Memorizing Psalm 100

You can't start too early to give them a good start!

Don't look for perfection but look for progress in our lives.

The perfect business Part 2

Jesus used stories to make his point over and over again. As we wrestle with those parables, we gain understanding into the ways of God.

Yesterday, we looked at the parable of the vineyard from Mark 12. We came to the point of the vineyard, which had to do with paying what we owe.

Do we pay God what we owe him?

The renters in the story felt they could get out of paying their rent by rejecting God’s messengers. At one level, that’s a picture of Israel rejecting the prophets of the Old Testament. And the Pharisees and scribes rejecting Jesus, the son.

Which lets us off the hook.

But this story doesn’t let us off the hook.

What do we owe God?

Interestingly, Mark 12 ends with another story that’s probably familiar to you.

In that story, Jesus watches a poor widow drop in two small copper coins – all she had. He praises her generosity.

In comparison to the huge offerings of the rich, her portion was nothing. But she gave what she felt she owed.

By giving up what she had to live on, she was trusting God to provide for her. She didn’t need to hoard two small copper coins because she had access to landlord himself.

We asked yesterday, what do we owe God?

It kinda looks to me like Jesus was saying, “you owe it all.”

The perfect business

It was the perfect turnkey business, already prepared for success. The landowner had planted the vineyard already, knowing it’d take several years before the fruit appeared. Meanwhile, he built a wall around the field and installed a winepress for when the grapes were juicy and ripe.

He even constructed a watchtower, because plenty of predators – winged and walking – would try to steal the crop before it was ready.

So when he rented the field out, those in line knew this would be a successful business.

But a problem arose. The first harvest was lush and full but the renters didn’t want to pay their rent.

After the renters had abused the landlord’s representatives – and even the collection agency – the landlord decided to send his own son. The son knew the business well and was very good in communicating.

The renters killed the son, assuming that they’d get the field because the landlord now had no heirs.

They assumed wrongly, for the landlord destroyed the renters and gave the field instead to others.

What are we to make of this story? It is a parable of Jesus, told in Mark 12, and seems simply to condemn the religious leaders of the day. And there are parallels to them.

But there are parallels to us as well.

The bottom line in the story is that the renters, although given a field in perfect condition, refused to give the landlord what they owed him. And eventually the landlord destroyed them in their rebellion and gave the field to another.

Let’s make the parallel with what God has provided: a world that is well able to provide for all our needs. We live in a place of beauty and abundance. We can get gritchy, complaining about what we don’t have, but we’re not seeing that we have all we need for life abundantly.

How do we respond to that? Do we pay God what we owe him?


Tomorrow: what do we owe?

A pierced hobby

Check out this link to the world’s most pierced woman. These sort of things draw us. As usual, this article stirred all sorts of questions for me.

Are they sure she’s the world’s most pierced woman? Could there be a woman in some small tribe somewhere who is busy installing more studs?

And is this competition only for women? Are there guys similarly devoted to the craft...er.... art .... er.... mission ...er.... hobby?

Are there prizes for this? Would anyone sign her up for endorsements? Of what?

Is the garish paint on the face optional? Is that yet another passion?

And then there’s her quote: "But I am happy. I decided to change myself and be me."
Why would she be happy in changing herself like this?

Ultimately, I’d like to hear her heart. Her appearance isn’t attractive to me, but God sees the heart. I wonder what nudged her to this sort of adventure. I’m tempted to mock her but I think God would like to speak to her.

What questions would you have for her?

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

1 Sam 16:7

Treasures

Anthony was a rich young man who fell in love with Jesus and threw aside his wealth for a life in the desert. He spent 20 years alone, learning to ignore attacks from evil while submitting to God.

Late in life, he was interviewed by Athanasius, who wrote an account of his life in the mid 300’s. Here’s a quote that intrigues me:

“…as we rise day by day we should think that we shall not abide till evening; and again, when about to lie down to sleep, we should think that we shall not rise up… But thus ordering our daily life, we shall neither fall into sin, nor have a lust for anything, nor cherish wrath against any, nor shall we heap up treasure upon earth.”

I don’t yearn for his lifestyle but I find his wisdom breathtaking. What do I cherish in my life? And am I devoting myself to that? We assume infinite tomorrows but am I devoting myself to that which is precious to me?

Some say that we do what we want to do. But I think we do what we think is important, whether we want to do it or not.

Do I know what I treasure? Am I living that way?

Made into wine

God can never make us wine
if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with.

Oswald Chambers

Free Range kids

When Nathan was 7, I stuck a $5 bill in his pocket and sent him to the grocery story for a gallon of milk. It was only a block away and we lived in the sort of town where, if he walked down the middle of the street to get there, any drivers coming by would have followed him with flashers glowing.

