Pinned.

(Photo by Travis Heying, Wichita Eagle, 2016)

"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies;"

-Psalm 23:5a

Pinned. Stuck.  Trapped. It is a bit unsettling.  For the last twelve days, I have been repeating these words as I undergo radiation treatments for the cancer in my throat.  Actually, I have been thinking these words, not actually speaking them.  During these treatments, my head is fastened to the table via a mesh mask that is designed to keep me from moving even a twitch.  This allows for accurate targeting of the treatments, but does not allow for oral recitation of these words of comfort.

I am powerless, but God is at work.

Our middle son, Isaac, when he was just about three years old, had some difficulty sounding the letter "r".  I remember one evening, we were in the middle of a real, mid-western, spring zephyr. There was thunder and lightning, wind and rain, and even a tornado siren.  The whole family was huddled in the basement waiting for the tornado warning to expire and I was visibly nervous.  I was worried about the roof, the trees, and the insurance paperwork, and  Isaac said, "Daddy, don't be afraid of tomatoes, God is with us in the storm and He will keep us safe."

Isaac knew that God was at work even when we were stuck in the basement and powerless to do anything about the storm.

And God did keep us safe that night, though it was scary. However, I know that sometimes, the tornadoes do come. The trees do fall.  Sometimes the storms in life pummel roofs, sometimes they tear at our hearts, and sometimes they do violence to our bodies. They are painful, heart-wrenching, and even devastating. Sometimes we feel pinned down. We can't move and even if we could, we aren't sure where we would go or what we would do.

We feel powerless, but God is at work.

...even on that treatment table. It is uncomfortable and nerve-wracking, and painful, but it has also been a humbling and awesome experience to feel God work when I can't move.  I don't know for sure what God is doing, but He is at work in me and around me and maybe even through me. I am convinced that when this is over, I won't be in the same place I was in the beginning.

Still, it is no fun.  And I can still think of others who might be more deserving of this affliction. But I am beginning to experience God in a new way.  When I am stuck, I am absolutely convinced that God at work, preparing a table of blessings, holding me close, and reminding me not to be afraid of tomatoes.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More Being.

Underneath His Wings

(This photo has been circulating on Facebook and I cannot find a reference...however,

it is an amazing picture.  Thank you for sharing!)

"He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge..." (Psalm 91:4)

It's been a while since I have posted.  A little over three months.

However, this hiatus all began about sixteen months ago.  What started out as a severe sore throat and ear pain has progressed to a forty-pound weight loss and chronic fatigue.  I have seen five doctors, a chiropractor, a natural healer, and a spiritual healer.  I have been prayed on, over, and anointed.  And, about six months ago, my weight loss leveled out. Praise the Lord! He covered me with His pinions.  With the exception of the severe ear and throat pain, I was able to maintain my daily routine.

It was a lot of work.  My wife and I have always tried to eat good, healthy food, but we had taken it to an extreme in the last six months. I ate no sugar, no soy (soy is in everything!), I cut out dairy, wheat, and even meat-based protein.  We began to juice.  We juiced beets, and celery, and carrots, lemons, and even kale.  Our three boys weren't terribly enthusiastic, but they were good sports.

However, I was still waking up two and three times a night because of the pain.  And, in April, I began to lose weight again, my voice changed, and I began to have a difficult time swallowing.  We knew whatever was wrong was getting worse and we made another appointment with another physician for June 14, 2016.

That is a day my world shrank.

The doctor came highly recommended by our family's doctor. He asked me many questions, then pushed my tongue down and had me say, "Ahh."

"Oh," he said, "You have cancer." (oral-pharangeal)

My wife and I were stunned.  We couldn't believe what we were hearing.  We had been thinking food allergies. But the biopsy confirmed the diagnosis and on Wednesday, July 6, I go in for my first round of chemotherapy and radiation.  It has been devastating to us, but in the middle of it, we have seen God at work.  He has given us a peace. We have also had momentary meltdowns.  Then, in those low moments, God stuffs the mailbox with cards from friends, family, and church community.  We met with a friend who has survived this type of cancer. God has graced our table with dinners provided by parents of students from the boys' school and from the church. My parents made an 1100 mile drive to help us catch up with projects around the house and help with the kiddos while we met with oncologists and gastroenterologists and the specialists at Smoothie King.

