Is There Any Future in Tomorrow?

On the other side
of tomorrow,

On the far side
of the future,

After the nightmare,

What dream
lies waiting for you

That you can hardly wait
to wake up to?

© 2005

Natal Star

A star rose into the emptiness.

At first it was only a pinpoint in the void of sorrow and pain.

But it grew larger and larger until even the vastness of sorrow could not contain it.

That star is still shining.

It rises on our emptiness, energy pulsing.

And those who are childlike enough to listen can hear a voice in their night sky asking:

"Would you like to be born

again?"

© 2005

Great Joy

As night fell, quiet filled up the valleys and settled over the hills. In the fields, talk died down to a whisper and then silenced altogether. Without city lights to dim the view, stars blazed through the blackness overhead like the suns that they are. Vivid. Close. The campfire, which hours before crackled and sparked, now hissed and smoldered, glowing only faintly. And shepherds dozed.

It was quite a birth announcement that stirred those herdsmen from slumber. Angels lit up the night sky and filled the countryside with their good news: a special baby had entered the world. The King had left the magnificence of his kingdom. The Creator had left the warmth of the womb.

There was good news.
And there was great joy.

© 2005

Quality Product: You

The Poetry of the Beginning

Picture God enjoying a crreative day. A special week. He calls light out of darkness, spreads the vast expanse of space. He uses words to gouge out a place for the seas and molds mounds of mountain, thousands of feet high, out of common dirt and stone. His fertile imagination calls lush vegetation into being. He hangs stars and moons on threads of nothing and sets them spinning in their places. A word, and the seas teem with fish, and out of nowhere birds take to the air. He speaks again and livestock and reptiles spring into being to roam and prowl the earth.

Then, finally, God gets to the good part. The really good part. People. Like me. Like you.

Where did we come from?
From the fingertips of God.

Who are we?
The pinnacle of Creation.

What are we like?
The greatest creature imaginable ... and also the worst.

I picture God enjoying a creative day. A special week. I do not doubt that he found the work of creation exhilarating. But I choose to imagine that when he came to the work of making people, with all their potential, he visualized each individual who ever would be born, descendatns of the first creative day--people like me, like you. And when his mind fell on each of us, I imagine his pulse quickened.

And he smiled and cried and smiled at our potential.

Numbers and Names

It's a crowded place we call home.

Two thousand years ago, during the earthly ministry of Jesus, the planet was not so densely populated. There were 255 square miles per person. Today, there are eight. In 100 years there will be six.

Over the past two millennia, the world's population has increased 30-fold, from 200 million then to more than 6 billion today. Almost 6.5 billion individuals, known intimately by their Creator.

He knows their joys and their fears, their hopes and their hurt, their pride and their shame. He knows their life story--even the swirl of their fingerprints. And each one is deeply loved by their Maker, though millions are born, live and die without ever knowing that their Creator is also the Savior, and wants to be their friend.

So Christ walked the earth with 200 million other people. It took around 1,000 years for the population to double. It doubled again in 200 years. And again in less than 100 years. Forty-five years later, it doubled again. In 1975, Earth's family reached 4 billion. By 1999, the population passed the 6 billion mark. By 2050, we will number more than 10 billion.

The remarkable thing is this: The love of God keeps pace with the population growth.

© 2005

Teaching the Silence to Talk

A man once found a key while walking along the beach at dusk. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Immediately, he recognized that it had been forged from solid gold and inlaid with precious stones. He imagined it had great significance and value. Even so, he said to himself, it serves no useful purpose. What could it possibly open here, on this deserted beach?

Again he turned the key in his palm, toying with the setting sun as it reflected on the precious stones. Then, noting that the sun was low on the horizon and night was fast approaching, the man pitched the key into the waves and turned to hurry off. What he failed to notice was that before him stood a massive doorway in the darkening sky.

* * * * *

There is another world, a parallel reality, a spiritual realm beyond the reach of our limited physical senses. For most of us, perhaps all of us, there is a critical moment when those spiritual realities are close. A hand stretched out in faith could take the key, treasure it, fit it into the lock, turn the latch, and open the door. A that crisis point of decision or awareness, faith would carry us over the threshold, if only we would allow it.