But the look on his face when he got home was priceless. "I felt so grown up!" he told me, handing over the milk and the change.


I thought about Nathan today when I heard about Lenore Skenazy. She gave her 9-year-old son a $20 bill, a subway map, a MetroCard and let him come home in New York City via the subway.

He made it, exuberant. But Lenore has been loudly criticized by the helicopter parents, who hover and rescue at every opportunity. It made me think. How would a follower of Jesus look at the issue?

I gotta be honest, I don't see our Heavenly Father as a helicopter parent. He could have dived right in when Eve talked to the serpent. He could have sent in a servant to block David's view from the roof of the palace. Jesus would have snagged the rich young man rather than letting him walk away.

God lets us make mistakes and then, in his mysterious and impossible way, molds mistakes into growth in our lives.

So what does that mean to us as parents? Lenore knew there were risks for her son. But she trusted his good judgment and ability to think things through.

"I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, 'Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead.'" Lenore wrote.

Lenore believes we have allowed fear to paralyze us as parents - and to disarm our children in the process. She now has a blog to examine her ideas about Free Range kids.

This is an important concept to me as a follower of Jesus. I want my children to learn judgment, discernment and trust. I believe in allowing them to make mistakes and helping them sort through the pieces. This is not an easy world to navigate. Our children, if they are going to make a courageous walk with the Father, must know how to get along. And they must know we believe they can learn to do it.

Just as our Father does with us.

Resolved : that all men should live for the glory of God.
Resolved second : that whether others do or not, I will.

-Jonathan Edwards

A heart checklist

When I wonder how I’m doing on my journey with Jesus, I sometimes look at others who journey as well. I can usually find someone who is stumbling more than I am, and then I can feel better about my own journey.

Have you ever done that, too?

I don’t think it’s wrong to evaluate my walk but I think it’s not helpful to look at others who are on the journey. I think I need a better evaluation tool.

Here’s what I came up with, out of the book of Romans. I think these are marks to compare myself to. These reveal my heart and show me where I need to grow.

I don’t think these are burdens we should place on those who are not following Jesus, as though checking off this list will make them followers. This list is for followers of Jesus, to check our heart condition.

See what you think of the benchmarks:

Is my love genuine?
• Do I hate what is evil?
• Do I hold fast to what is good?
• Do I love other with mutual affection?
• Do I outdo others in showing honor?
• Do I lag in zeal?
• Am I ardent in spirit?
• Do I long to serve the Lord?
• Do I rejoice in hope?
• Am I patient in suffering?
• Do I persevere in prayer?
• Do I contribute to the needs of the saints?
• Do I extend hospitality to strangers?
• Do I bless, rather than curse, those who persecute me?
• Do I rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep?
• Do I live in harmony with one another?
• Am I too haughty to associate with the lowly?
• Do I claim to be wiser than I am?
• Do I repay anyone evil for evil or do I do what is noble in the sight of all?
• As much as it is possible, so far as it depends on me, do I live peaceably with all?
• Do I seek vengeance or allow God to protect me?
Am I overcome by evil or do I overcome evil with good?

(Checklist courtesy of Romans 12:9-21)

Top of the mountain, part 2

Yesterday's post described how we came up the mountain.

The graduation began shortly, but first we worshipped. With guitar, bongo drums, maracas and tambourines, they sang. Exuberantly. Joyfully. Eyes closed and heads leaned back.

With many hugs from family, the graduates were given diplomas. Once the ceremony was over, we realized that if we wanted an interview with the pastor, it had to happen now. The light was fading and we had no electricity for lights.

So we set up an interview site with banana trees as a backdrop to hear an amazing story about a pastor redeemed from voodoo (another story on another day). As we filmed, goats wandered into the background.

By the time we were done interviewing, the meal for the graduates and their families was taken away. We wondered if we’d go to bed hungry.

But many hands helped us tear down our filming equipment and then we were seated in the pastor’s home around a table heavy with food. We ate a common Cuban dish, white rice and black beans. There were fresh sliced pineapple, bananas, lamb, chicken soup, bread, fried plantains.

Once the pastor’s family had served us, and were satisfied we needed nothing more, they faded from the scene to let us eat. We tumbled into beds in three small bedrooms with hard mattresses and stiff lumpy pillows.

But we realized that we had displaced three families. We’re not sure where they slept that night, but they were up late to clean up our food and then up early to prepare breakfast.

We ate pineapple slices as we watched the sun rise, casting orange and purple through the mist of the mountains. We left the mountains tired, dirty, and nervous about the 15-hour drive ahead.

But we left knowing we had been treated like royalty, given the best they had by people who love Jesus and freely give.

They said we had honored them by coming, but we found new energy in their love for the King and their love to us. Coming to the mountain had changed us.

