Ouch Moments

Some people have "Aha" moments. You know, when something becomes clear to you in an instant, or when you finally discover something you've been searching for or thinking about for a long time. Rather like Archimedes crying "Eureka!" (I've found it!) when he discovered that he displaced water when he got into his bathtub. Or those folks in the cartoons who get little lightbulbs above their heads. We think, "Aha!" as the idea comes to us.

Well, I have those, too. But I also have what I call "Ouch" moments. Those are the times when you read something or hear something that is obviously pointed directly at you and your own behavior or attitudes. It's typically something that you realize is true about you, but which is rather unflattering. I get Ouch moments sometimes while listening to our preacher. I haven't yet figured out why he's preaching directly at me, but he does it with distressing regularity.

I had an Ouch moment the other day, and it was in concert with a friend's Ouch moment, too. My buddy was telling several of us about some time he'd spent alone with God. He was seeking to hear from God, and he opened his Bible to read this passage in Isaiah:

And now the LORD says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD
and my God has been my strength-
he says:
"It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."
Isaiah 49:5-6

Except for one small glitch. In verse 6, my friend read two words out of order. I was listening rather than reading along, and didn't notice it at the time. He read, "Is it too small a thing . . ." instead of "It is too small a thing . . ." That turned a statement into this question: "Is it too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept?"

My immediate response was "Ouch!" In fact, I said that out loud. That verse, when put that way, hit me squarely between the eyes. Now there is no disputing that the verse doesn't ask that question. For Isaiah, that wasn't an Ouch moment. (He had plenty of others.) Isaiah heard it correctly. We didn't. But hearing it incorrectly had a big impact on my friend, and on me.

Please, please don't misunderstand me here. I'm not suggesting that we try to misread scripture and draw lessons from it. But the principle expressed by that question is one that is found throughout scripture. God told David he was not to be the one to build the temple. He told Paul that God's grace was sufficient, and he wasn't going to heal him. In addition, this principle is something we all should recognize and feel in our bones. We often want God to do one thing for us, or with us, or through us, and God tells us that he has something else in mind. And he gently tells us that he has blessed us in other ways, given us other talents, performed other deeds through us. "But that's not what I wanted," we whine. So God gives us that Ouch moment.

I've had lots of Ouch moments in my life. Some are painful, such as the time I heard and saw myself scolding my son on videotape. That was me? I really sounded like that? I hate it when people sound like that with their kids. Ouch! That left a mark.

Some Ouch moments are hilarious. One of my favorites is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (How's that for a theological movie?)

In the film, the peasants have brought a woman (whom they have dressed like a witch) to Sir Bedivere, crying "A witch! A witch! Burn her!"

Bedivere asks, "How do you know she's a witch?"

One of the peasants (John Cleese) replies, "She turned me into a newt!"

His Ouch moment came when all of them look at him in his obvious non-newtness.
After a moment of embarrassment he mumbles, "I got better." And they went on to more silliness, eventually deciding that if the woman weighed the same as a duck, she was a witch.

Our Ouch moments are teaching moments, if we have the wit and courage to recognize them.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go bandage up this wound . . .

Two by Two

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.
Luke 10:1

While I was reading this passage the other day (actually listening to it on my iPod), I was struck by the fact that Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs. Two by two. It was a little thing, but it brought home to me how much we need each other in the battle we call the Christian life.

So many times, we try to do everything on our own. Not only do we try to do things without God, but we try to do them without another brother or sister. But Jesus didn't send the seventy-two out separately. He sent them out together. Because they needed each other.

How do we miss this? The scriptures are absolutely full of reminders of this.

As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another.
Prov. 27:17

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecc. 4:10-12

Remember the story of David and Jonathan? Could they have done what they did alone? Or even the story of Jonathan and his armor-bearer battling the Philistines in 1 Samuel 14?

Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.
1 Sam. 14:13-14

Jonathan didn't go it alone. He had his armor-bearer at his back.

The early Celtic Christians had a concept and a practice that we would do well to revive. They called it the Anam Cara. It means "soul friend." It actually stems from pre-Christian Celtic thought. Your soul friend was your teacher, companion, and guide. He (or she) was one to whom you could say anything. You could confess to him, lean on him, ask him advice, for help—anything. Your Anam Cara would hold you accountable, speak truth to you, even tell you the hard things that you really didn't want to hear, but needed to hear. It not an authoritarian relationship, but complementary. Usually one was older, wiser, more practiced in spirituality. But learning flowed both ways, accountability and truth were spoken and heard by both.

