Surprises and Gospel Opportunities

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Life for global worker Joan has always been full of surprises and gospel opportunities in her host country. This morning, Joan muses about a neighborhood wedding, English clubs and the Apostle Creed—all in a day’s work for Joan.

A few weeks ago, there was a wedding reception for the son of the M family who lives next door to me. Since I hadn't received an invitation, I asked a friend who lives a few houses from me, if I should go. She said, "Yes, you must go or you will offend them since you live next door."

Reluctantly, I put my gift of money in an envelope and headed to the wedding. Much to my surprise, when I arrived, the groom's aunt met me, took my arm, found two chairs and sat me down beside her. She stayed with me throughout the reception and introduced me to everyone as her friend next door. We took pictures and they insisted that I was in the middle of each photo.

Later, she walked me home, came inside and we chatted some more. She has already returned for another visit, invited me to her home and was delighted when I gave her a copy of the photos I had taken.

This is a miracle since we have lived next door to this family for 16 years and they have never spoken to us. Pray for this new friendship to grow.

On another front, the English Club continues to be a blessing to the students and to me. One of the young M students recently said that he was born a M but didn't really believe any religion at all. When he comes to the English Club, he enters in to the discussions of the Bible. We have a mix of Catholics, Christians and Ms who come each week. God is working in their hearts as we study his Word together.

I have several more groups of global workers and pastors’ wives who are eager to learn English. What a blessing for all of us as we pray together for people in this country to know Esa (Jesus). God is building his church.

And there’s Siwi, my M friend, who works in another city but messages me every day. Please pray for her and her brother, Angga, that God will continue to grow our friendship and they will open their hearts to know Esa.

Last Sunday, I attended an English service in a church here. As we read the Apostles' Creed, together, I thought, Here I am in another culture, in another country, reciting the same creed in the same way as I did at College Church. This is what heaven must be like.

On this Missions Festival weekend, Sunday’s Connections features an article by Cheryl Warner, “Living in the Sun Rise.” It's a good read,too. Cheryl and her husband, Charley, live in Ukraine and serve with Barnabas International. Enjoy this special weekend with our missions people.

Wandering: 1968/2018 by Wil Triggs

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There’s so much I don’t get about 1968, but then, there are plenty of things I don’t get about 2018 either. What I really grapple with is how to fit social discord and sin with the place of the church in the world.

Last fall, we went with Pat and Lin Fallon to see Ken Burns and Lynn Novick talk about their PBS Vietnam documentary before it aired. The Auditorium Theater had equal parts anti-war folks and those who fought in the war—and both groups expressed appreciation for each other. 

That would not have happened back in 1968. The two segments covering that year were called “Things Fall Apart” and “The Veneer of Civilization.” Those titles seemed to perfectly describe what a chaotic year that was. And the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., just a few days ago, brought me back to that time.

I remember it. Sort of. I was alive, but a little kid—so little in fact, that racial injustice and our involvement in a war on the other side of the world really didn’t mean anything to me. I just wanted to play with my friends.

But swirling all around us was, well, 1968. The war. Assassinations. The Democratic Convention. As strange as it seemed to me as a child, it must have been truly bizarre for adults—so much change on so many levels all at once.

Vietnam was far away, but issues of race were as close as the block where I played and lived.

As a white boy, I didn’t feel privileged. In fact, in my neighborhood, I was the minority. My friends identified themselves as Japanese, Black, Chinese, Filipino, Mixed, Mexican. I can’t think of a single friend who was white and stayed in our community. None of us seemed to be ethnically in a majority position when it came to the classroom or the playground.

I loved to visit Demetrius, whose mother would come home from work and make cookies and pour glasses of chocolate milk for us. After watching the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., on television, I ran a few doors down to Demetrius’s home. I wanted to shake off the sadness and play. The mother, who usually looked happy and beautiful as she happily offered homemade snacks, opened the door, tears streaming down her face. She was stricken and could barely talk. “The children can’t play today,” she said. “I’m sorry,” I said. I felt stupid even trying.

