Faith and Imagination

What Happen When a Baby Is Born?

2008-08-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

What happens when a baby is born? A possibility enters the world.

It would be easy to think that one more life joins the race and nothing more — another solitary face in the crush of humanity, known and loved by those who gave him birth, those who nurture her, but little impact on the wide, vast world.

What happens when a baby is born? A son enters a family. A daughter takes her place alongside a mother, a father.

What happens when a baby is born? Another child becomes a big brother. A sister has one more object of affection, care, competition.

What happens when a baby is born? Grandparents are ecstatic. Aunts and uncles celebrate. Friends who don’t even smoke accept the festive cigar. Pink balloons, or blue, dance on the end of strings, amid streamers and ribbons and gifts of good will.

What happens when a baby is born? Someone’s future friend begins the odyssey we call life.

And what will this child do? Grow. Learn. Achieve. Fail. Befriend. Love. Disappoint. Create. Invest. Build. Destroy. Discover.

Nothing this child touches will ever be the same. His mother will change. She will carry forever the imprint of this life on her soul. The child’s father will perceive things differently — will never think of himself in quite the same way again. Friends will be shaped, however subtly, by this one child’s influence.

Someday, somewhere, a chance encounter which lasts a mere moment will spark a change — a beginning — that spans a lifetime. Perhaps nothing more than a word spoken. A smile. A gesture. A hug. An encouragement. A word of warning. A bit of advice. But somewhere, sometime, a life-changing moment would not have happened had this life not begun.

What happens when a baby is born? Unparalleled good. Incomprehensible evil. A breakthrough. A cure. A masterpiece. A crime. The course of a nation redirected, the change leveraged by one life. We could think of a life touching a family, an influence felt in a sphere of friendships. But this is only the beginning.

Somewhere, in some small boat, in an infinite ocean, a child trails her fingers in the sea. A tiny wake of froth and bubble goes by unnoticed and forgotten — the waters scarcely disturbed.

But couldn’t something truly mysterious happen? Something of immeasurably greater consequence? Couldn’t one child’s touch change the very tides?

What happens when a baby is born? A possibility enters the world, and nothing is ever the same.

Copyright © 2008 James P Long

The One Great Thing God Wants

2008-06-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

If I knew the one thing God most desired of me, would I do it? I must pause before I answer. It may be difficult. It may even be painful. It may be the one thing I least desire right now. If my heart is not right, my perspective foggy, I may not desire the best things.

Is it any wonder God reveals his will gradually?

He allows us time to catch up to him. He is patient as our perspective grows and our understanding deepens.

In truth, there is nothing so terrifying about God’s will. God’s will is that we love him. Because of who he is, that is as natural as breathing. He has loved us unselfishly and sacrificed himself for us even to the point of unimaginable pain. That kind of love prompts us to love him in return.

Something miraculous happens when we fall in love with God. It becomes our aspiration to be like him. This one passion drives us, because we know it is right and good. Our confidence in him deepens. We know we can safely trust ourselves and our plans to his care, and that in doing so, we will be free from disappointment.

What is God’s will? The one great thing he wants? It’s you.

Whispers of Eden

2008-06-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

The memories wash over him even now, so many years later, like dreams in the deep of night, like whispers on the wind. The sun falls toward the horizon, its rays filtered through the trees in slanting shafts of light. In his mind’s eye he sees it yet again, the lost beauty of Eden, and that same sense of serenity he felt so long ago returns, enveloping him.

The wind rises, stirring the trees above him and rippling the grass at his feet, as it carries the fragrance of foliage and fertile earth. He pauses, inhales, bends to touch a flower, then straightens, stretches, smiles, unable to suppress the quiet joy of contentment.

He is alone. An unseen presence fills him, calms him, lifts his concern and, for a moment, dispels his questions and quiets his grief. His apprehensions subside, his fears are allayed, his doubts silenced.

How could he describe his state of mind at these times of remembrance, as he relives, if only briefly, the idyllic world he once knew? How can he express the restfulness that settles over him, the peace he feels at the center of his being? Words cannot carry the weight of meaning.

Too soon the moment has passed and, though he strains to hold it, the memory dissipates like mist rising. The whisper of Eden stills, the vision of Paradise fades. In its place, a familiar, suffocating regret crowds in on him — a regret we all share to some degree — and we know instinctively the words that fill his mind:

If only.
What if?
What now?

* * * * *

Somewhere east of Eden, Adam’s son lay dying in the dust, his blood pooling around him. That afternoon, in Abel’s death, Eve and her husband Adam not only became the first parents to endure the premature loss of a son, they also became the first to know the pain of standing with a violent adult child who had spread sorrow to others, for Abel had been killed by his brother Cain.

Surely Adam, the parent, would recall the first rebellion, his own, in Eden’s Garden, so many years earlier, and the consequences it had set in motion. Had he not embraced moral failure himself, could this catastrophe with his sons have been averted? And if his own moral failure had somehow contributed to this heartache, was his own sin greater even than he once thought? As great as that of his son Cain? With the enormity of the fall brought home to him through so personal a tragedy, how could his mind not grind away on the question of what might have been, what should have been?

If only.
What if?
What now?

Would he ever again hear the voice of God, sense the nearness of God, experience the peace of God, feel the arms of God? Could he ever regain that sense of living in the Father’s embrace, knowing his approval, sharing his joy?

* * * * *

Who can imagine, years afterward, the first moment of consciousness, the dawning of self-awareness, the sense of emerging identity?

Who am I?

For an infant, it blossoms in slow motion over so many months in those early years of development, and the memory that might chronicle the experience afterward is not yet formed. For the infant, there can be no retelling of such primal moments, the journey of self-discovery.

But consider Adam. He entered the world mature, his faculties developed. When he traced his earliest memories then, how far back did they reach?

The man had been mere dust, a pottery project fashioned by the fingertips of God, crafted to become the Father’s own handiwork, the pinnacle of Creation. Then the breath of God was on him, and he became a living soul — from mere matter to living man in one spectacular moment — and he opened his eyes on an infant world still echoing with the voice of God.

“Let there be light!”

The man inhaled and life filled him. He rose and stretched his arms wide toward the blue canopy of sky above him. He turned to see trees and meadows, rivers, waterfalls and wildlife. Nature in perfect balance.

Did he run? Did he sprint through this new world at the dawn of the ages? Did he shout and sing his gratitude to the one who had brought all this into being, the one who breathed life into his very lungs, who filled his eyes with wonder and flooded his soul with light?

At the first sensation of thirst did he instinctively stoop to find refreshment in the springs before him? At the initial stirring of hunger did he know to reach for fruit and find it succulent and satisfying?

Did he voice his wonder, his questions, his joy, knowing his voice would reach the Creator’s mind, the one who formed speech, authored reason, gave birth to wonder? The one who called all things into existence — every “something” out of the emptiness of nothing.

The first day unfolds with perfection, precision, art, and as the sun dips below the horizon, the sky flares and flames in the flash-fire of sunset, then smolders into the purple smoke of twilight. A thin lunar crescent rises in the early evening and the earth cools with the approaching night. The sky deepens and soon the black overhead shimmers with stellar diamonds — planets and suns and constellations. A meteor streaks through space in a vanishing arc and the man looks on, astonished at the nearness of infinity. He reclines on the earth and looks heavenward as stars cartwheel above him.

And he sleeps.

* * * * *

He could not sleep. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the body of Abel, his lifeless son. He saw the defiant face of Cain, his eldest, the murderer. This was the nightmare sleep would not take away, and he could not shake the conviction — the certainty — that he was partly to blame, that every future crime and moral crisis would bear his own fingerprints, his DNA. Adam was here. He faced so simple a test all those years before and had failed so profoundly. Surely the shockwaves of the fall would be felt forever, as long as life was measured by time.

