Empty Jars by Wil Triggs

Our church has its share of widows and widowers. You might not realize it because some of them have remarried, and others are such vibrant servers of Jesus and College Church that widowhood gets forgotten. But a loss that deep is never forgotten—no matter how well adjusted to this new life or even a new spouse. Some of the people I most admire in our church are people in such a circumstance.
 
It’s not only our church, but the Bible itself that has a good number of people who have lost spouses. Think Ruth, Abigail, Tamar, the widow at Zarapheth, Anna, the widow who dropped all her coins in the offering box.
 
When my mother became a widow, she moved out of our house into an apartment that didn’t remind her of my dad. There were things ahead for my mom, but she felt she had to move out.
 
Think of the nameless widow of 2 Kings 4. Her husband, a prophet, died leaving her with two children and a mountain of debt she could not pay. She told Elisha. They talked. She explained to him that she had only one jar of oil in her home. So, Elisha gave her something to do. He said to her:
 
“Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside.” (vv. 3b-4)
 
This became a family project. She and her sons collecting empty jars from their community. What did the people think she was up to? Let’s go ahead and give her the empty jars. Some surely acted from pity. That crazy old widow. Just give her the jars. The debt collectors will soon be at her door, so let’s give her what she wants and be done with it.
 
And the widow? She was doing what Elisha had instructed her to do. And when she and her boys had exhausted all their neighborhood resources and gathered them all, they closed the doors of their home and got to work.
 
It was then that the oil flowed. I imagine a little assembly line—a son brings an empty jar, she fills it, he or his brother brings another empty jar, she fills it, he brings another. Until every last jar was filled. Somehow, she filled every one of the jars with oil, but it wasn’t her. It was God.
 
What next?
 
“Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest,” Elisha directed her.
 
God saw her, and he sees each one of us. We think our jars are full, but really without him, they are empty and dry, and we don’t have enough of them to do any good anyway. Or maybe because of circumstances, we see emptiness. Sometimes, even with him, our jars can be empty. Losing someone opens our eyes to the emptiness we sometimes face.
 
Only God fills emptiness with oil or water with wine or a lunch multiplied to feed thousands. I think of all the friends who live with great loss. I stand with them. I see God’s hand caring for and sustaining them and using me and others in the church to stand with them.
 
James reminds us that "religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world." (James 1:27) And then this comes across my desk from Voice of the Martyrs about a Christian woman in Laos.
 
Widowed Christian Threatened with Loss of Home
La and her husband became Christians while seeking a cure for his illness. Though he died three months later, they remained faithful due to the love and care they received from their brothers and sisters in Christ. In 2020, her daughter married a nonbeliever, and her son-in-law moved into her house. He practices animism, making offerings to spirits and trying to force his mother-in-law to do the same. He threw away La’s Bible and tries to keep her from practicing her Christian faith. In June, La’s son-in-law and daughter told her they would kick her out of the house if she continued to follow Christ. La continues to listen to Christian radio and receives encouragement from the church.

She asks for prayer for her current situation. “No matter what will happen to me . . .I will not leave God. I have hope that one day I could meet my husband again in the kingdom of God, and I will meet my God, too.”
 
Let our prayers be the empty jars we give to our sister La. Every day with Jesus is a miracle. She knows that and will not turn away. May our faith be like hers. Comfort comes from the God of all comfort. Rescue or not. We are the family of La.
 
Search for all the empty jars, all that you can gather and find. And then, you, Lord, fill them with stone-pressed oil that we might live and know. Fill the jars with water so fine, you will turn it into the finest wine.
 
Sing the triumph of the empty jars
borrowed from neighbors next door.
Filled to the top with precious oil
to feed, to soothe and calm,
oil fashioned into anointing balm,
oil to cook, some to infuse,
somehow there is no dross.
We marvel at this heavenly sauce;
we marvel at your created cross,
sweet mingling of love and loss.
From your shadow we will not hide,
ever always you do not forget;
you always see,
always provide,
always cover every debt.

Sin and Sensibility by Lorraine Triggs

As we cleaned out our mother’s house, my two sisters and I were delighted to discover that our mom kept our kindergarten artwork, in triplicate because we had the same teacher, Mrs. Compton.

