by jphilo | Apr 30, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
Because May 1 falls on Top Ten Tuesday, please enjoy the upcoming month’s devotion from our church newsletter a day early. It’ll give you a little more time to deliver May baskets tomorrow!
…His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness,
through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
2 Peter 1:3
A couple weeks ago, the Southwest Airlines flight goddess (that’s what she called herself) jazzed up the safety instruction shpiel by announcing our trip would be both non-smoking and no whining. I admired her bravery since we passengers had done a considerable amount of whining – about missed connections, lousy airport food, and changed plans – during the six hour flight delay before take off. But in the end, we arrived at our destinations…with $200 complimentary ticket vouchers in our pockets.
To be honest, the no whining announcement made by the flight goddess put my nose a bit out of joint. Because it reminded me of what God has been showing me recently. I whine a lot.
Each time God points out this tendency, I come up with reasons excuses to justify it. “Writing books for parents of kids with special needs doesn’t generate much money. I’ve been an obedient, trustful servant – blogging for special needs families for free for years, giving away books and advice often, donating my time to write the kids’ Sunday school skits, writing this column. Some day, God, the cost of my obedience could end my ministry if the funds run out. So my whining is justified,” I inform Him.
“No,” God says. “The Christian life is a no whining life.”
“But I deserve a reward for being an obedient, trustful servant,” I argue. “After all, kids get cookies when they obey. As an adult, I deserve a successful ministry for being obedient. Immediately. Without delay.”
“In that case, you’ll be happy to know,” God tells me through 2 Peter 1:3, “you already have your reward.”
“Really?” I read further. “Hmm. It’s not a cookie or a successful ministry, is it?”
“No. It’s better,” God answers in 2 Peter 1. “Your reward is knowing me and freely partaking in my divine nature. Now and forever. Amen.”
“I’m guessing your divine nature doesn’t include whining?” I ask.
“Do you see it on the list in verses 5-7?”
“Um, no. So whining’s out?”
“Whining’s out. But courage, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love are in. And they’re in you because my Son, your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ abundantly supplies everything you need.”
“So I don’t need to whine?”
“You don’t need to whine because you know me, and I am in you. I promise you will get to your final destination safe and sound. With eternity in your pocket.”
I smile and breathe deeply. No need for a sky goddess with a jazzed up shpiel to make me feel safe. God’s got me, and my eternity wrapped up in his promises. Who needs to whine when she’s got assurance like that?
by jphilo | Apr 2, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
For who has despised the day of small things?
Zechariah 4:10a
As a young child, I day dreamed about becoming big things kind of girl. I had big plans for a career as either a television star or a princess. Therefore, I focused on the big things like dramatic poses and tiaras rather than little things like learning to tie my shoes. Or telling time. Or making letters like b and d point the right way. Or memorizing math facts. Eventually, my parents and teachers made life miserable until I learned convinced me to pay attention to little things.
But I remained a big things kind of girl at heart for many years. Even after I became a Christian and started reading the Bible. I preferred the big, showy stories – Moses parting the Red Sea, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Jesus feeding the five thousand – to hidden, quiet events like Moses in the bull rushes, Ruth gleaning grain, or the long drudgery of rebuilding the temple in Zechariah’s day.
I remained a sucker for bright lights and big things until two babies entered our home six years apart. When they arrived, life became a river of small things. Tiny fingernails to clip. Itty bitty diapers. Minuscule onesies. Little bodies asleep in my arms. The first tiny hints of toothless smiles.
Slowly, my attitude about material things began to change. The arrivals of these little people made the sacrifices – buying a minivan, sleepless nights, spit up stains ruining expensive clothes, fun money diverted for college savings accounts and day care providers – worthwhile.
My spiritual attitude began changing, too. When I bathed our babies, I imagined Mary bathing her son. Wiping his nose. Drying his tears. Hugging his small body, holding him close, caring for her little boy. I imagined Jesus, God’s Son, beginning his life as the smallest and most inconsequential of small things. A baby born in a barn. Yet that baby grew up to do big things. He lived a perfect life. He healed hurting people. He fed the five thousand. He died on a cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. All to reconcile small and petty sinners to the eternal, omnipotent God.
My children are grown. I haven’t bathed a baby in years. But as the shadow of the cross grows large in the days before Easter, my thoughts turn to the babe in the manger. The hope of a fallen world contained in a small package. The baby who guides sinners to the foot of the cross.