Top of the mountain

We had to shed a lot of baggage to get to the top of the mountain. Up there, life is simpler. There’s no electricity and no running water, unless you count the rain which cut deep ruts in the trail that wound around the mountain.

It was four-wheel-drive country and we had a minivan. Really, it was a horse or oxcart trail and most people came to the church on foot.

We drove across the island of Cuba – seven people and our filming equipment stuffed into the minivan. To go, we had to drastically trim our luggage.

We’d already done that once, leaving a third of our clothes and equipment back in Cancun. Now we sliced again, trying to anticipate equipment needs. We ended up taking two sets of clothes – the ones we wore and a clean set – for the four-day journey.

We walked the last half mile up the trail, allowing the minivan to lurch and bump its way without our extra weight. As we turned the final corner, we saw over 100 people in the clearing waiting for us.

A small group waited under a tree, gathered around an oxcart. Children were playing in the shadow of the church and knots of people stood near the parsonage.

The women came to kiss our cheeks and the men, after a quick handshake, took our bags.

We were whisked into the house for a cup of espresso – the cup of hospitality in Cuba – and allowed to change to fresh clothes.

“When does the graduation start?” I asked our director.

“Right now,” he said. “As soon as we get there.”

This seminary, tucked away in the mountains nearly 600 miles from the city of Havana, had instructed 14 students in Bible knowledge for three years. This was their first graduation and the mountains were alive with excitement.

They had waited for us, the church exuberantly decorated with flowers and ribbons.

Tomorrow: their sacrifice

Frost-bitten

Sharon had gotten frost-bite once, on a snowmobiling trip with a short-term boyfriend. She hated the cold, that crunch of snow and the sting of ice crystals.

“I don’t go skiing,” she informed her friends. “I’ll sit by the fire and read a book in the lodge.” Well, it wasn’t long when she didn’t bother going to the lodge but stayed home with her book and her cozy quilt.

She found new friends, too, ones who weren’t so crazy about the cold. They could sit with her by the fire, reading books and drinking Earl Gray tea.

Before long, they formed a club and met weekly to sit with steaming tea, a favorite book, and a hot fire. She met a nice young man who didn’t like the cold either and eventually they married and started a family.

But their last-born was a strong-willed one who refused to stay by the fire. Julie had discovered snowballs and toboggan trips were exhilarating.

“Mom, Dad, listen, there some exciting people who play in the snow!”

“It’s too cold,” Sharon told her. “I will not get frost bite ever again!”

Julie was a loving daughter so she considered that for awhile. But the call of the adventure lured her. “I feel something spiritual out there,” she told her mother. “I feel more alive, almost like God is with me.”

Sharon never joined her. But Julie found a good coat and took the risk.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7

Reading or collecting?

Odd, the way the less the Bible is read

the more it is translated.

C.S. Lewis

Enchanted... or not

My favorite childhood movie was Sleeping Beauty. Sitting in the dark movie theatre, I remember being transported (and this was way before Star Trek days) to another world. I bought into the chipmunks and bluebirds who harmonized alongside the beautiful maiden with the voice of a 35-year-old.

There were no weeds or dripping moss in the forest, only a willing owl to dance until the prince wandered onto the scene. The witch was thoroughly evil, the prince pure to his toenails. Tue love’s kiss won out in the end and everyone lived happily ever after.

If you hung on the Disney fantasies, you ought to check out their new movie, Enchanted. Just the park scene, where Giselle enlists a wedding group and construction workers to a song-and-dance, will stir your heart – or your laughter.

But just like Giselle met Robert, who had both feet planted in reality, so I have a 12-year-old son who tagged along to see Enchanted, which is a consummate chick flick. He didn’t get it.

What a shock.

But he did insist on watching Sleeping Beauty, to get some context. Or to get out of some schoolwork. I’m still not sure which.

He wasn’t two minutes into the movie, where the camera pans across the beautiful green kingdom before zooming in on the massive castle, when his commentary began. “Who’d watch this?” he asked. He was especially disgusted with Prince Phillip abandoning his betrothed for a girl he met in the forest. “He doesn’t even know her!” he snorted. Informed that I had first seen this movie at his very age (thinking this would connect somehow), he said, “How old is this movie anyway?”

I keep thinking that his someday wife will appreciate the fact that he’s been around chick flicks and dreamy-eyed women.

We read Ephesians 6 this week, where it tells husbands to be like Christ to their wives, and my son thinks those are better pointers for him than can be found in Sleeping Beauty and Enchanted. Maybe I am making progress?

Poured out

Apparently Jack has toppled the giant. Or maybe the giant only stumbled. We’re not yet sure but what’s clear is that Bill Hybels has apologized.

If you haven’t heard yet what the head of Willow Creek had to say, check out this article from Christianity Today.