We all need an Anam Cara. We all need someone who can say anything to us, and receive anything we can say back. We need someone who knows us as well as we know ourselves, and probably better. We were never intended to go through this life alone. Isn't that just about the first thing God said about Adam? "It is not good for man to be alone." We need each other.

Usually, I suggest that men choose an Anam Cara from among men, and women from among women. That's not to say that our spouses cannot be our soul friends. Quite the contrary. But we need someone else who can see our relationships from the outside. Men need other men to stand with them. Women need other women. One of the problems with out society today is the lack of real friendships outside of romantic involvement. Especially for men.

When Jesus sent them out two by two, he knew exactly what he was doing. (Doesn't he always?)

Who is your Anam Cara?

Marred Clay

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
(Jeremiah 18:1-10 – NIV)

There is so much here that it's hard to know where to begin. I could talk about nations repenting like Ninevah did in the book of Jonah. I could talk about nations that are blessed by God turning away and abandoning God. I could speak of how God actually changes his actions based on the actions of nations.

But I'm going to talk about marred clay. Have you ever seen a potter working on a wheel? The clay starts out as just a lump, but soon, under the pressure of the potter's hands, it begins to rise and form into a cup, a pitcher, a jar, a bowl. Sometimes, though, there's a weak spot in the clay, or the potter presses a bit hard, and the clay collapses in upon itself. What was going to be a beautiful vessel is suddenly just a misshapen lump of clay again.

So, does the potter yell at the clay, pluck it off the wheel and throw it away? No. He changes his strategy. Sometimes he starts over, patting the clay back into its initial shape before trying again. Sometimes he takes what was going to be a tall vase, and makes it into a short, broad bowl. The point is, he makes something useful of the clay that was marred in his hands.

We are all marred clay. The potter picked us up out of the mud (what do you think clay is?) He took us and began to lovingly shape us into a beautiful vessel, fit for the home of a king. Instead, through our own failures, and through the action of God's enemy, we were marred in the potter's hands. We didn't fulfill the destiny that God originally had for us.

But God does not throw us away. He wastes nothing, not even the sins that marred our lives and turned us away from his original plan for us. He uses everything in our lives to build us up. He takes every sin, every virtue, every bad decision, and every good one and makes something to bring himself glory. It may not be the thing it could have been, but it will bring glory to God.

No matter what you have done in your life, God can use you. And he starts anew right where you are.

Joy and Sorrow

Yesterday I received some very bad news. My aunt Ginny, who has been very much a mother to me in the past 30 years, raised my sister, and has been a grandmother to my children, has terminal cancer. What she initially thought was a rotator cuff problem turned out to be a bone tumor, which was actually a secondary tumor, having spread from one in her lung. We got through the initial shock of that, and she was starting radiation for the shoulder, when more tests turned up tumors in her brain, liver, adrenal gland, and lymph system. The estimate is that she has between 3 and 12 months to live.

Needless to say, it has been a hard time for all of the family, none moreso than her husband Jim. I've been fighting a sense of deadness over this news. I haven't really been in denial, but I've had trouble grasping the reality of it. This is a vital, vibrant woman. She has had some tough times in her life, but has always fought back hard, bringing joy and blessing to all those around her. And she will continue to do that, I'm sure. It's not within her to be morose and self-pitying. Her biggest concern is for those she will be leaving.

It is hard for me to imagine a world without Ginny. She has been Nana to my kids since my oldest was born. After my parents died, she traveled down to Mexico to take care of my sister Alison, who was injured in the crash that killed our parents. She and Alison have shared a special bond since then. When my new wife and I moved to this area, we naturally leaned on Ginny, and really chose to go to Richland Hills Church of Christ because she was there. What a blessing that has been!

It was in this semi-dazed, somewhat mournful frame of mind that I went to our Wednesday worship service. I spoke to a couple of people coming in, answering their "How are you's?" truthfully with "I've been better." As the worship started, take a guess what the first song was.

