A Pastor Prays

This morning's musing is a prayer from Dr. Wendell Hawley's book A Pastor Prays for His People (used by permission of the author, and his book is available in the Church Bookstall). Wendell's prayer is appropriate for the start of a new year and every month that follows.

Prayer Number Two

God of all grace, God of my salvation,
I praise you because you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.
You never grow old; you are not impoverished, enfeebled, forgetful;
     your faithfulness continues to each generation—
        more enduring than the earth itself.
And yet, wonder of wonders, you have entered into our existence,
for the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And because of that, Jesus knows all about life's struggles.

We thank you, Father God, that Jesus had to earn a living.
    He did a day's work like any working person;
     he had to face the wearying routine of everday work,
         work that sometimes becomes a chore . . . a struggle.
He knew the frustration and irritation of serving the public . . .
    some people are never pleased.
Jesus knew the problems of living together in a family.
He knew what it was like to have unbelieving relatives.
And he knew the reality of temptation and the attacks of Satan.

We thank you, Father God, that Jesus shared in happy social
        occasions . . .
    that he was at ease at weddings, and at dinner parties,
    and at festivals in the homes of the rich and the poor . . .
        and people just like us . . .
Grant, Father, that we may ever remember that in his unseen, risen presence,
     he is a guest in our homes and a listener to every conversation.
We thank you that Jesus knew the meaning of friendship,
    that he had his own circle of friends with whom he wanted to be;
    that he knew how to catch fish and how to prepare a meal;
    and that he was there, standing alongside loved ones, when they
        needed him most.

He also knew what it was like to be disappointed by a friend,
    to suffer disloyalty,
    to have love repaid by rejection.
He experienced unfair criticism,
    prejudiced opposition,
    deliberate misunderstanding.
He was lied about and abandoned—he knew what it was like
        to be alone.
We thank you, Father, that whatever circumstances we face,
Jesus has been there before.
    Because he faced all of the same testings we do,
        he is able to help those who are going through them.
    Touched with the feeling of our infirmities, he knows our frame;
        he remembers that we are dust,
    Therefore, we come boldly to the throne of grace,
    that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in every time of need.

Lord, we are a needy people . . . in need of your assurances.
As we hide your Word away in our hearts,
    make every promise real to us this year.
Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.

And so, sovereign Lord, as we face the New Year,
we do so in the confidence that you are with us in the midst of every
        situation:
    sickness or health;
    empty purses or stretched dollars:
    business losses or economic gains:
    family disruption or family delights.
Whatever, Lord, we are yours!

Amen

Scripture quoted from Hebrews 13:8; Psalm 100:5, NLT; John 1:14; Hebrews 4:15, NLT; Hebrews 4:15, KJV; Psalm 103:14; Hebrews 4:16; Psalm 119:165. 

A Pink Birthday Cake at Christmas by Laurie Eve Loftin

When Mom’s side of the family gathered for Christmas, I would drive up north of Rockford to celebrate with them. Whenever I asked my aunts what I could bring, they always said, “Just bring yourself.” Nevertheless, one year, I decided to bring a cake. I had ordered one—a red velvet cake (originally called the Waldorf Astoria cake because of its origin in the 1920s). Little did I know the significance this cake would bring to that Christmas!

My cousin’s son, who was very small—about two–years–old if I remember right—had been praying for weeks that we could have “a pink birthday cake for Jesus.” The adults told him they were serving only pies, but he insisted there would be a pink cake, and we would all sing “Happy Birthday to Jesus."

When I arrived, the little guy greeted me at the door with the news that we would sing and eat a pink cake. Behind him, I could see a couple of the adults giving me the nix sign and mouthing, “pies, just pies.” However, while scrambling out of my coat and opening my packages, I said, “We will have a cake, but it will be red. I ordered it special to bring with me.” He was not deterred. He had prayed for a pink birthday cake for Jesus, and just seeing a cake was enough to boost his confidence.

