If You Believe

 A scientist placed a number of fleas in a jar and they immediately jumped out. He then placed a clear glass plate over the top of the jar.  The fleas continued to jump, smashing their heads into the invisible barrier.  They kept this up for some time, jumping with all their might, crashing into the glass and falling back.  They slowly adjusted the height of their jump to avoid crashing into the invisible lid.  The scientist then removed the glass lid, and the fleas remained in the jar, jumping just short of where the lid had been, unable to clear the lip of the jar and escape.

 The jumping fleas are a parable of how we adjust our expectations.  Like the fleas, we become conditioned to limitations imposed by others and, sometimes, imposed by ourselves.  We no longer try to extend beyond the comfort of what we have done before and we remain trapped by traditions and learned behavior.

 Wilbur and Orville Wright were sons of an itinerant preacher, a Bishop in the United Brethren Church. Like their father, they were gentlemen who neither smoked, drank nor gambled.  But they learned to dream.

 When the Wright brothers arrived at Kitty Hawk, NC, they found an almost deserted island with constant winds, lots of sand and about fifty homes, mostly occupied by descendants of shipwrecked sailors.  The residents wore hand sewn clothes and lived in homes with scarce furniture and bare floors scrubbed white with sand.

 Wilbur boarded with the William Tate family and set to work assembling his “darn fool contraption,” as the locals called it.  Tate later said, “We believed in God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that same God did not intend man should ever fly.” 

 The Wright brothers became fast friends with the Tate family and the outer banks people, who helped them immensely. Within 3 years, on December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers lifted into the air. Six years later,   Orville Wright circled the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor and the Wright plane flew over the Eifel Tower in Paris. Aviation was born.  The world has never been the same.

 Jesus was constantly urging his disciples to think beyond their limited expectations.  Often He referred to the twelve disciples as “you of little faith.”  He challenged them, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.”  (Matthew 17:20).

 Jesus chose twelve of the most unlikely men to follow Him.  They were common fishermen, common laborers and a tax collector. Without Jesus they would have lived out their lives in their small villages unnoticed.  History would have taken no note.  But Jesus taught them to believe beyond the limitations of their day.   Armed with faith, confident in the power that raised Jesus from the dead, they turned the world upside down and changed the course of human history.

 “Nothing,” Jesus said, “is impossible with God.” 

Halloween

 Next Friday miniature ghosts, goblins and superheroes will emerge at dusk to comb the streets in search of candy.  It is a long tradition in America, one I grew up with as a child and one I enjoyed as a parent. It is, perhaps, one of the few traditions we still celebrate outside with our neighbors. Manicured lawns are transformed into a mystical world of floating cobwebs, jack-o-lanterns and tombstones.

 Watchful parents huddle at the curb and visit while their little ghouls cheerfully threaten their neighbors with tricks for treats. Expectant children hold open hopeful bags and peer into their dark recesses trying to determine what luck they might have had at the door. 

 I always enjoyed taking our kids trick-or-treating. We had fun dressing them up and entering, at least for a night, into their fantasy world.  I liked watching them celebrate their growing assortment of candy gathered from well-wishing neighbors, until a costumed spook jumped from the bushes and convinced our five year old he had enough candy for one night. 

 I still look forward to answering our door bell on Halloween.  I enjoy trying to guess who is hiding behind the princess mask, what little boy is growling in the Ninja Turtle costume.  I like it when ET and Yoda drop by for a visit with their pet ghost-dog. They are polite ghosts and witches and extra-terrestrials. They almost always say, “Thank you.” 

 

Halloween, of course, has its dark side. Our nightly news reports of abducted children and maps dotted with sexual predators have erased the naïve world of Halloween past.  We are more aware that we live in a dangerous world where evil is real and present.   

 

Many churches are more than a little uncomfortable with Halloween.  On the one hand, it is enjoyable to celebrate community with imagination, fantasy and neighborly generosity.   On the other hand, there are demonic and destructive forces at work in the world that kill and destroy.  It is one thing to celebrate fall and indulge in imagination.  It is another to celebrate the occult, witchcraft, the devil and demons.