My oldest sib’s drawing of the circus tent was probably an exact copy of Mrs. Compton—that oldest sibling thing and all. At the bottom of her drawing, my sister printed neatly, “The circus.”

My middle sister’s drawing of the circus tent reflected the future nurse in her: evenly spaced stripes and precise colors. Her caption: “The circus.” No mistaking it for anything else.

Then there was me. If our mother squinted hard enough, she could make out “The cirgus” her creative and future editor daughter drew and captioned. We also admired the two “The Christmas Angel” drawings, and the one “Christmas Angle.”  No need to give credit where credit is due.

Such are the true confessions of an editor—I am not a good speller. I don’t trust myself or even spellcheck. I do have, however, a sense of when a word doesn’t look right to me, and I turn to the experts and their online dictionaries.

There are times I wish had a better sense of my sins or, more accurately, enough sense not to attribute sin to a mistake or burnout or a lapse in judgment.

It’s too late for Anaias and Sapphira to wish they had a better sense of their sin such as “Stop. What are we thinking? Don’t bury the proceeds. Don't lie about it to look better than you are."” Instead, Ananias and Sapphira stand in stark contrast to Barnabas’ generosity. Act 4 closes with Barnabas who sold “a field that belonged to him and laid it at the apostles’ feet,” and Acts 5 opens with a deadly property transaction.

It’s astonishing and sobering how quickly we can become de-sensitized to sin, and while it still doesn’t look right, it also doesn’t lookthatwrong. I go on my merry way, gossiping, grumbling, excluding, or excusing any number of okay sins. In a weird way, I am like Ananias and Sapphira, in that I bury some of my sins rather than unearth them and lay them at Jesus’ feet.

When I do consult the expert’s Word, I am overwhelmed (as always) with the beautiful paradox of God’s grace and my sins. It’s this paradox the psalmist sings about in Psalm 130, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. . . O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.” (verses 3, 7)

It’s when I have the good sense not to bury my sin, but dump it all—good, bad and indifferent—at Jesus’ feet, that I am forgiven. After all, it was Christ who died, was buried and rose again, holding nothing back to redeem a lost world, a lost me.

The Dog Ate My Novel by Wil Triggs

In May of 1936, John Steinbeck wrote his agent Elizabeth Otis: "My setter pup, left alone one night, made confetti of about half of my manuscript book. Two months work to do over again. It set me back. There was no other draft.”
 
As both an aspiring writer and a dog lover, I really enjoy this story. I can only imagine the frustration. My dogs have gotten into a lot of my stuff over the years, but never have either of them eaten my writing. Of course, I’m typing this on my laptop, so there is no paper manuscript to chew. My dogs have preferred slippers or shoes or socks, the occasional pork chop (bone-in), my winter hat from Russia, Christmas candy, hardbound cookbooks, birthday cake, crayons. It’s a fairly long list and that’s just off the top of my head.
 
Still, my imagination was piqued. Imagine months of work chewed up, and no computer backup. Steinbeck didn’t have a hard drive. He wrote longhand on paper. It doesn’t say he was finished with the manuscript, but he must have been pretty close.
 
Things happen to us. Months of work, years even, can get washed away by the salivating mouth that is this crazy life or my distracted brain or my misguided heart. God’s doing a good work and then the good work itself, me, does something stupid. How to handle a setback like that?

“I was pretty mad but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically,” Steinbeck wrote in his letter to his agent. “I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a ms [manuscript]. I’m not sure it is good at all. He only got an ordinary spanking with his punishment flyswatter. But there’s the work to do over from the start.”

God is cooler about these things than Steinbeck. It’s not as if he doesn’t know already whatever way it is that we are going to mess up. John Steinbeck was surprised when his novel went to shreds, but when Jesus found me having destroyed what others might consider a thing of beauty, he was not the least bit surprised.

“I’m not sure Toby didn’t know what he was doing when he ate the first draft,” Steinbeck continued. “I have promoted Toby-dog to be a lieutenant-colonel in charge of literature. But as for the unpredictable literary enthusiasms of this country, I have little faith in them.”

