Monday, November 05, 2018

WHAT SHALL WE DO AND HOW SHALL WE LIVE?

I am deeply concerned about the state of America these days.  I’m seventy-years old, and I’ve never seen in my seven decades such vitriol. At  www.vocabulary.comthere is a statement that rings clear, 
Back in the day, vitriol was the name for sulfuric acid, which burns through just about anything. So think of vitriol as language so mean-spirited and bitter that it could eat through metal. 
There you have it: America in a nut shell, couched in the mind and spirit of life in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Sadly, as a culture, it seems we’ve fallen and can’t get up.  So, stuck in the rut of anger and hostility we breathe in what we constantly breathe out. We now live in a war zone the weapons of which are character assassination, pungent humor designed to make fun of and destroy persons as persons, and acerbic news telling, designed to defend world views rather than tell the story with journalistic integrity.

How did we get here? How in the world did we get here? 242 years into the American experiment and this is the best we can come up with?  Generations in, and we can’t seem to live together.  We hold our worldviews so tightly that anyone who thinks differently than us is worthy of character assassination?  Vitriol might just be our downfall in the age of Twitter, Google, Instagram, and Facebook.

In the film, “The American President”(Castle Rock Entertainment, 1995), president Andrew Shepherd, played by Michael Douglas, gives a speech in which he states,
America isn't easy. America isadvanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight.  It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. 
We live in a republic and the people of the republic are responsible for its ongoing development. If you only want people who think the way you think to make their home here, you’re living in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This is America, American that has a constitution the Preamble of which states,
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In our Declaration of Independence, we find a driving principle that should be embraced by every man and woman who seeks to have a leadership spot in our republic:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 
All this being said, I suggest that our leaders are not living up to the leadership requirements of the  242 year old dream.  Leaders on both sides of the isle and those who claim to live in the middle or as independents are not a part of the solution but a part of the problem.  And, it trickles down into the everyday lives of all of us.  The anger and hostility expressed every day on social media, particularly, leaves one wondering if the days of democracy are coming to an end.  

We simply don’t know how to live together in the land we call “United.”  Yet, we’ve got to learn to live together or we all will be in deep trouble.  However, where in the world do we begin?  How in the world do we begin?

In brief and insightful article at oprah.com entitled, “Why You Should Take Your Demons to Lunch,” Elizabeth Lesser has a powerful paragraph that might just help us.  At least, it is helping me.
"Otherising" is the dangerous act of turning someone into the enemy just because he or she looks different, prays different, speaks different, or thinks different. Some of history's most tragic events—wars, genocides, terrorist acts—began with ordinary people demonizing other ordinary people. 
What if we chose not to participate in “Otherising?”  What if we chose not to demonize others?  Too radical? I don’t think so.  Granted, It will take intentional reaching out that is rooted in some degree of humility and a great degree of seeking to resolve conflict that, if we’re not careful, will rip us all apart.

As a follower of Jesus I am wondering if Jesus wasn’t actually on to something when He said, “In everything…treat people the same way you want them to treat you… (Matthew 7:12). 

Let me leave it here for now.  Treat people the same way you want them to treat you.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

INHALE AND EXHALE

The car stopped in front of me at a stop light had two decals in the back window.  On the Drivers side I read "Inhale Courage."  On the Passenger side I read, "Exhale Fear."  That was two days ago and I'm still thinking about those two statements.  

Over and over in Scripture we are called to trust God and "fear not."  Long before Nike made popular the phrase, "No Fear," God had already driven into the hearts and minds of His people the incredible insight of trusting God so much that fear would be tossed out of their lives.  After all, God is love and “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18, NASB).  God is not about fear and the bondages fear creates.  God is about life and freedom and renewal and transformation and renewal.  God doesn’t tie people up in the dungeons of despair.  Jesus said He came that people might have life and have it to the full.

God is getting bad press coverage these days and that’s sad; sad on so many levels.  We human being need hope and dreams and belief; the very realities God builds into people who trust in Him.  People who have tasted God’s amazing grace are blessed beyond their capacity to fully experience or explain.  God’s love and grace are so vast that they are simply to be received.  We try to explain them but our words far short.  