At this turning point, some look forward into that other realm, and the spiritual reality they see suddenly appears to be all that truly matters in life. Standing at that doorway, they look in and see life for what it can be. How could anything that had gone before hold value now, compared to this? At this same decisive juncture, others, in denial, look away, because they are only capable of seeing life as they imagine that it is or has been. They trust their physical senses alone and so turn away, their backs to all that will someday matter.

I used to think there was this one critical, life-changing moment only, when we either embraced spiritual reality or turned away from it. I now see that all of our moments offer such crucial choice, such perspective-altering potential. Spiritual reality calls me to live every experience, each moment, with the heavens in view. To make every decision in faith, governed by the unseen. To see every chance encounter as a holy moment. To face the mystery of pain, and find somewhere traces of the compassion and purpose of God. To confront the contradictions and incongruities that perplex my limited mind, and humbly trust God's greater wisdom. To create stillness amid the distractions of life and will myself to hear the voice of God.

To do this is to live.

© 2005

Now & Then & Yet

The eyes that close in sleep
will open to the blazing of the dawn.
The small and great from every age
will stand alone in fear.
Whispered secrets,
lifelong shut,
will shout till they are heard;
and all these things that might have been
will shame what has become.

But grace can change our yesterdays,
and transform our tomorrows now,
long before they come.
Grace can change our yesterdays,
and write our story new again.
Grace can change.

The King will stand to welcome you;
his smile will shout, "Well done!"
Your voice will raise your ceaseless praise
like smoke around the throne.
Like smoke around the throne.

The One who gave you sight
will be himself your light,
and he will be your never-fading joy!

Grace can change our yesterdays,
and transform our tomorrows now,
long before they come.
Grace can change our yesterdays,
and write our story new again.
Grace can change.


© 2005

Hellen Keller on Joy

"There is joy in self-forgetfulness, so I try to make the light in others' eyes my sunshine, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."

Simply Loved

Sometimes the simplest things are the most profound. For instance, I say the words, "God loves me." What is my emotional reaction? If the phrase has not become so commonplace that I have emptied it of meaning, I feel gratitude. That response deepens as I dwell on the idea.

"GOD loves me." Who is this God? What is his nature?

God is omnipotent -- he has all power. No power is greater. There are so many ways he could use this power. A harsh thought from him could crush me. His breath could incinerate me. His anger could sweep me away. But how does he use his power? He uses his power not to devastate me, but to help me, to lift me, to shield me. This God loves me.

God is omnipresent -- he is everywhere. His presence is inescapable. David celebrated this trait in Psalm 139. There is no destination distant from God and there is no mode of transportation that can outrun him. Jet travel would have been unimaginable to David. Imagine how he would react should he be escorted up the jetway, and buckeled in for flight. How hard it would be for him to understand. How incomprehensible that he could leave Jerusalem and that same day land on, say, the British Isles, a place so distant and foreign he does not know it. Yet David would know God had traveled with him. "If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guild me, your right hand will hold me fast."

The sight of a submarine diving would mesmerize him, but he would not suppose the vessel would dive beyond divine reach.

Death he was family with -- yet death could not separate him from the caring God.

This, of course, is the point. God is present everywhere. I cannot escape him. But his nearness is a comfort, not a fear, because this God loves me.

God is omniscient -- he knows all things. There is nothing unknown to him. More to the point, there is nothing about me unknown to him. No thought crosses my mind without his awareness. No idea ever occurred to me without him seeing it, hearing it, feeling its impact on my thinking.

God is all-knowing, but he does not use this knowledge against me. David is excited and comforted by the reality of it. He applauds the knowledge of the God who understands him so completely. And this all-knowing God loves me.

God loves me.
God LOVES me.

He has grounds to detest me. Divine indifference would be understandable. It would, in fact, be astounding, and would prompt eternal gratitude, if he merely found me tolerable. Better still if he liked me. Instead, his affection for me runs infinitely deeper. "I have loved you with an everlasting love," he says, "therefore, in lovingkindness have I drawn you."

Like the shepherd with one lost sheep, he sets his comfort aside to look for me. Like the woman with the lost coin, he searches diligently for me until I am in his exuberant grasp. Like the father with the wayward, distant son -- the lost son -- he longs for my return, and throws a party when at last I find myself home, back in his arms.

He sacrificed everything to make me his own. Everything.

God loves me.
God loves ME.

Who am I to merit his attention? What in me prompts divine favor?

