to about 206 bones.

It is almost impossible to contemplate the magnificence of our bodies without God. In his book, The Remarkable Birth of the Planet Earth, Henry Morris does a little math to demonstrate the odds of 200 parts – say the 200 bones of our body – coming together by chance in just the right order. He calculates the odds at 1 in 10^375 (that’s a 1 followed by 375 zeros). He goes on to show that there hasn’t been enough time or space in our massive universe for these odds to have played out. And that only includes our 200 bones, not the other billions of cells in our bodies. In other words, the odds of us existing by chance are pretty much nil, zero, zilch, zippo.

All this points back to our God who not only created the heavens and the earth, but also men and women in his image. Our bodies are his temple, and he spared no detail.

How big is your God?

(Source: Nova; SortLifeOut.co.uk quoting Magical Mind, Magical Body, by Deepak Chopra).