After dinner (which, for some reason—maybe the cold weather—we ate in the “old kitchen” in the basement of my aunt and uncle’s house), I brought out the cake. Once more, the adults tried to convince the youngest among us that it would be a dark red, but he could enjoy it anyway. So we sang “Happy Birthday to Jesus.” Grandma blew out the candles and I put the cake down to cut it.

Do you know that cake was PINK! I don’t know what happened at the bakery, because it tasted just fine. But there it was: a pink birthday cake for Jesus, in answer to a little boy’s prayer of faith and celebration.

Thank you, Lord, for that wonderful gift.

My grandmother, my aunt, and this season, my uncle are no longer celebrating with us here on earth. So I dedicate this story to them this Christmas in gratitude and joy.

The Naughty List by Wil Triggs

For whatever reason, my parents stopped going to church when I was little, or maybe they stopped before I was born. We didn’t consistently go to church.

But we did have a church. It was the Garfield Baptist Church.  All of my sisters and brother remember attending that church. This was my family’s church even though we were, well, sporadic in attendance. Maybe my parents were just millennials before their time.

Though we didn’t attend regularly, I do remember going there, one Sunday in particular.

The pastor was preaching about sin. And he was getting pretty excited. The sermons at that church were interactive in a way that we aren’t at College Church, with people shouting “Amen” whenever the pastor was trying to stress an important theological truth.

On this particular Sunday, the pastor pointedly asked the congregation about sin in their lives. He repeated the question, asking if there was anyone sitting in the church that morning without sin. No one responded.

The pastor asked a third time if there was anyone in this church who did not sin. If so, raise your hand, he said, challenging us to come face to face with our sin.

I was right there with the pastor.

I knew that Jesus had washed away my sins. Whiter than snow. As far as the east is from the west. Nothing could undo what Jesus had done.

I didn’t realize it, but that was not the point.

Every time he asked the question, the volume in his delivery got louder and more intense. It seemed to my young mind that he was not happy that no one was responding.

So after that third time asking, I shot my hand up into the air as far as it would go. Yes pastor, I was without sin!

The pastor and everyone else in the room saw my raised hand. The congregation erupted in laughter. The pastor was taken aback. My mother was mortified. She pulled down my raised hand as fast as she could.

Especially during the preaching, people didn’t really laugh at church back then, at least not at the level that happened that morning. And they were laughing at me. I didn’t understand why people were laughing. It wasn’t funny. I didn’t want to let Satan blow out my little light. I wanted to let it shine. And the pastor was asking for a response, just like he often did for people to come forward if they wanted to make a decision or have someone pray for them.

I didn’t really think that I had never committed a sin, it was just one big misunderstanding between the pastor and me. Afterwards, I felt bad and tried to explain, but there wasn’t really anything I could do. I was young enough that people were forgiving. And I think in a subsequent Sunday the pastor even joked about asking for a show of hands, looking over at me, and people chuckled in a more acceptable level.

Sometimes at Christmas, we put ourselves on the nice list. We get caught up in the moment and think of ourselves as good. We raise our hands up in the air like I did those many years ago. And then, the  wonder of Jesus can get lost in our sense of goodness.

This Christmas, I’m thinking of my favorite quote from a book I read this year:

“…we sin even in our best moments as we serve God. There has never been a single moment when we have loved the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:29, 30). In our most sincere time of prayer, the pure eyes of our holy God see the unbelief, lukewarmness, spiritual pride, hypocrisy, and selfishness that is in our hearts. We grieve over the sins we see, but God sees far more. Our sins are like the dust on a gravel road. My sins and yours are beyond number.” (The Psalms Volume 1—Psalms 1 to 41, Rejoice the Lord Is King by James Johnston, p. 415)

Though our sins may be beyond number, even more measureless is the great God who gave his only Son. He laid down all the glories of heaven. He laid himself in a manger. He washed dirty feet. He spoke to waves and storms and demons and pigs and Samaritans and tax collectors. He laid himself out on the cross. He laid aside his very life. He was laid in the tomb.

And then, wonder of wonders. Savior, Redeemer, Friend, Mighty God. King everlasting.