My God works through small things. He uses the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. He uses small things like us to demonstrate our need for the great gift of His Son. At the foot of the cross, kneeling before the manger, I am finally content with small things.
by jphilo | Mar 2, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
Wretched man that I am!
Who will set me free from the body of this death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 7:24-25a
We’ve had plenty to be thankful about this winter. Not much snow. Warmer than average temperatures. Good driving conditions. With the days getting longer and spring around the corner, my heart should be positively overflowing with gratitude. But it’s not.
Instead, I do plenty of complaining. About the miserable state of our gravel road. About how every mild day brings the stink bugs, box elder bugs, and Asian soy beetles out of the walls and into our old farmhouse. About the possibility of this winter’s mild, dry conditions morphing into a blistering hot, summer drought.
Yet I rarely express dissatisfaction with my penchant for complaining, even though plenty of scriptures warn against the practice. In Numbers, complaining earns the Israelites earn an extra forty years in the wilderness. Job describes his complaints as rebellion. Two of Jesus’ best buds, Peter and James, advise new Christians to stop complaining, too.
However, scripture doesn’t just warn against complaining. It tells us what to do instead. In Leviticus the priests are commanded to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. The Psalms advise turning thanksgiving into song. Jesus gave thanks as he broke the bread that signified his imminent crucifixion. Over and over Paul tells believers to give thanks in everything, rejoice always, rejoice in everything.
Rejoice.
Rejoice.
Rejoice.
Still, complaining remains my default response unless the Holy Spirit exposes my ingratitude for the joy killer it is. When that happens, God breaks my heart. He shows me how complaining dims His glory, and Paul’s despair become mine.
Wretched woman that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?
But Paul’s hope, spoken in his next breath, becomes mine as well.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Christ, who gave thanks in the face of death.
Christ on the cross.
Christ in the tomb.
Christ, risen from the dead.
Christ, who sits on the right hand of the Father and intercedes on my behalf.
Christ is my hope and weapon and protection as I struggle with ingratitude.
Christ, not the weather or other circumstances, is a reason to give thanks always.
Lord, may you be a reason for rejoicing in my life and in the lives of all who love you. Amen.
by jphilo | Feb 3, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim;
I box in such a way, as not beating the air;
but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly,
after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.
1 Corinthians 9:26-27
I do not like exercise. At all. Ever. It took me almost two years to learn to walk, three months to get the hang of jumping rope, an entire summer to catch onto playing jacks, and three years to ride a bike. Consequently, I can’t fathom why anyone would willingly engage in painful activities like bending and stretching.
Similarly, I never understood why anyone would consult a physical therapist until a sore knee landed me in physical therapy. Where the therapist, who must be a direct descendent of Attila the Hun, decided my weak glutes cause my gait to alter which stresses my knee and makes it sore. So week after week. she assigns new, torturous glute-strengthening exercises to make my mornings miserable.
And every morning after exercising and “feeling a burn” I lived without quite happily for 55 years, an image of Paul training forms in my mind. I picture him wrestling in prayer after God struck him blind. Defending Gentile freedom from Hebrew law during the Jerusalem Council. Attacking spiritual strongholds in city after city, taking the gospel to far countries floundering in darkness. Sparring with with Felix and King Agrippa in Caesarea.
How did he develop the spiritual muscle to engage in such spiritual sport? Perhaps it has something do with the three years he spent in Damascus after his conversion, but before beginning his missionary work. I sure would like to know what happened in Damascus. Was he under the tutelage of a spiritual therapist who revealed the apostle’s weak spots and prescribed spiritual strengthening exercises? Did Paul have to bend in ways he’d never bent before? Was he stretched to show compassion to those he once despised? Did the stretching and bending hurt? Did he ever want to quit? What motivated him to keep going, day after day, until he gained muscle and aim and purpose for the race set before him?
Still thinking about Paul, I pick up my Bible, journal, and pen. My muscles ache. My glutes burn as I ask God to reveal my lack of spiritual muscle and make me strong in him. I open the Bible and with pen in hand, start studying God’s word. Each day he stretches me in ways I’ve never stretched before. Sometimes it hurts. Most mornings I want to quit. But the passages about Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, hanging on the cross, and finally released from the tomb are the motivation needed to keep going.