Look at me. See me as he alone is capable of seeing me. I am unworthy, with thoughts and attitudes alien to the Kingdom of God. And yet, look at me. See me as he alone is capable of seeing me. I am loved, forgiven completely, wrapped in the righteousness of Christ.

God loves me.

So simple an idea.

So profound a thought.

© 2005

The Smile on the Face of God

We each have the power to put a smile on the face of God.
Here's how.

It's truly remarkable to think that God could look at us and be pleased by what he sees. We know our weaknesses; he knows them in infinitely greater detail. How can we please God? We have a hard enough time pleasing ourselves. When he looks at us, what could he possibly see that would put a smile on his face?

We may already know.

Suppose we each complete this phrase: "God would be pleased if I were less ..." Less what? What is there in my life today that should not be there?

Or this: "God would be pleased if I were more ..." More what? What are the good things about me that ought to increase.

When we read Scripture and listen to our conscience, we get a fairly accurate image of what we are, a clear reflection of what we can become. The mirror only fogs over when we are hypocritical, when we tell ourselves how good we are, yet go on hurting others and hurting ourselves.

© 2005

Who Painted the Sky with Flames?

Northern Illinois

Someone set fire to the sky, cast a flaming ball over the horizon and ignited the clouds. I stand transfixed as the flame overspreads the early evening sky, west to east. The glow brightens, the blaze intensifies, the color deepens. It is as spectacular a suset as I've seen.

I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red. It is explained in the physics of light.

Traveling at 186,282 miles per second, it takes eight-and-a-half minutes for the sun's white light to cover the 93 million miles to earth. But what I see as white is actually a blend of the prismatic colors of the spectrum -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet -- and those lightwaves are not of equal length. Red lightwaves are long; blue waves are short.

The sun's light strikes the clear air of earth's atmosphere, but the clear air is actually a sea of countless molecules, each molecule only slightly smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. As light enters this sky-sea of molecules, it is scattered, but the long and short lightwaves are scattered unevenly, so that the colors reach me unevenly.

As I look up into the afternoon sky and my eye gathers the scattered light, it is the blue I see most. Later, as the sun moves lower and lower toward the horizon, its lightwaves travel a greater distance through earth's atmosphere. The short lightwaves of blue are scattered in all directions so that fewer reach me, while the longer lightwaves of red and orange and yellow are scattered less. I see them, and they set the sky ablaze, painting clouds with the brush of colored light. If the sky is dusty or smoky, the effect is intensified further, and the sunset is spectacular.

It is spectacular now. Even the cloud wisps in the darker eastern sky glow like pink neon.

Too quickly though, the flash-fire of sunset spends itself, and the day's last dying embers flicker in the purple smoke of twilight.

I knoew why the sky is blue and the sunset red. Does that make it any less the brushstrokes of the Creator?

© 2005

Lyric: "Gifts Come Down"

Joy or sorrow, happiness or loss,
Praise or failure, benevolence or cross;

Pain or pleasure, every gift's received
From our Maker, known or unperceived.

Life brings hardship side by side with good;
God brings order only sometimes understood.

Now we see through a glass darkly,
Tomorrow we will know and we are known.

© 2005

Albert Schweitzer on the unexpected secret to happiness

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know. The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

Sometimes It's Hard to Say Thanks

The surgeon lifts his knife, lowers the blade, makes his incision, which is trailed by a red ribbon of blood. Were you not anesthetized, you would most certainly feel the pain. Tissue splits under the scalpel's razor edge. There is nothing natural about this experience. If we knew nothing of it, if we had no trust in the medical procedure, we would be horrified. We walk into a brightly illuminated room. A sinister, masked figure hunches over a body. He is surrounded by accomplices as he bends to the task. You see the blood and realize with horror that he's slicing someone open. What good could possibly come of this?

Yet, knowing what we know, instead of being horrified, we are thankful. Instead of thinking the man a criminal, we find him good. What appears to be a game of death is instead an exercise in health. We know the man's purpose and we trust his skill.

What we observe has not changed, but the perspective has, and that makes all the difference. Is it really surprising, then, that God might be able to bring good out of circumstances that right now appear to be so bad?

© 2005

Give Away the Feeling

How does it feel when someone treats you like a friend? How does it feel when someone is kind to you without expecting anything in return? How does it feel to be loved? Picture that feeling. Then realize: this is a feeling you can give away.