It wasn’t until I went to my evangelical Christian college that I experienced a truly white majority living situation. Where were the other ethnic groups? Many of the students who were not white had come from countries overseas. 

While onstage with Russell Moore at a conference this week, John Perkins said, “You are serving God absolutely when you love like God. …There is one way to get rid of sin and that’s the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.”

We can’t fix everything, but we can show our own love and point people to the King of Love, the one who shed his blood for us all.

Just a few weeks ago, we invited Lonnie to our Easter services this year—part of our “Each One, Bringing One” outreach. She is an African American woman we’ve gotten to know at the grocery store. Lorraine and I go there on Saturday mornings and split an omelet before our weekly grocery shopping.

Lonnie’s job was to cook the breakfast orders. We began to visit with her week after week. She got to know us so well that when she saw us walk in, she started our order before we placed it. At Christmas, we gave her our traditional gift to friends—chocolate ice cream sauce. When we gave her the sauce, she pulled out her cell phone and showed us photos of her newborn granddaughter.

So when we gave her the Easter invitation, we were hopeful. But she said right away that she had to work. We told her about College Church and she said, “Oh yeah, I know that church.”

We told her to visit. And if she ever visits, Lorraine said, “you dress up that granddaughter of yours and bring her with you and show her off to us.” We told her where she could find us when she visits.

And inviting her, even though she didn’t come, has meant that we pray for her more consistently than we did before. Join us in praying for Lonnie.

Maybe in the days ahead, we’ll see her on a Sunday morning when she doesn’t have to work.

At the same conference where John Perkins spoke, Russell Moore said, “Sometimes we say ‘If only we could have multi-ethnic churches.’ The church is multi-ethnic. The church is headed right now by a middle-eastern homeless man.”

I need help. I don’t really get this.

Let’s ask God to guide us to truly serve him by loving others like God loves us.

The Royal Sisterhood by Lorraine Triggs

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The Royal Sisterhood in training. (I am the sweet toddler princess in the middle.)

The Royal Sisterhood in training. (I am the sweet toddler princess in the middle.)

We were the ruling royalty of South Kenwood Avenue. Granted, our kingdom only extended to one neighborhood block and we were self-crowned. Nonetheless, my sisters and I were benevolent monarchs, gently cajoling our friends to play all games by our rules all the time.

The finest display of our grandeur was reserved for our annual summer backyard play—written, produced and starring ourselves, the Royal Sisterhood. We managed our own promotion, plastering telephone poles with hand-drawn fliers announcing the date, time and place of the performance. And the loyal subjects, uh, neighbors, would come in droves to watch us.

Then one summer we noticed a decline in the number of subjects in attendance. It turned out that a competing kingdom moved in on Dorchester Avenue, one block over from ours. It was ruled by Pamela. The call to arms came when we discovered that she was going to put on a play.

We spent the rest of the summer spying on her. We would climb the old willow tree in the backyard and have a clear view into Pamela's yard. Better yet was our friend "Tuffy" who rermained loyal and lived right next door to Pamela. We would pretend to swim in his above–ground pool, while keeping a watchful eye on her. We neglected our kingdom and our play planning. We sabotaged her publicity and tore off her fliers from telephone poles on Dorchester.

We drove ourselves (and our mother) crazy with this insane need of ours to compare ourselves with Pamela and always come out better than she. No, we didn't want to put on a play with her, the Royal Sisterhood decreed. No, we would rather die than befriend her. No, we were perfectly happy playing this new game of comparison.

Even Jesus' disciples played the comparison game when they "argued with one another about who was the greatest." (See Mark 9:33-37.) When Jesus asked them what they were arguing about, their silence was telling. I know mine would be. Would I really say to Jesus, "Oh, just spying on Pamela to make sure we were still the greatest."

