Going away to college was a big change for me. One of the biggest changes related to my instrumental music and the ensemble I would be a part of. It could be expressed as a change from the marching band uniform to the tuxedo.
Read MoreThis morning’s prayer—a divine sweep of our soul’s clutter—is fromA Pastor Prays for His Peopleby Wendell C. Hawley.
Read MoreBy now, you have surely heard about the kidnapped missionaries in Haiti.
As I prepared this week’s prayer guide for the persecuted church, I found reports about them in both the secular and the Christian press. I don’t know why I didn’t click on all the articles I saw. I figured they would be critical of the missionaries.
But I was curious to see what the sending missions agency had to say about the situation. I don’t know the theology of this board, so I’m not endorsing them or aligning myself or College Church with them, but I do think the situation is worthy of our prayer support regardless, so I went searching.
I found a webpage on the Christian Aid Ministries website with the latest update.
They are asking prayer for the following:
“Pray for the hostages—for their release, that they could endure faithfully, and that they would display Christlike love. Jesus, when nailed to the cross, said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
Pray for the kidnappers—that they would experience the love of Jesus and turn to Him. We see that as their ultimate need.
Pray for government leaders and authorities—as they relate to the case and work toward the release of the hostages. We appreciate the ongoing work and assistance of those knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with kidnapping cases."
These prayer requests demonstrate remarkable balance. They ask for prayer, not just for the hostage missionaries, but for the salvation of the kidnappers. And the third request, related to the human authorities in the situation seems refreshingly free of political slant, though one can never be sure about that kind of thing.
It’s surprising how much attention the story is getting in the press, and I couldn’t resist searching more and delved into secular news.
The New York Times wrote an article on a 24-hour prayer chain and quoted a mother of six who is praying at 2:45 a.m.: “We do believe God is in control,” she said. “When Daniel was put in the lions’ den, there was nothing logical about him coming out alive.”
And then I found this quote from a report on both NPR and Christianity Today:
“Weston Showalter, spokesman for the religious group, said that the families of those who'd been kidnapped are from Amish, Mennonite and other conservative Anabaptist communities in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Ontario, Canada. He read a letter from the families, who weren't identified by name, in which they said, ‘God has given our loved ones the unique opportunity to live out our Lord's command to love your enemies.’"
Of course, we should be praying for these people. This email is an invitation for us to pray about their perseverance in situation and for their release, but I think it is also a challenge for us to remember, even as we pray for the kidnappers, to pray for our enemies as well, whoever they might be and in whatever sphere of life the word “enemy” might take us.
If kidnapped folks can pray for the salvation of those who have kidnapped them, surely, we can do the same toward our enemies.
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48)
As much as we might want to pray down fire and brimstone, Jesus calls us to do something counter-cultural; to love and pray for our enemies, not just for people we like or agree with, which is counter to our humanness. Maybe that was the point Jesus was making. Remember that when we were enemies of God, he went to the cross for us. So "enemies" doesn't have to be forever.
Is there anyone in your life who is, at some level, your enemy? Are you especially angered by a certain opponent of the faith? None of us are kidnapped, but let's take the response of those kidnapped to consider how we respond to enemies. Take the time to consider this.
The good news is that God in Christ Jesus turns enemies into friends—sons and daughters of the God that they/we once rejected. So even as we pray for the freedom of these missionaries, may we also pray for the people we call enemies, that God would work in them and set them free from sin and reconcile them to both him and us.
You can read ongoing updates from the missionary board here if you’re interested: https://christianaidministries.org/updates/haiti-staff-abduction/
What better way to teach Kindergartners about the Fall than with a bag of Starbursts and a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles? We corralled our teachers and Dan Burden to help execute our lesson plan. Dan would bring in the candy and explain that it was only for the teachers. He would put the Starbursts on one side of the room, and the chocolate on the other, emphasizing only for the teachers and only the Starbursts. The teachers could eat any of the Starbucks, but none of the chocolates.
One-by-one, the teachers would come up, fuss over the Starbursts, and reject them in favor of the chocolate. But shouldn’t one of us do what Dan said and not take the chocolate, a teacher asked. Well, no, not really. We all are sinners. The main verse we were studying was Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
I know you know where this is headed. I went first and checked out the Starbursts, but kept looking over at the chocolate. I really love chocolate I told the kids and walked across the room. I was about to open the bag—and we didn’t see this coming—Riley jumped up from her chair and shouted, “No, Mrs. Triggs, no. Don’t take the chocolate.” Sadly, the other teachers, one by one, took their turn, each of us falling to the lure of the forbidden truffle as other children joined Riley in shouting "No, don't eat it."
Riley should have been in the garden with Eve.
Nowadays, even in this post-Christian world, there is nothing original about sin. We all do it, and if we look closely enough, our response to sin resembles our first parents’ response—we doubt God’s Word and goodness, we blame, we deny, we twist things ever so slightly to justify and make ourselves look better than we are. We aren’t even original thinkers in our excuse-making. We will live and not die. We will know more fully.