“Adam, where are you?”

The voice of God called to him.

We may think that the greatest expression of intimacy with God would be to hear him call our name; but is it? For Adam, at that moment, following his moral failure, he would have felt far nearer to God had there been no need for God to summon him by name, had they already been together. Together and close.

Instead, it fell to God to go looking for Adam as he hid among the trees of the garden in the cool of the evening, to look for him and to call his name.

“Adam, where are you?”

He called the man to face his God and to face himself and to face his shame. There can be no restoration, no new beginning, for those who hide from the past, deny their shame, suppress their moral impulse, avoid their God. And the regret echoes unendingly.

If only.
What if?
What now?

And the voice called to him, as if to say, Adam, step out of the underbrush, face regret, expose the shame, embrace the Father who is waiting — waiting and calling your name. Nothing productive happens till this line of new beginning is crossed.

“Adam, where are you?”

* * * * *

All he needed had been lavishly provided; the Creator’s generosity had been unbridled. Suppose the man had been dropped into a major metropolitan center, rather than the obscure rural garden. Would he have been any better cared for?

The city would provide delivery systems for food, water and energy, access to the finest medical care, nearby cultural experiences, intellectual stimulation, and opportunities for career advancement. But the garden yielded all he needed for nourishment, and the optimum climate control to assure his comfort. Eden’s provision even guaranteed immortality; there was no need for health care. There, in Paradise, the man was surrounded by the art and drama of nature, the symphony of creation, and he found fulfillment in the work assigned to him by the Almighty. He found his identity and purpose not merely in what he did — what occupied him — but in who he was, the friend of the Creator, whose image he bore.

He was called on to name the animals and found in the task far more than a basic phonetic exercise; rather it was for him an intellectually challenging enterprise as he classified and categorized nature’s wildlife — a veiled hint of what he might become, the intellectual stature he might attain.

His emotional needs were met as God brought romance into his life — a companion perfectly suited, his equal and his complement.

The man enjoyed spiritual quest in unhurried conversations with the Creator, and moral challenge and development through one simple test to assure his vigilance and growth, and to gauge his affection for and trust in the caring God who had crafted him, then met his every need long before it would even occur to the man to utter a request.

One simple test, one solitary prohibition, and his failure shattered everything, jeopardized his life and the well-being of future generations, touching every age and every people. Immediately, he felt the distance grow between him and his divine friend. A fissure opened, a crack that soon became a chasm. Shame colored his face and clouded his thinking. He felt the crush of regret, a sensation so foreign he could scarcely name it. He felt exposed, and hid himself; self-conscious, and could not bear to be seen. Even before his confrontation with the Creator, his mind was preoccupied, mulling over the timeless mantra of regret.

If only.
What if?
What now?

“Adam, where are you?”

And he stepped forward to face his God and himself and his shame.

* * * * *

Now, years later, one son had crossed the threshold of violence and the other lie dead. The Creator confronted the murderer, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.” And before the day had ended, Adam had lost one son in death, and the other in banishment and exile. In the emptiness of his ensuing grief, Adam was left to ponder again:

If only.
What if?
What now?

If we permit it, if we grant it the power, regret will show itself more persistent, more tenacious, than divine forgiveness itself, a truth most of us can attest to from personal experience. And yet, out of the extremity of his pain and regret, Adam could call to mind the Creator’s enigmatic promises, offered in the aftermath of his own moral failure so long ago.

Though he would return to the dust from which he came, there was more: a cryptic reference to restoration, which, in time, would be more clearly understood. A deliverer would come, and he would have both the power and inclination to crush the forces of temptation, moral failure and disheartening consequence. Far more than Eden would be restored. In that veiled promise, Adam doubtless found again and again the assurance of hope and the prospect of the Father’s embrace.

And he remembered Eden.

Life might bring unimaginable pain — the comforts of Paradise may quickly fade to a half-forgotten dream, a faint whisper, but still the unseen Father is closer than breath itself. For even at the birth of regret, hope was there and it was only just beginning.

Copyright © 2008

An Ocean of Endless Light

2008-06-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

I stand on the breakwater and the waves are angry, the shadow of the swell races toward me. I watch as wave after wave lifts and curls, the gray face of the troubled sea reflecting the storm clouds overhead. The surf rises in fury, then slams the breakwater in an explosion of salt spray. The tide ebbs and the stones shed water, the waves retreat like an army pulling back to regroup. White froth hisses against the rock and slides away into the sea. The incoming breaker gathers the receding foam — the ebbing tide — gathers it, churns it, tosses it onto the stones once again.

Over and over, restless and relentless, wave after wave rises and falls, rises and falls, year after year after year, until, in time, the very stones crumble and dissolve.

My breath rises and falls, minute by minute, month after month, into the years. My heart circulates life-blood like the ever-renewing rhythm of the waves — heartbeats marking hours and seasons and decades.

Someday all this will cease. Life will wear down the body as certainly as surf erodes rock and stars extinguish themselves.

Someday even the waves will cease, and time will stop, and eternity will dawn, and we will swim in an ocean of endless light.

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A Pledge of Stars

2008-05-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

The end was near and the family stood vigil, a somber semicircle around his bed. As the minutes passed, holy silence filled the room and Abraham’s breath became shallow, his breathing labored and irregular. Long moments passed, the room in stillness, before his chest rose slightly, almost imperceptibly, then fell — his last breath. His eyes closed one final time, and they saw him die.

But death is not what filled his vision.

For him, the end, when finally it came, was a beginning. If only he had known, could he ever have feared its coming? True, weakness overtook him, a dimness of vision, and then darkness, as he fell into the sleep from which he would never awaken ... except, that very sleep was wakefulness itself. And death was life — or, more precisely, death was overtaken and consumed by life. In the end, that which had been so terrifyingly unfamiliar in its coming was not unfamiliar at all. It was not the Great Unknown, it was instead the Finally Known. And it was hope.

Everything was warmth and comfort, and he found it was the Father’s embrace. Everything was light and brightness, and it was his Father’s eyes.

Abraham saw a vast and spectacular city, so long sought, and he knew its architect and builder was God. He soared above an unending seacoast and saw at once its scope and its detail — grains of sand, infinite, too numerous to count. He saw a stellar sky rushing toward him and each star was a face, and in each face he saw his own likeness.

Abraham was finally home.

And hope had become sight.

Copyright © 2008

Quality Product

2008-05-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

Picture God enjoying a creative day. 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.

Philosophers might suggest we take time out from making and spending money, time out from eating and sleeping and mating, time out to ask:

How did I get here? Who am I? What am I like? Where is life headed?

Well? Have you asked yourself any good questions lately?

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

Here, opinions differ radically. Most people who give thought to where we came from assume we gradually happened, and all by chance. If we take enough backward steps in time, we find ancestors quite unlike us. Further back, single cells got tired of being single and married into complexity. Further back still, life emerged from nonlife. In the beginning, if ever there had been a beginning, matter and force existed alone, spending long, lonely evenings together, waiting for things to happen.

Chance takes time. Years in the millions. The billions. And how can even that be enough for something to spring out of nothing of its own initiative, or caprice, or ... well, chance.

Christians assume that God created out of nothing. Had he not decided to create life out of nothing, life would not have happened, spontaneously or otherwise, no matter how many years or eons passed. Nothing would have happened.

On this point, the explanations you hear can be, frankly, embarrassing. But no one need blush at the Bible’s basic concept of creation. With God around, we can accept the idea that nothingness was overtaken by somethingness ... and all it took was a word. Or a short sentence. “Let there be light,” for instance. Or, “Let us make man.”