On a lot of levels, I still happily play the comparison game. I don't tear down fliers from telephone poles anymore, but it's hard to avoid comparing homes, children, achievements, social media posts. We even compare how crazy busy we are.

In his book, Saving the Saved, author Bryan Loritts referenced a statement C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: "C.S. Lewis was right. In order for pride to exist, there must be comparison with what we would deem to be an inferior other."

The fatal blow to my pride is the recognition that compared to Jesus, I am the inferior other—not Pamela. Any attempt to make myself better than I am will always fall short of his glory. And there, in all my inferiority and other-ness, I recollect the amazingly graced words of Ephesians 2:4-5: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…" 

It's time to stop playing my favorite game.  

Flight Song by Virginia Hughes

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As chair of the board of deaconesses, Virginia and the deaconesses are well-versed in grief and mourning as they rally around families with sweet comfort and assurance of the church family's care and love.

Feathers lay strewn across the bark chips in white, black, brown, grey and speckled array sticking there ruffling in the light breeze. A tiny yellow beak and one remaining claw sink into the fluff where minutes earlier the hawk sat ripping and tearing at the flesh of the little bird. This scant pile is all that remains of the hawk’s hasty meal. I am at fault for placing the birdseed enabling the wily carnivore to snag the unsuspecting bird, so I retrieve the feeder willing the hawk to fly away from rooftop perch and not have my yard open season for hunting.

His eye is on the sparrow, and sometimes sparrows fall. A giant member of the avian species would not swoop down to consume a smaller, weaker member in the early days of creation. Blood spilled and animals eating each other are the sad result of our original sin. Nature after the fall is attack, split and devour. It seems in violent disarray, yet creation in its fallen futility remains part of the divine order. As do our losses, grief and mourning for an end to separation, a longing to make things whole and right.

Our loss, our grief echoes within ourselves, our families and community. We join creation’s groaning when a loved one dies. Loss rakes as it takes the faithful believer. Bitten by death and gnawed by grief, the sharp sting is felt even as we celebrate the passing into heaven of our loved ones. We need comfort, and there are times when the sad outnumbers the glad in cards sent to say we love and care about you, as in the past two months at College Church where many have entered their eternal home, and we miss them.

Grandpa’s death shattered my father. The family could hear Dad crying and playing recordings of Grandpa’s preaching behind the closed door of his study. My father could be tender, but he had never cried in such loud lament as heard through that door and it terrified us. We sat in a huddled mass with ears pressed to his door, weeping along. My brother announced, “Dad is crying like there’s no tomorrow,” bringing another wave of tears along with Mother scolding us for listening at closed doors. When I asked Mom why Dad was crying so much she sighed, “Your daddy never quite got enough of his daddy. All those years he spent in boarding school when Grandpa was off preaching, then Daddy went into the army and next came the mission field. He really misses his daddy is all.” At nine years old I was awed that a grown man could feel so much love and loss for his father and I cried even more.

When my father died we were all so relieved and that didn’t feel right either. Dad had struggled and wasted away on kidney dialysis for 20 years. It was painful to behold his suffering. Death was a terrible blessing. Home after the funeral, I was watching my young daughters twirling and giggling so vibrantly alive in contrast to the dead garden stalks of winter. They were carefree and carrying on as if death had no hold on us. I cried knowing that loss would touch them someday as it touches us all. 

Mourning, yearning, emptiness and quiet. The hollow pain that lingers when a loved one leaves us behind. We may at times be rolled over and snowed under by grief. Tears aren’t enough. Words don’t cover. We are blinded by our tears and maybe angry at the circumstances. How dare the world go on? The sun will rise too brightly and set too beautifully for our grief. Sound is too loud. Metal spoons crash and clang on pans. The chewing of insects is deafening. Snowflakes fall with a harsh tick on the window pane.

