A Gaggle of Geese by Terri Kraus

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It’s that time of year—in the Midwest, at least—when the amazing happens: the Canada geese make their annual trek to the warmth of the south for the winter, passing through on their way. I always wonder and marvel at this God-given impetus within them as I see a gaggle flying, in tight V-formation, against a clear blue autumn sky. What is it that triggers their need to get going? As the leaves begin to fall, and the wind cools, does God whisper in their ears of the shortening days?

There’s a lovely little pond behind our home, and it seems it’s become a popular wayside inn for a number of our feathered friends each year. I love hearing their earnest honking, sometimes in the middle of a foggy night—the plaintive, somewhat melancholy sound matching the feelings in my plaintive, melancholy soul upon having to say goodbye to another summer, not able to fly south, like they do, to escape the coming grey days of the winter cold.  

With this increased seasonal population of geese, it’s not at all unusual to have to hit the brakes for a group of them as they make a valiant march across any number of local roadways. It’s not so bad on a side street in town at 30 miles per hour, but alarming on a 4-lane highway outside of town that cuts across the prairies where they graze, at 55 or 60. It would be almost comical, the way they take their time, waddling and then pausing to crane their necks, webbed feet on dirty pavement, unhurried, totally unaware of my hurriedness in getting somewhere, if it wasn’t so precarious for them. I hold my breath as cars from the opposite direction speed toward their graceful bodies. Will the drivers see them and stop in time? Unfazed by the squealing tires, they purposefully cross in single file, as the line of traffic builds in both directions...  

So I’m sitting in my car, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel with a bit of impatience, and I say out loud, as if they can hear me, “But you can fly! Instead of risking your lives, you can easily glide above the road, out of danger! Use the wings God gave you!”

And in that moment, I am stunned by this thought: Isn’t that so like me. How often I don’t use the wings God gave me, stubbornly tethered to this earth, bent on doing it my own way (which inevitably ends up being the harder, more perilous, precarious way) even when I know his ways are higher than my ways, and that he's proven this to me over and over. I trudge my way on a dirty road through many dangers, toils and snares, coming at me from both directions, on my own steam.  Slogging through, sometimes joyless, to get to the other side.  This, when my powerful God has equipped me with everything I need to soar, to mount up with wings as eagles in a clean, clear, wide open sky, and do it the heaven way. His way.  The far superior way. The way of joy.

Which is followed by another stunning thought: Isn’t it so like God, who is not tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, who is not impatient with me, as he looks on while I waddle along on the low road, season upon season, when I could be flying. How beautiful is his long-suffering, how he waits, waits for me to use everything he’s given me to live victoriously in this life, being all he has designed me to be in Christ. To rise above. He lovingly watches, lets me learn from my mistakes, only encouraging, with no condemnation.

And if my Heavenly Father does this for me, is this what I am doing as a parent, as a friend? If someone I love chooses the low road, will I be as lovingly patient with them? How well am I encouraging that friend who walks a dangerous path, with no condemnation, in the way to soar?       

Dear God, please whisper in my ear about the shortening days, and let me fly, O Lord, let me fly.                     
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this?" Job 12:7-9

Visit Terri at terrikraus.com

Friends and Likes by Lorraine Triggs

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It was this picture of our dog that led to our two-day obsession with Facebook. It began when Winfield Flower Shoppe posted a contest for the best pet Halloween costume. The rules were simple: post a picture of your pet in costume, invite friends to like it and the picture with the most likes won a $50 gift certificate to the store. 

Sissy.jpg

I entered the contest Saturday morning, and voting ended Monday at 9 a.m.  I began checking the number of likes every hour on the hour, every half-hour on the half-hour, every quarter hour on the quarter-hour.

Facebook friends suddenly took on a new and immediate importance. They could help my dog win!

For most of the day, our dog was top dog. The competitors were few; our likes were many. Suddenly, Saturday evening we had a serious competitor, and the likes were up and down. It was nerve-racking.

It was not a restful Lord's Day. Our likes froze on Sunday at 8, 9:30 and 11 a.m. I guess it's a good thing people weren't liking our dog during the worship services. And we managed not to check our status during worship.

Then lunch came and we sent out requests to our friends to ask their friends to like our dog's costume. We emailed people to like our dog. We kept Facebook open on our devices to make it easier to track the likes. At 10:30 p.m., exhausted, we went to sleep. Our dog had two more likes than her competitor.

Monday morning. What do you think was the first thing I did? We checked Facebook. Our dog had surged ahead with 10 more likes. We could go to work now. At 9 a.m., we finally relaxed when the email announcing our win arrived in my inbox.