The mechanics — the technical “how” of creation — is not addressed in Scripture, of course. It is left to the poetic precision of word painting, and that imagery powerfully conveys the heart of our origin:

“In the beginning, God.”

Who am I?
The pinnacle of Creation.

Regardless of how you read the first couple chapters of Genesis (Beginnings), certain things stand out:

A personal, caring God was involved in each step of the creative process.

Creation did not require great effort. A word of two was sufficient to make things happen. Cosmic things. Again, the language is poetic, but poetry does not diminish the power of the idea it conveys, if anything, the opposite is true: It gives the idea greater power. For God to fashion nature is easy.

There was a purposeful progression to all this creative effort. Was anything left to chance and happenstance?

God was pleased what he made. He found joy in it.

Humankind was his crowning touch to creation. And if anything, God gives greater deliberation to the creative artistry that gave birth to people.

Hear the words of Creation’s Poet:

“God said,” and light was created.
“God said,” and there was sky.
“God said,” and seas and dry land appeared.
“God said,” and vegetation sprang out of the earth.
“God said,” and suns and moons lit the expanse of space.
“God said,” and fish flipped fins and birds flapped wings.
“God said,” and critters crawled the planet.

Then came people.

The rest of creation was the product of the Poet’s oratory. Animal life was uniquely handcrafted — the Artist resorts to sculpture. But people in particular ... he lingers over people. He took his time with the maleness and femaleness of it all.

Over all that was created, God placed the label “Good.” But when he finished with people, a superlative was in order, and he pronounced them, “Very good.” And he made man monarch over all that he created, King of the Earth.

Galaxies and fruit trees, fowl and flower, all sprang from the creative mind of God. Humankind was modeled after God himself, a creation fashioned in the Creator’s image. We are not part of the physical machinery. We are unique. We have more in common with God than we do with celery stalks, amoeba or chimps.

We were created with a body, a physical dimension. But slugs have slimy little bodies.

We were also created with a soul, charged with emotional and intellectual energy. We may look at gorillas or dolphins and wonder if we see in them faint reflections of our intelligence. Or even of emotion.

We were created with a spirit, fitted for eternal living and friendship with the Creator. Here, without qualification, we stand unique. Face-to-face with God.

If you think of Creator versus creation, you see an infinite gulf between God and us. We seem little different in significance than a fist full of silt, a head of cabbage, or a gadfly. He made us all. But if you take the Poet’s words at face value and accept that we, and we alone, are made in his image, the gulf shifts.

And so there are minerals, and vegetables, and animals ... and between these and us, a great gap. And we are on the God-side of the gap.

So far, though, this talk is rooted in creation. Our first parents. Ages ago. But with every life conceived since, God is aware. Involved. Caring. Sensitive, Watching. Planning.

Can we even calculate how much we matter to God?

“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well.

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.”

God does not simply care about humankind. He care about individuals. People like me. Like you.

He cares about the rest of his creation, too. Again, the Poet speaks, putting across such profound ideas so delicately understated: He notices when something as commonplace as a bird dies and falls. And why does he bother to point that out? To tell us that we matter far, far more. He talks about evil people who would do violence to us and he reminds us that God is the superintendent of the gates of hell as well as heaven. He will not fail to practice justice, and he does not forget the injustice done on the face of the earth. He watches us, vigilently. He even knows when our hair is ruffled. So poetic, so poignant. And so he tells us, “Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”

So, as I say, there are minerals, and vegetables, and animals ... and between these and us, a great gap. And we are on the God-side of the gap.

What am I like?
The greatest creature imaginable ... and also the worst.

The greatest creature, because we were created on the God-side of the gap, separate from the rest of creation. We are made in the image of God. We have personality and will. We can communicate and make decisions. We live above mere instinct. We have moral sensitivities and conscience.

We are the greatest creatures imaginable. If we could see ourselves as we really are — or should I say, as we are capable of becoming? — we would be astounded.

Yet somehow, through a quirky twist of rebelliousness, we are also the worst creatures imaginable. And why? We have fallen in the image of Satan. This may sound too Sunday-schoolish for sophisticates. But consider our capacity for inhumanity. We can’t be too hard on the law of the jungle — strong beasts tearing the weak to shreds — when we realize that we, the Kings of Creation, do the same to one another.

The Poet speaks: It was a simple, silly sin that started our downward spiral. Imagine our original parents enjoying good life in God’s garden paradise. The rules are minimal. One fruit tree off-limits. The why behind the law is incidental. The point is, the original parents had all their needs met. They lived in comfort. They walked with God.

Then the man stumbled. He fell. The gates of Eden closed, the gates of suffering and death opened. All the years since are a blur of scientific breakthroughs and bloodshed, loving friendships and oppression, nobility and war. We are haunted and hunted by our own capacity for evil. Pride and rebellion, temptation and moral failure.

We are all susceptible. We all fall. If we could see ourselves as we really are — the depth to which we are capable of falling — we would be terrified. Fearful and ill. And what makes the prospect so hideous is the great contrast: What we have become. What we could have been.

But the Poet speaks through his own life, his own blood. He speaks to say, “Eden will be restored.” We can be remade in the image of Christ. We have the capacity to know God. Jesus has opened the way. In him we regain the majesty that we threw away through our rebellion against God. And he stirs within us to transform us into a perfect reflection of his character. He is pleased, in fact, to count us in as family.

“Both the one who makes us holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

Through faith, we are family.

Here, then, is how we gauge how great we are in creation, how bad we are in our rebellion, how good we can be in Christ — the image of God, the image of Satan, the image of Christ:

What was required to restore God’s image in us? His Son.

What was God will to give to bring us back to himself? His Son.

And so I picture God enjoying a creative day. A special week. I do not doubt he found the work of creation exhilarating. But I choose to image that when he came to the work of making people, with all their potential, he visualized each individual who ever would be born, descendants of the first couple. 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.

Genesis 1—2
Psalm 139:13-18
Matthew 10:29-31
Hebrews 2:11

copyright © 2008

Open Secrets

2008-05-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

I knew the book was special long before I knew why. It had been a Christmas gift from my parents back when I’d have chosen cars and trucks and guns. And yet there was, I sensed, something different about this boxed Book with its black Leatherette cover.

The Holy Bible
CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED AND REVISED. THE AUTHORIZED KING JAMES VERSION, 1611, RED LETTER EDITION.

I was 9.

Over the years, I made gradual progress deciphering the Book. But it was seven years later, at 16, that I first had the startling experience — and may I say how I felt it? — the startling experience of this Book “speaking to me.” It was that crisp, later-summer night high in California’s Sierra Nevada, before a crackling campfire, reading about the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. The words, even the King James-ish thee’s and thou’s, seemed not so much a part of a book being read as a conversation being spoken. It was very much like being let in on a dreadful but exhilarating secret.

Was God “talking” to me through this Book of his?

I have occasionally had similar Bible reading experiences since. I have related, for instance, how the words, “Every good and perfect gift is from above” seemed to rise off the page as I had read them. Meaning was coming to me. Understanding. As if God were letting me in on another of his secrets: “Guess what? I am the giver of all your good experiences!”

I realize it is not uncommon for a reader to be struck by an aha! kind of feeling at reading most anything. Catching the meaning of something for the first time or seeing a concept in a new light may give a gentle high. But this was different because the ideas were different. God was letting me in on his thoughts.

I am now convinced that, in giving us the Bible, God has placed his secrets out in the open. Down where we can reach them.

Read them.