Let’s think more about Jesus this Christmas and less about the lists, be they naughty or nice.

How A Google Doc Changed My Life by Rachel Rim

One of the biggest blessings of my life exists in the form of a Google document.

Two years ago, my friend Alycia and I sat on the steps outside "Saga O" on Wheaton College's campus and made the rather arbitrary decision to be accountability partners. Looking back, we had no clear idea of what that really meant. The decision came out of a conversation about how ironically difficult it was to read the Bible regularly at a Christian college. If memory serves correctly, I made the suggestion, she readily agreed and neither of us thought too much about it. Later that night, one of us created a Google document, titled it “Rachel and Alycia’s Accountability Page” and we went on with our unsuspecting lives.

Like in the gospel story of the five loaves and two fish, God took our clueless-but-genuine intention and multiplied it in ways we never could have predicted. We started reading Deuteronomy and Hebrews together and began writing on the page every night. We wrote out our questions and thoughts on the passage and responded to each other’s posts in different colors. Soon we were reading Paul's letters to the Corinthians, the prophet Hosea and the Gospel of John. We posted on C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, shared lyrics to hymns we were currently listening to and pondered the Tolkien lectures at the Wade Center we attended. 

It didn't take long before academic discussions turned into personal conversations. Alycia opened up to me about her family; I shared with her some of my struggles. We began to not simply share prayer requests but to meet every week, usually on the steps of Edman Chapel, and pray for things going on around the world, on our campus and in each other’s lives. Whatever happened on any given day, I could count on Alycia’s steady reflections on our accountability page; whatever a particular week looked like, I knew there would be a time to come together, share and pray. The summer before our senior year, we read a book together and decided to pursue spiritual friendship—friendship that was intentional, committed and rooted in biblical truth.

Looking back, I’m not sure either of us would have so casually embarked upon our accountability friendship had we known all that would happen. There is something a little frightening about seeing something grow so powerfully, so unambiguously of God. Some truly beautiful conversations and memories have come out of our accountability, but it has also been immensely difficult at times, as we struggled through busy schedules, the natural wounds that come from deep vulnerability and the inevitable realities of post-graduation life.

Part of the struggles we faced—and still face—stem from the fact that we have few places to find examples of friendships like ours. Short of David and Jonathan, there aren’t many biblical stories used to illuminate deep friendship, and the topic does not factor heavily in most sermons or seminars. Our culture as a whole, and I would dare to say, church culture in particular, holds friendship as the least committed of all relationships. It puts marriage and romantic relationships up on a pedestal, and friendship comes in last of all. The nature of friendship is seen as whimsical, the decision to “be friends with someone” as arbitrary; we become friends and stop being friends with someone based on how we feel, and we use words like “commitment” and “intentionality” exclusively for marriage.

As a single, recent college graduate, friendship obviously plays a different role for me than it does for someone in another season of life. I recognize this, and yet at the same time, I cannot help feeling that our under-emphasis of friendship has caused us to miss out on a fundamental aspect of God’s character, as well as a profound avenue for grace and blessing in our personal lives. I have learned different things from my friendship with Alycia than I have from my relationships with my parents or my sister, particularly because I’m stuck with my family whether I like it or not, whereas friendship requires unrequired effort. It is creating a covenant where none exists, choosing commitment in a culture that says we can drop friends when we no longer feel like we have much in common. And accountability specifically has done more than anything else in my life to show me that I cannot walk alone—that to do so would be to miss so much of what it means to be human, made in the image of the relational God.

Alycia and I are still accountability friends, though we live in different states and the lack of proximity makes everything harder. Our Google document is close to three hundred pages long, and I recently returned from Minnesota where I spent a week with her and her family. Before my friendship with Alycia, I never knew friendship could be so hard and so complicated; I also never knew it could be so beautiful. It is my prayer that both secular culture and Christian culture can slowly work towards understanding friendship in a radically different light. I’ve found too much beauty in my own to pray any differently.

