Those leaves

Because the cliche is so familiar, I've sometimes let it color my thinking.

You know how we compare our lives to the seasons, so that a young man is like the spring. A mature man is summertime and onward to the elderly, who are like winter. You know the rhythm of new life in spring, usually accompanied by buds and fresh blossoms. Then summer focuses on broad green leaves followed by the rich golds and oranges of fall leaves.

But winter is the time of brown dead leaves falling uselessly to the ground.

That isn't a hopeful image for us as we continue to clock up the years of our lives. Do we believe that image, that the end of our life falls, like dead leaves, uselessly to the ground?

As my body ages, I find that my mind wants to bear fruit. I want to be the tree planted in the living water of God's word, drawing from God's life and wonder. Is that my proud humanity, refusing the face the reality of time?

Well, there's another image in the Psalms. Look at this:

They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, "The LORD is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."
Psalms 92:14-15

God never intended for our last years to be as useless as dry leaves but fruitful to our exit to heaven.

In the midst

My temperature matched the thermometer outside, which wasn’t so good in Nogales, Mexico in June.

I had come with a team to build a second story room to be used for Sunday school classes in a small church. But the team traveled to the church every day while I slept on a mat on the floor back at our home base.

That was a disappointing week.

But I had come for two reasons: to help with construction and to present a puppet show on Sunday morning to the church people. We’d practiced for weeks with a program that included Spanish music and silent skits.

By Friday, I felt good enough to repair some of the props that had gotten jostled on the trip down. We rehearsed on Saturday and then Sunday came.

As I set up the stage, three of our teenagers rushed by, obviously upset. Before long, I found out that a fourth teenager – a stranger to our team, from another church in another state – had been caught packing drug paraphernalia into her suitcase for the trip home.

“My friends asked me to buy it for them,” she explained.

As you can imagine, there was some chaos in our preparations. I heard reports of angry words and tears, but I wanted to accomplish something on this trip. The show had to go on!

Shortly after that, the lights snapped off. We had no power for our CD player and no music for the puppet skits. First, we sent someone down to a shop to purchase what turned out to be very expensive dead batteries for the CD player.

Then my dear husband rigged up a system which would power the CD player from a car battery. We tested the system and were ready to go.

As he cut wires and taped connections, the puppet team gathered for prayer. It was hard to focus on something as trivial as a puppet show when we were dealing with a teenager who capped a week of veiled rebellion with this mess. We asked God to work where we couldn’t.

And we presented the puppet show. The electricity came on just as we were starting the first song and stayed on throughout the show, blinking once during a needed intermission. After we finished, the pastor talked to the people.

And 21 people came to faith in Jesus that day, coming forward to pray with the pastor.

That’s the story of a mission trip to Mexico, where God ignored my week of disappointment and did a miraculous work in the midst of chaos.

Ruth: Finally

The wonder of Ruth captivates me. The story is rich. A woman is stripped of her security and family, blaming God. A foreigner commits to a place and a people she does not know, because of God. A rich man protects relatives he only met, because of his faith in God.

We start the book of Ruth reading a list of names. We close the book in the same way. But the second list is more memorable, for it leads us to King David and ultimately to Jesus.

Men with clay feet, fearful and sickly, were replaced by a heritage of dignity and vigor. Naomi trusted her husband and sons to provide, but learned that that God’s provision is more wondrous.

This is much more than a sweet romance about two people who did the right thing and were rewarded. This is a powerful story about people drawn to health and restoration by God’s compassion and sovereignty.

Nations and lineages were redeemed in God’s plan.

Ruth is a book to encourage us to do as Ruth did: commit with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul and all our strength. For we have seen God work.

Being like

Can you imagine it? Unburdened by time or tired feet, Jesus reigned in righteousness and glory as a plan ripened into perfection. Meanwhile, those who breathed the breath of God, formed with gentle hands and declared to be “very good,”[1] were in a cold and silent place. Desiring to be like God, they had torn the fabric of love and exposed themselves to the thorns and darkness.

Unlike those first beings, who lived in the middle of God’s abundance and fruitfulness, Jesus did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.[2] He left paradise to close the fabric that was really a gaping ugly wound, exposing all to the ravages of rebellion.

God, the Creator King, the Conquering Lord, the Righteous Judge, shed divinity to become one with the stricken, paying our debt and opening the path to his side. He looked down on the lowly and the poor and the captive – and became that in our place.

This day we celebrate the birth of our Savior, who chose a humble beginning to reveal a humble life. He came not to rule with glory and power. That was for later. This time, he came to be emptied, to be burdened, to act in righteousness.

We consider equality with God a goal to hunt but Jesus regarded equality with us a door to renewal. We try to heal the wound by elevating ourselves. Jesus healed the wound by humbling himself.

Today, every day, rejoice in his obedience and in his life. We are set free by his humility and grace.

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Luke 1:78-79

Painting used by permission from the Genesis Project. Thanks again, Ann!