The Joy of the Lord.

Here I am, grieving over the news I still have not completely taken in, and we sing The Joy of the Lord. If you're not familiar with the song, these are the beginning lyrics.

The joy of the Lord will be my strength

I will not falter, I will not faint.

He is my shepherd, I am not afraid

For the joy of the Lord is my strength.

It continues in that vein. As you might guess, it is a very joyful, exuberant song. Not exactly in line with my mood, right? And yet as we sang the spirit of the song overtook me, and I began to sing wholeheartedly and with conviction. Before long I lost myself in the joy of the Lord, in praise and worship of the one whose gift is joy.

Joy comes not from easy times, or from a life that lacks hardship. There is no such life. Joy is sometimes unexpected, but always welcome. It can come through new life, as when a child is born. It can come through beauty, as when the sun shines through clouds to highlight a flower. It can come through laughter, through meeting old friends, through victory, through learning. It can even come through sorrow.

I am reminded of the time the family had gathered for my Grandma Gill's funeral. It was a time of sorrow, to be sure. We were saying goodbye, and that always hurts. But a time of joy also came out of that sorrow. Several of us gathered at Grandma's house (a trailer, really), and went through her things. Understand that Grandma was not wealthy by any means. She had no great store of possessions, and what she did have was of no great quality. But there was meaning there. We all found little things that meant something to us, often gifts we had given to her and Grandpa over the years. I came away with a cheap weather set, barometer, thermometer, and hygrometer, which I had give to Grandpa for Christmas many years before. We found old snapshots, jars of Grandma's pear preserves, rusty knives, beat up fishing lures. All worthless, all precious. And we found joy in the midst of sorrow.

That's not quite what it was like for me as I sang last night. The joy I found came not from memories. It came entirely as a gift from God. I cannot truly explain it, but I did feel joy in the moment, joy in praising God, and strength that came from somewhere else. It certainly didn't come from me. It didn't eliminate my sorrow. But it made the sorrow seem more distant and infinitely more bearable. It's odd, but joy and sorrow can coexist. But joy so outshines sorrow. Sorrow becomes like the moon in daylight. You can see it, but it's not the light source.

There's more here, I know. There will be more sorrow coming. That is the condition in which we live. And there is more God wants to teach me about both joy and sorrow. Because sorrow, too, can be from God. I pray I am open to the teaching. And I pray peace for Ginny, Jim, and our whole family. I ask for your prayers as well.

One Day at a Time

Ask anyone in recovery, whether it’s a member of Alcoholic Anonymous, a person in drug rehab, or a man struggling with porn addiction, and they’ll say this: you have to do it one day at a time. It’s no good looking far into the future and imagining what it’s like to be free of whatever addiction or demon besets us. We can only live in the moment, and do our best to make good decisions today, this day. We’ve all heard this so often that it has become something of a cliché. One day at a time, we hear from counselors, from friends, from mentors, from out accountability partners. We hear it so much that we are a bit dead to it.

But it’s not mere cliché. For that matter, a saying only becomes a cliché because it contains truth. If there were no truth there, it wouldn’t be repeated enough to become cliché. A cliché is a proverb that has had a lot of success.

In the case of “One day at a time,” the cliché originates with . . . Jesus. He said it in Matthew 6:-34:

“Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

In the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us not to worry about tomorrow. It’s another way of saying one day at a time.

And it’s great wisdom. We cannot change tomorrow. Yet. We can only change tomorrow when it comes to us. We must receive the blessings and trials of each day as they come.

Easy said, right? Not so easy to do. But, really, what else can we do? We are all locked within time. Not a one of us can reach forward to tomorrow or backward to yesterday.

Also, look at the verses just before this in Matthew. Jesus is talking about worry and how it is contrary to dependence on God. The pagans worry, he says. But God knows what we need, and we should be about seeking the Kingdom.

So, we should deal with one day at a time when it comes to our food and our clothing. Makes sense that it should apply to the strength we need to resist temptation or do the right thing, too.

For that matter, even God deals with each day as it comes. I know, you’re going to say that God is outside of time, that he’s eternal. A day is as a thousand years to God.