Through it all we need comfort and assurance that we are loved, and the community prays, and practical kindness appears in the form of cookies and delicious food on trays at a funeral reception. Special effort in planning, arranging, setting it all out with willing hearts and steady hands. A cup of cool, refreshing water or aromatic, hot coffee. Something sweet to cover the sour feeling. Something savory to balance the sweet. In some small way emptiness may be filled and cold replaced by warmth. Here is a kind word or tender morsel to lighten your step as you trudge through your heaviness. We walk together hand in hand. We cry rivers until we run dry, and here enters grace with a balm of kind words, Scriptures, memories, smiles, tears, prayers and favorite hymns.

There are birds who sing flight songs to draw attention as they fly upward in a straight line. At a memorial service we gather to share our sorrows and affirm belief in our Savior. We do not walk alone through the valley of the shadow, watching death be swallowed up in victory. Our mourning turns to dancing as we join in a flight song that begins together now and resounds into eternity as Jesus taught us:

Our, our, our.
Father, Father, Father.
You are, you are, you are.
In Heaven,
Holy is your name.
 

Are You the One? By Rachel Rim

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“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3)

John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask this question of Jesus while he himself was unfairly locked behind bars. Perhaps though, even if he could have walked out on his own two feet, he still would’ve sent his disciples. I can’t quite imagine that John would have felt completely unabashed to ask this question of the man he himself had proclaimed to the whole Judean countryside—with waving arms and brutal honesty and cracking voice raised against the winds, no less—as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And, of course, to ask of it of his own kin, when his own existence was inseparable from the prophecy that heralded his cousin’s birth. No, I think that had he been free, John would very likely have sent his disciples anyway. I would have. In a way, I do. Every time I ache to hear someone else’s testimony, someone else’s story or answered prayer, or hear someone else’s tale of grief, I am in a sense asking the same question: So, have you found him to be the one, or do you think I should start looking for another?

Looking seems to be a major theme of both this passage and our modern journeys. Jesus didn’t much look like the portrait of the Messiah painted by the prophets even to the first century Jewish communities he walked among and he doesn’t much look like it now to us. One glance at the news makes me wonder if maybe the Jews are right—how can the Messiah have come if our world is still so broken? The past year alone saw a fissure dividing political parties, families and evangelical leaders alike; saw scores of women come into the open about stories of sexual abuse; saw forest fires, hurricanes, bomb cyclones and tornadoes; saw racially-charged protests in Charlottesville, and Vegas shooters at music festivals. Every time I read the news or watch a commercial aimed at an entertainment-saturated culture or listen to a friend’s story of pain, I ask John’s same question. Every time I look at myself, for that matter, and the selfishness that constantly corrodes me, I ask it. If he really is the one, why am I so little changed? 

And yet I find hope in the rest of Matthew’s account, because what does Jesus say? Does he rebuke John for his lack of faith? Does he point out every prophecy he fulfills, including the one about John himself? He does neither. Rather, his answer is one rooted in looking:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matthew 11:5-6)

Jesus’ reply is the opposite of theoretical and dogmatic. It is empirical in the truest sense of the word—appealing to the reality and truth of experience. Go and tell John what you have seen and heard, go and tell him… People are receiving their sight, people are receiving their hearing, those who cannot walk are walking, the dead are living. Good news has come in the form of hands and feet and eyes and a radical subversion of the traditionally hierarchical society. Do you want to see the truth, John? Look around. See by others’ new sight. Don’t you know that belief now has limbs? By all means, keep looking for another if you want to be safe, but meanwhile, keep your eyes open for all the ways I am opening people’s eyes. And blessed are you, John, if you can hear this and not be offended, because God knows I know myself to be an offensive kind of truth. Like getting a shovel in answer to a request for water; like getting new eyes when all you asked was where to look.

This passage in Matthew’s gospel gives me so much hope, almost more than I want or can stand. It causes me to come alive in response to its beauty. It anoints me with this kind of quiet, burning desire to be the answer to John’s question to somebody else. And it awakens in me a sense of almost painful gratitude to all the people—friends and pastors, poets and novelists, theologians and musicians—who are the answer to John’s question for me. What is the church? The body of Christ. Perhaps another way to say it is that the church is the restored hands and feet and eyesight and hearing that Jesus resurrected during his ministry on earth, and we are to be those limbs and senses to a world aching from amputation and sensory deprivation.