 Many struggle with addictions and impulses they seem unable to control.  They find themselves on a collision course with destruction.  Our world needs deliverance from evil.

 Jesus once met a man filled with destructive demons.  He lived among the tombs of the dead, often cutting himself with sharp stones.  Local citizens tried to control him by putting him in chains, but he broke the chains and escaped back to his home among the graves.  When Jesus ordered the demons that were destroying the man to leave him the demons entered a nearby herd of swine that immediately rushed into the sea and were drowned.  The man was healed.  When his neighbors found him, he was in his right mind, sitting with Jesus, no longer a threat to himself or to them. But it scared them. They asked Jesus to leave their country and not to come back.  (Mark 5:1-20). Forces that we cannot understand or control always scare us.

 This Halloween we will celebrate an occasion to enjoy our children and their imagination. We will celebrate the turning leaves, dry corn, pumpkins and harvest. And we will celebrate that we have a deliverer who can conquer evil in our hearts and in the world.

Celebrities and Mortality

The list of celebrities who have died this year is growing long.  February 18 Gene Hackman died in his New Mexico home.   April 1, Val Kilmer died.  August 7, astronaut James Lovell, commander of Apollo 13; September 16, Robert Redford died peacefully at his home in Utah. And October 11, Diane Keaton succumbed to pneumonia in Santa Monica.

 

Somehow we don’t think of celebrities as mortal.  Their images on the screen make them bigger than life:  Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, Little Bill in Unforgiven; Doc Holiday in Tombstone; Tom Hanks portrayal of Lovell in Apollo 13; the Sundance Kid, Roy Hobbs in The Natural; Louise Bryant in Reds, Nina Banks in Father of the Bride.Their cinema performances made them seen immortal.  But, they weren’t.    

 

The truth of Scripture appears stark.  “The days of our lives are but 70 years, or if by strength, 80, for soon they are gone and we fly away,” (Psalm 90).  “For the Lord God knows our estate that we are but dust.  For man is like the grass of the field that flourishes as a flower, and after the wind passes it is no more and its place remembers it no longer,”(Psalm 103).     

 

My grandchildren have no recognition or remembrance of some of the icons who shaped the world in my youth.  Paul Newman. (Did he have something to do with coffee?)  Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Ricky Nelson, Annette Funicello.  I’m not sure they even know who John Wayne was.  “… After the wind blows …”

 There is One who lived who remains. James Allen Francis captured his significance in a sermon in 1926: "He was born in an obscure village, a child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty.  Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.  He never had a family.  Or owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place he was born.  He never wrote a book or held an office.  He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. While he was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him.  His friends deserted him.

“He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.  While he was dying his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had, his coat. When he was dead, he was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.  Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he is still the central figure for much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, All the navies that ever sailed and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned put together
have not affect the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this One Solitary Life.

 Job asked the question, “If a man die, shall he live again?”  After a long ordeal of sorrow, disappointment, doubt and despair he arrived at his answer, “Yet as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, He will take His stand on the earth.  Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I will see God, whom I, on my part, shall behold for myself, and whom my eyes will see, and not another,” (Job 19:25-27).

Practicing Kindness and Compassion

 I like to read. Always have. As a kid I rode my bike to our local library with my friends to browse and check out books. When I met my wife, we spent our evenings together in the library at Baylor University and, across the years, libraries have remained one of our favorite places to visit on our “dates.”

  Once in awhile, a book sticks with me. Same Kind of Different as Me is one of those books that stuck. Based on a true story, the book was made into a movie in 2017 starring Renee Zellweger.

Same Kind of Different As Me is two stories. One, the story of an illiterate black man named Denver who was raised in the cotton fields of Louisiana and ended up homeless on the streets of Fort Worth. The other, an upwardly mobile white man named Ron Hall who graduated from TCU and made a fortune in the art world. They each tell their story, and the remarkable intersection of their journeys.