In the spiritual realm, I’m more often dog than Nobel laureate. God is doing something good, and then I set my teeth on the good works of the Lord and the manuscript goes to pieces. I think of them more as something to play with or gnaw into pieces than a message to the world around me.

But the transformed life, my transformed life, is not really mine at all. The dog didn’t write the novel; the dog’s master wrote it.

Steinbeck had to start over on Of Mice and Men, completing the new draft by August of that year, just about three months later. It’s a short novel, but to turn it around again in just three months impresses me. Besides the book, it’s a story that has been produced as a stage play and in the movies. All of that would have been lost if Steinbeck hadn't persevered.
 
My setup is not God’s. Jesus is always starting over with me like Steinback did on his manuscript. Jesus doesn’t give up. He both loves and likes me. He enjoys me. He has a story for me, and he won’t let me ruin the telling or doing of it.

I am both the dog who ate the novel and the novel itself, a work that seemingly will never get finished, but really will because Jesus has promised to bring to completion the work he has begun. It will be finished. Even I can’t mess that up. The Apostle Paul wrote about this In one of his manuscripts: "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work In you will bring It to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6)
 
The dog ate the novel when his master was away. My Master is never far away, and he gives me the best words ever to eat, words that can change everything. 
 
Your words were found, and I ate them,
    and your words became to me a joy
    and the delight of my heart,
for I am called by your name,
    O Lord, God of hosts.
Jeremiah 15:16
 
The photo of the soon-to-be-auctioned fragment reminded me of photos I’ve seen of Scripture portions unearthed after centuries. Except the words are English and for some reason, the Steinbeck family or estate chose to hold onto it. How unlike God. Over millenniums of time and the work of many people and especially the Holy Spirit, God’s Word comes to us, not through an auction but through the free and amazing work of God.
 
We naturally think of this dog as a naughty pup. But in a way, he is a positive example for us. We have only to eat the manuscript of God. As people, we can delight in it, taste it, fully ingest it into the body of our souls. Let it shape our lives, even this Saturday, in every way.

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."
Colossians 3:16-17
 
Endnote: The Steinbeck fragment goes up for auction October 25. If you want to bid on it or just see the fragment, here is the link.

Out To Save the World by Lorraine Triggs

Actor David McCallum died last month. For the uninitiated, McCallum played Russian Illya Kuryakin, a secret agent in the TV show, “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Illya was sidekick to Secret Agent Napoleon Solo, and together these two good guys outwitted the evil agents from THRUSH. 
 
McCallum’s death transported me back to Miss Miller’s fifth-grade classroom, where a small group of friends and I re-enacted this popular 1960’s TV show. Susan, Becky and I were the good guys from U.N.C.L.E. (eventually there was a spinoff, “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.,” but we were trending at the time.) Kurt and Richard were the bad guys with THRUSH. We played mainly at recess, and occasionally in the classroom, using ball point pens to shoot messages across the room to each other or tapping out code on the desk. 
 
Like Solo and Kuryakin, we always outwitted THRUSH, making the world a safer place. As a fifth-grader also enamored with Emma Peel (Diana Rigg in “The Avengers”) and Nancy Drew, I was thoroughly convinced that collectively, we could save the world and make it a safer place. It was an interesting twist of the Cold War days that the television writers had a Russian and an American working together to vanquish the real bad guys.
 
One would think that by now, I’ve put away these childish things, but rest assured, my inner Kuryakin-Peel-Drew is alive and well. And given all the conflicts and wars and persecutions going on in the world today, the desire to make things right is stronger than ever.
 
On many levels making the world a safe place is a proper instinct. We work hard to create (or re-create) safe places to live, to work, to attend school, to worship, to be accepted and respected. We don’t want outsiders to intrude, and if they do, we’ll fight like my childhood heroes to beat them back.
 
The problem with self-made safe spaces is the intruders still get in. Some might chip away at the foundations of our safe places till we feel like giving up. While other intruders creep in with the darkness of disease, unemployment, divorce, wayward loved ones, failure, dementia, rejection, reminding us that our safe places aren’t safe after all.
 