God is invisible. But you can show people exactly what he looks like. All you have to do is love.

© 2005

G.K. Chesterton on Art

"Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal."

We Should Still Be Writing Psalms

There are two books of the Bible which, in one sense at least, should never be complete. One is the Book of Acts, which chronicles the birth of the Church. We keep writing that story of the ever-expanding kingdom of God, a story we write with our lives.

The other book we continue to write is Psalms, which relates our human experience to God, and God to our human experience. This is what makes the Psalms a book of such deeply felt worship, as well as a book we each must write in our own experience, if not also in our words.

© 2005

The Hands of Time, The Arms of God

My watch measures time by the tick. It clicks off seconds, minutes, hours. The date changes in the small window on the watch face. Twenty-four hours, another day gone.

The sun marks time, too. Day and night. Season and year.

I watch the sky. Stars cartwheel through space, the gears of time in perfect sync. The moon changes its face as the months come and go.

Leaves show green, then golden. They fall, leaving naked branches behind to catch and sift the snowfall. The earth warms. Buds form and burst open. Seasons come, seasons go -- birth, life, death, birth, life, death -- measured by all creation.

Dreams also measure the march of time. An idea formed. A desire born. A goal established. A plan executed. A fulfillment. A disappointment. A success. A failure.

Sooner or later the hands of time strangle us, the final measure of a lifespan. But the arms of God enfold us, embrace us, hold us secure in the now that never ends.

© 2005

Four Stories, Four Ideas

Powerful ideas are conveyed in comparatively simple stories, easily remembered and passed on. The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell four compelling tales, each with a beautiful or haunting message.

1 | Creation

The Storyline: An exquisite world is spoken into existence.
The Point: All good things begin with a sovereign, all-powerful, creative, personal provider God.

2 | The Fall

The Storyline: Humanity undergoes a catastrophic moral collapse.
The Point: God has granted the terrifying courtesy of choice. With choice comes responsibility; with responsibility comes the Divine assessment we call judgment.

3 | The Genesis Flood

The Storyline: Floodwaters sweep the world away in a disaster of devastating proportions.
The Point: There is a moral compass: the revealed heart of God. Disregard it and hellish consequences follow. Respond to it, and, even in our imperfection, we will be sustained by the kind and forgiving grace of God.

4 | The Tower of Babel
The Storyline: Humanity undertakes a futile, ambitious building enterprise and, in the process, disintegrates into confusion.
The Point: In the arrogance of human ambition, the smallness of humanity is revealed, but the grandeur of God fills the universe.

© 2005

Love Expressing Itself

I thumbed through a Bible the other day, tracing out the idea of kindness. I found the word used side by side with friendship and generosity, hospitality and warmheartedness, doing good and expressing love, being helpful and showing sympathy. I saw kindness coupled with understanding, patience, courtesty, thoughtfulness, compassion and forgiveness.

The Bible expresses the idea unmistakably. It is love that proves we have faith. Well, it's kindness that proves we have love.

Strong Help, Limitless Possibilities

Think about the complexities of Creation. God is the one who dreamed up aardvarks and sequoias, cashews and laughter, aurora borealis and touch. He thought up Creation and then made it happen.

God has all power. He can do anything.

Think about your bad habits and realize God can help you change them. Think about love and know that God invented it and shows us its highest form. Think about thought itself and ponder this: God made your mind.

God has all power. He can do anything. And how does he use this awesome, unlimited power? It is unleashed for good. For our good.

© 2005

Do You Want to Get Well?

You realize you are ill. Your stomach is churning, your head is throbbing, your eyes hurt. Your shivering convinces you of your fever. You are weak and lightheaded, and the symptoms persist. By the time you make it to the doctor, you are genuinely concerned -- a concern you see mirrored on his face. But he reassures you, gives you an accurate diagnosis, stuffs a prescription in your hand. You leave his office knowing that your restored health is as simple as following a few instrucitons and being patient with the healing process.

Upon returning home, you put the medication aside. You disregard the instructions to force liquids and get plenty of rest. Not surprisingly, your health fails to improve. If anything, it worsens. At times, this concerns you -- so much so that you take out the medications and the doctor's instructions and spend a few minutes looking at them. Nevertheless, looking at them is as far as it goes.

