When You Are Angry

 Anger doesn’t require significant issues to raise its ugly head.  Several Tampa Bay baseball fans got into an angry fight over a foul ball that landed in a garbage can. After tempers flared, the security guard stepped in and ruled that the ball would remain where it landed, beneath a pile of peanut shells, beer cans, hot dog wrappers and whatever else had been deposited in the can. If we can’t get along with one another, nobody wins.

We are all acquainted with anger. We have felt the rising resentment and boiling emotions that overwhelm rational thought and take control of our words and our actions leading us to say things and do things that we later regret. We call it losing our temper. It is built into us. We are born with it. Anyone who cares for a newborn soon discovers that babies have a temper. For most of us, age helps. We call it “mellowing.” Things that once pushed our button and shoved us over the edge are not as frustrating as before. We become more patient; we gain greater perspective.

It is okay to become angry. When anger causes us to take action that will result in improved environment and behavior, it is good. Jesus became angry. He did not casually cleanse the temple. He drove out all those who were using religion for profit, overturned their tables, scattered their money on the stones and drove the bleating sheep, braying oxen and fluttering pigeons before him with a whip. Later, when the religious authorities wanted to prevent him from healing the sick on the Sabbath, the Bible says he looked at them “with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.”

But it is not okay to lose our temper. Uncontrolled anger can be disastrously destructive. It is not okay to live an angry life as an angry person. Angry people alienate others, and, when their anger spins out of control, they inflict damage and injury to themselves and others. When anger cuts off conversation and communication that can lead to understanding and solutions to shared problems, it is a bad thing. When anger spills over into rage that lashes out at others to hurt and to harm, it is a bad thing.

Anger is one of those human emotions we all possess that must be channeled and controlled to produce constructive results. Left unchecked and allowed to run wild, it can destroy us. The Bible instructs us to “Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”(Eph. 4:26). The Bible also says, “The anger of man does not fulfill the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20).

 When we are introduced to the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts, he is an angry young man. After assisting in the murder of Stephen, he proceeded to persecute Christians, going from house to house, arresting men and women and throwing them into prison. But, on the way to extend his rage to Damascus, he met the risen Christ. His life was changed.  His anger was quenched.  Later, he extended the love of Christ to those who persecuted him (Acts 16:22-30) and authored one of the greatest passages on love the world has ever known, (1 Corinthians 13).  

Spiritual Myopia

 Myopia. I learned the word when I was ten years old from the optometrist who checked my eyes and told my parents that I was nearsighted. I didn’t know I was nearsighted. I thought everyone saw everything the way I saw it. Trees were green blobs, the landscape blurred into blotches of pink, green, brown and blue, like an Impressionist painting. I wondered how other kids could catch and hit a baseball. I never saw the ball until it was on top of me. I could see some vague arm motion in the distance and then, wham! The ball was in my face.

My first pair of glasses changed my world. I discovered leaves on trees. I could see people’s faces inside their cars. I could read the blackboard from the back of the room. As a teenager I became the cleanup hitter on the all-star team, and could catch a fly ball over my shoulder while galloping toward the centerfield fence, like Joe DiMaggio. When I returned to the dugout, I heard the coach say, “I always knew if he could see it he could catch it.”

Myopia is not only physical. It can bespiritual. We are all born spiritually nearsighted. Like my childhood years, we think we see things clearly, but we don’t. We are unaware of what we don’t see. The only person who ever had perfect vision was Jesus. That is why He said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness … if anyone walks in the night he stumbles because the light is not in him.” (John 8:12; 11:10)

When the prophet Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the enemy at Dothan, the servant was gripped with fear. But Elisha told him, “Do not fear. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” When God opened the servant’s eyes, he saw that “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings 6) When we are gripped with fear and despair, we need God to open our eyes so we can see clearly. “If God be for us,” Paul said, “who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

Jesus once met a blind man in the village of Bethsaida. Jesus laid His hands upon him and asked him, “Do you see anything?” The man responded, “I see people; they look like trees walking around. Once more,” the Bible says, “Jesus put His hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened … and he saw everything clearly.” (Mark 8:22-25) Many of us are like that blind man. We may be religious. We may attend church. But we need a “second touch” from God so that we can see clearly.

We are born with spiritual nearsightedness so that we only see things close up, our own self interests. As a result, we are often filled with fear, doubt, anger, resentment and despair. When we turn from our sins and place our faith in Christ, He is able to touch us so that we see clearly and walk in the light. Only Christ can cure the spiritual myopia that afflicts us from birth and enable us to see the world as God sees it.

This We Believe

 Over the years I have preached many funerals for friends and family.  None stands out more in my memory than the funeral I preached for my niece.  By the time she ended her long battle with breast cancer she was in her fifties.

 I still remember her innocent blue eyes as a child.  I watched her grow through childhood and into her teen years.  When she was a young adult, she was lured down painful and destructive paths refusing to heed the warnings of those who loved her. I prayed for her, along with others and she fell deeper into addiction to drugs and alcohol. She gave her first born up for adoption and eventually served a sentence in prison.

 But somewhere along the way, whether in prison or afterward, she came to faith in Jesus Christ. Just as He said to the woman who pressed through the crowd and touched the hem of His garment, Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole.” 

 In the last decade of her life, I saw her reunited with her first-born whom she gave up in her youth. She was reconciled with her family who surrounded her with love.  God brought a good man into her life who, like herself, was a recovering alcoholic.

 She often shared with me her testimony of faith and what God had done in her life.  She still wasn’t perfect. She still had issues. But she was different. God was healing her on the inside.

 The week before she died, we visited.  Family and friends gathered around her, comforting her, praying for her and loving her.  On Wednesday of that week, she drew her last breath.

 Once again, I thought of her as that innocent blue-eyed girl I first knew. It reminded me of Jesus’ visit to the home of a mother and father whose twelve-year-old daughter had died.  The house was surrounded by people who were weeping. But Jesus entered the child’s bedroom with her parents and spoke these gentle words to her.  “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”   She immediately breathed, opened her eyes and got up.   

 This is the faith we believe as followers of Christ.  We make mistakes.  We may wander far from God.  We may cause pain to ourselves and others.  But He seeks us out.  He never lets us go.  He reconciles, redeems and, in the day of our death, He raises us up!

Did Jesus Do Dishes?

 Did Jesus do dishes?  The very question sounds sacrilegious.  That might be the point.  Sometimes our “religion” prism causes us to miss the real miracle about Jesus.  The whole idea of “religion” tends to confine our thinking to “church” related activities and theological conversations.  To most people, Jesus never enters day-to-day conversation because to do so is to introduce “religion,” and daily life has little to do with religion.

 Those who knew Jesus, who met him, heard him, saw him, ate with him, and walked with him were struck by his humanity.  He was real, but, as some say, “not real religious.”  He went to the synagogues and spoke there, but it was the religious people who had difficulty with him.  He ate with tax collectors, visited with prostitutes, and befriended lepers, violated religious laws by healing the sick and allowing his disciples to harvest grain on the Sabbath.

 Jesus’ divinity continued to shine through for all to see:  he made the blind see, caused the deaf to hear, enabled the lame to walk and raised the dead.  Even the wind and the sea obeyed him.  But, just as importantly if not more so, he made the mundane extraordinary.

 He lived most of his life as a carpenter in a remote village.  As Dallas Willard wrote, “If he were to come today as he did then, he could carry out his mission through most any decent and useful occupation.  He could be a clerk or accountant in a hardware store, a computer repairman, a banker, editor, doctor, waiter, teacher, farmhand, lab technician, or construction worker.  He could run a house cleaning service or repair automobiles. In other words, if he were to come today he could very well do what you do.”