The end of our manufactured safe places isn’t a call to despair and moan about how awful things are, rather it’s a call to hope and gladness. A call to hope in the Lord’s steadfast love, in his faithfulness, his deliverance, a call for gladness “because we trust in his holy name” writes the psalmist in Psalms 33:21.
 
And that goal to save the world has its fatal flaw—we can’t save ourselves, let alone the world. As the psalmist wrote earlier in Psalm 33: “The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.” (vv. 16, 17)
 
That’s very good news for you and me because the burden to save us was placed on another’s back, scarred and wounded as it was for our salvation, and not only ours but also the whole world.

We can still be about making the world a safe place and saving it as we point intruders to Jesus, the only hope for rescue and rest. and as we witness global tragedies, even as we seek proper responses we can fall before God in prayer and plead with him to work in ways we cannot apart from him.

Timeless Yosemite

Photographs by Eloise Voelker

Sky Night Lights

Photographs by Scott Davis

Altar Calls by Wil Triggs

I remember, as a boy, watching Billy Graham on our black and white television set. At the end of every broadcast, Graham would invite people to come forward to receive Christ, assuring them that "your friends will wait." And people would come forward, a lot of people. The invitation would go out to viewers to join in and call a phone number. 
 
The times I went on occasion to church with the lady who picked kids up around the neighborhood, or sometimes with my family or, as a high schooler, when friends with cars would come by and pick me up, that something happened at church, toward the end of the service usually. Music would be playing, and over the music, a preacher or another person of power and influence would be speaking, praying.  
 
With every head bowed and all eyes closed, if you want to raise your hand and say to God that you want to follow him, do that now. 
 
Sometimes the music itself carried the day and then the preacher speaking softly through a microphone or in the churches with no amplified sound, loud and urgent, a strange kind of intimacy. 
 
If you raised your hand, if you are ready, if God is speaking to you, if you want to surrender all, come down the aisle so that all can see that you are saying yes to Jesus. Come.  
 
Sometimes friends I knew would go forward. People of all ages. Those dressed in suits. Women in silk dresses or suits with matching hats. A working-class man who didn’t wear a suit. The rebellious teenager who walked down at least once a month. A little girl, uncertainly letting loose the hand of her mother, stepping into the aisle and working forward to join the others, if there were others.  
 
All of this while the rest of the congregation sang in unison, rejoicing and praying. We had sung the hymns. We listened to the choir. We passed the offering. We heard the sermon. God was at work. So this was how the service ended, people walking down the aisle for the altar call. 
 
Lorraine tells me that in the church where she grew up, some people judged the strength of the service based on the number of times they sang the chorus before the service ended. 
 
I think back on my experiences with this. In a church I began attending on a semi-regular basis, I noticed one lady going forward every week. A friend from high school went forward for the sins she had committed that week, a sort of Protestant confessional. I remember one guy joking that he went forward just so the service could end.  
 
Thinking back on those journeys down the aisle, I found this from a Christian History article: 
 
“Many people consider Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) to be the ‘father’ of the altar call. Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1823, Finney did not begin giving public invitations until long after Methodists had made the altar call a regular part of their camp meetings. Finney, however, did more than anyone to establish altar calls as an accepted and popular practice in American evangelicalism. Finney regularly called anxious sinners to the front of the congregation to sit on an ‘anxious bench.’ There, they would receive prayer and often be preached to directly. The altar call was also one of Finney’s famous ‘new measures.’ He was convinced that ministers could produce revival by using the right methods, and that the altar call ‘was necessary to bring [sinners] out from among the mass of the ungodly to a public renunciation of their sinful ways.’” 
 
And this from a Gospel Coalition article quoted a description of George Whitefield’s call for immediate decision in a sermon:  
 
“Whitefield asked whether anyone wished ‘to take Christ for their husband.’ If they did, he extended an invitation: ‘Come and I’ll marry you to him just now.’ . . . A twenty-one-year old male convert said that when Whitefield ‘laid out the terms’ of the union with Christ, he found his ‘heart made sweetly to agree to those terms.’ Another convert ran to embrace a friend, exclaiming that the minister had ‘married my soul to Christ.’ . . . Whitefield wrote that many ‘were married to the Lord Jesus that night.’” 
 