Daddies Saturday Mornings by Wallace Alcorn

It’s Saturday morning, and Ann and I have just returned from shopping at Trader Joe’s. I like going on Saturdays, because it is then I get to see dads—daddies, actually—shopping with their children. One little guy was sitting in his cart seat singing, “Daddy O, O my daddy.” I hope daddy noticed. This old daddy certainly did, but I wonder if I noticed more today than I did when I was the daddy.

I think I did, but it is more certain that I now more understand and with stronger conviction borne of both rewarding experience and enlightening observation. I pray retroactively (however dubious the theology) that I was faithful as a father as our Father always is. I learned most by how he worked out his fathership through my father, who was himself father indeed.

Changing planes at O’Hare some years ago, I ran into my former Wheaton College professor Kenneth Kantzer at baggage claim. Any number of esoteric theological questions rushed into mind. As I was deciding which to risk asking at this opportune moment, he preempted me: “Wally, how old are your children?” When I told him all in grade school, he shot back: “Spend time with them while you have them!” Then he was off, leaving me to ponder why this world-class theologian should lay just this advice on his former student. Although I knew him as an academic, he had also allowed me to know him as a person, as a daddy. The Lord chose the right voice for me at the right time.

John Calvin wrote of a sensus divinitatis (“sense of deity”), and I wonder if there isn’t also something of a sense of fathership, inherent within our souls. I have seen it in some who never experienced actual fathership. It was there ready to be activated. In the most deeply felt crises, it expresses itself as daddy, “Abba Father.” Already a father is but a start; we must grow into being daddy. The children will already know, and they will never forget if we are.

I was, as a police chaplain, called to a Tacoma KFC following an armed robbery. As the policeman unlocked the door to admit me to the crime scene, he motioned to a booth where sat a grandmother and a two-year-old boy. The young boy was sobbing deeply trying to “be a man,” as his grandmother was demanding. Tragically, when the little one had begun to cry, one of the robbers pushed a gun in the boy’s face and then turned and shot the clerk before the boy’s eyes.

I slid in beside them and held my arms out to the boy. He flew into them and buried his face in my shoulder. As I hugged him, he kept crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” He knew.

I am grateful to those daddies who remind me on Saturday mornings. But, when we have grown up recognizing what a daddy is, why is it we don’t pay attention when we are?

My Road to Russia by Wil Triggs

I was in fifth grade when my trumpet teacher took it upon herself to teach me music appreciation and theory in addition to trumpet. She sent me home each week with records to listen to and then we would talk about them at my next trumpet lesson. After she took me through weeks of studying and listening to composers for each of the periods of classical music, she told me that I seemed to be drawn to a lot of Russian composers. The more I listened to, the more records she would pull out and loan to me. “If you like that, listen to this,” she’d say week after week. And it really became an auditory sort of revelation of sound—Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,  Rachmaninoff, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Prokofief, Stravinsky, Khabalevsky.

In my junior high art class, the teacher dumped clippings of buildings and places from around the world onto a table and told us to each pick one up and paint it with watercolors. I chose an exotic building with lots of colors and shapes. Is it real? I wondered.

The teacher explained in his outgoing art-teacherish way that there was a terror to go with the beauty in the photo I chose. I didn’t know what that building was or where it came from. Of course, it turned out to be a real structure in Russia. The legend was that the Czar had the architect blinded after he finished so that he could never duplicate his work. I was fascinated and a little aghast. What kind of a place was this?

Then, in college, I took a class that focused on Dostoevsky. There I was, back in Russia again, this time exploring the world through the eyes of Raskolnikov, Sonya, Porfiry, Mitya, Ivan, Alyosha, Zosima and so many others. Dostoevsky became a giant of a writer to me, as I read through many of his works and marveled at the insights into humanity, faith, suffering and some kind of redemption. This was a land far-removed from the England of Charles Dickens or the America of John Steinbeck. Not better, but very much different. It was a people familiar with sorrow and suffering.

In all of these experiences, never did I think that I would ever go there.

