PRIDE

When I was raising small children, I was torn. They come into a harsh and fallen world, so many strikes against them, so many things looking to consume them. Most days I felt like I was getting it all wrong. And then one (or both) of them would do something completely unacceptable: pick a fight, take something that wasn't theirs, tell a lie (and that was a whole 'nother thing: "detecting" a lie without my having any discernment whatsoever --some of their tales were Jim Dandys, though!). I knew it was time for discipline. How much? In what way? What about grace? It was difficult. These were little people whom I loved with all my heart! I never wanted to crush my children, but limits and truth are essential. I wish I'd known then what I know now; I wish I'd stood on the truth of Scripture and leaned on the wisdom of the Spirit at that time. It would have made the things I had to do so much more sure and so much less difficult. This is what Jesus has designed for you; this is what Jesus has designed for me. Let's walk in those things together. We won't always get it right, but we are gonna live trying. It is in that spirit that I write today.

There are people I love living in sin. They have believed a lie. Because many churches refuse to stand on the truth. Because it's easier than fighting against it. Because they want what they want until they don't, and they've been told there are no consequences, easy to go back; everything fluid. Because there are flags and shows and clothing and an entire month dedicated to saying it's okay. Because, because. But it's a lie. Some have heard all the "clobber" verses; some have never heard a one. I myself have heard a few verses I didn't like when I was looking for reasons to say what I wanted to say and think what I wanted to think and do what I wanted to do. It didn't make them any less right; it didn't make me any less wrong. Even when I felt that twinge of conviction, my very next thoughts were What is getting out of this going to look like? What am I going to have to leave behind? What will my now friends say? But this is home! And the response to all of those things in brief are: Messy but with time you will see it's worth it. Everything but nothing that matters. All kinds of terrible things, but you will choose to love them. No, no it's not; it just feels like home the same way "sheep's clothing" feels like the real sheep.

This, of course, is PRIDE month. There's no escaping it. Even our local grocery store has it plastered all over their weekly circulars. The irony they have deemed it PRIDE is not lost on me. To continue to believe a lie is foolish; to insist a lie is truth is indeed PRIDE. I will not even tell my children I am proud of them --pleased with something they've done, glad they have achieved something they worked hard to do, but proud? No. Not that it keeps me from pride or makes me any less proud in my heart, but I don't even care to give room to inordinate self-esteem; conceit; arrogance; disdain; lofty self-respect (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1936). I take very seriously what Scripture says about pride, and I know how inclined I am to compensate for my shortcomings with telling myself grandiose stories of my importance and self-worth. Besides, in a world full of words, the best thing we can tell our children is I'm proud of you, or Be proud of yourself? Maybe that's where the lie began. Be whatever you want to be, affirm it, embrace it! Happiness above all else! Self-acceptance at every turn! It's a lie. And because I love Jesus, because I love you, you have to know that.

To live life in homosexual sin should be as much an abomination to society as to live as an intractable gossip or a compulsive liar --nothing good (truly good) can come of it. To live life in homosexual sin should be as much an abomination to the church as a pastor with a drug problem or a philandering worship leader --it will tear down the church, corrupt the message of the gospel, and souls will perish. Practiced homosexuality, specifically within the church, needs to be addressed in love, not unconditional acceptance. Practiced homosexuality in society needs to be exposed for the lie it is, flags burned, and all remnants of affirmation destroyed. The enemy of our souls --of all souls-- is seeking to destroy lives and ensure the deaths of any who would believe him. As possessors of truth and ministers of reconciliation, it is our responsibility to confront this PRIDE deception and speak to those we love (are called to love!) about their sin and its consequences. To those who are living in homosexual sin, particularly those within the church, I lovingly say Repent, please! Purity is what Jesus is calling you to; love and ambassadorship is what Jesus requires of me. Let's walk in those things together. We won't always get it right, but we are gonna live trying.