I don’t think Whitefield was calling people forward when he invited people to be married to Jesus. Something else was going on of which the physical movement was a symptom. It wasn’t really the beginning, but something happening in the middle of faith for a lot of folks. 
 
The aisle doesn’t matter, but the heart does. We don’t do altar calls anymore, but there is a calling we must heed from God, the call to believe and receive and give our lives to God, not unlike marriage, a vow that lasts longer than marriage and earthly life. His promise to be faithful even when we fail.  
 
How can we even breathe apart from his lungs? How can we clearly see apart from his eyes? Every day he washes my feet. Every day of life, even in my sins and failures, falling back into nail-scarred wrists and the hole in his side, the shoulders of the Shepherd, the Spouse who is always at my side, nearer still to feel his breath on my sin-weakened frame promising peace, falling, rising, holding on to him, receiving new life to face this day whatever it holds. 
 
You still give me breath  
in the valley of death. 
In the pastures green you ever lead. 
My raging waves you still.
You drink the cup  
and do the Father’s will.
When I fall and want to hide 
There you are, at my side 
On the cross,  
empty grave,  
ascending the sky 
Your love is my love,  
I am still your bride 
Your love is my love ever even now, 
You conquer my sin,  
it’s gone away 
In my heart in your heart I hide, 
Faithful eventide. 

Starstruck by Lorraine Triggs

It was probably the timing—a week before our 35th wedding anniversary—that made me read an article about Michelin-star restaurants. In the September 17 New York Times article, “Michelin’s Coveted Stars Can Come with Some Costs,” author Julia Moskin notes that the “Michelin Guide—owned by the French tire manufacturer—is the world’s most recognized authority on fine dining.” Moskin discovered that in “interviews, dozens of restauranteurs, chefs and officials across the country said ‘the status the stars confer is priceless and comes with vast earning potential.'”

Those coveted stars had a humbler origin than I thought. According to the article, “the star system—one, worth a trip; two, worth a detour; three, worth a journey—was devised more than a century ago to guide businessmen as they motored around France on the company’s tires.”

The owner of Southern California’s only three-star restaurant noted that the stakes are higher today when someone is flying from Germany to San Diego to eat at your restaurant.

There’s also intrigue about how Michelin awards those coveted stars. Notes Moskin, “Curiosity has always swirled around how the company does it work: Who are the inspectors? How often do they visit? What does it take to rise from two stars to three?”  

I’d rather be tooling around the south of France on a set of Michelin tires than worrying about rising from two stars to three. But reading about the process of ranking and stars does have a certain appeal. 

It's a human thing. I mean, ranking and analyzing and thinking how some of us are better than others is just so natural. I begin to fret over my own set of stars. And in those mad moments, I think, what’s wrong with wanting more stars? Why shouldn’t someone confer four stars, maybe five, on my insightful (read right) opinions, my impressive CV and my curated treasures. And these stars come with a bonus—an overestimation of myself. Ta-da!

When status stardust blinds me to who I am, I need the clear-eyed words of the Apostle Paul: “Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or your importance, buy try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you all.” (Romans 12:3, Phillips)

From that sane estimate flows another quality, a quality likely unheard of in Michelin Guide world—humility. Charles Spurgeon said that “humility is to make a right estimation of oneself.”

In the Christ follower's world, this right estimation has its beginnings and end in paradox. We hear this in a king's humble cry, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51:1) We see paradox in an ordinary young woman’s extraordinary submission to God, and she sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.” (Luke 1:47, 48) 

The culmination of paradox is Jesus. Paul’s lyrical prose in Philippians 2 takes us to heaven, where Jesus doesn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Then down to earth where Jesus not only is born in the likeness of men, but also takes the form of a servant, and we go down yet again as Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” And Paul takes us back to heaven where Jesus is not just exalted, but highly exalted.
 
That's another paradox at play. The paradox in our lives where we can have the mind of Christ our Savior, and instead of grasping for status, we shine as lights in a dark world. We give ourselves in service to him and to one another. The day will come when the king of paradox doesn't give us stars for what we've acheved but crowns for what he has done in and through us.