2-4-23-38-46, Mega Ball 23.

If your Mega Millions ticket sported that combination last night, please know that you are loathed and envied all across the Fruited Plains and from sea to shining sea. Of course, if you just won a world record jackpot, you aren’t reading this little blog.

So, never mind.

What a crazy world we live in. While the current administration works to make capitalism and the American ideal of a little person pulling himself up by the bootstraps to become a grand success a thing of the past, most of these united states endorse a game of luck to make someone a multimillionaire just because they either chose or were randomly issued the right combination of numbers.

It was fun while it lasted though, wasn’t it? Yesterday, I listened to my coworkers imagine themselves super rich. The things they would do with that money!

I think the odds of winning were something like one in 136 million. (These are still better odds than evolution, so I don’t doubt the Darwinians were all over this.)

That reminds me of the interchange between Lloyd (Jim Carrey’s character in the movie, Dumb and Dumber) and the girl by whom he was smitten…

 While some folks in Kansas, Illinois and Maryland decide what to do with their cut of the $640 million, I will get back to work on my first million.

Poor, poor, pitiful me.

Years ago, when I was a young pastor in California, some well-meaning chowderhead gave me a book titled, Dear Preacher, Please Quit! 

(If you were that chowderhead, I apologize…for not telling you sooner.)

The book’s author was no Rhodes’ scholar. Nor was he much of a theologian. Nor was he a writer.

His name was Roy Branson, and he was mostly an ignorant, prideful preacher that thought every preacher that wasn’t him wasn’t good enough to be one.

Dr. Branson’s self-publishing publishing house Landmark Publications advertises the book thus: Dr. Branson details why the majority of preachers are not called and should quit. How the ministry is shamed by egos and meaness. [sic]

He never says how large a majority the uncalled preachers comprise. Nor, apparently, did he ever catch the irony in his accusation that most preachers (the majority, you know) are chock full of ego and meanness. The irony here being how ego-maniacal a preacher has to be to make such a sweeping statement about other preachers, along with the fact that the good Reverend Branson has about as much meanness in his pen as any preacher I have read.

I don’t remember much of what the book had to say. (Well, it didn’t say a word, but I read it and don’t remember that either.) I do remember the tone was caustic, the rhetoric unschooled and the overall quality—um, how do I put this both politely and accurately?—abysmal.

I had not thought of that book in years and years and years…until it popped into my head for no apparent reason this very night. Then, Bam! I thought of it and now I don’t know how or why.

Never one to let a good title go to waste, I would like to pilfer it and level a little meanness of my own.

(Yes, all that stuff was just the introduction.)

Dear preacher, please quit…

• Thinking you can only include music in your worship that was written within the last fortnight. I am not saying you should run out and buy hymnals for everyone and get rid of your light and sound technicians. I am saying that if you are cheating your people out of learning the words and music of great hymns of the faith that have stood the test of time, you are cheating your people. You won’t let your people sing Amazing Grace but you listen to—and revere—the Beatles and Johnny Cash? There are some gospel oldies but goodies, too, you know. Why is retro cool everywhere but church? Don’t worry. You won’t lose your contemporary street “cred” if you acknowledge you know a song that was around before Al Gore invented the Internet.
• Trying to substitute style for substance. I love the casual Sunday morning dress-down thing. Sure. Who wants to wear a coat and tie if he doesn’t have to? I like the laser light show and the mimes and on-stage drag races and whatnot, too. But, you know what separates you from any old Broadway or off-Broadway show? Two things: they put on a better show than you, but you have eternal, immutable, holy TRUTH. Your hairdo and skinny jeans are not going to make up for a lack of real biblical substance, my friend. There is not much difference between a shallow church and a shallow grave, in my book.
• Pandering to petty people. Ole Deacon Cuss-n-Puff will only grow pettier and meaner if you pet him. Pray for him? Sure. Love him? If you are able. But, for God’s sake, for pity’s sake, for the church’s sake, for your own sake, don’t fear him and don’t feed his habit. You won’t respect yourself and he won’t respect you, either.
• Ogling greener pastures. People have become downright suspicious of the fact that, when “God calls” a preacher to a different ministry, it is almost always a bigger congregation, a bigger city and a bigger paycheck. I am not saying God doesn’t move his chess pieces around. I am not saying He doesn’t take a man that has proven himself over a small flock and promote him to a bigger one. I am just saying that the grass is not greener there. I know. I have been there and back.
• Listening to people telling you to quit. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

I would like to thank Dr. Branson for the title, Mr. Gore for the Internet so I would have a place to express my opinion, you for reading my blog, and God for everything else.

God bless you and yours.

What will you do when standing up means standing out?

It is easy to talk tough until it is tough to talk. Everybody is ready to do something until something must be done.

 The reason we revere the founders of America is because they pledged everything– their lives, their lands, their liberties– for a cause they believed to be just. They would be branded traitors to the Crown. They would be the objects of the king’s ire. They would face the stark reality that their only options were liberty or death.

We respect Martin Luther King because he had a dream and a clarion voice that called for equality, despite the personal cost.

But these are high ideals. These are the standards to which we aspire…unless the cost is too personal and too great.

These were the words hurled at me until I told that man in the mirror to kindly shut his trap. Just because something must be done is no sign I have to do it. Maybe someone should say something, but I don’t have to be that someone.

Let someone else do it.

I have troubles of my own and they are enough. Besides, this is all risk and no reward.

Right?

I was speaking with a Christian friend yesterday.

She said, “I think I am such a disappointment to God.”

To this, I replied, “No, you are not.”

It is, I believe, impossible to disappoint God. We may displease Him, but we cannot disappoint Him.

Disappointment is born of unfulfilled expectations. We anticipate a certain day or event going a particular way and when it does not, we are disappointed. We expect another person to say or do a thing or behave a certain way. If they do not, we are disappointed.

But God is omniscient. God knows the end from the beginning. He is not subject to disappointment because He knows exactly what He is in for. He knows what He has in you. He knows your propensities, your proclivities, your defects, your imperfections, your sinful bent. He knows you will fail. He knows you will falter. He knows you will fall short. He knows you will try to do better and mess it up.

Sure He does, or He isn’t God at all.

And yet…He loves you without contingencies, without restrictions, without limitations, without conditions.

This is not an invitation to throw caution to the wind and do as you “damn well please,” expecting God to take his holy broom and clean up the mess you made. No. If His unconditional love, if His saving grace is not motivation enough for you to live to please Him, it is doubtful you have experienced it at all.

Amazing grace is not a ready-made excuse or super safety net for the willful sinner. It is, instead, the tie that binds the wandering heart to Him. It is the bridge that closes the chasm between holy God and (what would otherwise be) the hopeless sinner.

You are not a disappointment to God. You are, according to Calvary, the apple of His eye.