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

And James wrote: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

© 2005

The Kiss of Eternity

There are those moments when time kisses eternity -- just a feathery brush, but it is filled with astounding possibilities.

Do you comprehend what I'm saying?

Are there those times when you KNOW you were made for eternity? When time feels so confining, so ridiculously temporary? Moments when you feel that time is fine, as far as it goes, but you know it just doesn't go far enough.

Do you ever feel as St. Augustine felt?

"Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are weary until they find their rest in you."

© 2005

Today Is a Blank Page

The page is empty. Well, it was. Sitting there with its blank expression, just daring me -- daring me to write something, anything, across its face.

I think that blank page knew something about me, something I also know about myself. I'd rather leave the page empty than write empty words -- sentences without meaning.

Today is a blank page, standing before me as if to say, "Go ahead! Write something across the facec of this day. But write something that matters. Write something with you life that will change today, that will make it somehow better."

Touch a life with kindness.

Inhale wonder.

Throw your arms wide open and embrace God's surprises.

Do something! Something that matters. Write today! Write it with your breath, your blood, your mind, your feeling, your eyes, your heart, your hands.

Lift your pen, your life. Breathe! Create!

© 2005

God Is a Consuming Fire

When you embrace God, you embrace a consuming fire. Go ahead, take him to your heart, but know what it means. Know what of necessity must be consumed. There are things we hate, but cannot release. In time, they will burn. There are things we love or somehow feel we cannot part with, yet hinder us. They are worthless and, in time, will burn away. There are things that are good, but not yet pure. They will be refined. Our God is a consuming fire, but the things we need, the things that make us better, the things we truly desire will only increase in value as they pass through the flames.

© 2005

Astounding Beginnings

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).

Glancing through a magazine one afternoon, I ran across this imaginative piece of trivia:

If the solar system were shrunk to the size of New York's Manhattan Island, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 5,500 miles away, in Jerusalem.

We know, for instance, that traveling at the speed of light, we could reach the sun in about eight minutes. Traveling on at lightspeed, it would take more than four years to reach the next nearest star. At our current rate of space travel, however, it would take 100,000 years.

If we were to shrink the sun to the size of a pin head, the solar system would fill a large living room.

Let's say the living room is in a beach house of the coast of Southern California. Alpha Centauri, that next nearest star, would be on Catalina Island, 26 miles away. Shrunk to this scale, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, with its 200 billion stars, would be 600,000 miles in diameter. It's not, of course, it's a trillion times larger than that.

Which accounts for one galaxy. But there are more than 10 billion in the observable universe.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

© 2005

Burning Gift

A ball of fire suspended in space, millions of miles away, warms me. Today, arctic air touches my face, but still I feel the heat of that fire -- my round, white sun. It's brilliance fills my world. I see by its glow. Its rays force life into the planet, my home. Long, swift fingers of light caress, prod, knead -- pushing, pulling.

Life does trail from those radiant fingertips.

Life and light and warmth.

My star.

My sun.

My fire.

© 2005

The Meaning of Words

It's easy to say, "Lord, my life is yours." I do not stutter through the syllables. My tongue does not twist on the vowels or consonants. I comprehend the quotes, the comma, the period. I do not need a dictionary to decipher these five short words:

"Lord, my life is yours."

The English is easy. But the math is hard.

How can I count the cost?

© 2005

C.S. Lewis on God's Inescapable Presence

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito."

Richard Paul Evans on the book that is your life

"Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed."

G.K. Chesterton on Self

"Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them."

George MacDonald on Fear

“Endless must be our terror until we come heart to heart with the fire-core of the universe, the first and the last of the living One.”

Paul Tournier on Prayer

"Prayer constantly enlarges our horizon and our person. It draws us out of the narrow limits within which our habits, our past, and our whole personage confine us."

Ruysbroeck on Love

"Love cannot be inactive; its life is a ceaseless effort to know, to feel, and to realize the boundless treasure hidden within its depths. This is its insatiable desire."

G.K. Chesterton on Thankfulness

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

Tom Bodett on Obsession

"Obsession must wear itself thin before you can see through it."

Madeleine L'Engle on Stories and Faith

"It is not easy for me to be a Christian, to believe 24 hours a day all that I want to believe. I stray, and then my stories pull me back if I listen to them carefully. I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith."

Soren Kierkegaard on Dreams

"I divide my time in this way: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream."