With Healing in His Wings

I was reminded this morning by a friend that the ministry of healing is a good ministry. I have another friend — that is now two, if you are counting — who recently injured herself. Her response to being injured is to try to be more active. Actually doctors have suggested that this should be a time of quiet and rest so healing can proceed quickly. Against such well-trained advice, she has decided that being up and busy is a better way forward. Now she guaranteed that she will be injured longer, will live wearier and will heal crooked. If only she had the grace to be still and heal.

When a church or other human system, a family or business has been hurt, it needs to heal. It needs to rest and recover. When it is able to function a little, it needs to take pointers from the physical therapists and try small steps in safe environments. We are in a time of recovery at UA church. We are resting a bit. We are also beginning to take steps forward into the future.

I think in my life I am always in some phase of recovery from some near disaster. Maybe we are all hurting, healing and hobbling in some way all the time. May God grant us the grace to get into fewer dangerous situations, the grace to realize when we are hurt, the wisdom to rest and rehab slowly and the courage to launch out again into a risky, delightful world. Churches, families, folks and I need to remember this.

May God bless us all

Preaching Wisdom

I went to Lipscomb University in Nashville last week to attend a sermon workshop on preaching wisdom. David Fleer and David Bland brought together great lights and moderately great lights to help us get a focus on the wisdom books, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and James, for preaching. 

Proverbs begins with the simple truth that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Those presenting the material did remind us that this didn't mean we should be trapped in trembling, cowering fear before God. Neither did they think that mere "respect" was an adequate translation for the Hebrew in the text. 

Being in the presence of God ought to stir us to our very souls. To be with the One who knows us inside out and upside down ought to sober us. The idea that we could fritter away the opportunity to live in covenant promised relationship with God should send shivers down our spines. Never letting our present moments out of sight of our certain future judgment before the Lord should focus our present landscape as clear as crystal.

Living in the awesome presence of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because there is no place to hide folly there. 

Eggs and Legos

In my refrigerator, I have a carton of eggs. They are grade A large. Each one looks exactly like the others. Each one has its own little egg place to fill. When I go to get an egg, it doesn't matter which one I get because they are all the same really. 

In my upstairs closet, I have a container of Legos. My grandson Sailor likes them. Legos come in different sizes and shapes and colors. They live all jumbled inside the box waiting to do their Lego thing when summoned. 

Some folks wish the church could be like a carton of eggs. Uniform. Separate. Predictable. I guess under certain duress folks could be compressed and suppressed into egg-like uniformity. Someone would probably smugly announce that everyone is alike because each one looks like Jesus. 

Of course the truth is that the church is much more like a box of Legos than a carton of eggs. Jesus calls a very random group of folks together to be his. He says this gathering of misfit toys looks like him. The Holy Spirit distributes a diverse array of gifts within the Body of Christ. Different cultures and generations come together. Different sexes and different upbringings come together. I cannot begin to list all the differences brought into unity in Christ. Yet, they do come together and all the pieces fit together to become the Temple of God, the Family of Heaven, the Body of Christ, the Church of the First Born Ones. And it is amazing.

A secret: I sometimes wish we were eggs. We would be easier to manage. 

An admission: I don't like being treated like an egg. 

A bad pun exhortation: Let's be happy that we are different and that God can use us all. 

Ready? OK. 

Let's Lego and let God.

God bless us all. 

A Prayer

O God,

Put to death what is evil in us so that we might be more filled with your Spirit. Change our hearts that we might bear the Spirit's fruit. Help us love the church, the Body of Christ for whose sake the Spirit has given us His gifts. Open our mouths with the good news of life as the Spirit bears witness to Jesus through us. Use our hands and feet to do your will in caring for others.

To the glory of the Father, within the fellowship of the Spirit, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

This simple prayer calls for our best cooperation with the work of God in us and in the world. We have been invited in the love of the Father, the blood of Jesus and the open hand of the Spirit to join in the great work of bringing life to this world. Paul likens the invitation to an offer of adoption into the family of the Holy Trinity. We are adopted children invited to join the family business.

At our best we inadequately represent the character and interests of the Family. Our hearts are not as loving as the Father’s heart. Our will is not as obedient as the will of Son. Our desire for joyful connections with others is not nearly that of the Spirit. Still we are invited to open our churches, homes and hearts in response to the invitation to be God’s Family incarnate in the world.

Stunning.

In response to this invitation, we put to death what is evil in us, change our hearts to receive and respond to the Spirit, and open our mouths and our hands with good news. Here in the heart of Austin, God calls us. 

God bless us all. 

 

Pneumatic Tools

I have a friend. I am not a very good friend to him, I fear, but he is a great friend. He likes tools and gadgets. He would help me do anything. The thing I loved about his garage was that he had plumbed it to carry compressed air to a number of different spots in his garage/workshop. Once he turned on his big time compressor, he had multiple places to attach his pneumatic wrenches and other air-driven devices. I was impressed that a ordinary guy could have the same tools as my higher-priced compadres at the Firestone store. 