We, uh, our dog, had enough likes to be declared the winner. Our friends had come through.

I still sometimes obsess about my likes on Facebook. I want my friends to like my profound quotes or empathize with my bad news or praise my vacation, my garden, my family, my accomplishments. I like theirs, too.

But this dog contest and how I fixated on it made me think after the fact about the nature of real friendship. We remember it every fall season and laugh. It was funny and fun to win, but it got a little out of hand.

I recently read an article that asked, "Are You a Friend of Jesus?" It pointed out four characteristics of Jesus' friends: they love one another, obey his commandments, understand his truths and are chosen to bear fruit that remains. There is nothing there about clever posts or gorgeous photos or bragging rights. The number of likes or friends or comments amount to, well, not much.

Jesus explains in John 15:12-17, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another."

Jesus appoints us to so much more than we would ever imagine on our own. He does more than send us friend requests or posts to like. And he expects more of us than that. He calls us friends, and then gives us the grace and power to live like his friends. It's about Jesus and abiding in him and his love, and finding rest in this nerve-racking world.

God of Hope, God of Mercy by Dr. Wendell C. Hawley

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God of hope, God of mercy,

Faithful God, forgiving God, holy God,

We have your Word, your promise—and we trust in the fact that

the Lord is near to all who call upon him,

to all who call upon him in truth.

We have been invited to ask, to seek, to knock, with promise of answer,

for we believe you rule over all,

and in your hand is power and might.

So we address our petitions to

the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God,

worthy to receive honor

and glory for ever and ever

Father God, we would that our moments of trust were with us always,

but events come into our lives and we are filled with questions.

We need the reinforcement that you have the answers.

We stand mute before inexplicable circumstances, but there are no

mysteries for you.

There are no facts you do not know;

no problems you cannot solve;

no events you cannot explain;

no hypocrisy through which you do not see;

no secrets of ours unknown to you.

We are truly unmasked before you, and you see us as we really are—

filled with our pride,

our selfishness,

our shallowness,

our impatience,

our blatant carnality.

We would despair were it not so that

you, O Lord, are compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness . . . .

You have not dealt with us according to our sins,

for as high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is your loving-kindness toward those who fear you.

So we crave today

a clean life,

a quiet spirit,

an honest tongue,

a believing heart,

a redeemed soul.

Thank you, God, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from

all unrighteousness.

Now, may we enjoy you forever!

Amen

A Post-Happiness World by Wil Triggs

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Two weeks ago, a news analysis piece in the New York Times titled, “Are We Living in a Post-Happiness World?” really sort of got me thinking.

The article defines happiness as “a positive state of overall well-being combined with a sense that one’s life has meaning.”

It seems that a lot of people are giving up on happiness. Yet there is considerable time, effort and money being spent on trying to scrutinize happiness on a global scale. 

Did you know there is a World Happiness Report? This was news to me. Produced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in partnership with the Ernesto Illy Foundation, the study has apparently been released every year since 2012.

In the most recent report, of the 156 countries analyzed, Finland ranks first, South Sudan 156. The United States comes in at 19, its lowest ranking so far. There are sections relating happiness and voting patterns, the effects of technology, prosocial behavior, addiction and unhappiness, and more.

Church is, in the author’s mind, perhaps regrettably, a thing of the past. In bygone days, churches were “central to a community’s integrity.” She quotes Dacher Keltner, director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, who said, “Church gave you awe, joy and ecstasy.” Keltner continued, “You collected in a group. You sang a little. You gave money. You got to chant.”

Even when some replace the immediate physical space known as church with virtual substitutes, most people have a hunch that it is not the same. And this loss of physical space and the lack of shared flesh and blood experiences of regular worship together is all part of the post-happiness world.

But the church is still here.

Those of us who still attend church regularly might not think of our church as a place of awe, joy and ecstasy, but maybe we should recognize that perhaps that is exactly what it is. And while we may not realize it, at least Keltner recognizes it because it’s something he doesn't have anymore.

What if happiness and joy comes not from obtaining it ourselves, but from living in such a way that what we are doing is part of the joy of Christ? This joy isn’t exactly ours to own, but a sort of fulfilment, a vessel through which Jesus passes on the joy set before him.

I’m probably not saying it quite right. It’s what Jesus prayed and Pastor Moody preached, “that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”

So the happiness we long for, the joy that refreshes, isn't even something we can own. What if joy comes when we do things Jesus wants us to do, things that we may not think we want to do or even can do on our own, things we can choose to do no matter what life is throwing at us? It’s the Holy Spirit at work, encouraging us, enabling us to what we might feel is impossible.

