A Pledge of Stars

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

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

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

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

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.

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© 2008

Lingering Mystery

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?

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

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

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?

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

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

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?

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

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

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

“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

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

"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

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

"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."