It has been an amazing and beautiful thing to see how the church works.  It's been incredible, actually.

I find myself in a paradox of fear and peace.  I can't see the ground from this high branch.  I don't know how I am going to make it to the next one...but, somehow, I feel the prayers, and I know that under his wings, I have  found refuge.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.

The Harrowing of Hell

"The Harrowing of Hell" by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-1311)

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous,

to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit,

through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when 

God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built... (1Peter 3:18-20a)

...at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:10-11)

"He descended into hell." (The Lord's Prayer)

Holy Saturday. We don't talk about it much.  We are reminded of the cost of our salvation on Good Friday and then the actualization of our salvation on Easter Sunday. We skip over Saturday because we don't like to dwell on the dead body of Jesus lying in the tomb.

But Jesus wasn't dead. Not totally...

Crucified in the body but alive in the Spirit, Jesus went to Hades where he preached to the prisoners who had long ago died during the deluge.  

It makes us uncomfortable.

Because if Jesus was made known to those who did not have a chance to know him in their lifetime on earth, those that even "disobeyed" God, than there is the suggestion that those who die without a saving knowledge of Christ today will still have a chance to meet him face to face and accept Christ as Lord and Savior when they die. 

Perish the thought.

Because if the Lord really "descended into Hell" and if 'every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth," then our belief in Christ has to mean more than just life with Him after we die. If Jesus is available to the living and the dead, then those of us who are living can no longer think of salvation as just a divine insurance policy, redeemable upon death.  

At least, not according to Scripture.

The harrowing of hell means that no one is really beyond the love of God. And if this is true, than Christianity limited to a post-mortem, empty-tomb, reward is not enough. There has to be some merit to knowing the Lord before death. 

Of course there is. 

The veil has been torn between us and the holy. We have access to the Creator...the wonder of this world and the promise of the world to come. Our faith has one foot planted in the sealed tomb of Saturday and the other planted in the empty tomb of Sunday. We are Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday people.  We have life with God today and life with God for ever and we can never fall out of the reach of our Savior who will storm the gates of Hell for all who would follow Him.

Church Stopping. Less Doing, More Being.

Sleep on It

Nearly done with the tree house!

(Elijah) lay down and slept under a broom tree; and behold, and angel touched him, and said 

to him, "Arise and eat." (1 Kings 19:5)

When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you. (Proverbs 6:22-23)

Have you ever noticed that the solution to a problem, or the answer to a major decision in life, seems more clear after you lie down?  We shouldn't be surprised. Neuroscientists  believe that the brain receives nutrients and believe that toxins are removed during sleep.  Researchers believe that the brain organizes and stores memories during sleep. And, I believe, God speaks to us as we sleep.

And, sometimes, angels come to us in the night.

When Elijah was on the run from Jezebel, he was led to a broom tree where he slept for two days before a forty-day journey to Mt. Horeb.  Angels came.  And it was God himself that spoke to young Samuel while he slept.   Jacob saw the ladder to heaven while he slept and Joseph dreamed dreams.  God appeared to Solomon in the dream where the king asked for wisdom.

Because wisdom, sometimes, comes in the night.

Over the last three months, working on the boys' tree house, I have often come up against various problems; Where should we build the tree house? How tall should the tree house be? How can the roof be sealed around the tree branch growing through the center? How are the kids going to get into the tree house when I remove the ladder?  How far apart should the floor joists be? Sometimes I can just call my friend Steve who has a lot of wisdom about tree house construction (and real house construction!). Sometimes, I don't even know how to ask Steve. Then, I just sleep on it.

After all, God speaks in the night.

I know, it is just a tree house, but it is also a backyard adventure, a secret hideout, a meeting place, and a place for boys to get off the ground and dream.  However, I am convinced that the solution to every problem that I have been faced with, not just with the tree house but in life...if I sleep on it...has become much clearer and often less scary.