I’m thinking of the people who came forward to serve in Kids’ Harbor so that other people's children could have a place of their own to learn and grow.

Or the retired missionary who used to give money to our evangelism camps in Russia back when such camps were legally permitted there.

What about the people who spend a good amount of time faithfully praying for College Church, clicking on the missionary prayer letters in our church family news emails on Fridays and praying for them, asking God to bring revival to our tired and angry world.

What if joy is on display in the mom and her kids walking to Wheaton Square apartments to invite children who live there to a Backyard Bible Club. The mom, then leads a parade of joy-filled, happy children across Main Street, behind the buisness and down the street to the right backyard for the club. 

I remember a family who vacationed in Eastern Europe and saw a need there so great that they came home and started a family foundation to make a difference there.

Or the unseen STARS families who stay past the third service to clean up the plastic communion cups after our Sunday morning communion services.

I think of every person who walks into church on Sunday carrying hurts and pains and sorrow, only to set them down to help carry another brother's or sister's burdens. Together we stand and pray and sing and hear God's Word preached.

The Times piece concludes by quoting an authority on happiness and joy, “I don’t think about happiness anymore,” she said. “I think about joy. And if you string together enough moments of joy, maybe you can have a happy life.”

Comparing that conclusion with the joy I witness in the people around me, well, there really isn’t any comparison.

So how will the joy of Jesus Christ be fulfilled in us today and when we gather together tomorrow?

Thy Humility by Emma Bodger

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Emma is a sophomore at Wheaton College as well as a member of College Church. Her parents are Keith and Melody Bodger. Says Emma, "I have been going to College Church for almost six years and have enjoyed reading your Saturday morning musings for almost as long." We're delighted to post a musing from Emma today.

I read a great devotional a few months ago, written by Amy Carmichael. She wrote, “Take the opposite of your temptation and look up inwardly, naming that opposite: Untruth—Thy truth, Lord; unkindness—Thy kindness, Lord; impatience— Thy patience, Lord; selfishness—Thy unselfishness, Lord; roughness—Thy gentleness, Lord…” and so on. 

I decided to try this and come up with an opposite word for my every sin and look up to God as my source. This worked until I found myself feeling prideful. Pride, that pesky sin most easy to fall prey to, the prompt inside that isn’t even a voice because all it has to do is point toward yourself. and you think, “Yeah, what about me?" Pride is not a skeleton in your closet, and it doesn't lurk in the recesses of your basement. Rather it dresses respectably and slides quietly into the passenger seat of your sinful heart, making you forget it’s there.

So as I was trying to apply this simple practice as a defense against this perpetual sin, I found that I couldn’t do it when I deemed humility as the opposite of pride. I couldn’t pray, “Thy humility, God” to the God of the universe! This is Yahweh, "the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty." (Exodus 34:6-7)

He is the only one who shouldn’t be humble—the one who deserves all glory forever and ever. Utterly and completely sovereign and good. So when I felt my pride taking hold, I'd beseech God, “Thy…” and then halt, feeling the impossibility of my supplication.

After several weeks of this, I remembered the hymn Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-11 (CEB version):
Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.
who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God
as something to be exploited
Instead he emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
For this reason God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow—
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus, equal with God, chose to become human, taking on all of our human
limitations, in a position without prestige, dying in the most ugly, shameful way possible at the time. He washed the feet of his friends and disciples, he hung around with and healed people no one else would have anything to do with.

And this is the God of the universe. He is worthy of all blessing and honor and glory, the Righteous One who will open the scroll when the time comes. He took
on human flesh and lived as a servant and died as a criminal.

When I pray to God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, I can pray "Thy humility," because impossibly, bizarrely, in the greatest reversal of all time, he humbled himself in order to take the penalty of our sins so that we can be made clean.

Proceed to the Route by Lorraine Triggs

in

My husband and I just came back from a relaxing and refreshing few days in the country. I am talking real country—cornfields, forests, show pig farms, posted signs for squirrel hunting, deer, darkness with stars and quiet. It’s a bit strange to this city girl that all this exists just over an hour from Wheaton.

What's strange to me is how quickly I lose my sense of direction in all that wide-open space. I can locate the rising sun, but it doesn’t feel like real east to me as in the lake is always east. That east. Miles are meaningless to a person who goes by the number of streets or traffic lights or markers in route to a destination.

I tend to give people specific markers to look for—“Okay, the bank time and temp sign is on the left and our street is on the right. It may or may not be working, but you know what I mean. If you go through the traffic light and see a Walgreens, you’ve gone too far so turn around and go back one short block from the traffic signal and turn left at the bank sign.”

