Saturday, January 27, 2024

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.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

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.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

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?

Friday, June 05, 2020

It's Us


We Have Met the Twit and He Is Us - Vox

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.


Tuesday, May 05, 2020

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.

Friday, May 01, 2020

The Questions



There's a old red devotional book next to me here at my cluttered desk. I got it almost 20 years ago at a yard sale. It and I have been in a relationship ever since. There are times when it's a pretty constant companion and part of my daily routine - and even more often some days. And there are weeks, even months some years that I just drift away from it for a while.

Yet within it are some passages and quotes that lift me. That shake me. That probe me and my faith.

Do you have friends like that? Everybody should, I think.

There are so many examples of what I encounter there, by so many writers and sources I could share, but because this morning some people who might be wondering and wandering are on my heart, I'll share this.

"I want to beg you to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try and love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now try to seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you wouldn't be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." 
- From Letters to A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

If you could only see how many times I search the Scriptures, break down the text, read the ancient commentators and trace the years through what men and women have written as they too "lived the questions" maybe it would make a difference for you.

What resonates with me about this is the "live along some distant day into the answer."

How many times have you stopped short having realized after many years just why your father or mother did something a certain way. I know marriage and having children of your own bring realizations like that for many.

But walking with Jesus does too.

If you'll keep walking.

Will you please keep walking into the answers?

Your companion on the journey,

David


Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Leaving Your Mark


Years ago, when my supply of books was outpacing my capacity to store them, my Father In Law, Curtis Clinard decided to apply his considerable woodworking skills and help me out. He designed and built a pair of large bookshelves with an entertainment center in the middle. 

The entertainment center suffered from the advance of technology. Since you can put a half dozen LCDs in the cavern a tube TV occupied, its place in our house was lost (it's in the garage now). But the bookshelves that accompany it have and are serving to hold the books I use every week.

You know Curtis had me "help" him when the bookshelves and TV unit were built. Not in any skilled way for sure - but I was there, watching and helping with what I could. I learned a little bit about carpentry. And I learned a little more about my Father-In-Law's way. 

He was precise - measured twice to cut once.
He was efficient - his tools and materials were arranged so the job was easier.
He was guided by his convictions - if it was to have his name on it, it had to be the best he could do.
And he was kind. There were times my "help" probably was not helpful. But when it wasn't, he stopped and without any sign of exasperation or disappointment, he'd not just fix it - he'd show me why it happened, how to fix it, and how not to do it again.

Yeah, I learned a little bit about carpentry that year. And I learned a lot from my Father-In-Law that still is guiding me today. He left his mark on me.

I believe it's because of the mark he carried on his heart from his Savior. Think about it. Curtis Clinard was a follower of Jesus Christ. A carpenter from Nazareth. What he learned at Christ's workbench, he simply passed along to me. 

29  Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30  For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” 
(Matt 11:29-30)

Guided by the Truth in love, 

David