John described him like this:  “The Word became flesh and lived among us and we saw his glory, glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14);  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”

 The Bible never says that Jesus did the dishes.  It does say that he washed feet. Which, it seems to me, required a great deal more humility than washing dishes.  I expect dishes were prized possessions in most homes of Galilee. They weren’t cheap.  You could not pick up dishes at the local Walmart or the Dollar store.  They were all hand crafted and often passed down from generation to generation.  Most homes likely had little more than the essentials when it came to dishes. They did not pile up in the sink waiting for someone to unload the dishwasher. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus helped his mother out, or even lent a hand to Martha in the kitchen at Bethany, and washed dishes.

I always think my wife will be most impressed when I buy her flowers.  She does appreciate them. But what she really seems to like is the times that I do the dishes.  It may be that the most spiritual thing you do today is to do the dishes.  It could be a God thing.

What Our Dogs Can Teach Us

 We live in a dog-friendly neighborhood.  Everyday, weather permitting, I see people walking their dogs. Men and women, old and young, couples pushing strollers, teenagers, some riding a bike with their dog on a leash.  Once I met a woman walking her cats. She had three of them on leashes which she periodically paused to untangle. There aren’t many “cat-walkers.”

 After years of feeding, bathing, picking up poop and emptying litter boxes for the dogs and cats that belonged to the family, our kids grew up and left home. The house was quiet. Even the pets were gone. I decided I wanted my own dog, just for me. It took several months and many promises to my wife that I would do all the feeding, bathing and poop picking up, but my wife finally agreed.  We adopted Buddy, a tri-color Corgi.  

 Buddy isn’t with us anymore. After 14 years he lived out his Corgi-life.  But the memories and the lessons he taught me remain. Here are a few things I learned from my dog, Buddy.

 Buddy trusted me.  Whenever I got in my truck he jumped in and took his place, ready to go.  He didn’t know where we were going or what we were going to do. But he believed that if I was driving it was okay.  I need to be more like that with God.  I always want to know where we are going, when we are going to get there and what we are going to do once we arrive.  I need to jump in the truck with God and give him control of my life.

 Buddy wanted to be with me.  He didn’t care if he was at the lake running, splashing and rolling in the mud, sitting in a chair next to me on the patio or in my study lying at my feet while I wrote.  He just wanted to be where I was.   I need to spend time with God.  What made the early disciples different was the fact they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).

 Buddy followed me.  He even followed me from room to room in the house. Whenever we went for walks on an empty beach, I let him off his leash and he ran free.  But he kept an eye on me.  He developed a radius of his own, about thirty yards from wherever I was.  Within that radius he felt comfortable sniffing washed up driftwood and marking sand dunes.  Occasionally he got out of eyesight. But, when I called his name he came running. Not real fast, but as fast as he could. After all he was a Corgi.    It reminds me of what Jesus said to His disciples, “Come, follow me!”  “My sheep know my voice.” 

 Buddy waited for me. When I was writing, he rested his head on his paws, kept one eye on me and waited.  If we were walking and I stopped, he sat down with his tongue hanging out and waited.  If I went to the store when it was cool, he waited in my truck until I returned.  Buddy never complained about waiting on me.  He never got in a hurry.  I should be more like that with respect to God and those I love.

 Buddy has his own book, Buddy the Floppy Ear Corgi, on Amazon that tells how he was rescued off the streets and how he learned to love himself and others just the way God made them.  Free eBook Aug 29-Sept.2.

Tragedy in Paradise

 We are entering the second week since wildfires swept through Lahaina on Maui.  The painful reports from Maui continue.  The death toll stands at 114. Children, parents, families, tourists, trapped in an inferno at a least suspected place in a least suspected moment.

 Like many we have been to Maui and visited Lahaina.  We have treasured memories of the “aloha” and “mahalo” island, palm trees swaying in a gentle breeze, waves cresting upon the shore, luaus on the beach at sunset.  It doesn’t take long to travel the island, including the Haleakala Crater and the road to Hana where we found Charles Lindbergh’s remote grave overlooking the ocean.