Maybe I was drawn to the book because Ron Hall spent his childhood summers on a farm near my boyhood home of Corsicana. His descriptions of Corsicana resonated with my memories growing up on Collin Street, one of the signature brick streets that reflect the glory days when the city boasted more millionaires per capita than any other town in Texas. Maybe I was drawn to the book because Ron and Denver intersect in the slums of Fort Worth east of downtown where my wife started her teaching career fifty years ago.

But the true stories of Ron Hall and Denver Moore are not the main stories in the book. They represent other stories: the story of our country and its culture. Ron represents those who rise from middle class with professional opportunities that can lead to great wealth. He also represents the dangers of that path that include temptations for greed, materialism, shallow and broken relationships. Denver represents the alarmingly huge segment of our population that falls between the cracks, victims of prejudice, oppression, injustice and neglect. He also represents the dangers of that downward spiral that includes temptations of bitterness, anger, isolation and despair.

The greatest story underlying and connecting all of these is God’s story. Ron’s wife, Deborah is the entry point for His work, one person who was open, willing and obedient who became the catalyst for connecting these two broken men from different ends of the social spectrum.

In a day when many look to government to heal our wounds and solve our social problems, Same Kind of Different As Me serves as a reminder that the real solution to our personal and social problems lies within us. It is often buried beneath our own prejudices and fears, but it can be unlocked and released with the keys of acceptance, trust, faith and love, all the things Jesus demonstrated and talked about.

God wants to use each of us, whatever our race, whatever our circumstance, whatever our background to make a difference in the world. “Thus has the Lord of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice, and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another,” (Zechariah 7:8-10).

How Immense Is God?

In the 1960s J. B. Phillips wrote a book entitled, Your God is Too Small. The title can apply to all of us.  Our understanding of God is always too small.  Our finite minds have limited comprehension of the infinite power and presence of God. In his introduction Phillips wrote, “God is immeasurably ‘bigger’ than our forefathers imagined, and modern scientific discovery only confirms their belief that man has only just begun to comprehend the complex Being who is behind what we call ‘life.’”

 Once in awhile science gives us a hint.   Voyager 1’s almost 50-year-old journey to the edge of the Solar System does just that.  Next year, November 2026, Voyager 1 will achieve a literal “milestone.”  Launched in 1977, traveling at 38,025 mph, Voyager 1 will reach 1 light day from earth, the distance light travels in one day.  50 years and it is just now on the doorstep of interstellar space.  Of course, one light year requires 365 light days.  So, it will take another 17,500 years for Voyager to travel one light year from earth. 

 The nearest star to earth is Proxima Centauri, 4.25 light years away.  Since Voyager 1 has already been traveling 50 years, it should reach Proxima Centauri in another 74,325 years. The most distant star from earth, that we know of, is 28 billion light years away.  Our universe is incredibly immense.  That being the case, consider how immense the Creator is.  This is why the Bible says God is “from everlasting to everlasting.”  To God “1,000 years is like yesterday when it passes,” (Psalm 90). 

 In his book, Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey wrote, “I find more of a spirit of reverence among secular science writers than in some theologians.  The wisest among them admit that all our widening knowledge merely expresses our more-widening pool of ignorance.”

 Albert Einstein stated, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

 C. S. Lewis cited the source of intelligence as his turning point from atheism to faith, and eventually Christianity.  The intelligent source of all creation wrote himself into His own creation when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

 John expressed the immense mystery of God and incarnation in this way, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind.  And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not ^[grasp it,” (John 1:1-5).

What's In It For Me?

 October baseball is here.  Major League teams have played 162 games over six months for this moment.  Stadiums are packed with hopeful fans. The Blue Jays and Yankees finished with identical won-loss records, but the Blue Jays win the tiebreaker based on their head-to-head record.  The Yankees will have to get past Boston to play the Blue Jays again.  Detroit will have to get past Cleveland to play Seattle. In the National League, LA must win over Cincinnatti to Play the Phillies.  The Cubs and San Diego fight it out to play the Brewers.  There is nothing quite like baseball.