English poet John Donne wrote these lines in his Holy Sonnet I
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour I can myself sustain;
An hour? Don’t I wish. There are some days I can’t even sustain myself on the 10-minute drive to work without complaining about road construction and school buses. That old subtle foe of ours sneaks in a worry here and there, a doubt or two of God’s goodness in a difficult situation and a large dose of self-pity because life isn’t going my way.
The final lines of Donne’s sonnet bring hope to my lack of sustainability:
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
In his book The Soul in Paraphrase – A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poem, Leland Ryken comments on this first sonnet, defining the word adamant as "magnetic lodestone," a rare magnetic mineral that occurs in nature. The magnetism is permanent and cannot be undone.
When God reaches out to his beloved through his nail-scarred resurrected hands, his bride clings to him like metal to a magnet. They are together. The serpent’s head is crushed.
Nothing can pry us away. There’s nothing subtle about God’s amazing grace that draws cold iron hearts to his loving heart, rescues us from our not so original sins and sustains us as we walk with him.
By the way, Riley’s favorite hymn is “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I think that girl is on to something.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
Gracious Father, many of us have felt some measure of grief in our lives. No matter its source or its duration, grief is not a welcome visitor to anyone.
That was surely the case, Father, for young Joseph in the Old Testament. The apple of his father’s eye, Joseph had no idea that he would be betrayed by his brothers, enslaved and imprisoned, and then separated from his family and country for what seemed like forever.
Thank you, Father, for Joseph’s story in the Bible. I weep whenever I read it. At first, my tears flow from deep sadness that Joseph endured so much anguish and loss. But when the story takes a turn—when Joseph rises to success and is reunited with his grieving father who thought his son had been dead for all those years—my tears spring from pure joy!
O God, in Joseph’s grief we feel our own grief. May we see that you are with us in our suffering too. May we understand that even when others intend harm, you intend good and can overrule evil to accomplish your perfect plans. With your help, Father, we can each become fruitful in the land of our grief.
The first ever heart transplant was on December 3, 1967. My father died from heart failure on July 9, 1967—six months too early for a new heart.
My father, however, would have been the first to say that he already had a new heart.
While my dad was in hospital recovering from a heart attack, my sisters and I turned our bedroom into a card factory that would have rivaled Hallmark. With an endless supply of construction paper, glue, tape and scissors, we created get-well cards for our dad. We cut out paper hearts, tore them in half, taped them back together with the cheery greeting, “Hope you’re on the mend.”
We made primitive versions of pop-up cards, gluing paper hearts to the end of “springs” we folded from the construction paper. “Spring back to health.” We drew pictures of the family dinner table with a big red arrow pointing to an empty chair: “Someone’s missing.” If we could have made a new heart for him, we would have from our craft supplies.
Last Wednesday, in my Women’s Bible Study small group, the discussion turned to hearts when we read Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” There isn't a lot of wiggle room in that verse about humankind's heart condition.
One of the women commented that a co-worker has a mug with the saying “Follow your heart” on it, and she remarked to her co-worker that she would never follow her heart. She explained that the Bible describes the heart at deceitful and desperately sick. (Jeremiah 17:9)
We joked about starting a home business designing mugs and t-shirts that proclaim, “Don’t follow your heart.”
There is good news for desperately sick and wayward hearts—Jesus came to cure the sick and call back the wayward. Think of it as a heart transplant, a heart transformation, a new heart that my father experienced long before his physical one gave out.
Yet even that new heart can experience heart failure, and sin. I can overthink the slightest hurt, and it simmers in my heart, threatening to boil over. My complaint list has more entries than a thanksgiving journal (which I have started and dropped more times than I can remember). Anxiety sometimes rules both day and night.
And when Jesus hears this? He says to me, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)
Jesus wasn’t fooled by the self-righteous then, and he isn’t fooled by the self-righteous now. He knows my heart better than I do and beckons me not to look inward at myself, but outward to the wonder of the new only he gives. He calls me back to his grace in our lives. He says no, don’t follow your heart. I'm giving you a new one. As his chosen one, holy and beloved put on the new compassionate heart— kind, humble, meek, patient. A heart that forgives and holds up others. A thankful heart ruled by the peace of God.
When some sinners and the self-righteous see that kind of heart, they won't look up to me, but see and follow the One who gives out new hearts in exchange for old ones.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
By Heather Owens
I scribble my plans
In purple crayon
On yesterday’s grocery stubs.
Read MoreMy grade school was James Garfield Elementary School. St. Lucy’s was the school where the children went who lived next door to Mrs. Robertson's home. Every school day from Kindergarten through grade six, mom took me to Mrs. Robertson's on her way to work at the local community college and picked me up at the end of every workday.
Mrs. Robertson’s neighbors were Mexican. At least that’s what we called them back then. Given current sensibilities, that may not have been entirely accurate, but they spoke Spanish and they looked Mexican. While their actual ethnicity may have not been precisely defined, one thing we knew for sure: they were Roman Catholics.
As a kid, I didn’t understand or appreciate the finer theological points. I heard but didn’t understand the criticism from Protestant adults that Catholics never go to church.