Ten centuries ago Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai wrote words that resonate even today when we don’t think much about parchments and scrolls and quills. He wrote,

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

God’s love rocks the world of everyone who dares receive it.  God’s love has been known to change the trajectory of a human life, turn people of anger into people of peace, and to enter into spheres of desperation and to create hope where there seemed to be no hope.  In the places and people of fear God’s love has shouted, “Inhale courage and exhale fear.” The life-transforming words of Jesus call out to all of us, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:29), “In Me you…have peace…take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), “My peace I give to you…Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (John 14:27).  

Inhale courage … Exhale fear. Take the grace and be filled with the love of God. After all, “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).  God is with us and our times are in His hands (Psalm 31:14-15). Take the grace and live.  Take the grace and do not fear.  Take the grace and let it become courage in you.     

Thursday, May 31, 2018

DREAMING DREAMS

I suppose if you live long enough you turn seventy. It happened to me just a few weeks ago.It was a wonderful day of celebrating with my family.  It was extra special, too, because I share my birth date with one of my grandchildren, Carson,-- April 29, just 57 years apart.

Being 70 I now feel a part of  a group called, “the old men” in the book of Acts, who “dream dreams” (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28). I feel good about it, too.  While the sons and daughters of the church prophesy, and the young men have visions, I am one who now gets to dream.  By a grace I don’t understand or deserve, I am one of the multi-millions of people on whom the Holy Spirit has been poured.

“Pour.”  I like that word.  It has about it the image of being soaking wet.  The Holy Spirit has been poured forth, on both men and women.  Together they speak forth the holy Word of our holy God to a generation of people in desperate need of the holy.

Why the holy?  I think it is because people are tired of the ramifications of the unholy -- greed, violence, anger, poverty, the daily bombardment of man’s inhumanity to man, lust for power, sex, and money, regardless of the innocent who are deeply damaged along the way.

Our world thrives on the unholy.  The Bible informs us, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  Of course, the world would disagree because the world is so busy being the world it can’t see beyond its own passions.  It simply presses on in its narcissism, getting what it wants when it wants it regardless of the collateral damage left along the way.

The unholy is the normal state of being in a world patterned after self-centeredness, power and greed.  N. T. Wright has a compelling paragraph that speaks into this issue. He write,

In the Western world, and many other parts as well, homes and families are tearing themselves apart.  The gentle art of being gentle -- of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love -- have gone out of fashion.  Ironically, everyone is demanding their “rights,” and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic “rights,” if we can put it like that: the “right,” or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn, and to flourish.
--Simply Christian, Why Christianity Makes  

Sense,(HarperOne: New York, 2006), 8

Our old world needs some Godly prophesy, and Godly visions, and Godly dreams.  God help us to catch His visions and dreams for His world.  God help us to hear His truth.

Back in 1955 Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul” (From a letter written on September 6, 1955 to Betty Hester in “The American Reader”).  I believe O’Connor was on to something.  Also, I believe if it were true in 1955 how much more so in 2018. “Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.”

Jesus has a great word for people who lived in His day and for people who live today.  He said to hurting people, 
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV)
Because of the realities of life going on all around us and because of Jesus’ gracious invitation, I feel a strange and marvelous hope for all of us.  Am I too optimistic?  That’s a fair question.  Let me just respond by saying , “I’m an old man now, and I get to dream dreams.”  

I’ve seen a lot in our world over the past seventy years, a lot of which I wish were not true.  However, as O'Connor writes again somewhere, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”  One truth that does not change has set me free to live and move and have my being in the very life of God:  “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NASB).

So, move over John Lennon.  
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(John Lennon & Yoko Ono, 1971)
Oh, by the way, unlike John Lennon, I do believe in heaven.  I believe in the God who came to us to bring us peace.  I believe Jesus died on the cross to put His broken world together again.  I believe in love.  I believe in hope.  I believe in truth.  I believe in forgiveness.  I believe in peace.  “You may say I’m a dreamer.”  Well, I am an old man after all.
God bless you. 

May God's Grace and Peace embrace you to His heart today.