 The 1989 movie, Field of Dreams is rated number five among the favorite baseball movies of all time. In the story, Ray Kinsella responds to a “voice” that urges him to build a baseball diamond, complete with lights, in the middle of his Iowa corn field.  After doing everything the “voice” commands him to do, Ray is stunned to see Shoeless Joe Jackson and some of the greats of the game emerge from his cornfield to play the game as they did in their youth.

 The story climaxes with an invitation from Shoeless Joe to join them in the cornfield, a dimension beyond the edges of this world. But Ray, who has risked everything to build the field, is not invited. Instead, Jackson invites the cynical 1960s writer, Terrence Mann.  Ray explodes in a fit of frustration demanding, “What’s in it for me?”  To which Shoeless Joe asks, “Is that why you did this Ray, for what’s in it for you?”                                                       

It is a good question.  According to experts in marketing, it is the question we all ask when we consider purchasing any product or joining any organization. In our age of seeker-sensitive churches, it seems to be the dominant question asked by anyone considering a church. “What’s in it for me?” But, is it the right question?

 When Jesus invited Peter, James and John to leave their home, their families and their boats, I wonder how He would have responded if they had asked, “What’s in it for me?” Perhaps He would have responded as He did when the young man with great possessions refused to give up his wealth.  How much do we miss of what God has for us because we are so focused on “What’s in it for me?”

Jesus’ invitation to join Him on life’s eternal journey sounds strangely different than our twenty-first century marketing plans.  Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25). 

Perhaps what is “in it” for us is the same thing that was “in it” for Jesus: the pleasure that comes from obedience to the Father. “My food,” Jesus said, “is to do the will of Him who sent Me” (John  4:34).  When the Apostle Paul reached the end of his journey, he measured it in this way, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith;” (2 Timothy 4:7). “I did not prove disobedient to the Heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19).

What Does God Want

 When I listen to myself pray, and when I listen to others pray, it seems that most of what we say to God revolves around what we want.  Sometimes our lists are heart-rending.  We desire healing from a deadly disease, comfort from the loss of someone we love, a job and a paycheck. More often, our prayers are day-to-day: a passing grade on the exam, strength to get through another day at work, safe travel.  Sometimes they are trivial:  a victory on the football field, our favorite team in the playoffs.  Most of our prayers are filled with the things that we want God to do for us.

 But sometimes I wonder, what does God want?

 Maybe he wants a great cathedral constructed in His honor, a building that rises out of the concrete and towers over the city with majestic spires and stained glass windows. Perhaps he wants a more modern structure that resembles the headquarters of a major corporation or a shopping mall. Something designed to make a statement to the world that God is important.

 Maybe He wants music. Perhaps God wants classical music like Ode to Joy, or Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.  Or, maybe he prefers contemporary music: amplifiers, electric guitars, drums, drums and more drums.  Maybe God prefers Blue Grass or Country.  Who knows?  I sometimes wonder what we will sing in Heaven.

Maybe God likes His own sounds: thunder in the heavens, the whisper of wind in the wings of a bird, echoes in a canyon, a babbling brook or the powerful rush of Niagara Falls.

 The Bible gives some pretty good clues about what God wants. 

 In Isaiah’s day, God made it clear that He was fed up with efforts to impress Him with religious behavior. He said, “When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts?

Bring your worthless offerings no longer. … Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson,
they will be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:12-18).

 When I think about how I feel as a parent, this makes perfect sense.  I am happiest as a parent when my children are together, when I hear them laughing, when they enjoy one another and go out of their way to help each other.  Of course, I want them to love me.  But somehow I feel like they love me best when they are loving each other.

 Many people assume that God measures our love for Him by how religious we become.  But John set us straight when he wrote, “One who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  (1 John 4:20).

 The bottom line is this:  God wants us to get along with each other.  He wants people to be kind to each other, to do good things and help each other. Jesus said,  “If you love me you will keep my commandments.  … This is my commandment.  That you love one another, just as I have loved you.”  (John 14:15; 15:12).