Come all ye who hunger and thirst, who yearn for meaning, who sting from suffering. Come all ye who are looking. There is good news here for you, and it is news that walks, laughs, weeps, sings.

Oil of Grace by Cheryce Berg

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My cast iron skillet is begging to be parented by a Southern mama. Even though I adopted it three years ago, I just decided today to take seriously the Care and Cleaning of Cast Iron Skillets. I’ve too often scrubbed it with soap and steel wool, and I may have oiled it once. This Midwest mama failed. It’s currently having a spa treatment, sitting upside down in my hot oven. Once it’s cool enough for me to touch, I’m going to massage it in oil, towel it off gently, and put it to back to bed, whispering words of recommitment.

I sigh as I think about the other things I don’t do well. I think it comes with January and all the hoopla about Making Resolutions, combined with the Lack of Sun and the Bitter Cold. Cast iron skillets are the least of my worries, really. Parenting Through Finals, Buying a Midlife Crisis Car, and Not Missing Another Meeting rise above. And don’t even remind me about Exercising Old Dogs in Winter, Calling Family or Writing Frequent Meaningful Blog Posts.

I just can’t keep up with it all. We had pancakes and bacon for dinner, with a failed heap of soggy hash browns (which triggered the cast iron skillet crisis). Not grilled bratwursts, like my 15–year–old wanted (the one studying for finals), or spaghetti soup like my husband requested  (yes, spaghetti soup is a thing. Think chili, not spicy, sporting a few spaghetti noodles. It’s okay, but it doesn’t make the menu that often. And neither will hash browns, after tonight.)

I hear myself sigh again. There are helpful books piled on my desk and fun books piled by the cold fireplace. Pictures to be organized on my laptop (Learning Lightroom—another To Do. Check back with me in 2021 to see how it’s going.) I have a list of people to grab chai with, even though I gave up chai yesterday. Miles to run on the treadmill, once I reassure myself that I won’t fly off the back in front of the cool moms. And stories to be written.

And also, breathing without sighing. I remember my One Resolution for 2018: to not be critical. It was meant for me to not be critical of others. But I realize it applies to myself, too. I need to learn to not be critical of myself. And to not sigh.

I remember what I’m reading in Genesis—how shocking it is, with heaps of failure and fornication. Really, everyone is such a mess. It makes me second guess my challenge to my 15–year–old (the one studying for finals and waiting for me to grill bratwurst in January) to read along with me, because the sins are so—dirty. And rampant.

Lying, murder, drunkenness, betrayal, adultery, doubt, shame, anger and death. And this is just part of the list, in part of the book, in part of the Bible.

Yet amazingly, Genesis flows with grace. Grace greases all the cogs on the misshapen wheels called us, and the story of redemption soars forward. God is faithful, even when—especially when—his people are not.

I think about my own self, and how I mess up every day. The image I struggle to maintain has cracks, and the older I get, the more noticeable they become (like wrinkles). Yet so does grace in my life. More noticed the more it is needed.

I think back to Jacob, a key figure in Genesis, and one in need of gallons of grace. Twice God speaks to him in the same place, near the same stones. And twice God reminds Jacob of promises too great to believe—of offspring and land and protection and God’s presence. And twice Jacob picks up the stones where God has spoken, standing them on end to form a pillar and anointing them with oil. The oil consecrates the stones—remakes something so common and rough into something of significance.

Oil-of-Grace.jpg

The oil signifies grace to me, poured out as a reminder that God is holy and perfect and I am not. And yet he doesn’t let me slip through his fingers. He holds on tight.

And I remember the same, tonight, as I go to oil my skillet, clean now of blackened bits. I remember as I pour oil over it and rub it in deep, that God gives grace, that he doesn’t give up.