Scratching the Surface

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Maybe you recognize these as the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23. Or perhaps you recognize these things in God's character. Do you recognize them in yours? Not to brag or anything --no, I really mean, not to brag (at least not on me)-- I can see them in mine. You see, over the years, the Holy Spirit has been at work, changing me and bringing me into conformity with the character of God. It's sort of like those "scratch art" things. Maybe you did them as a kid: you apply the base coat to your paper with all sorts of brilliantly colored crayons, you paint over it with acrylic paint (usually black); once the paint dries, you scratch off your design and watch the colors pop through wherever you've removed the paint. That's how I imagine the work of the Holy Spirit to be.

I encourage you to give Genesis 1 a read some time. In a nutshell, God created all this stuff. He said it was good. Lastly, He created a man and a woman. He looked at everything He had made, the man, the woman, and the perfect environment in which they could live and have a relationship with Him, and God said it was very good. Mankind was made exactly as God designed: strong, beautiful, in His image. Two short chapters later, in Genesis 3, God through Moses tells of the sad day when sin entered the world, and everything became corrupt by its presence. (Sort of like the black paint that obscures the beauty of the original design on a scratch art.) What would it take for God's design to be restored to its perfect beginning? All of this was part of God's plan. He would use Adam and Eve's rebellion as a means to show human beings His goodness and their need for a good God. Again and again, He demonstrated grace toward those who dishonored Him; He forgave and restored; He loved His people and cared for them the way a good father longs for his rebellious son to return home; He proved His character: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and then, when the time was right, He offered up His Son to be cursed and condemned in the place of every man that they might be righteous in His Son. He would not restore mankind to its perfect beginning; God would reveal the fullness of His plan: a new life, a more perfect design! 

To those who choose to follow after God through His Son, He gives the gift of His Holy Spirit to dwell with them and in them, changing them --while still on this earth!-- to be more like Jesus. This is His word-of-mouth advertising. He transforms lives to reflect His character so that those He has transformed will love others and by loving others will entice others to follow after Him as well. Living, breathing, walking, talking billboards of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control!

But we're human. And we're not robots. we're not always going to get it right. We're not always going to obey perfectly. When we do, however, more of our old nature (more of that black acrylic paint) gets scratched off. And one day, when we get to heaven, we'll be able to see the beauty of God's perfect design. Not just the original swirls of colored crayons, or the obscurity of the acrylic paint, but the perfect masterpiece, just as He designed it from before the foundation of the world. 

Until then, take the time to reflect. Acknowledge and give thanks for the transformation that's taking place as the Holy Spirit scrapes away more and more of your old nature. Don't be ashamed to say you are better than you used to be. After all, it's not you who is doing the work anyway.

Such a Gift (Frederick Buechner)

War is hell, but sometimes in the midst of the Hell men do things that Heaven itself must be proud of. A hand grenade is hurled into a group of men. One of the men throws himself on top of it, making his body a living shield. In the burst of wild fire he dies, and the others live. Heroism is only a word, often a phony one. This is an action for which there is no good word because we can hardly imagine it, let alone give it its proper name. Very literally, one man takes death into his bowels, takes fire unto his own sweet flesh, so that the other men can take life, some of them men he hardly knows. 

"Who knows why a man does such a thing or what thoughts pass through his mind just before he does it. Maybe no thoughts at all. Maybe if he stopped to think, he would never do it. Maybe he just acts spontaneously out of his passion the way, when you are a child and somebody attacks your brother, you attack the attacker with no fear for yourself but just because it is your brother and somebody is attacking him. Or if you are a cynic, you might say that a man must be temporarily insane to do such a thing because no man in his right mind would ever willingly give his life away, hardly even for somebody he loved, let alone for people he barely knows. Or that he must have acted out of a crazy thirst for glory, believing that not even death was too high a price to pay for a hero's honors. Or if you are an idealist, you might insist that although the human spirit is full of darkness, every once in a while it is capable of the Godlike act. Maybe in some complex way, something of all these is involved. It is impossible for us to imagine the motive. 

"But I think that it is not so hard to imagine how the men whose lives are saved might react to one who died to save them--not so hard, I suppose, for the obvious reason that most of us are more experienced at receiving sacrifices than at making them. In their minds' eyes, those saved men must always see the dead one where he lay in the ruins of his own mortality, and I suspect that at least in part of what they feel must be a revulsion so strong that they come to believe that if they could somehow have stopped him from doing what he did, they would have stopped him. We say 'life at any price,' but I have the feeling that to have somebody else pay such a price for us would be almost more than we would choose to bear. I have the feeling that given the choice, we would not have let him do it, not for his sake but for our own sakes.