But the essence is that this multi-million dollar facility, with enough staff to run a town, and lots of church programs didn’t produce spiritual growth. Willow Creek is one of the leading megachurches in this country with innovative programs and great energy for impacting the culture.

I don’t fault their motivation. Their church model drew thousands of people hungry for a Christianity relevant to their lives.

The only problem was that these people were not growing spiritually. They came to be fed but didn’t grow. Willow Creek discovered, to its chagrin, that the model grew numbers but not disciples.

It may be tempting, to those sitting on the outside, to withdraw into the good old church of our childhood, to walk away from innovation and church models.

Spiritual growth does happen the old-fashioned way, but that way is not the model of the 1950’s but of the first century. Growth happens with prayer, Bible reading, fellowship. It’s hard work and it’s not glamorous.

Jesus was the broken bread and the poured-out wine. His work was inconvenient and unattractive at times. How does a follower of Jesus grow? Willow Creek found out it wasn’t by racing after programs that pour in but by that which causes us to pour out.

Words of the will

The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will....Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it, not necessarily physically, but in will.

—My Utmost For His Highest

Flames of passion

The woman was indignant. “I’d better be in heaven someday,” she said heatedly, “because I know my mother is!”

She could have been a third-generation Puritan. In the mid-1600’s, the Puritans had fled English with the hot flames of persecution on their tails. Rather than adapt their beliefs, they adopted a new homeland.

But that first generation of Puritans, passionate and committed, failed to pass on the fervor. The following generations drifted toward spiritual lethargy. Churches once filled with energetic followers of Jesus were now seeing empty pews. The youth were out late, pursuing lewd practices with no time for Sunday morning worship.

We obviously expect too much, responded the Puritan fathers. They wanted to increase church membership, which had been based on spiritual conversion, and so decided to make it easier. Thus developed the Half-Way Covenant, which allowed membership based on baptism. If and when conversion occurred, the member was then allowed full membership but in the meantime, they were half-way members.

These half-way members couldn’t vote but they could inflate the membership roll. The hope was that the younger generations would eventually make a conversion to Christianity. Without the expectation of conversion, the younger generation became more and more self-indulgence and immoral.

By reducing membership to baptism, Puritans communicated that faith wasn’t necessary. Membership was. The sluggish results of the Half-way Covenant made the Great Awakening of the early 1700’s an amazing work of God, injecting fervor and commitment into the cool listless spirituality of the times. When people found Jesus, they responded with enthusiasm and ardor.

Jesus started with a large group of disciples but followers kept peeling off as the cost of following became clearer. Jesus didn’t come up with a Half-way Covenant to keep them. He upped the ante: in comparison to your love for me, it’ll seem like you hate your family. (Luke 14:26)

To follow Jesus means to leave attachments, to cultivate zeal, to risk all. He expected obsession from his followers. The Puritans were hoping to boost church membership with the Half-way Covenant. Their focus should have been on the passion of the people, not the numbers on the pews.

Jesus never made it easy to follow him and neither should we.

And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:27

Rights of passage

It was probably the Sunday afternoon polkafest that really got me started. My father was a polka fan (I cannot explain this) and tuned the car radio to polka music on the way to Grandma’s house.

As he rocked his shoulders to the rhythm of accordions, his children in the back seat sent up a howl of protests. I’m surprised he didn’t leave us on the side of the road.

I thought I deserved to listen to my music. Always.

I figured that there ought to be some joys to getting older and one included getting tmy music now and my favorite foods and my movies. The apostle Paul punctured my balloon.

It really came to a head when my son invited me to listen to some of his favorite Christian tunes. I had politely declined many times but now I had Paul’s words ringing in my ears.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. (Romans 15:1)

“Strong” has to do with maturity and influence. Paul also discusses, in this passage, how many things are morally neutral and need not be points of conflict.

And it came to me in a rush: if I had to listen to Christian rap and metallic rhythms to help my teenagers get through those years of turmoil, that was a small price to pay. If I joined their search for meaning through a style of music that was, well, difficult for me, the price was worth it.

Like Jesus did: For even Christ did not please himself…(Romans 15:3). He, the King of kings, was even washing men’s feet like a simple servant. He suffered, the God of the universe putting on skin and walking the path of a frail man.

Although we tend to glorify youthfulness and ridicule old age in our culture, we do reserve one privilege for the old, the right to be selfish. The “come around” rule (“what goes around comes around”) meant it was finally my turn to get what I wanted.

Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. (Romans 14:20)

Today, it isn’t about food but about length of hair or style of music or favorite celebrity. We who are older sometimes make a stand on our right to what we prefer rather than our responsibility to nurture those who are younger and weaker.

Unfortunately, our churches bear witness to this for many are filled with elders and not many teens. Teens can be selfish and demanding and, well, weak. Paul is clear: it is the strong who submit to nurture the weak, not the other way around.

Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself. (Romans 15:3)