And I am so grateful. Grateful for the oil of grace.

On Being Goliath by Wil Triggs

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Last Sunday, Kids' Harbor returned after Christmas break.

Our story was Goliath and David. In that order.

How to make Goliath big? I sent Victor an image of Goliath and asked if he could use it to make the biggest one ever. It was Saturday when I emailed him. I wasn’t sure if he could make it happen on such short notice.

Maybe I should just put on a costume and do my best to be, well, big. Tom Nussbaum is big (and he already is there in Kindergarten Bible school). Or Anson Johnson. Or Kent Graham. Or Steve Knoner. Those guys are big. I’m not, though with Kindergartners, maybe I could pass for big. It’ll be okay. And I can make my voice big. I know how to shout.

None of us, though, are the nine feet plus that Goliath was. I would make do.

Sunday morning came and Victor walked right up to me. “Where do you want Goliath?” he asked.

I walked with him to the STARS room where he was serving, and he showed me what he had come up with. It was better than I had imagined when I emailed him the request. It was big. Thank you, Victor. Thank you!

I walked the few steps from his room to our Kindergarten room with Goliath. It was early enough that not too many people saw me. It’s hard to be inconspicuous when there’s an almost-life-size Goliath under your arm.

Teacher Lorraine started the story with Samuel annointing David as king, and then came the Philistines.

Victor had made an opening in the head where I could put my face and talk to the kids from as high up in the room as I could get. I stood on the piano bench, the two-dimensional Goliath as a sort of shield between me and the kids.

I issued Goliath’s challenge to the Kindergartner Israelites. It’s easy to talk big. Even as Kindergartners, I could see the effect on them. This kind of talk was not foreign to them.

They looked around. Who would fight such a big man? We explained that Goliath was even bigger in real life than the one we had.

Then Goliath began to make fun of these little people. I would squash whoever they brought forward. Stomp on him like he was an ant. It was surprisingly easy to get into character.

And not just for me. Some of the boys laughed. Girls too. Stomping ants can be fun. Yes, we all can be Goliaths who think we are, well, bigger, stronger, better and mightier, especially when we measure ourselves against one another.

Then Gavin stepped forward as David.

His brothers didn’t want him. They looked down on him. And Saul—the armor wouldn’t even fit.

I looked through the hole in Goliath’s head down at the children, each of them looking up with a certain amount of wonder. And David looking up in a sweet certainty.

"So you just want to send a little guy like this to fight me—am I some kind of doggy you want to hit with some sticks? I am going to make you into food for birds and wild animals to eat!" And yet, still, a surprisingly amount of empathy was building for Goliath.

Again, the kids laughed. Even in their humor, though, the scale was enough to help them see and imagine how scary it must have been. Even though we were having fun, Lorraine explained, how terrifying it was when it really happened.

We had fashioned a makeshift smooth stone out of tissue and white labels.

And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone, slung it and (with Tom's help) the paper stone struck the Philistine on his forehead. Goliath fell on his face to the ground.

Goliath.jpg

Kindergartners are great. Their imaginations alive, their joys and sorrows not yet obscured by the restraint that we learn over the years.

And then to end with a song:

The rock hit Goliath right in the head
The stone hit Goliath and knocked him dead.
Not with a spear or a lance or a sword,
But only with a sling,
But only with a sling,
But only with a sling
And the Word of the Lord!

A pretty good morning all the way around.

Just as the children were enthralled with our cut-out Goliath, we, too, like the big. We celebrate all sorts of Goliaths. And the little David goes unnoticed or forgotten by the rest of us, who fit so comfortably into the roles of selfish brothers or Saul-like kings. And then God does what needs to be done in ways that no human strategy can muster.

It’s good to be back with the Kindergartners discovering for what seems like the first time Bible truths and missionary stories. God's Word is alive!

It wasn’t the stone. It wasn’t even David, really. It was God himself who brought down Goliath.

Let’s worship and serve and celebrate him together.