"Because we have our pride, after all. We make our own way in the world, we fight our own battles, we are not looking for any handouts, we do not want something for nothing. It threatens our self-esteem, our self-reliance. And because to accept such a gift from another would be to bind us closer to him than we like to be bound to anybody. And maybe most of all because if another man dies so that I can live, it imposes a terrible burden on my life. From that point on, I cannot live any longer just for myself. I have got to live also somehow for him, as though in some sense he lives through me now as, in another sense, I live through him. If what he would have done with his life is going to be done, then I have got to do it. My debt to him is so great that the only way I can approach paying it is by living a life as brave and beautiful as his death. So maybe I would have prevented his dying if I could, but since it is too late for that, I can only live my life for what it truly is: not a life that is mine by natural right, to live any way I choose, but a life that is mine only because he gave it to me, and I have got to live it in a way that he also would have chosen."

Such a Gift by Frederick Buechner (from his book, The Hungering Dark and reprinted in his daily meditations: Listening to Your Life) 

Like My Mom

Mom and I went for our annual ride through a local cemetery. If that sounds a bit macabre, try doing it with a 90+ year old woman. Chester Rural cemetery has been around since 1863, and I want to make some crack about that being almost as long as my mom, but I'll refrain. We go there because of the azaleas. They are absolutely spectacular, and they are all over the place! It wasn't really the day for it --overcast, so their colors didn't pop quite the way they do in full sun-- and it's still a bit early. They won't be hitting their peak for another week or so; I know I'm rushing it. This time with my mother is slipping away; I can feel it. Things she was capable of doing only a few months ago have become more difficult. Things she knew to do only a few months ago are lost to her now.

It wasn't always this way. Of course, the forgetting is new --in the last fifteen years or so-- but my sadness is even newer. Mom has always been, to me, exasperating, difficult. I remember in my teen years being somewhat of her "Mini Me." We shared clothes, enjoyed the same hobbies; my first "real" job was at the same place she was working at the time. We even watched soap operas together (probably not one of my mother's best decisions). But as I began to develop interests of my own and acquire the means to pursue them, tensions arose in our relationship. The last person in the world I wanted to be was the woman I saw when I looked at my mother. In my twenties, Mom and I reunited over my children, but never really addressed or resolved the issues between us. I kept her entertained with field trips and regular meals at our home, but by the time my children were teenagers, she and I parted ways once again. My husband and I were virtually empty nesters when my father passed and my mother, living but one street away, became my charge once again. 

Somewhere in all of that I was being granted healing and Mom had begun to decline. I was being given another chance to repent, to reject the life I'd been living and follow in a much more eternal way; Mom's life was growing not only shorter but declining in quality, as they say. It has been a less than perfect journey for me (the One who has set me on this path is faithful to bring the necessary changes to fruition and see me through to the end); it has been brutal for Mom. I have been bitter and angry, blamed and resurrected ancient history (some of it in an effort to discover the source of my anger, but much of it to justify my bad behavior); Mom has as well, only for her, there is no resurrecting of history, only anger. I have hurt myself and others; Mom has, too, only given all she's been through, I would argue she has a right. I have wasted precious time; Mom is lingering as long as the Lord allows. And through that He is teaching me lessons.

The lesson I am learning these days is time is fleeting. I am making every effort to enjoy it with her. I am making every effort to enjoy it without her. I want to be as excited to put on fresh socks each morning as she is. I want to sit in the sun --no books, no phone, just sit. And I want to breathe. And be grateful for every breath. I want to squeal and coo at the azaleas every year as if it is my first --even under cloudy skies, even though furled blooms still clutter the branches-- just as she does. I want my eyes to light up at the sight of ice cream. I want to forgive quickly and love broadly. I want to leave lessons and be a blessing to others --even in my brokenness. The way my mother has.