And I believe that this is one of the main promises of Sabbath. We set down the hammer and nails and rest and allow God to speak to us, not just of floor joists, but of parental decisions and career moves, and relationships. God speaks to us, pragmatically, when we sleep, but also to that deep part of our minds connected to our hearts; that place where dreams live and we are reminded who we were created to be. 

Neuroscientists and researches talk about nocturnal brain activity in the form of nutrients and toxins and memories.  The faithful know that it is God that speaks in the night.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.

Road Trip: by Larry Snook

(The author hard at work on a tree house for the grandkids.)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

Just before retiring, Geoff, Burl, and I took an awesome road trip to LaGrande, Oregon where I met with a member or the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System and got signed up for my Oregon retirement. But, to get to LaGrande, we took a fun route.

We had decided to go to the Oregon Coast and see my mother and Geoff's grandmother. We decided to leave the main highway when we left Ontario and cut across country through the Owyhee and Steens Mountain area. It was scenic and wild and we were running out of daylight when we approached the National Antelope Refuge in south central Oregon. We pulled off on a side road and drove out through a sagebrush-covered landscape and decided to pitch our tent along the two-track road. Geoff and Burl took a walk down to a pond in the draw below and Burl had the time of his life harassing the Avocets who lived there. After dinner we walked down the road as the sun was just setting and seemed to be sitting right on top of the tall sage. It was an awesome and beautiful sight. Then things changed. The setting sun seemed to trigger the howling instincts of coyotes and they began howling from all directions. Burl wanted to be carried back to camp. When we bedded down in our small tent, we had a visitor for the night. Burl crowded in between the two of us and did not give up his spot until daylight.

The next day we traveled on than, shortly after getting back on the refuge road, we saw a sign which read, "No camping allowed on the refuge". We traveled on to the refuge headquarters and took a long soak in the hot spring pools. Then on to Grants Pass, Oregon and took a beautiful back road over the coast range, down the Rogue River, and on to Bandon to see mother.

After our visit there we were on to Eastern Oregon and LaGrande for my meeting. After the meeting, we traveled through Wallowa County and my old stomping grounds and over to Lewiston, Idaho, We camped on the Lochsa River that night. Then, on over Lolo  Pass the next day and we made it to Butte, Montana for lunch. We toured the big copper mine and Geoff insisted on taking me to the famous Butte landmark, Pork Chop John's, to have their famous park chop sandwich! 

(What a fun trip, Dad! Thanks for the reminder.  It's about time we do it again. I love you, Geoff)

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.

Imitate

(Mom, Dad, and Gabby.)

“Follow Me.” (John 1:43)

   “We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are…” (Hebrews 4:15)

When Jesus came into the earth, it changed the Jesus. Jesus has always been and will always remain God, 

our great High Priest, but, in His experience as a human being, Jesus was forever changed.

            When my parents' dog, Gabby was four years old, she was out on a "walk" with my mom and dad and she was running fast, full blast, through a field chasing something. She was a great hunter. Athletic, and had a never-give-up attitude.  What she didn't see, and what my parent's didn't see in the tall grass, was a left-over irrigation pipe. The pipe had an opening about the size of Gabby's head.  She ran directly into the opening of that pipe.  She was initially dazed. Then, she staggered away from the pipe, collapsed, and lost all

movement in her legs. Gabby was  paralyzed. 

My parents rushed her to a veterinary clinic eight hours away  where they had the capability of doing an 

MRI. The doctors discovered that Gabby had ruptured a disk in her neck and tore a hole in the sheath

around her spinal cord.  The doctors said that there was nothing that they could do. They

couldn’t operate. They just had to wait and see if the sheath would heal. My parents brought Gabby
home after a couple of days with explicit instructions to handle her very gently so there wouldn't be 
 any further damage.  

Gabby had a friend in the neighborhood, Duke.  He was about the same age and about the same

personality as Gabby, if not more energetic.  Every day Duke would come over and they would wrestle.
For about an hour, they would play together. They would wrestle and run and jump.  And on the day that 
Gabby came home from the hospital. he barked enthusiastically for Gabby.  Gabby, without lifting her head, barked weakly to let him know that she was on the porch, lying down.  My parents were worried because Duke and Gabby played rough and they knew that Gabby wasn’t supposed to move or be moved.
They didn't want Duke to paw at her or even to nudge her. However, they didn't interfere thinking that 
Gabby’s spirits might be lifted in seeing her good friend. 

