Runaways and those that love them

Adam with Daisy and Sean with Ellie (In 1992)

She was of dubious pedigree. Purchased as a full-blooded miniature schnauzer, it seemed obvious as she matured that she was all that - and a little bit more. Her coat was rough, her ears large. What else would you name a dog like that but Daisy?

And Daisy was wholly and dearly loved.

Chief among her admirers was her owner, Adam. As a young boy, his obedience to his chores had earned him enough points that he could have gone on a Toys R Us shopping spree, taken a trip to Six Flags, or get a puppy. He chose Daisy, and from the moment they met, the two were as one.

That's not to say that Daisy didn't have room in her heart for the rest of the Wilson clan, she did. After all, a dog's heart was created to love without limits. But for Adam, she reserved her utmost affection. At night, they'd go to bed together. In the morning we'd go in to wake Adam up, and find Daisy literally wrapped around his head like some sort of four-legged aviator's helmet.

Daisy was personality plus. Her antics kept us all laughing, but she could also be used to great effect to calm anyone down. Holding her in my lap lowered my blood pressure many times. So much so that when I was freaking out trying to balance work, school, church, and family, Bunny would tell the kids "Go get Daisy for your father. He needs a schnauzer break."

For all her awesome personality traits, Daisy had one that drove us crazy.

She'd run away.

We'd take her outside 100 times in a row without incident. But on that 101st trip, if you turned your back, she'd take off. Through the neighborhoods and to God knows where she would go. We would be frantic, scouring the neighborhood calling her name. Sometimes we'd get lucky and find her a couple of blocks over. Other times, though we searched on foot and by car, we couldn't find her. Hour after hour we would look, but it would get dark, and we'd pray that she would be found and promise each other we would look again in the morning. Adam would go to bed in tears as we reassured him that we would find her.

Then she'd come home, wet, muddy, and hungry.

And we'd love her again.

I thought about Daisy today because I was praying about others we know and love.

We've laughed together. We love things in common. When things are going well in their lives, they are great to be around. But they have one trait that relentlessly stalks them - they run away.

Every time they begin to make some progress in their lives, or their relationship with God, something deep within them begins the rebellion. It may be 6 days, 6 months, but one day you look up and they are gone.

And you're scared, it hurts, and you don't know what else to do.

That's when we have to put our faith in Jesus. No one loves the runaway more. 

Jesus used this illustration: ⁴ "If you had one hundred sheep, and one of them strayed away and was lost in the wilderness, wouldn't you leave the ninety-nine others to go and search for the lost one until you found it? ⁵ And then you would joyfully carry it home on your shoulders. ⁶ When you arrived, you would call together your friends and neighbors to rejoice with you because your lost sheep was found. ⁷ In the same way, heaven will be happier over one lost sinner who returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven't strayed away!

Holy Bible : New Living Translation. 1997 (Lk 15:1-7). Tyndale House: Wheaton, Ill.

One thing about lost sheep, lost dogs, and yes, even lost people. It can happen again. And again. People get tired. Call it compassion fatigue. Call it a broken heart. But to overcome it, we have to call out to Jesus. Jesus said He came to seek and to save those who are lost. He never stops.

Only a heart like Jesus' can give us the courage - the hope to keep wanting to search when history, family, and friends are telling us to give up. Only a heart like His.

Friend, would you pray with me for a heart like Jesus?

For there are not enough searchers and way too many who are lost.

Grace!

David Wilson

Would it matter to you if you knew...??

Yesterday there was a solar eclipse. There's a lot going on in the universe, but because the Earth, our moon and the Sun lined up for a while it got dark directly under their path. Here it was sort of "darkish" not really worth the time to go outside and suffer permanent eye damage looking up at it unfiltered. 