It does make sense to me, hearing these words I read as God’s. Think about it. God loves us — he’s dramatically demonstrated that. So wouldn’t he choose to communicate with us somehow? Wouldn’t he want us to avoid exhausting speculation about what he’s like and who Jesus was and where evil came from? Wouldn’t he warn us if he saw we were in danger?

God knows life can be perplexing, at time even sickening. Wouldn’t he give us information so we could understand it, and perspective so we could tolerate it?

God has expectations of us and has made promises to us. Wouldn’t he formalize things, put it all in writing like a contract?

And yet, I wonder: Why a book? Why written ideas? Why couldn’t God communication, wwarn, inform, promise privately? With each of us, individually? Why couldn’t he simply whisper his ideas in my mind, and yours, and his, and hers, and theirs all at once? It would be so personal. So identifiable. So unmistakable. He is God, after all. He listens to millions of complex prayers simultaneously. Why couldn’t he talk to us — all of us — directly?

I have thought about this a lot and magnanimously grant that he could have spoken privately, individually, personally, simultaneously, directly. Since he didn’t, since he spoke through people into a Book, and through the Book to us, there must be some good reasons. And I have concluded there are some distinct advantages to receiving God’s secrets openly, in a book.

The Book is objective. Objective, as in “object.” I can hold it, look at it, evaluate it, explain it. So can you. So can we, together. We can read it. Study it. We might come to different conclusions on the meaning of some phrase or idea, but we have a common source we can come back to: the Book.

Can you imagine, if we each claimed a private pipeline to God, how competitive we could become? Private “revelation” is so subjective. Subjective, as in “subject” — a subject in the mind to be pondered and discussed. We might disagree sharply. Who would arbitrate? And by what standards? How could we judge the ideas that you say flow through your direct, private pipeline? Or the ideas that I say God gave me?

The Book is something we can hold and value. I don’t mean worship; we worship God, not a book. And yet, these ideas about God are available in print. A portable library of life, telling the story of God’s unfailing love. Shouldn’t we value it?

The Book calls for our energy and involvement. Perhaps God’s ideas spoken directly into our minds would have been too easy. God seems to appreciate it when we invest our energy in seeking to understand him, our involvement in bringing the ideas off the page. We read. We study. We exert mental energy. We take part in the process of finding God.

The Book connects God’s friends together. I might, in having a private link with the perfect God, shun interaction with his imperfect people. Instead, we are linked together to cooperate in our search for understanding.

The Book — here are 66 individual books, written by 40 authors, in three languages, in several different countries, over hundreds of years. Yet, taken together, we have one unified Good, authored actually by God. But with such human involvement!

The words in the Book were passed as stories from generation to generation. The scrolls hand-copied who knows how many hundreds of times. The manuscripts circulated, read, explained, collected, ultimately printed and distributed, translated and re-translated as we learn more of the language and culture, and as our own language changes over time. And that Book, those words, over generations, read and studied and explained.

We would not have God’s ideas without the help of God’s other friends. Obviously, God values all this connectedness of his people, his family, his kingdom, his priesthood.

He could have conducted unending individual spiritual conferences. But he does not want us connected only to him; he wants us connected also to one another.

So, whose Word is it? In spite of such human involvement, the Book we read is called, “The Word of God,” not “The Words of People about God.”

“The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

It is called the Bible, meaning “the Book,” precisely because of its uniqueness. It is not a book, it is the Book. God’s Book.

It is called the Scriptures — the writings — for the same reason The Writings. Unique. Set apart.

It is called the Old and New Testaments — testaments, covenants, agreements — because it is a book detailing God’s promises and agreements with his people. With us.

It is called “The Law and the Prophets” because it contains God’s expectations and principles for life.

It is pictured as a mirror, reflecting our inner attitudes.

It is pictured as a seed, giving life.

It is pictured as cleansing water, bringing purity to our motives and actions.

It is pictured as light, offering clear guidance for life.

It is pictured as food, bringing nourishment to the inner life.

On and on the images go. Each stressing the uniqueness of this Book. Its power. Its supernatural author. God wanted to help us with life, wanted to share his secrets. Openly. So he wrote them down.

And how many writers? We say, “God wrote a book.” But we credit David with many of the Psalms. Solomon with most of Provers. Paul with half the New Testament. John with five books. Forty authors, when the roll is called. So, were there 40 writers or one?

Both.

“No prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” God ideas, then, came through a partnership. God’s will, human voice.

I do not take this to be a mechanical sort of thing, either. Read the Bible. You find unified themes spoken through varied personalities, intellects and styles. Matthew was a tax collector. Luke a doctor. David a monarch. Peter a fisherman. And their writings are colored by their backgrounds.

Peter noticed this difference in Paul’s writings — logical, intellectual Paul. What did Peter say?

“Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

What did Peter say? He said that Paul’s message agreed with his own. He said that Paul wrote out of the resource of God’s wisdom. He said that Paul had certain recurring themes. He said that Paul was sometimes hard to follow. He said that Paul’s message was tampered with only out of self-destructive foolishness. Why? Because Paul’s writings are Scripture.

Moreover: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

There’s help for our understanding. For us to gain good from God’s words, we must be able to understand them. As Proverbs so aptly puts it: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

We are astoundingly capable of self-deception. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Who? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind.”

If we cannot figure out our own mind, how can we fathom God’s ideas?

How? He helps us. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him — but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

And what has God freely given us? Open secrets about his way for us to live — loving, forgiving, exercising self-control, showing patience, finding joy even in hardship.

What has God freely given us? Open secrets about God and his agenda for time and forever: God loves us; Christ died for us; the Holy Spirit helps us; Satan hinders; hell is real, but so is heaven.

And yet, in some mysterious way, as open as God has made his secrets, people who do not know God do not understand his ideas either. The secrets seem stupid; too silly to be wise.

“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. ... For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”

I guess, one day it just clicked. I do not recall when it happened. But I turned a corner in my mind. The Book that had seemed so special because of its protective box and Leatherette binding took on a deeper meaning. It had once captivated me precisely because it seemed so forbidding, unapproachable:

The Holy Bible
CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED AND REVISED. THE AUTHORIZED KING JAMES VERSION, 1611, RED LETTER EDITION.

Then something clicked.

Was it that night in the Sierra? Was it some afternoon when curiosity prompted me to crack the Book open? At some point I realized I was no longer reading words from people about God, I was reading God’s Word. His Word to me.

And a responsibility settled over me with astonishing weight: I have only one life to master this Book.

I may have forever to get to know God.

But I need his open secrets now.

James 1:17
Romans 5:8
Hebrews 4:12
James 1:23-25
James 1:18
1 Peter 1:23
Ephesians 5:25-27
Psalm 119:105
1 Peter 2:2
1 Corinthians 3:1-2
2 Peter 1:20-21
2 Peter 3:15-16
2 Timothy 3:16-17
Proverbs 14:12
Jeremiah 17:9
Jeremiah 17:10
1 Corinthians 2:9-12
1 Corinthians 2:14-16

copyright © 2008

Uncommon Gifts

2008-05-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure when I first noticed it. The awareness dawned gradually. Like waking up without the jangling of an alarm clock. There is a drowsy stirring. An eye opens slightly, then squints against the morning’s brightness. There is a moment of half-sleep twilight. All this before fully awakening.

For me, it was a thought. An idea. A possibility. Waking up to a reality, squinting in surprise against it:

Every good gift is from God.

Sun, rain.
Sight, taste.
Intelligence, speech.
Friendship, family.
Health, life itself.
Every.
Good gift.
Is from God.

The Bible had been a gift from my parents. For years I had regarded it as a special book, though I never read it. Until that evening, high in California’s Sierra, as I read Matthew’s Gospel, alone, by the light of a campfire. The generosity of it rocked me. The gift of Jesus — his grisly death — had opened the way for me to know God and enjoy him forever.