Out in the country, it’s hard to be that specific about cornfields, at least for me. Hence, our recent heavy reliance on Siri for directions, and for comic relief. The directions to the short ten-minute drive to town were straightforward. But we didn’t trust ourselves to remember which way to turn at which cornfield on the way back.

“What did Siri just say?” said my husband who was driving and not staring down at his phone which was programmed with a cheerful Aussie.

“He said to turn left at ‘four-thousand and six-hundred and fifty street,” I choked back my laughter. I figured that the length of the street sign alone would work well as a marker. The street sign was short, sweet and well-placed on the corner: 4650 Street.

Old paper maps from my childhood seem better in some ways; folding and unfolding them as a child was an entertaining puzzle. And wouldn't my father have preferred my know-it-all eight-year-old voice from the backseat to an automated voice from a phone, something that would have seemed right out of H. G. Wells.

But even on this trip, there were times we didn’t rely on Siri, especially when we saw a handwritten sign: “Farm fresh eggs.” We made a sharp turn into the driveway and spotted another sign “Drive on up and turn around to get your eggs.” The best sign was taped to the blue and white cooler: “Eggs inside. Thank you.”

By now, on our detour to get farm fresh eggs, Siri was squawking “Proceed to the route. Proceed to the route. Proceed to the route.” Imagine what we would have missed if we did proceed to the route.

When we were outside the car, walking on a trail without our phones, we relied on trail markers. Even then, one said to turn left, so we went right just to see where the path would take us and we saw a herd of deer along the creek.

There are days I wish life came with its own personal Siri or had a few more markers for me to follow. I could type in “heaven” as the end destination, hit go and then take the most direct, detour-free, least painful route to get there.

Instead, life comes with the Redeemer, who doesn’t need our help to program our journey to heaven. It was set before we were even created. Jesus doesn’t hand us the latest device and leave us to our own devices to figure things out. He gave us his Word so we can know him, love him and follow him.

Often, though, God diverts our path to discover things we'd miss with just a straightforward route. Along the way, we turn this way or that and find eggs or deer and maybe even a hurt Samaritan along the side of the path.

Jesus is the shepherd who guides us through detours of green pastures and dark valleys. He knows that the best route home to heaven might be a twisting, turning detour, which he delights in showing us that it was a smooth path after all. 

Jesus is better than Siri. He doesn’t just say to proceed to the route; he is the way, the only route, the truth, the path and the trail and the trail makers all in one, the life, taking us all the way home to heaven.

Finding God by Wallace Alcorn

in

The fourth number in Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah” offers both a plaintive plea somehow to find the distant God and a reassuring answer on how to find him.

Though born Jewish, Mendelssohn was baptized Lutheran at age seven. Although his narrative is based on several incidents found in the books of Kings, he drew the exposition from other sections of the Old Testament. Our English text does not come from the King James Version, with which he may not have been familiar, but from the German Bible. However, the King James clearly reflects the text from which the composer worked.

He has his character Obadiah cry out as a tenor solo:

Oh, that I knew where I might find Him,
That I might even come before His presence.

For this, he seems to have in mind the story of Job. Eliphaz the Temanite had reasoned: “Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!” (Job 22:12, KJV) Then he challenged Job in his own presumptuous wisdom: “If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up. . . . For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.” (vs 23-26).

At this bleak reality, Job despaired. Despite his unshakable confidence in the purposes and will of God and his eventual recovery, there were dark moments in which God seemed inexplicably distant. Job could but cry desperately: “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!” (Job 23:3).

Mendelssohn found the biblical answer Job sought in two other Old Testament passages, and he put it this way:

If with all your heart ye truly seek Me,
Ye shall ever surely find Me,
Thus saith our God.

The composer seems to have found this, first, in the Deuteronomic instructions of Moses as he summarized the Law as to how the Israelites are to live when they enter into what God had promised. Moreover, God anticipated their failure so to live and Moses counseled that when they come to the point where they can no longer find God:

“But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” (Deuteronomy 4:29).

Second, centuries later the prophet Jeremiah addressed the Jews God had sent into exile in Babylon because they had effectively distanced themselves. The prophet sent a letter from Jerusalem to these exiles and prophesied that when the seventy years of discipline would be accomplished, and God would call them back to Jerusalem:

“Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12,13)

What God expects of us is not something of a successful search and rescue operation, but simply that we want to find him—and the willingness to be found of him. However, we may have estranged ourselves from God and however distant he may seem, God is not so hard to find. The Old Testament teaches this, and Mendelssohn recognized it.

The God we would seek has already found us. All we need do is to seek him with all our hearts—truly seek him with our whole being. Then we just look up and there he is, waiting to be found.