And you’re right. God is outside of time. But we are not. So much of what God does uses, even depends on us. He used Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and Joshua, and David, and Solomon . . . you get the point. God is outside of time, but we are locked in it. And God has always, since he created Adam and Eve, worked with the people he created. Sinful though we are, frail and foolish as we are, he works with us. He created us to be his allies. And since the day when we turned against him, he has worked to make us strong allies, soldiers in his war against Satan and the third of the angels who rebelled with him.

There can be only one reason for this. He loves us.

And because he loves us, he provides for us, works through us, and lives in us.

One day at a time.

So, the next time someone tells you to live one day at a time, take heart. Know that God is living this day with you. Look beyond the cliché, and see the one who made this day. He’ll make another one tomorrow, and give you everything you need to get through it.

Resisting the Devil

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
James 4:7

Something I heard recently has bearing on my last post, Pray Hard. I am very familiar with this verse, and I've quoted it to a lot of people. Unfortunately, my understanding of this verse (and I'm not alone) has been somewhat inadequate. It all stems from translation and not knowing the culture in which this was originally written. Thanks to Patrick Mead for pointing this out to me in one of his recent lessons.

There are a lot of sporting terms in the New Testament. That's hardly surprising. The Greeks, if you remember, started the Olympics, and they had conquered everything from the Adriatic to India. Greek was the language of trade and literature, and Greek social customs and terms had filtered out into all the cultures they touched.

When James speaks of resisting the devil, he is using a sporting term. It is from a type of wrestling where the participants wrestle to the death. It had a specific meaning to James' readers, but over the intervening years and through translation we have lost that meaning.

That kind of puts a different slant on "Resist the devil," doesn't it. We have had this idea of just saying, "get away, Satan", and he heads for the hills, screaming like a little girl. That couldn't be further from the truth. What James is saying is that we have to fight hard against Satan, resisting him even to the death, and he will flee. We have to be willing to give everything, even our lives, in the battle against him.

Really, this should not be shocking to us. Look at 1 Peter 5:8-9:

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

I don't know about you, but I've never lived in a place where lions roam. We think of lions as those big, placid cats at the zoo. Those who live with lions know to fear them. An adult lion can be over 450 pounds, and can kill and carry off a grown man with as little trouble as a cat playing with a mouse. Does it make any sense that you can just resist a lion with a glance or a word and it will leave you alone? In addition, look at the last part of those verses. Do you think those folks being persecuted could just say, "leave me alone, Devil," and their persecution stopped?

Look also at Hebrews 12:4:

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Umm . . . didn't that say something about shedding blood?

This is not a picnic day in the park we have signed up for. It's a battle. God is at war, and we are soldiers in the line. Nobody said it would be easy. There will be casualties. Our leader and savior was crucified. He told us that we needed to pick up a cross to follow him. I think that might be a hint.

Pray Hard

When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. "Why are you sleeping?" he asked them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation."
Luke 22: 45-46

It's funny how you can read a passage of scripture repeatedly throughout your life, and then one day it will just jump out at you. That happened with this passage. And I wasn't even reading the passage. I was actually listening to Luke on my iPod.

The first thing that hit me was that the disciples were exhausted from sorrow. They were grieving because Jesus was grieving, and that wore them out. If you remember, this was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed so intensely that his "sweat fell like drops of blood." Apparently, the disciples weren't up to this. They fell asleep.

But Jesus was up to it. That tells me what a mighty man Jesus was. The disciples were a rough lot. Most of them were zealots, most of them men who made their living with their hands and their strength. But Jesus prayed intensely while they fell asleep.

But the thing that hit me hardest was what Jesus said to them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." How many times have I read that and missed it? None of us wants to fall into temptation. We all want to have the strength to resist. So, what's the secret?

Pray.

That's it. Just pray. I'm assuming that Jesus wouldn't have told the disciples to do it unless it was effective against temptation. Pretty safe assumption, wouldn't you agree? There we have it in Jesus' own words. Pray so you will not fall into temptation. Considering what Jesus is going through here, I suspect he's not talking about a quick "Help me, God. Amen." He's talking about struggling in prayer, wrestling in prayer. Praying against resistance.

Praying hard.

Generally, we fall into sin because we are weak, or because we are willful. We've all seen both sides of that coin.

But maybe, just maybe we didn't pray enough, or hard enough.