With hell’s fire in plain view, I could recognize in forgiveness a good gift when I saw it.

But as good a gift as forgiveness is, this awakening awareness that every gift is from God was something far different. Something, in a sense, more comprehensive than the promise of heaven, tomorrow. Or at least more encompassing, inclusive.

Forgiveness was God’s special favor to his people, his family of faith. But this every gift idea included everyone. Good gifts were freely lavished on everyone — friend of God, enemy of God, alike. Heaven was the Christmas gift from the Father to the members of his family. Every good gift was for that larger gift list on which every human’s name appeared, whether they recognize it or not, acknowledge it or not, everyone receives.

From the hand of God.
Every.
Good gift.

It was that same long-neglected Bible; it had introduced me to the gift of eternal life, now it sparked my awareness of God as the Giver. I had read the New Testament book of James — when, I don’t recall — but I had read it with a yellow marker in hand. I had underlined much of the first chapter.

Months passed. Perhaps even a couple years. Then one afternoon as I skimmed James, a bright yellow patch of Bible words rose off the page:

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Every gift.
From God.

An idea was stirring. A thought awakening.

I had read it before, noted the words for their simplicity and power. But new meaning was dawning.

I realized that Christians asked God for things. (James talks about this, too.) And God often grants their prayer requests. He often gives what has been sincerely requested, as a gift. But prayer wish lists, prompting the generosity of God the Giver, were not the same as this new every gift awareness.

Prayer-answers were special gifts. Gifts requested. Gifts dispensed by God to his own people who knew how to pray.

This every good gift idea was fundamentally different. These gifts were common: food, shelter, ingenuity, life. Yet they were uncommonly special. But in their commonness (I call them common only because God was so unbridled in his giving) they were most often overlooked by us as gifts. They were merely life’s standard equipment. Who would think to thank God for something as expected as beauty in a sunset, simple as a smile, as routine as emotive music?

These everyday gifts were not only common, they were unrequested. They just happened, simply arriving in our lives. Who would think to say thanks to God for something life itself dished out — to all?

Yet I found myself waking up to an idea. Every gift. Sitting bolt upright out of sleepy presumption. Is from God. I was facing afresh the commonplace ... and seeing God.

Every.
Good gift.
To everyone.
Is from God.

And I was impressed with God all over again, in a new way. Impressed by his generosity, his creativity, his willingness to give without fanfare, without thanks in return.

You might reverently say that God was just the kind of guy everyone would want as a father if just once they could see him as the giver of every good gift.

Wildlife and waterfalls.
Flowers and flamingos.
Clouds and stars.
Music and art.
Medicine and high technology.
Human brilliance and humanitarian impulse.
Something was behind it all.
Someone.

Think of it! The growth of vegetation is possible because God cares enough to feed us, to shelter us, to convert carbon dioxide into breathable air. Rain and sun and fog and wind and ice. Beauty, variety, balance.

Think of it! You bite into a strawberry, or a lemon; fresh fish, or dark chocolate.

Thank of it! You feel the lightness of a gentle rain on your face, or a special friend’s touch on your arm. You splash in Pacific surf or slip into warm covers on a cold January night.

Symphonic sound envelopes you. A friend whispers a compliment. You step off a curb and someone shouts a warning.

The evening’s darkening sky fills with stellar pinpoints of light. You see the face of a friend. You examine delicate floral patterns.

You read, reason, talk.

You communicate with strangers. Establish friendships. Mate.

Think of it!
And thank the Giver.

And understand this. Jesus said, “Love your enemies ... that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

God is perfect. We know, because he gives gifts freely, perfectly, to all of us. Friends or enemies.

Every.
Good gift.
In from God.

I should have understood before, awakened sooner. The thought is exquisite: Every good gift is from God.

Sun, rain.
Sight, taste.
Intelligence, speech.
Friendship, family.
Health, life itself.

Every good gift is from God.

Is it any wonder I would choose him as my Father?

James 1:17
Matthew 5:44-46

© 2008

Beyond Religion

2008-04-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

If you have never felt the crispness of the night air and smelled the strong scent of pine high in California’s Sierra; if you have never huddled close to a crackling, open campfire and watched the sparks swirl into the sky and disappear among stars so close; you may not understand how I could feel myself so small and God so large. Feel it. Sense it. Experience it. My insignificance. God’s vastness.

But I was there, one brisk late summer evening, collar turned up against the cold. The darkness had dropped a curtain around me, thick and heavy. I had to look up. Up at the suns and the constellations. Up. And then down. Down at the flickering fire in front of me. Down at the book, flat, open before me.

In the faint and dancing light I strained to read: “He saved others, but he can’t save himself! ... Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him.”

Why had I taken a Bible with me? My faith was in flux. God had seemed distant. Had I distanced him? What prompted me to pull the Bible out of the car, then, that night? And why did my eyes fall on Saint Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, chapter 27? And why did I feel so strange a sense of ... of participation in what I was reading?

“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice. ... ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

I looked up from the book and stared off into the darkness. What was I thinking? What was I feeling? I was at that moment feeling sorry for Jesus. Sorry for him and angry at those who mocked him, spat on him, bashed his head with rods, nailed him to the timbers. Everything was out of control, and it felt so profoundly unjust.

“When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.”

The next words perplexed me. Were things out of control?

“The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

“When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’”

And that’s precisely how I felt as I finished the story, closed the book and stared again first a the fire and then at the endless expanse of space above me.

I felt small. God felt large. Large, but now also strangely close.

What was this experience? These High Sierra feelings? Simply emotionalism? “Yes,” some would say, “unchecked emotions.” I’m not so sure.

This much I will grant. Several years later, in retrospect, I wouldn’t necessarily stake my whole religious experience on one evening’s reading one cold night, above the valley, away from the commonplace. But on the other hand, I would argue with anyone who would write off the experience as mere sensationalism and untamed emotion.

Perhaps I felt God so strongly because for once I had met him on his turf — nature — away from the silliness of the city and the distraction of life and my preoccupation with how I was perceived by those around me.

Also, this was not the only time I sensed God’s vastness and closeness simultaneously. Later, I would often walk southern California’s beach, feeling wet sand under my bare feet and white foam washing around my ankles as I inhaled the salt air. And occasionally, when I was all alone, I would talk to God — sometimes out loud — as I walked along the shore.

Christians refer to such one-way conversation as “prayer.” That sounds formal and ritualistic. To me, at those times, it was just conversation. Conversation often punctuated with question marks. I wondered what God was up to. Why I sometimes felt disappointment or faced “unanswered prayer.” I had a friend who died. I was betrayed by someone I trusted. I felt strong guilt over my moral shortcomings.

God listened to my complaints and questions about all of this, and I have no reason to believe he was anything less than patient with it all. My faith grew stronger. God and I gradually became closer friends, which may sound audacious, but it feels wonderful. I had thought of myself as “Christian” for several years, but as my acquaintance with God grew, I felt many of my doubts begin to melt ... or at least diminish in importance compared to the things that now seemed certain.

Maybe it’s my poetic nature, but I like to imagine it was God prompting me to fetch my Bible out of the Chevy that brisk night high in the Sierra. I like to think of the wind of his Spirit blowing the book open, fanning the pages to Matthew’s Gospel. I like to visualize God reading the story to me by the firelight, under his canopy of stars.

I don’t understand all the mystical details. But I know this: That black late summer night, with my Bible open before me and with the infinity of space stretching out above me, I was not alone.

Nor have I been since.

Read more »

© 2008

Lingering Mystery

2008-02-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

The restaurant door opens, and winter enters the room, accompanying the man in the brown coat and knit cap. A Chevy Citation the color of his coat idles in the lot, waiting for him, exhaling a fog of exhaust into the arctic air.

The man is preoccupied. He shuffles as he walks and his head is bowed slightly, his shoulders stooped. He steps to the counter and mumbles a request, places an order. All this without eye contact. His face is to the floor — he studies his shoes, the brown tile floor, the red rectangle of carpet by the door.

Once, maybe twice, his shoulders rise and then fall in a deep, almost exaggerated sigh. An order number is called — not his — but he lifts his face and his eyes follow the brisk young businessman as he steps to the counter and collects his order. The guy in the suit is all smiles and pleasant banter, optimism and sunny sentiment.

The man in the brown coat and knit cap sighs again, and once more his eyes trace the pattern in the flooring, the details on his shoes.

What is this unseen heaviness that weighs on his shoulders, that pulls his gaze to the floor and holds it there, that draws those deep sighs from his chest?

A number is called. Wordlessly, the man collects his order, shuffles across the floor, steps through the doors and climbs into the idling Citation. He backs out and is gone, leaving nothing behind except the winter chill that entered the room as he left, and the lingering mystery of human concern.

* * * * *

Lord, everyone has a story and every life is laced with concern.

Sometimes the need is severe and humanitarian impulse prompts us: We care for one another. More often, we turn inward, preoccupied with our own troubles, or grateful that, at the moment, life seems, for us, trouble-free.

You were different, Lord. Your agenda was defined by the unspoken needs of others. And you have called us to stoop and serve the outcast, to bear one another’s burdens, to weep with those who weep, to look out for the interests of others, to refresh those who thirst for relief.

Today, Lord, may my eyes see as you see, and may my hands move at your impulse.

Amen.

Who Painted the Sky with Flames?

2008-02-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

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 sunset as I’ve seen.

I know why the sky is blue and the sunset red.

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 lightwaves are short.

The sun’s light strikes the clear air of earth’s atmosphere, but that 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 eyes gather 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. 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 know why the sky is blue and the sunset red. Does that make it any less the brushstrokes of the Creator?

God Is Closer Than Your Breath

2008-02-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

Lift up your eyes to the mountains of our God.
Lift up your hands in grateful praise.
Life up your voice to the One who always hears you.
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.

When you walk through the valley of the shadow;
When your steps take you to the edge;
When your voice echoes back across the void;
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.

When your grief is turned instead to dancing;
When you laugh and no longer mourn;
When finally beauty rises from the ashes;
God is closer than your breath.
God is closer than your breath.

Copyright © 2005

Creation Could Have Been

2008-02-02T14:54:00.000-08:00

Lord, sometimes I picture what creation could so easily have been, had you restricted yourself.

You could have fashioned a monochromatic world, black-and-white, devoid of color. You might have settled for one type of tree, one kind of animal, one race of people. All food could have tasted the same: flat, boring and odorless. Or even repugnant. It could have been that whatever we touched would feel like sandpaper. Voices could have been monotone, garbled and grating.

Instead of the rhythm of the seasons, year ‘round might have felt like the polar extremes or arid deserts. We might have had 12 months of humidity, seas without surf, nights without sleep. Mountains might have been leveled, a topography without highs and lows, and we might have had emotions to match.

Birds and cats and dogs and cows might all have brayed like donkeys. Snow could have been mauve, and lukewarm. The gauze of a charcoal gray cloud cover might always have hidden the sun and shielded the stars. Life could have been boredom, or even unrelenting pain.

Instead, you were flamboyant, filling our world with beauty and diversity and pleasure. You gave us a home of comfort, then furnished it with lavish amenities.

What made you do it? What motivated such kindness? Why were you so preoccupied with our happiness and satisfaction? Why did you place us in a world of such intricate wonder? We could never fully appreciate the depth and dimension of such artistry in a thousand lifetimes.

Lord, I walk through your world — through my world — and see your kindness. Everywhere I turn, I stumble into grace. And I marvel to think this is just the beginning.

Amen.

© 2008

Why Celebrate Jesus?

2007-12-25T21:02:00.000-08:00

Helpless, bundled against the night chill, the baby lies. Ordinary. His squinting eyes dim, hardly seeing. What thoughts would fill this newborn’s mind? He cannot speak his needs; his self-expression limited, virtually to tears. His young adult parents hover near, attending to the child’s unexpressed needs. They know that this baby, like all others, is completely dependent. If they do not cover him, he will be cold. If they do not hold him, he will whimper his loneliness. If they do not feed him, he will weaken and die. And yet, before this frail, ordinary newborn, rugged independent adults bow to worship, claiming him to be the extraordinary Son.

Years pass.

The young man sits at the crest of a hill, the focus of a small circle of friends. He is dressed as others are dressed, no uniform or emblem to signal him as different. His voice not unlike other voices; yet he speaks his ideas into the afternoon air and a crowd forms. And grows. The words are common words, simple and direct. Children understand them. Adults smile at their beauty, nod agreement at their logic, wince under their demanding clarity. And they walk away astounded at the authority and uniqueness of the man.

With arms stretched wide, as if to embrace the whole world, he dies, as weak and helpless as a newborn. Yet what proves truly weak and helpless before him? Death itself.

Christ did die with his arms stretched wide, and he did so to embrace the whole world. And he way, by choice, for a few days, as weak and helpless as a newborn. Weaker even. Lifeless. But he did all this to give us good reason to celebrate. He has tied Christmas to Easter, and given himself as the most costly gift.

Copyright © 2007

The Voice of God

2007-02-17T15:02:00.000-08:00

His voice is carried on the wind,
the wind that is the Spirit.
Like breath it enters anyone
who willingly will hear it.
His voice is whispered in the trees,
and shouted on the surging seas,
and sung by stars in space.

© 2007

The Timeline of Jesus

2006-12-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

Christ sees all that will be as if it already was, all that was as if it now is, or is yet to be. Unbounded by the time he created, he lives above it and beyond it. Yet nothing happens within its cramped quarters that does not touch him, move him, stir his concern.

Thousands of years of human history come and go. War and peace. The rising of nations, and their fall. Progress and regress. Scientific breakthroughs and artistic achievements. Kindness and oppression. Moral victories and incomprehensible evil. Life and death. Joy and suffering. The successes and failures of billions — every facet of every life is known by the caring, timeless God.

Tears fall. Prayers rise. Through smiles and encouragement, through hateful and abusive words, he is always there watching. AIDS and addiction and incest. Healing, compassion and generosity. Nothing we face escapes his notice. Nothing in all the centuries since his birth, and nothing in all the millennia before his birth. Jesus is here. And he was there.

He was always there.

He is Alpha and Omega. The Beginning. The End. The Now.

And when time grinds to a halt, all we’ve ever longed for that is truly worthy will finally dawn, conceived by the patient Creator.

Do You Want to Be Well?

2006-12-05T12:40:00.000-08:00

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 think you see mirrored on his face.

But he reassures you, gives you what you’re sure is 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 instructions and being patient with the healing process.

Upon returning home, you put the medicine aside, unopened. You disregard the instruction 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 the New Testament says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

http://JamesPLong.com

The Contradiction of Cantankerousness

2006-07-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

In times of success, when sorrow was a distant memory, the people of God celebrated. They feasted, danced, sang songs, laughed and smiled till they were too tired to continue the party.

But at their best, God’s people have always been a people of joy, even when their circumstances weighed them down. People who felt the weight of sorrow, nevertheless found a place of optimism within them. People who endured great adversity somehow brought joy into their present circumstances, as they contemplated a future hope. Prisoners song songs and wrote letters urging others to rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Paul wrote those words while incarcerated, the prospect of death always before him.