And yet throughout recorded history, people have jumped to all sorts of conclusions about life - theirs and all humanity's any time an eclipse happened. And people in the know about when they were going to happen have been known to use that knowledge to their advantage. It gave them the opportunity to seem more powerful than others. But you had to absolutely have your facts straight or the opposite would be true - you'd seem less than you were seemed to be. 

We participated in the Lord's Supper last Sunday at New Hope. It was a gloriously full Sunday with a child/parent/Church dedication on the agenda as well. And so the message was a short one, with a visible message at the end as we remembered the body that was broken and the blood poured out for our sins by our loving Savior.

I've participated in hundreds of that remembrance of the sacrifice Jesus made for us - for me. I've read those Scriptures aloud many times and read and studied them and their context even more. It was moving Sunday, and the Holy Spirit worked in our hearts.

Today I opened my devotional book - the one I've been reading for maybe 20 years??? And I came to a short article by Martin Marty, a New Testament scholar. 

"The first words of Jesus to be transmitted in writing are quoted in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. Before we hear anything else from Jesus's lips we hear Him saying, "This is my body which is broken for YOU."

The moment I read that today, I felt as though I had looked into the Son - His heart. 

And it wasn't the knowledge I'd forgotten about the timeline of New Testament books that moved me. It was the words themselves spoken by a man who would die a few hours later that for a minute today, made me remember His sacrifice eclipsed all my sins - the passive and intentional acts - FOREVER.

Would it matter to you if you knew your sins could be (or are) forgiven?

Laying that burden down

 

As a rule, no sports team I root for will prosper. Or if they do, they will be like a seed sown on hard ground. Consequently, I'm only an observer of success by other teams. Painfully so at times. And so it is with Liverpool, and their manager, Jurgen Klopp. In fact one of the most painful memories has to do with him and Liverpool beating my Tottenham Hotspurs in the Champions League finals.

But I've always admired the Liverpool fanbase and in particular Jurgen Klopp. Recently, Klopp made known his decision to leave at the end of the year. He said he's run out of energy. That you can't do what he's done for as long as he's done it and not pay a price. I get that. I can identify with that.

Almost 25 years ago I accepted the call of a small group of people in Valparaiso, Florida - a place I don't think I had ever heard of - to become the pastor of New Hope Baptist Church. I was entering an area, a culture, and a role that I had no idea of the cost to my family and yes, to me. But I was absolutely sure this was God's will for my life. And my family trusted what I believed.

There were (in no specific order) hard times, okay times, hard as heck times, and good times - even great times. In one of the hardest, I knew the church would not be able to support my family through a severe but unexpected financial crisis. So I started substitute teaching, giving all my salary to the church. Then I got a full time teaching position and for the next 11 years I had two jobs I loved that would both take all the time, effort, and dedication you had to give. 

COVID came and I taught online for a year and 3 months. But then, even though I loved teaching online and did really well, there was to be no online. So I went back to the classroom and had a tough year. The togetherness and parent involvement wasn't there, and the admin paperwork, assumptions that you'd work another 20+ hours off the clock for free, and the horrible behavior issues and poor support from admin just sucked the joy out of teaching for me. At the same time, I was dealing with half the number of regular attenders at New Hope after COVID. At year's end - the week before I was to return - I retired from teaching. I hoped that I could help see the church turn around.

I'm still waiting. And yes, I get what Jurgen Klopp said. There's only so much you can give.

Mr. Lincoln's Devotional

 

A good friend, now with the Lord, was culling his possessions prior to moving into assisted living. He brought some things to our church rummage sale. Among them were several books. When I saw this one, I knew I needed it. I've always loved History and admired Abraham Lincoln (growing up, that would have been a highly unpopular opinion in my home town). 

There's been a lot of speculation about Lincoln's relationship with God. Just as now, if a person's faith doesn't line up perfectly with the tenets of a particular denomination or group, the person can be viewed as everything from heathen to heretic. And conversely, people hoping to move opinions about a person's faith can seize on any quip or reported quote to make a person like Lincoln more than what he was.