But I did end up working to advocate and pray for Christians in labor camps and a psychiatric hospital during what turned out to be the last years of the Soviet Union. And while doing my work, the organization I worked for sent me there. It was to help me see and do a better job of writing, and also to take some Bibles and books with me to the churches starving for them. This later grew into full-time missionary service, but that’s another story.

One place I went to on that first visit was Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). A Soviet-approved tourist destination was the Tikhvin Cemetary—the burial place of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Of course, I had to go. When I got there, I found that I was not the only one to go to his grave. Others went also, reverently and with a sense of awe.

And Dostoevsky was not the only one. I wandered and stopped beside others where people stood and figured out the names in my newly acquired Cyrillic alphabet—Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky. I knew these names and recalled their music. Walking by them all, in the shadow of the Orthodox monastery, I returned to Dostoevsky’s grave before heading out.

Even as the official tour guides took us to many cultural and historic landmarks and lectured us on history and culture from the Marxist-Leninist perspective, we did carve out free time. It was then that we purposely sought out church. Leningrad was also where I met and prayed with Christians who loved Jesus in ways that seemed normal to a Sunday school teacher like me but was reckless in the Soviet context. And just a few weeks later, some would be arrested and sent to psychiatric hospitals/labor camps for teaching minors about Christianity. And even later on, one recanted to a degree and later got back into ministry, another served out his term and was released from prison, later still emigrating to the United Kingdom. 

The suffering and sorrow expressed with such intensity in the arts of the country were nothing compared with the mostly unseen regular people living out their lives and practicing their faith no matter what.

My prayer and advocacy for Russia has grown now to include so many other places and people of the world—a partial list from a recent prayer time includes Algeria, Central African Republic, China, Eritrea, Indonesia, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Vietnam and North Korea.

I’m learning and forgetting and learning anew that God answers prayers along the way—prayers that free people, topple empires, convert persecutors and give freedom to share the good news in more open ways that may seem impossible. Things that seem far away aren’t far away at all where Jesus is concerned. You could read about a far-off land and years later find yourself standing in the very place you read about.

My first time in Russia was an eye–opener. More than that, it was a heart–opener, forget the heart—it laid bare my soul. I came face to face with God preparing me for his work in ways no human could imagine. And I started to learn that even more beautiful than art or literature or music is the suffering of God’s people and the amazing gift we have to stand with them in prayer and advocacy.

Noses and Nostalgia by Nancy Taylor

The air is heavy today with the scent of rain and fall. It’s funny how our sense of smell can instantly transport us to another time and place. One whiff of hedgerows and roses and I’m back in England. Salty sea air wafting on the breeze transports me to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Scotch pines swaying in the breeze take me to the Northwoods of Wisconsin. A particular cologne brings back all the feelings of young love because that’s what my husband wore when we were dating. The smell of cedar brings me back to days of playing in our walk-in cedar closet as a child. Gasoline and lawn clippings and burgers on the grill are all the best scents of summer. Maybe it’s no mistake that the words nostril and nostalgia are so similar.

The funny thing is, we can’t really describe a smell the way we can describe a sight or taste or sound or feeling. It’s something you have to experience for yourself, and it’s not always an experience we choose. Scientists tell us that the sense of smell is the most direct of all our senses. As we breathe in, tiny nerves transmit information to our brains. The effect of a smell is instantaneous, unedited, and visceral. And the information that enters our brains through our noses lodges in the long-term memory section of our brain. The effects of what we breathe in without even knowing it are long-lasting and inescapable. That is why smells have the power to bring up long-buried emotions of joy or sorrow, reduce our stress and improve our cognitive performance.

Perhaps the power of scent was on Paul's mind when he wrote, “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15–16) Christians have a unique smell about us. We carry with us and in us the life of the Spirit, and he creates in us rivers of living water, which carries the scent of life and growth and hope. The promise of true life.

The scent of a Christian is interpreted differently by different people, just as the smell of grass clippings makes one person think of happy summer days and another think of miserable allergies. Those who are being drawn to life in Christ know that it is the aroma of the life-giving love of God, and to them it is the smell of life. The presence of another believer transports them to the glorious home they will one day share as they live in God’s presence. It is a tangible reminder of the worldwide family that we became part of when we believed in Jesus.