I do not know what I will face today. But if the grace of Christ touches me, I will be a person of joy. A core of optimism will remain within my reach. And he will keep me from the contradiction of cantankerousness. With his hand on me, I will set grumpiness aside, and my joy will be visible, unambiguous, contagious.

© 2006 | http://web.mac.com/jamesplong

The Crowd Beyond the Blur

2006-07-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

I stepped off the plane, walked down the jetway, entered the terminal, caught up in the crowd. The voices around me rose in an unintelligible roar. No one was speaking English. Were it not for international symbols, the signs around me would be meaningless, incomprehensible.

For some reason, I paused. I looked into the faces of passersby. I listened to their speech, heard their laughter. For one brief moment, behind their eyes, I caught a glimpse of soul. In this airport, in all this chaos of humanity, there is not a single individual unknown and unloved by God.

I board a bus, enter a subway, walk the mall, step into a restaurant, cross the path of an old enemy, meet a friend for coffee, greet my sister, embrace my wife — I will never encounter another human being who is loved any less or any more by the God I call my friend.

And that is why anything less than kindness is not enough. Anything mean-spirited will disappoint my Father, who loves all individuals — and loves them unconditionally.

© 2006 | http://web.mac.com/jamesplong

Unanticipated Friend

2006-07-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

“Be holy,” the stellar writer says, “because I am holy.” He might just as well say: “I am something that you will never be, can never be; now, get on with the task of being just that.” Which is sort of like saying, “Walk on water! But shoes with floats don’t count.”

The mystery is that he is always fiddling with impossibilities, twisting the unlikely into the probable. I read wild tales of God teaching paralytics to sprint, and blind folks to gawk at their newly enlightened world.

Does God perform moral tricks, too? Can he pull perfection out of my life as an illusionist might dip into a top hat and yank a bunny out by the ears?

The moral mystery unfolds. If God’s lips seem to curl at the corners into a faint smile as he urges me on toward the impossible, it may be because he plans to offer his moral strength at the very moment he shows me my moral weakness.

But if I didn’t first see my weakness, I might never accept his strength.

http://web.mac.com/jamesplong

Someday I Will Share Your Nature

2006-07-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

Father, someday I will share your nature. Someday someone will see me and be reminded of Jesus. Someday the distraction of imperfection will be set aside and forgotten. I will finally be what I have been so slowly becoming these many years.

Lord, when finally you have completed the good work you have started, I will stand with Jesus your Son and my brother, and I will not be embarrassed and he will not be ashamed.

Amen.

Tolstoy on Change

2006-07-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

"When I came to believe in Christ's teaching, I ceased desiring what I had wished for before. The direction of my life, my desires, became different. What was good and bad had changed places."

The Girl and the Tree

2006-07-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

I noticed the tree, naked against the sky. Twisted, leafless, grotesque beauty, reaching out of the packed earth. The sun was setting, the sky streaked amber. Gnarled fingers of bark grasped, empty-handed, at the fading sunlight.

She paused there, by the tree, her face golden in the dying light, and mopped the perspiration from her brow with the red-plaid flannel of her sleeve.

She was young, perhaps 20. With both hands she lifted long, thick hair off her neck — dark hair, black as the approaching night. Her slender fingers brushed sweat-dampened tendrils from her face. Then, her palms flat against the small of her back, she stretched — cat-like, I thought — and smiled, the features of her dark, tired face suddenly radiant.

Where was that smile born? In a memory? A dream? A hope? A face remembered, a joke recalled? Or was it simply this moment of wonder? The sunlight fading, the night approaching. A tree dying, yet alive, holding some mystery, a memory, caught like a kite in its withered branches.

She had worked since dawn, the young woman. Hard work. In the field perhaps, or the nearby packing shed. Doubtless, every muscle ached. It showed in the slightest stoop of fatigue, in the way she walked, in the relish of so brief a break, pausing in the sunset to mop her brow, brush her hair, stretch her back, smile.

Had she noticed me, sitting there on the earth, my knees up, my chin resting in my hands? I don’t think so. But even if she had, still she would have paused, wiped her brow, brushed her hair, stretched her back, smiled. The magic of the moment was hers and hers alone, just as it was mine and no one else’s.

She walked on, and the sun descended beneath the horizon, pulling the blanket of twilight up and over the naked form of a dying tree. And everything was alive.

Dorothy Sayers on Christ's share in the human experience

2006-07-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

"God has himself has gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, death."

Sky-sized Portrait

2006-07-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

In my mind I need a picture of God, a mural as broad as the sky. If I could open my eyes wider, wider, I could see all creation on his canvas. From the swirling brushstrokes of galaxies to the artful blotches of newborn aardvarks. Zinnias and canyons, hermit crabs and oaks, oceans and infants. Through what he’s painted in creation, in colors bright and dark, muted or primary, I would see something of the artist.

If I could look closer, closer, into the texture of history as he is painting it, I am certain that I would see some artistic purpose. I would see, in brushstrokes broad and fine, some hint of what he’s up to, and what he’s like. The picture would breathe with life and purpose.

If I could see the painting as only God could enable me, if he could touch my eyes to perceive his art, I am certain I would see all that is unattractive turning slowly, slowly, into beauty beneath the artist’s hand, his brush trailing crimson.

In my mind I see a picture of God. But even a sky-size mural cannot contain it!

— Excerpted from An Ocean of Endless Light | copyright © 2006

What Happens When a Baby Is Born?

2006-06-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

What happens when a baby is born?

A possibility enters the world.

It would be easy to think that one more life joins the race and nothing more -- another solitary face in the crush of humanity, known and loved by those who gave him birth, those who nurture her, but little impact on the wide, vast world.

What happens when a baby is born? A son enters a family. A daughter takes her place alongside a mother, a father.

What happens when a baby is born? Another child becomes a big brother. A sister has one more object of affection, care, competition.

What happens when a baby is born? Grandparents are ecstatic. Aunts and uncles celebrate. Friends who don't even smoke accept the festive cigar. Pink balloons, or blue, dance on the end of strings, amid streamers and ribbons and gifts of good will.

What happens when a baby is born? Someone's future friend begins the odyssey we call life.

And what will this child do? Grow. Learn. Achieve. Fail. Befriend. Love. Disappoint. Create. Invent. Build. Destroy. Discover.

Nothing this child touches will ever be the same. His mother will change. She will carry forever the imprint of this life on her soul. The child's father will perceive things differently -- will never think of himself in quite the same way again. Friends will be shaped, however subtly, by this one child's influence.

Someday, somewhere, a chance encounter which lasts a mere moment will spark a change -- a beginning --that spans a lifetime. Perhaps nothing more than a word spoken. A smile. A gesture. A hug. An encouragement. A word of warning. A bit of advice. But somewhere, sometime, a life-changing moment would not have happened, had this life not begun.

What happens when a baby is born? Unparalleled good. Incomprehensible evil. A breakthrough. A cure. A masterpiece. A crime. The course of a nation redirected, the change leveraged by one life.

We could think of a life touching a family, an influence felt in a sphere of friendships. But this is only the beginning.

Somewhere, in some small boat, in an infinite ocean, a child trails her fingers in the sea. A tiny wake of froth and bubble goes by unnoticed and unforgotten -- the waters undisturbed.

But couldn't something truly mysterious happen? Something of immeasurably greater consequence? Couldn't one child's touch change the very tides?

What happens when a baby is born? A possibility enters the world, and nothing is ever the same.

© 2005

As If There Were One

2006-06-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

"God loves each of us as if there were only one of us," Augustiine wrote.

It is, of course, a wonderful thought -- an idea full of wonder. It is also quite true.