 This tragedy strikes an especially painful chord.  How could this happen in such an idyllic place?  The deadliest wildfire  in the U.S in more than 100 years.  

 This week tropical storm Hillary lashed southern California with high winds, mud slides and flooding.  Like Maui, we have been there. We visited San Diego six months ago, relaxing at Mission Beach, strolling through Balboa Park, listening to the street musicians, shopping and dining at Embarcardero.

 My wife grew up on the coast of Texas, at Freeport. When she was 12, Hurricane Carla struck her home on September 11, 1961. Winds reached 173 mph.  The storm was so intense the weather Bureau retired the name “Carla,” never to be used again for an Atlantic hurricane.   Her family fled to east Texas for safety.  When they returned, they drove through miles of devastation with bloated cows lying in the fields. Their home was flooded with 3 feet of saltwater. They had to rebuild and start over.

 The deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history remains the Galveston storm of 1900.  An unexpected hurricane struck the island on September 8 and left more than 6,000 dead in its wake.

 Jesus was clear that disasters, both natural and manmade,  would continue on this earth (Luke 21).  He was also clear that these tragic events would affect the just and the unjust, the good and the evil, (Luke 13:1-5).  So how are we to respond?

 When his disciples encountered a man blind from his birth, they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?  Jesus responded, ‘It was not that this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:1-3).  Jesus then proceeded to heal the man who was blind.

 This gives us a clue about our response when others suffer inexplicable disease and disaster. We must enter into their grief, share their sorrow, pray for them and do whatever we can to help. Most of us can give. There are numerous charities.  We should choose one we trust and give what we can. Every little bit helps those who lose everything when disaster strikes.

 We are to place our trust in the One who overcomes every adversity and gives to us life eternal. We must be like the man in Jesus’ parable who built his house upon the rock. ““Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock,” (Matthew 7:24-25).

Back To School

 Last week we kept our grandchildren, ages 12, 10 and 6.  Their parents had taken them shopping for school supplies the day before.  It might as well have been Christmas! They were elated to show us all the new supplies for school: pencils, pens, notebooks, dividers, glue, backpacks and new shoes!  White Nikes for the girls, orange Under Armor shoes for our 6-year-old grandson.  He insisted they were superhero, super-fast shoes.  We gathered at the living room picture window and watched him demonstrate, sprinting across the front lawn, an orange streak against a grass-green background!

 It was fun to listen to them talk about all the things they are looking forward to after a long hot summer, their new teachers, schedules and friends who would share the same class.  The same scene is unfolding in families all across our country. 

 I thought of the many children whose parents are short on funds, who are struggling to pay rent, to put gas in the car and food on the table.  I thought of children who will show up on that first day with worn hand-me-down shoes.  So, we went shopping for school supplies, especially nicer new shoes, which we dropped off at a local charity for distribution.  It wasn’t much. Hopefully it meant something to one or more children.  If we all do a little, it can help a lot.

 When my wife was a child, she spent days organizing her supplies anticipating the first day back at her desk.  When she became a kindergarten teacher, she faced the greater challenge of managing preschool children armed with crayons and markers in a room with freshly painted walls.

 It will soon be time to put away the lazy days of sleeping late, TV, video games, camp and vacations.  Kids will wake before sunrise and wait for the bus.  Going back to school is the rhythm of life, as surely as the first crisp scent of fall and the turning of green leaves to gold.  We will soon wake up to the early morning echo of school bands, coaches’ whistles, and the smack of shoulder pads.  

 Jesus’ invitation to follow Him is an invitation to each of us to go “back to school” with all the child-like enthusiasm and wonder of children skipping expectantly across the school yard.   That is the meaning of the word, disciple.  He is the Master Teacher.

 No person ever lived who was as wise as Jesus.  Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Mount by telling the story of two men who built houses, one on the sand and one on rock.  When the storm came, the house on the sand crumbled and the house built on rock survived.  “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them,” Jesus said, “may be compared to the wise man who built his house upon the rock.”

 We all need to go to school.  We all have something to learn.