After all, neither did we. Not every week.
Not only that, Catholics confessed their sins to a person. For me, confessing my sins to Jesus in prayer was something I wanted to do, but telling someone else? And then that person somehow had the power to do what only Jesus could do? It shook my fledgling Protestant brain.
They had a pope, who was like the president, only in charge of churches instead of a country. Why did they need that anyway? If you didn’t like something at your church, I thought, you could just go someplace else. Spoken like a good Baptist boy. Even though we didn’t go to church, I was catching on to the Baptist way, or maybe that's an American thing.
As a family, we were not regular churchgoers. But in my head, I knew there was a difference. I knew these neighbors were Catholics and I was a Protestant. I knew that they were wrong (read bad) and that we were right (read good). They went to St. Lucy’s and wore navy and plaid uniforms. I went to Garfield and wore whatever I wanted. Our school was bigger and open to everyone. Their school was small, and you had to be Catholic to go. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
But between the hours of three to five in the afternoon, none of that mattered. That was playtime after I got out of school and before my mom got off work and picked me up. Even though the neighbor kids and I went to different schools, we were free from the schools when the bells rang that told us we were done for the day. And we liked playing together.
One day, I stumbled onto some other differences in this two-hour window where differences fell away and all we wanted to do was play.
It wasn’t a hopscotch or kickball or soccer kind of day. It was time for imaginative play. I don’t remember how this happened, but one day we ended up playing in their backyard and they wanted to play church.
It didn’t sound that fun to me, but they were enthusiastic. They ran inside the house to get what we needed to play church. I didn’t get it. What things did we need?
They came out with a book that looked like a Bible but wasn’t. They had a chrome cross about the size of a piece of notebook paper and Jesus was hanging on it, which seemed creepy, a bag of what looked like confetti, some other trinkets and a goblet.
“Instead of doing a regular church, let’s do a wedding,” announced Deborah, who was a year ahead of me in school. Usually we called her Debbie, but for some reason, she wanted to be Deborah that day. “Mary, you be the bride. Miguel, you can be the groom. And you,” she said, looking at me, “get to be the priest.”
“I’d rather be the groom,” I said. I had a bit of a primary-school crush on Mary, so even if we were playing, maybe it would be ok to be a groom. After all, I knew weddings. I had been the ring bearer at two of my sisters’ weddings and was a pro at the-walking-down-the-aisle part. Whatever went on once you got to the front was, well, boring.
Deborah turned to a specific page in the book and that had exactly what the priest was supposed to say for a wedding. It was like a play. The procession started. I looked over at Miguel and wondered if we shouldn’t have ditched the girls and just found some other guys for a game of soccer. But it was too late.
I was reading along when suddenly the wedding turned into a communion service. Communion only happened once a month at our church, and never at weddings. Deborah explained that they always did it, even at weddings. I’m surprised she didn’t sneak some wine out of the house, but she just filled the goblet with water and some drops of red dye. And then the bag that I thought was confetti turned out to be communion wafers.
I did not like this.
“We can’t do this,” I protested. “This isn’t right. Those are for church,” I said. I started to debate with Deborah. She got frustrated with me and declared a snack time break.
So, we broke file and they offered some of the wafers to me as a snack. “It’s okay,” they said as all three of them took small handfuls of the wafers and shoveled them into their mouths. “It hasn’t been blessed yet.”
I had no idea what that meant.
But I looked at the wafers. Little tissue-paper-thin circles. I put one in my mouth. As soon as it hit my tongue, there was a millisecond of flavor and then it seemed to magically dissolve.
“Take more,” Deborah said, “One isn’t enough for a real snack.”
They started to explain how the priest had to bless the wafer before it became something only the priest could give people. Before that, it was just like any other food.
It didn’t seem like any other food. In fact, it really didn’t seem like food period. A snack for me would be saltines with peanut butter, not something a company made for church communion, Catholic, Protestant or otherwise.
Suddenly, their mom came into the back yard. “What are you doing?” she asked them, seeing all the Catholic items that they had turned into toys. She started to speak to them in Spanish. They ran inside and the mom started to collect the Catholic items from the yard. Then my mom arrived, and it was time to go home.
I didn’t play with them for a while after that.
I asked my mom how the priest could change the wafer into something not quite like food.
“Catholics believe that when the priest blesses the wafer, it turns into Jesus,” she explained. “We don’t believe that. We know it’s just a reminder, a symbol.”
My Garfield School brain was pretty much done with that. I didn’t want to play church anymore. It didn’t matter to me if it was blessed by a priest or not. I felt guilty eating from that bag. It wasn’t right.
The good news for my guilty conscience was that Jesus did break bread and did drink from the cup. It was no play but reality that Jesus’ body was broken, his blood poured out, and my sins—our sins, the sins of the world—were washed away. Behold the Lamb of God.
Something special happens at the Lord’s Table. For us, that's tomorrow morning. It’s not a game. I don’t do it alone, but with the family of God, together. And it’s not only looking back, but also ahead to when the Bridegroom returns and he and the Bride feast together.
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” (Revelation 19:9)