Mom and Dad watched as Duke walked over to the porch and looked at Gabby. He didn’t touch her. 
He didn’t paw her. He didn’t nudge her or even touch her.  He just lay down with her, eye-to-eye, 
nose-to-nose. For an hour, every day, for several weeks Duke came and spent time with Gabby
until she could run and play again. Duke was different.

So are we.  When we imitate Jesus, when we get nose-to-nose with those Gabby’s 
in our lives we know that it will cost us something…and there is no guarantee that they will be changed. 
We may even experience loss; financial, temporal, and emotional, but we will be changed. And there will be joy and we will keep coming back, day after day after day because that is what love is.  And that is what Love does.
Amen.

Church stopping. Less doing. More being.

Quaresma

(Charleton Hesston in the Ten Commandments. Photo courtesy of Paramount pictures.)

Ballad of the Goodly Fere

            By Ezra Pound

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all

For the priests and the gallows tree?

Aye lover he was of brawny men,

O'ships and the open sea.

When they came wi' a host to take Our Man

His smile was good to see,

"First let these go!" quo' our Goodly Fere,

"Or I'll see ye damned," says he.

Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears

And the scorn of his laugh rang free,

"Why took ye not me when I walked about

Alone in the town?" says he.

Oh we drunk his "hale" in the good red wine

When we last made company,

No capon priest was the Goodly Fere

But a man o'men was he.

I ha' seen him drive a hundred men

Wi' a bundle o' cords swung free,

That they took the high and holy house

For their pawn and treasury

I ha' seen him cow a thousand men

On the hills o' Galilee,

They wined as he walked out calm between,

Wi' his eyes like the grey o' the sea,

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging

With the winds unleashed and free,

Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret

Wi' twey words spoke' suddenly.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,

A mate of the wind and sea,

If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere

They are fools eternally.

John Eldridge in his book, “Wild at Heart,” writes: “Christ is no passive "capon priest ... no pale-faced altar boy with his hair parted in the middle, speaking softly, avoiding confrontation, who at last gets himself killed because he has no way out. He works with wood, commands the loyalty of dockworkers. He is the Lord of hosts, the captain of angel armies. And when Christ returns, he will be at the head of a dreadful company, mounted on a white horse, with a double-edged sword, his robe dipped in blood. Now that sounds a lot more like William Wallace than it does Mother Teresa. No question about it, there is something fierce in the heart of God."

Maybe we have forgotten that we have a rigorous faith.  Maybe we have forgotten that Christianity is not for the faint-hearted.  Maybe we have forgotten that Christianity is not, as Karl Marx once said, “an opiate for the masses.” While it is true, as CS Lewis has said, that in dying Christ did for us what we cannot do for ourselves, it is also true that we are expected to follow Him; and these forty days of Lent leading up to the Christian Passover is an opportunity for us to take our place with Moses and Elijah and Jonah and Jesus Himself.  There is nothing magical about the number forty, but there is something Biblically significant about 40; the Latin word is “quaresma.” When we think of “forty” we are reminded of all the old stories; The Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years.  Moses was on the mountain for forty days.  Jesus was in the tomb for forty hours.  So we give up chocolate and read the Psalms we do something; and whatever it is we do for forty days, in that time we rescue Jesus.  We rescue Jesus from being a gentle-hearted savior; we rescue God from being a sentimental weakling who will allow us to live without rebuke; we rescue our faith from being an opiate for the masses and we remember that we worship a sovereign and holy God and our faith is not one lived on couches by potatoes, but one lived by adventurers to undiscovered countries, and prophets to unrepentant people, and soldiers redeeming captive lands.  Our faith is one that will challenge us as well as comfort us; break us to fix us, and try us but ultimately bring us face to face with the One who has gone before us.  What will you do and where will you go in the next forty days for our Lord.  Blessings to you, Godspeed, and safety on Your journey. Amen.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.