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.

Bring Your Hoe

Notice there's an "e" on the end of that word. I'm talking about the garden implement, not . . . never mind.

I was talking with a friend today, a man who has been at Wild at Heart Boot Camp a couple of times. We were talking about how Satan deceives us, and how we miss the glory that God sees in us.

At the Boot Camp, they show that scene from Braveheart where William Wallace is riding back and forth in front of the assembled Scotsmen, inspiring them to stand and do battle with Edward the Longshanks' soldiers. It is an amazing, stirring scene, one that makes us want to stand up and shout, "Freeeeedom!"

The Boot Camp instructor for that session, a man who has been involved in Wild at Heart for years, confessed something to them that day. He said that when he sees that scene, it's hard for him to put himself in the picture as one of the brave warriors at the front of the line. He sees himself not as a William Wallace with his greatsword, or as one of his companions with a battle axe or a mace. Instead, he sees himself as "that little scrawny guy in the third row carrying a hoe."

That was evidence to him that we really don't see the glory God has in mind for us. We don't see how we reflect God's glory, how we are allies with God, warriors in the battle against Satan. We're not the big, brawny soldiers, but the little shrimpy guys, poorly armed, untrained, inadequate.

I'm going to have to take exception with that. Not with the fact that we don't see God's glory in ourselves clearly. That's pretty evident for most of us. We need others to show us how that glory is reflected in us. It's one of the reason we need true friends, brothers and sisters who can come alongside us and show us what we really are.

No, what I take exception with is that the little guy with the hoe was somehow less glorious than Wallace and his companions. Far from it. That little, scrawny guy was there.

He willingly chose to come to the battle. He willingly chose to stay and fight. He didn't have armor, or a shield, or even a real weapon. He wasn't big and strong. He wasn't well-trained. Yet he chose to expose himself to the deadly shower of arrows the English launched toward him. He stood his ground when the heavy cavalry charged, shaking the very ground. He even chose to taunt the overwhelmingly superior English by mooning them.

Talk about glory! That guy waded into a maelstrom of battle, swinging his hoe. He was a man's man, full to the brim with bravery and boldness.

We are in a battle. Not all of us can be Braveheart. In fact, few of us can be. Not all of us even have a proper weapon. But we can all bring our hoes, rakes, and pitchforks to the battle. We can all stand between the enemy and our families. We can all fight alongside the greatest hero the world will ever know. We are allies with Jesus in the battle against Satan.

Bring your hoe, brothers.

A Man After God's Own Heart?

In 2 Samuel 11 and 12 is one of the most amazing stories of the Bible. David, the king of Israel, a man after God’s own heart, the little boy who had enough faith to take on Goliath, commits adultery and murder. He takes Bathsheba, probably against her will (who can resist the king?), and after finding out she’s pregnant, tries to get her husband Uriah to sleep with her so the baby can be passed off as his. When that doesn’t work, he orders Joab to set Uriah up so he’ll be killed in the battle.

Now, what is amazing is not that David committed these terrible sins. What is amazing is that God forgave him. Not only did God forgive him, but David is held up in scripture as one of the heroes of the faith. And to add to the strangeness, God continued David’s line on the throne by making Solomon, the son of Bathsheba, king after David.

Now, that is scandalous to the nth degree. Look at what he did! He committed adultery (maybe rape), and murder! He tried to sweep it all under the rug. Does God not care about sin?

Hardly. There were terrible consequences for David and for those around him because of his sin. The son of his union with Bathsheba died. David’s concubines were taken by Absalom, who had sex with them in a tent on the palace roof so everyone would know what was going on. Absalom took the entire kingdom during his rebellion, and many, many people died.

Oh, God cares about sin. He hates our sin. It’s something he cannot help. Sin is simply the opposite of God’s nature.

But he loves us more than he hates our sin. Because he loves us, he does not keep us from sinning, like robots. He permits us to either choose him, or to choose sin. At this point in his life, David chose sin. But look at what he wrote after that:

Psalm 51
For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.

There’s a lot more, and it would be a good passage for all of us to memorize. But I really want you to consider the note at the top, where it begins "For the director of music." David published and distributed this Psalm. He went public with his sin. He confessed it freely, and then he wrote a Psalm about his sin and sent it to the director of music to be performed.

Don’t hold back. Don’t let shame keep you from proclaiming the grace and freedom you have received. We, too, can be men and women after God’s own heart. In spite of our sin.

My Sister's Keeper

This has been a summer of great movies for me. I’m not a big movie-goer. It’s not that I don’t like movies. I do. But I resent the amount of money it takes to see a film, and don’t even get me started on the price of a soft drink and popcorn.

As an aside, have you noticed that movie popcorn is yellow? Even the unbuttered kind is yellow. When I pop popcorn at home, it’s white. But movie popcorn is popped and seasoned with so much yellow food coloring it looks like it ought to be banana flavored.

Anyway, let’s leave the snack bar and return to the theater. I usually get around to seeing the flicks I want to see when they’re at the Dollar Theater, or when they’re out on DVD. This summer there were several I really wanted to see right away: the new Star Trek flick, Pixar's Up, and the newest Harry Potter film. Two down, one to go. Then there was My Sister’s Keeper. The previews I saw intrigued me, as they did my wife and daughter. So when we decided to drop 50 bucks (that’s at matinee prices) on a movie and popcorn, we chose My Sister’s Keeper.