Those who have turned their back on God associate Christians with judgment because a Christian’s life of love and obedience to God makes theme realize that their own life stinks of death and destruction. To them, Christians reek of death. Maybe they are not too far off, because after all we are carrying in our bodies the death of Christ, the death which brings life.

There is another aspect to the scent of a Christian—we are, in our very existence as well as in our acts of love and worship, a fragrant offering to God. The prayers we breathe out and the good deeds we do for others are like the sweet aroma of sacrificial incense wafting up to him. (Leviticus 1:17) We are “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.” (Philippians 4:18) In these ways we imitate Christ, who “has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” (Ephesians 5:2) Regardless of how we are viewed by those around us, the scent of life and love that clings to us as believers is pleasing to God. It is a sign that we are a living sacrifice to him, that we have offered ourselves, body and soul, in worship to the Creator.

So the next time a scent takes you by surprise and transports you like a magic carpet to another time and place, think of the aroma of your life. Are you letting Christ flow through you so that you bring the scent of life to those around you? Are your attitudes and actions a sacrifice of praise that releases a sweet aroma pleasing to the Lord?

Follow Nancy's blog on her website: nancytaylorwrites.

The Great Homesickness by Rachel Rim

When I imagine childhood, that crescent of time when we’re somehow more human than we’ll ever be again, I picture strips of asphalt and living room windows. For the first seven years of my life, my father pastored a church an hour’s drive away from home. Since the small group my family attended always met in the houses of its more proximate members, it sometimes felt like we were eternally making our way home. Sitting in the backseat, drifting in and out of our parents’ conversation, my twin sister and I would gaze out our car seat windows in that hazy twilight between waking and sleeping.

By the time we turned off the freeway and into our quiet neighborhood, the world outside was a dark blur of shadows broken only by the occasional lights left on in people’s houses. Drowsy, wrapped in my own tangle of arms and legs, the warm air from the vents billowing out the Chicago cold, I’d stare out the window into strangers’ homes. With the infection of night, they seemed infused with mystery—esoteric spaces that opened an ache inside my chest, bright squares of hallways and curtains that coaxed whole worlds from their calyxes. Though I knew in my head that they were made of walls, ceilings and floors just like any other house, they seemed illuminated into mystery, a grain of belief I did not have to fight to hold.

Some fifteen years later, a diploma under my belt and the awning of adulthood now situated firmly above my head, I am envious of a time when anything—particularly faith—could be held with the gentle grace of childhood. These days, it seems there is nothing that does not require inordinate strength to believe. Living rooms, it turns out, are just living rooms; draw close enough, and the world beyond the sill shrinks back into the mere luminescence of your longing, a reality language can contain.

Once, sitting in the back of a different car making its way home from a different church, my sister and I asked our father why he believed in God. I remember his momentary quiet, how it fell like snow upon the dashboard, and then his simple answer: “Because of beauty.” I remember expecting a more dogmatic answer from a professor of philosophy.

At 23 years old, I don’t know much. About the only thing I know with certainty is that I don’t know as much as I thought I did a few years ago. Sometimes, oftentimes, it feels like life got confusing far before I got courageous, if I’ve ever gotten courageous, and this philosoher's daughter who grew up exposed to more theology than the average adult, can never quite seem to summon enough faith.

Yet if you were to return my question back to me and wait for my own snowfall silence to melt into words, then like so many times before I would quote my father: I believe because of beauty. I believe—because of beauty. Because of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and the feel of nylon guitar strings; because of the miracle of friends and the paradox of the gospel; because of the strange amalgamation of darkness and childhood that takes strangers’ homes and flowers them into grace, and the insatiable ache for God that remains our deepest proof of him. If I had to venture a guess on any truth, it might be this: longing, like beauty, is inherently apologetic.

Rilke puts it another way, in a prayer that seems to float out an old window and into the surrounding night: “You, the Great Homesickness we could never shake off.”