After last Sunday's visit with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, one of his best days, I have decided that the church is meant to be a pneumatic tool and each Christian is meant to be a pneumatic tool. The Greek word for spirit and for wind is the same word—PNEUMA. It is the word that gives us scary words like PNEUMONIA and tool words like PNEUMATIC. A pneumatic wrench operates on compressed air. A Christian does not work unless filled with the Pneuma of God, the Holy Spirit. So... I don't think I am charismatic by the common definition; I do think I want to be seriously pneumatic. We all could be. We all could be pneumatic tools in the hands of God.

May God bless us all.

You Will Always Have The Poor with You…

One of the transitions for me over the past year is dealing with constant presence of the poor. In Abilene people were poor. Annette worked in an elementary school that provided free breakfast and lunch for 95% of its students. A small group of homeless men and women lived in a camp near a railroad bridge. Ministries of various churches focused on the poor, the working poor, the homeless poor, the aged poor, the mentally challenged poor, even the poor from other countries who were settled there. So we did have working knowledge of the poor and ministry to the poor in Abilene.

But...Austin. In Austin the poor are much more among us and in ways that I have not yet learned to deal with. The men and women asking for money at the intersections raise questions in my mind about doing the temporary good versus doing the best thing for them over all. Is it really good to make intersection begging a viable career choice? What circumstances would put me in their shoes? WWJD? I feel confused and vulnerable in their presence.

The people standing in the crowds of day laborers waiting for work make me wish I needed something built or hauled or painted. Every time I ride the bus I find at least one man or woman who is using the bus for self-directed adult daycare. My wife Annette is working at an elementary school where 98% of the students qualify for free meals. Add to this list of the persistent categories of the poor, those whose good jobs have ended and who have been forced to live through their savings toward a day where the impoverished life begins. Always. The poor are with us always.

The rest of that story is that God loves the poor. God loves those who love the poor. The poor in spirit and the poor in stuff are high on his list. We are invited to have a heart for the poor. We are not expected to eliminate the problem of the poor. The poor are always present. We are expected to have a constant ministry of compassionate sharing with the poor. The poor inside the fellowship of the Body of Christ get to stand at the front of the line. The poor, in all the ways they present themselves, are never outside the ministry heart of Jesus or his church.

So a part of the Christian experience is to be troubled by the troubles of the poor; to be moved by the pain and need of the poor; to act in selfless and compassionate ways for the poor; to serve the poor as we would serve Jesus if he were poor, to serve the poor as if Jesus were in our skins making the choices about how to serve the poor. And we will never get through. The fallen nature of our world guarantees a few things and one of them is "you will always have the poor with you."

God bless us all.

On the Brink

The recent series "Living on the Brink" from 2 Timothy received responses that were sobering. Person after person thought it was time we stopped whistling through the graveyard and say out loud that things in this world are crazy weird dangerous right now. 

Many of us have had some sweet years with things going along pretty well. We know what our faith was like during those times. We got to dabble with this or that idea or imagine a ministry initiative of one kind or another. The thought process was calm. The stakes were manageable. This thinking at the shallow end of the pool was comfortable. And nothing much had to be done in the near future. No crisis loomed. 

To be sure we have all had various crises in our personal lives and families. Still all those difficulties took place against a backdrop of relative comfort and ease for most of us in middle-class in America. Now the world of worry and want that the poor have long known has become a world that threatens to dominate. A sane and sober man has looked into my eyes within the last 24 hours and said, "I think that we may see levels of need and people in situations within the next two or three years that we never thought we would see here." 

Hmmm. What to do? What if the life that folks on the margins of life have always known becomes more the norm? What if more and more of us take our place living on the margins of life where money, work, time and comfort are scarce? What becomes of our life and faith then?

What we found in 2 Timothy is still a good place to start when framing a faithful answer to how to live on the brink. 

The first thing we do is recover our weak flame of gift and calling and claim the power of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, standing unashamed in this world with all of its challenge and trouble. 

The second thing we do is focus with greater clarity on the word of God — the God-breathed word that is unchained, powerful and life-shaping in all situations. 

The third thing we do is lift our eyes from the immediate and urgent and lock our vision on the promises of God that stand today and stretch out into a richly satisfying and rewarding eternity. 

This life may indeed become more uncertain. We may see the sand on which many, and perhaps even we ourselves, have built their lives for what it is. This wild, raging sea of a world is the right place to stand on the ever moving wave of the present as it absorbs the future and leaves the past. We are on the edge, the brink, the wave. Let the metaphors roll and tumble to describe where we are, but … really this is where followers of Christ have always stood and demonstrated their faith to the world. 

Don't be afraid.

God bless us all.