One way to take a measure of the love of God is to ask myself, "Does God really love me in such a personal and self-sacrificing manner? Does God love me as if I were the only one, even as he loves you so uniquely?"

If I were the only one, would he still go through with the bother of the incarnation? Those long months confined to the uterus of Mary, his mother, knowing the messy and perplexing dependence of infancy was to follow?

If I were the only one, would angels have cause to sing, would the star still rise, guiding me to the Christ child, would Mary still smile at the Good News she birthed? Would I have reason to shout and laugh and lose myself in praise?

If I were the only one, would he have spent the long years of childhood, learning and growing, step by patience-testing step, enduring the teasing and ridicule of those who questioned the circumstances of his birth and the integrity of his parents? Would he endure the hunger and the thirst and the fatigue and the grief that are part of the human experience? Would he do that for me, if I were the only one?

If I were the only one, would he face the bitterness and inhumanity of the mob, the injustice of a rigged courtroom, the anguish of abandonment, and the agony of the slow, tortuous execution? Would he do all this for me, if I were the only one?

Would he rise from death and ascend through the clouds with the promise of return and a place for me, if I were the only one?

Would the skies still split and the thunder of angel-praise still shake the earth? Would time cease and eternity dawn, and the arms of Christ spread wide to welcome me home, if I were the only one?

Why, yes, of course. "God loves each of us as if there were only one of us."

How can we help but celebrate, and pass on the astonishingly great news?

© 2005

The Breath of God

2006-05-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

There is a reason they call him "The Wind," or "The Breath of God." He fills the earth and there is no vacuum. He stris, he rustles, and things happen. He breathes and we live or die. He settles smooth over life like air settles thick and full over fields, mountains, streams and cities. He gusts and blows and nations topple or habits break or someone changes her mind about God.

He is the Holy Spirit.

I call him "The Wind" -- "The Breath of God" -- because in the languages of both Old and New Testaments the word for "wind" or "breath" is identical to the word for "spirit." What is spirit? It is wind, breeze, the breath of life.

So I picture God's Spirit as "the wind," covering the earth, carrying the goodness of God on its breezes. It fills everything, touches everything, reaches everyone. It is everywhere and inescapable. I picture God's Spirit as "The Breath of God." Without him, life suffocates.

The imagery of God's Spirit as wind and breath is apt. We might try to close ourselves off from him, slam the door and close the windows against his breezes. But there always seems to be a draft under the door, reminding us of his presence and his patient but persistent desire to enter our stale and stuffy lives. Those who are wise not only throw open the door, but also inhale deeply.

© 2005

Assembling the Puzzle of Joy

2006-05-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

You open the box and empty its contents on the table. There, before you, are hundreds of individual pieces that, when fitted together, will create something that makes sense. A complete picture. You pick up individual pieces, look at them from different angles, and try your best to fit them together with other pieces. Slowly, the project takes shape, as you compare the puzzle on the table with the picture on the box -- your only guide to what the puzzle is to become.

Your life is such a project. In time, hundreds -- thousands -- of individual details will somehow fit together. When the puzzle is at least complete, you will be satisfied with the result. Until then, the process of figuring out the place of each piece can be annoying, a seemingly endless trial of your patience.

The encouraging difference between these two puzzles is this: The puzzle that is your life, God is assembling. Each individual piece -- whether hardship or happiness -- God will fit together with flawless skill. When the process is complete, your life will perfectly match the picture in his mind -- the precise image of what you can become.

© 2005

Stars and Sand

2006-05-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

A promise to Abraham
A promise to us

God made a promise to his friend Abraham. Though he was old, his wife unable to conceive, he would father the Nation, the people of the promise. Abraham, whose descendants are "as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore" held onto the unlikely promise.

Faith. Hold on to the promise.

Even today, God may seem distant, his promise a faint memory. But faith holds on to the promises of our Friend.

Sometimes faith means remembering, when everything inside you and around you screams for attention and will most certainly distract you and drown out the voice of memory, and cloud your vision of the better things God has promised.

So do this: On a clear night, go out and find a place away from the light pollution. Look up and start counting stars. You are linked to the promise, the promise God made to Abraham. You are an heir to that promise by faith. You are one of those stars. But what is one star among so many?

It is a flame of promise and potential known by an infinite and omniscient God.

Take a pilgrimage, in your imagination if not in reality. Make your way to the coast. Stand at the shoreline. Look out at the vast, immeasurable stretch of ocean. And look down at your feet and all around you. Stoop down and fill your fist with sand. Let the grains filter through your fingers. But hold one. Look at it. Keep it. Imagine its place amoung all the coastlines of the world. You are that one grain of sand. You are nothing. What do you matter?

No, remind yourself that you are known. That which seems insignificant and forgotten, that appears lost in the infinity of stuff, is known by God. You, the single star -- you, the solitary grain of sand -- are part of the promise and are known and loved by your Creator.

© 2005

Show Time

2006-05-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

You enter a dark movie theater and take a seat. The curtain rises and the screen comes to life. For the next two hours you will watch a motion-picture depiction of reality.

Someone has written a script, but the limitations of the medium have dictated certain things. Let's say the story covers a span of three years; the movie will run 120 minutes. Obviously, much will be omitted from the story. The events will be abbreviated, as will the characters. People will be depicted, but the movie will fail to capture the full, rich complexity of real life. The best characterizations will remain caricatures, compared to reality, and the sequence of events as the movie related them will, of necessity, be distilled to simpler form.

The best of screenplays falls far short of the real story.

Even so, you watch the movie, captivated by spectacular effects, yet scarcely aware of them. You're so engrossed in the production that you're not distracted by the mechanics of simulating reality. If it's a good story, told well, it will touch your emotions and provoke reflection. You will not be quite the same when, finally, the closing credits begin to roll.

Then, as the lights brighten and you step through the exit, you enter what Hollywood has spent millions characterizing and you have just spent two hours escaping: reality.

It will be similar when we exit this life. We will look back on time as a gripping and convincing drama, but it will suddenly feel flat and simplified in the true and eternal light of day.

© 2005

A Place Called Forever

2006-05-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

Time is a room in a place called Forever.

We live in that room.

Eternity is outside and all around us. Four walls, a floor and a roof hide Forever from view.

But something has punched a hole in the wall of this room called Time. God has installed a window.

Look through that window. Always look through that window, and let the great outdoors called Forever give perspective to all that happens in these cramped quarters we call Time. Then pause and thank the Builder for flooding your life with light.

* * * * *

Time is a room in a place called Forever.

We live in that room.

But one day, and soon, I suspect, the roof will fly off, the walls will fall, the floor will dissolve beneath our feet. Time will be consumed by the Eternity that has always surrounded it.

What will we do with the sudden brightness and the brisk winds that blow across Forever?

I imagine some will wither under that sun, shrivel up and blow away.

Others will be only warmed and invigorated, as if truly alive for the first time.

© 2005

Is There Any Future in Tomorrow?

2005-12-02T14:11:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-19T18:56:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

2005-09-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

"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

2005-08-12T06:01:00.000-07:00

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

2005-07-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-07-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

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"

2005-07-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

"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

2005-06-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

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

We Should Still Be Writing Psalms

2005-06-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

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

2005-06-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2005-05-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-04-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

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

2005-03-30T09:24:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-03-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-23T20:24:00.000-08:00

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

2005-02-20T20:13:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-02-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-02-07T18:34:00.000-08:00

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

George MacDonald on Fear

2005-02-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

“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

2005-01-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-01-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-01-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

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

Tom Bodett on Obsession

2005-01-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

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

Madeleine L'Engle on Stories and Faith

2005-01-17T15:02:00.000-08:00

"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

2005-01-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

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