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[1] Gen 1:31

[2] Phil 2:6

A time as this

April had her baby yesterday. April is a radio newscaster in Denver and so the arrival of her firstborn brought lots of comments from her fellow broadcasters. But this time those comments were a little different.

“God bless,” said the sports guy. “Best wishes to April and son,” said the weatherman. “Be praying for them.”

It looks like Jeanne Assam brought God to Colorado yesterday. (Here’s a link to her news conference.)

On Sunday, Colorado was rocked by a gunman who first walked into the Youth With a Mission headquarters in Arvada to kill two missionaries there. He then traveled about an hour south to Colorado Springs where he apparently planned a major assault on New Life Church during the Sunday morning worship time.

Matthew Murray carried two handguns, an assault rifle, and over 1000 rounds of ammunition into the east entrance of New Life Church.

There he met Jeanne Assam, a member of New Life Church and a trained and armed security officer. “I knew I had been given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse,” Assam said.

It was a David and Goliath situation. “God was with me,” Jeanne said calmly at a press conference yesterday. “This has got to be God because of the firepower he (Murray) had versus what I had... I did not run away and I did not think for a minute to run away.”

Jeanne was in the last day of a three-day fast, weak from an intense time seeking God’s direction, when she faced Murray. “I was weak and where I was weak he made me strong. He protected me and many other people. I’m honored that God chose me.”

Journalists reported her words: “God was with me and I asked him to be with me and he never left my side.”

For the moment, it’s somewhat fashionable in Colorado to honor God’s name. Where many like to link God to fearful legalists, they had to face a woman of courage who saved countless lives by trusting in God’s presence to protect her.

Haman once told his beautiful niece Esther: “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this." (Esth 4:14)

Jeanne Assam may have been raised up for just a time as this.

In exile

Analogies can be slippery, vibrant yet vague. How to illustrate without misleading, how to reveal and not obstruct….

It wasn’t exactly a cave. Or an ostrich, Or a commune in the mountains.

But I was once a separatist, rejecting all that had the smoky taste of the world. I boycotted movies starring homosexuals. A preacher with a divorce in his history was not worthy of my ear. Music was always suspect, lyrics and motives overlaid on transgressions and rhythms.

I often wondered why God, once I had opened the door to my heart, didn’t whisk me off to heaven so I could escape this soiled place.

Did Daniel, snatched from his homeland and pressed into the king’s inner court, feel the same? He was an alien in a strange world, surrounded by false gods and unhealthy practices. He refused the king’s food because it would defile him. (Dan. 1:8)

But irony of ironies: Daniel’s refusal to be tainted led him deeper into the king’s presence. Noticing Daniel’s wisdom and understanding, the king began consulting him often. He gained greater standing than the magicians and enchanters.

What’s up with that? Daniel didn’t get to go home. He remained in the strange land, surrounded by the scent of opulence and the tinge of idolatry. Superstition and conjuring ruled the king’s mind.

Before Daniel came on the scene, that is.

Daniel didn’t escape Babylon. He spent a lifetime correcting magicians, outdueling enchanters, revealing God’s mysteries, testifying to the power of the one true God.

Daniel was God’s agent to deliver life to Nebuchadnezzar, the powerful king who moved from ignorance to acknowledgement to serving God only. In the battle of two kings, Nebuchadnezzar learned his place as servant of the true King.

By his words, advice, wisdom, choices, prayers, and courage, Daniel served the king of Babylon well. And he served the King of kings even better.

Daniel was no separatist.

Daniel remained at the king's court.

Dan 2:49

The Divine Warrior's victories

Happy Independence Day!

After God had swiftly wiped out the powerful army of the Pharaoh, Moses led the people of Israel in a joyous celebration of the victory. In the victory chant, they named God as warrior. The LORD is a warrior. (Ex 15:3)

The Divine Warrior theme is threaded throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes the victory was clearly God’s alone, like at the Red Sea or Jericho’s wall. Other times, he used people. Gideon and David both had to do more than watch, but their victories clearly belonged to God as well.

There was no doubt for ancient Hebrews that God was their warrior, winning battles for them. Often he freed them from the oppression of other nations. Their independence as a nation depended on God’s divine hand.

My daughter and I just re-watched the movie The Patriot with its rich landscapes and grisly war scenes. This patriot army of farmers had shortages of most everything except their fierce dedication to freedom. They gripped the idea that their Creator had given them inalienable rights (Here’s the complete text of the Declaration of Independence). It was impossible for this mottled group to defeat – or even slow – the proud and disciplined British troops. Yet the vision of freedom, of self-government, prodded them forward. Many died so that others could live in freedom.

We enjoy that heritage today, of freedom and democracy patterned on God’s provision. The cliché must be repeated: freedom isn’t free.

But as followers of Jesus, we can cut this another way. We can celebrate the victory of the Divine Warrior, when God honored the desire of a people to be free. Might we say that our independence as a nation depends on God’s divine hand?

I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously…

Ex 15:1