The majority of people do see Lincoln's faith as Christian. He was seen on numerous occasions with a little book on his person, "A Believer's Book of Days" which was a devotional guide published in the mid-1800s by the Religious Tract Society of London, England. When I think about what Lincoln endured in his presidency, as a believer myself, I cannot imagine how he made it day to day with the burdens he carried. Carl Sandburg, who wrote a forward that's often included in the reprints of "Lincoln's Devotional" wrote “... it is new testimony that he was a man of profound faith.”

When you look at a devotional guide, look for not just comforting thoughts, but the scripture and how the editor pairs it with the commentary. Lincoln himself told a friend in the toughest period of the Civil War "Take this book (the Bible) upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a better man."

Today's entry that Lincoln would have read, "There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Romans 8:1 Followed up by this poem:

O LOve, thou bottomless abyss!

My sins are swallowed up in Thee;

Cover'd is my unrighteousness,

From condemnation now I'm free;

While Jesus' blood through earth and skies,

"Mercy, free boundless mercy!" cries.

The little red book

 Books. Yeah, I have books. The little red book that rests on my desk drawer is not like the others. It's been a source of inspiration, a catalyst for serious reflection, a challenge and a comfort - for decades. Today I opened it, and written at the top of the page is written in pencil Jan 28 - Feb 4 2002. That was on my first time through it. There have been many times I've picked it up since then - and it has helped me.

"Disciplines for the Inner Life" is its name. It's a collection of prayers, scripture readings, songs and commentary on the practices that help form a soul to reflect Jesus Christ.  I've recommended it to several over the years.

For me, it was a revelation, because it had many contributors that I hadn't known of except in  passing. Going through the denominational pipeline has advantages and disadvantages. One I discovered was the narrowness of focus. Over the years I've widened the breadth of what I read when I prepare. No regrets at all except not beginning sooner. 

People like Annie Dillard: "No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land."

Or Brother Lawrence: "“The difficulties of life do not have to be unbearable. It is the way we look at them - through faith or unbelief - that makes them seem so. We must be convinced that our Father is full of love for us and that He only permits trials to come our way for our own good."

Or Henri Nouwen: “I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me. (Finding My Way Home)”

They've become my trusted and faithful companions on the Way. Who are yours?

It's Us

It's hard to believe we are in 2020, given we've been working on racial reconciliation for longer than I have been alive. One of the books we read every year is about Ruby Bridges, one of the bravest Americans that never wore a uniform. She walked the long road to integrate her school in Little Rock, even though the Governor and most of the public hated her for being black. The military had to be called in to make it possible. The Chicago newspaper, the Defender, sent a reporter to Little Rock to see what monsters lived in Little Rock. But it turned out the people were ordinary. 

Gwendolyn Brooks's poem, “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock”: 1957

In Little Rock the people bear

Babes, and comb and part their hair

And watch the want ads, put repair

To roof and latch. While wheat toast burns

A woman waters multiferns.

Time upholds, or overturns,

The many, tight, and small concerns.

In Little Rock the people sing

Sunday hymns like anything,

Through Sunday pomp and polishing.

And after testament and tunes,

Some soften Sunday afternoons

With lemon tea and Lorna Doones.

I forecast

And I believe

Come Christmas Little Rock will cleave

To Christmas tree and trifle, weave,

From laugh and tinsel, texture fast.

In Little Rock is baseball; Barcarolle.

That hotness in July … the uniformed figures raw and implacable

And not intellectual,

Batting the hotness or clawing the suffering dust.

…

There is love, too, in Little Rock. Soft women softly

Opening themselves in kindness,

Or, pitying one’s blindness,

Awaiting one’s pleasure

In azure

…

In Little Rock they know

Not answering the telephone is a way of rejecting life,

That it is our business to be bothered, is our business

To cherish bores or boredom, be polite

To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness.

I scratch my head, massage the hate-I-had.