With my eyes upon Christ, I press on.
by jphilo | Jan 2, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
In my book, this past month did not qualify as a Hallmark perfect Christmas. Too many friends experienced too many tragedies too close to the holidays. One friend lost her husband to a brain aneurysm. He was only two years younger than my husband. Two of her sons were preparing for college finals and the third was adjusting to a new school. Another friend faced the first anniversary of her husband’s death on Christmas Eve. Someone else received a grim prognosis concerning a disease she’s battled for years. A nine-year-old boy with the same esophageal anomaly as our son developed complications. His mom said her active, food-driven boy may soon require a feeding tube.
Tears flow when I think of the the loneliness and heartbreak of two widows, three young men without their dad to guide them to adulthood, and a woman destined to leave her family far too soon. When I think of the nine-year-old boy who may need a feeding tube for the rest of his life, I can imagine what our son’s life would have been like in similar circumstances. Then my tears give way to sobs and a profound, deep, unending grief.
In those sorrowing moments, I don’t like God very much.
I question His timing. Did you have to do it now, God?
I question His decisions. Did it have to happen to these people I love so much?
I question His compassion. Do you know how they feel?
Then I think of Mary in this year’s Christmas program. She’s waiting in the wings, holding her baby close. I close my eyes and picture God looking down on His baby, looking ahead through His Son’s life on earth to His death on the cross. I see the Father’s tears flowing into the bottle to join the tears of His Son, mixing with the tears of this past December’s new widows and orphans, of a little boy and his mother weeping while she pours bolus into a feeding tube. I see God’s tears mingled with theirs, with mine, and with yours.
I may never understand why God allowed such suffering into the lives of these people when He did. But I do know this. God understands how they feel. He has experienced their pain. And when his children cry out in the darkness, they never cry alone. God weeps, too, blessing them and us with His tears.
This past Christmas wasn’t Hallmark perfect. But, like the first Christmas, it was bathed in the Father’s tears. Not even a Hallmark perfect holiday can be better than that.
by jphilo | Dec 2, 2011 | Church Newsletter Columns
We’ve been in our new church building for a year, and many new families are attending. It’s easy for people to get lost in the crowd when that happens, so our church (like many others) encourages newcomers to join a small church group. This month’s column for the December newsletter was one attempt among many to get the message out. Maybe it will encourage you to join a group at your church, too.
Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls
for a sincere love of the brethren,
fervently love one another from the heart,
1 Peter 1:22
In my youth, I was one of those weird kids who liked Sunday School. Okay, I loved Sunday school. Really. Even though we didn’t have cool Todd the Builder skits before going to class. Even though the most up-to-date Bible translation was the Revised Standard Version. Because the Living Bible and The Message weren’t around in the Dark Ages.
One Sunday, I was positively blown away when one of the incredibly feisty, outspoken guys in our class – you know the type, and no, I didn’t have a crush on him – had the audacity to say, “I don’t like to read the Bible because it’s hard to understand. Because it uses old-fashioned words kids like us don’t get.”
I waited for a lightning bolt to come down and turn him into a crispy critter. Or for our Sunday school teacher to tell him to leave class and walk straight into the lake of fire and brimstone without passing Go or collecting $200.
Instead, our teacher said, “You’re right. The Bible can be hard for kids to understand.” From then she had us read the Bible stories and paraphrase them in our own words, verse by verse. Sometimes, she even let us act them out. Boy, oh boy, nothing kept me away from Sunday school after that!
To this day, I use that wise teacher’s technique. Not the acting part, which is hard to do alone, and Hiram’s not usually willing to be thrown into the lion’s den. But the paraphrasing part. I do that often. In fact, I did it just the other day while studying 1 Peter:22. I asked two questions to get started: What happens when we purify our soul for a sincere love of the brethren? What happens when we fervently love one another from the heart?
The paraphrase came in a flash. We get smooshed. When we purify our souls to sincerely love other believers, we learn how to smoosh. When we fervently love one another from the heart, we are smooshing.
Ten years ago, when Pastor Tim preached about smooshing, maybe he said it’s a way of obeying God’s truth. Maybe he said it’s a means for growing in holiness as the souls of believers are purified to love one another sincerely and fervently. But if he did, I don’t remember. Maybe you don’t either. Or maybe you weren’t around ten years ago when Tim ended the sermon – and this part I do remember – by urging us to go to small church and get smooshed. But you’re around now. And like every believer, your soul needs some purifying. You need practice in loving other believers from the heart.
So join a small church.
Learn how to smoosh and get smooshed.
You’ll be glad you did.