I had not read the novel by Jodi Picoult, so I didn’t have to worry about unhappy comparisons with the book.

In this age of in-vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research, and promised miracle cures, no thinking adult should miss this movie. This is not a movie that makes you cheer, as Star Trek was. It’s not a movie that leaves you with good warm feelings, as Up did, although there are plenty of warm moments in My Sister’s Keeper. This is a movie to see, to think about, to feel. It will raise questions for you that you probably haven’t considered. For example, what are the rights of a child to her own blood, bone marrow, even her kidneys? When is it time to say, “Enough” to what extreme medical measures can do for a sick person? This movie will not only tug on your heartstrings, it will yank them so hard you’ll check for a hole in your chest. Especially if you are a father with a daughter, it will reduce you to tears of sadness and of joy. I speak from experience here.

I will print no spoilers. There is no need. Young Amanda Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva give superb performances as Anna and Kate. There really aren’t any bad performances here. I especially liked Joan Cusack as judge De Salvo. But there are two things I missed in this movie. The first is Jesse’s story. I suspect a lot of his story was left on the editing room floor. It seems vague and incomplete.

The biggest thing I missed, though, was God. There was a little talk of “where you go” after death, and a vague understanding of “I’ll be okay,” but that was all there was of the afterlife. There was virtually no mention of faith of any kind, and none of the comfort or understanding, or even the struggle that faith brings. I’m not talking about the soft, mushy, Precious Moments faith that is the background of a lot of vaguely Christian films, nor the obvious evangelizing of films like last year’s independent surprise, Fireproof. Nothing against Fireproof. It was a good film that hit its mark very well. But that wasn’t what My Sister’s Keeper was about. This film was a perfect opportunity to show how faith bears on the biggest questions of our existence, questions about sickness, suffering, death, and duty. Now, I suppose it is too much to hope that Hollywood would have dealt with these things well, but I can dream, can’t I?

Go see My Sister’s Keeper. It will make you think, it will make you feel, and you won’t regret it.

Eyeglasses

I've been thinking about eyeglasses lately. The other day I was listening to Matthew on my iPod. (Don't you just hate those cutesy product names with a lowercase letter before an uppercase one?) At any rate, I was listening to Matthew, and came to the place in Matthew 20 where Jesus heals two blind men. And I began to wonder if they were totally blind, or if they just had such bad vision that we would call them "legally blind". There are lots of folks in the world who have some vision, but cannot see well enough to work. And this was in an age before there were eyeglasses, so even with a fair level of vision, they would still be called blind, I think.

Now, before you go thinking the wrong thing, I have no doubt that Jesus could heal someone who was totally blind. No doubt at all. In one healing, Jesus not only heals a man's eyes, but he heals his brain as well. Check it out. In Mark 8, Jesus "spits on the man's eyes and put his hands on him," then asks if he can see. (It's interesting that he had to ask, don't you think?) The man says, "I see people. They look like trees walking around." Then Jesus laid his hands on him again and he could see everything clearly. This seems to me to indicate that Jesus healed his eyes, but his brain at first could not interpret what his eyes were seeing. I don't know the name of the condition that causes this, but it's not all that uncommon.

Still, the fact that Jesus could heal someone who was totally blind doesn't mean it happened that way in every instance.

And that thought led me to be very, very thankful. You see, I'm one of those people who can't see well without some sort of corrective lenses. I believe the technical term is "four-eyes". If I was living in an earlier time, say, the Middle Ages, or the time of Christ, I would be very much restricted in what I could do, how I could work, how I could live.

I'm a recreational shooter, and I'm not bad, really. (Not all that good, either, but you get the idea.) Without eyeglasses, I wouldn't be just bad, I'd be dangerous. Nobody would volunteer to go to the skeet field with me. In a more primitive era I wouldn't be one of the guys who shoots a bow well enough to stay out of the line of battle. I probably wouldn't be in the line of battle, either, as I might have a hard time telling friend from foe. I wouldn't be able to see the mountains in the distance, or the ship coming over the horizon, or the sheep that was starting to wander toward a cliff. Maybe, just maybe I could make my living in a profession that didn't require great vision, as a potter for instance. But more likely I'd be the guy who was told to go dig a ditch, or carry rocks, or shovel manure. There is nothing wrong or belittling in any of those professions. It's just that my choices would be limited, as would my appreciation of such things as a mountain vista or the shape of clouds in the sky.

Yes, I'm very, very grateful that I was born in a time and place with not only eyeglasses, but antibiotics, computers, universal education, motorcycles, and air conditioning. We are all very blessed. I've heard it said that we are in many ways richer than Solomon ever was, because he never had the opportunity to ride in an airplane, or eat ice cream, or listen to a symphony.

But consider this . . .

Solomon did live without all those things. As did David, and Job, and Elijah, and Moses, and Jesus. They seemed to do all right without them. We have some great things, to be sure, wondrous things. But in the final analysis they are just things. No amount of things can make your children grow wise, or your spouse love you, or your favorite dog live forever.

But God can. And God loved those blind men no less than he love you and me. He loves us all, yet the blessings he grants us are not all the same. We all have different measures of wealth, health, and happiness. So the essence of God's love, his richest, truest blessings cannot consist of those things.

Still . . . I'm happy for eyeglasses. And so are the folks who shoot with me.