I blink across my prim and pencilled pad.

The saga I was sent for is not down.

Because there is a puzzle in this town.

The biggest News I do not dare

Telegraph to the Editor’s chair:

“They are like people everywhere.”

The angry Editor would reply

In hundred harryings of Why.

And true, they are hurling spittle, rock,

Garbage and fruit in Little Rock.

And I saw coiling storm a-writhe

On bright madonnas. And a scythe

Of men harassing brownish girls.

(The bows and barrettes in the curls

And braids declined away from joy.)

I saw a bleeding brownish boy …

The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.

The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.

It's Time - Past Time

I reread the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" yesterday, and what struck me about it this time through was that it was written in 1963, but the "fierce urgency" he wrote about is still here. I've thought and prayed about it off and on ever since and I think there are some things I need to confess and one I need to repent of. It's past time that I did. So here goes.

It's time for me to say that most of the history I was taught in the public schools of Bibb County Georgia was biased toward a white-European perspective. I had little exposure to other cultures and didn't begin to gain any until I went back to college in the 1980s. I've learned more since beginning to teach 10 years ago than in all the other years. But I still have a lot to learn. Not only about other cultures, but about the parts of American culture that were hidden from me, even when they were happening.

It's time for me to say that the Civil War was clearly about slavery, and that the people of the South fought to perpetuate that sin. You can say they fought to live as they always had, but that way included owning other people made in God's image. That's a sin. Those men I looked up to and admired - men like Lee, Jackson, Gordon and others were traitors to the Union. No matter what virtues they might have had, they were complicit in the sin of slavery by their actions to prop it up. The cause was evil. At the core. And they, and my ancestors were wrong to fight to keep it going, and I was wrong to honor that.

It's time for me to admit that I have no idea what it's like to worry if I'm pulled over about anything other than a ticket. Or no idea about being followed in stores, or treated differently because of my color. I have always bristled to hear the word "privilege." I understand what it means now. I have that, even if I still don't think the word captures what it is. It has to end. White supremecy has no place in our culture and is anathema to the teachings of Jesus.

It's time for me to admit that I don't suffer the disadvantages of my color, and that I gain from advantages I don't even realize I have always had.

For all my ignorance, insensitivity, and lack of interest in the pain that my black brothers and sisters have endured I apologize and ask your forgiveness. I stand with you in the desire for justice - equal justice - for all.

My heart is broken over what has happened and is happening in our nation. I've been shocked again and again by the rank evil that the police and racist indiividuals have perpetrated on innocent black men and women. I will work to make a change for as long as God leaves me here. His Kingdom come.

Lord Have Mercy

"When we discern that people are not going along spiritually and allow the discernment to turn to criticism, we block our way to God. God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede." - Oswald Chambers

It happens sometimes without our even realizing it.

A person we know, we relate to, we care about - comes to an opinion or position that immediately leads us to believe that all is not right between them and God. And lets say, for the sake of my proposal, that their opinion or position conflicts with our own settled facts about the matter.

"Well," we say to ourselves (at least until we can get to Facebook to write some subtle dig, rant, or other "instructive" post that casts us in the very best light and them in shadow), "hopefully God will  convict them of their sin."

Hmmmm....

I seem to recall an event where a rich and religiously well connected man, and an outcast of a collaborator both come to pray. One takes the time to remind God what a great catch He made when He convinced Mr. Piousity to come on board. The other, shaking as he cried, knowing his sins were as scarlet, and his life itself unworthy, said this, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Jesus, who knew sinners and religious people well, and tended to hang out with the sinners, pointed to the outcast as the one who went away justified.

Friend, you and I cannot walk away justified from a categorization of anyone as a sinner. What we can do if we are led to believe another is walking the wrong direction is pray for them, What we can do is love them. What we can do is live our lives as proof that even a sinner like us can find hope and redemption in Jesus.

Now who are you going to pray for? That is after that "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner" part.