See how they love one another

Well, our church made headlines in the local paper. We are praying the story doesn't get picked up by other news agencies - we would like for this to all go away soon.

What happened? Well, first some background: there is a group of people in our community who seem to want the church to take a more active - read that "adversarial" - role in fighting abortion in our nation. Not our local church, but 'the church' in a larger sense. They want us to do exactly what they do. We don't want to do exactly what they do, so they have done their level best to hold us hostage to their beliefs. Now let me be clear - we are a pro-life church, not only our local church, but our national denomination.

Exactly what transpired is this, boiled down: They began to picket in front of our church a few months ago. Not just our church, but many of the local churches. One church at a time, as they seem to only have a few people who will take the time to "demonstrate" on Sunday mornings. Their signs said, "Church Repent" and "4,000 abortions a day," and it has to be very confusing to people who drive by. I don't know if they have ever picketed in front of the Jewish Temple or other houses of worship - why do I mention that? Because there are houses of worship in our community which are public in their support of Planned Parenthood and in other ways make it clear - publicly - that they are pro-choice. We are not. We are pro-life. We support the local "Crisis Pregnancy Center" and we have given large gifts to the neo-natal wing at our local hospital, in hopes of keeping babies alive. We do not want to make the lives of women harder - on the contrary: we want to help any woman who finds herself facing an unplanned pregnancy. We will love you, take care of you, give you a safe and secure place to calmly sit and make tough choices and we will even give you a place to live while you await this new life coming into the world. We want to save lives.

So this group showed up with posters - eight feet tall - of aborted babies. In full, gory color. And several of our young children were exposed to this gore as their moms and dads drove them in to Sunday School. There was no way to warn our parents: they simply drove up to church as usual, and their kids got an eye-full. And many of them reacted as you would expect: asking "what is that!!??" with tears, many with night terror or at least trouble sleeping that night and the next.

One parent went too far and engaged the protesters in a water fight. And THAT is what made the paper. The reporter did not quote any statistics about how many babies die each year, or how often babies are aborted after the point at which they are viable, living individuals. Nothing was mentioned of the ability of a teenager to have the school nurse take her to a clinic, get an abortion and go back to school as if nothing had happened, without contacting parents - nope. The father, angered at a rude exposure of his kids to violent bloody images in front of his place of worship was the focal point.

Well, what he did was not very level-headed. He may pay a huge price for his actions, but I would truly love to know the answer to this question:

If the protesters are truly interested in saving the lives of unborn babies, how many do they think they will save by turning a pro-life church into the butt of jokes, the object of scorn, the focus of hate and revile among our neighbors? Of COURSE there have been calls and letters from our neighbors asking "what were you thinking?"

We had to explain that those ugly posters were most definitely NOT being held up by members of our church, nor were any of the events that transpired part of some plan by the leadership of our church - it was an outside agency which fully wants to pressure us into their agenda. But it is too little too late: so many local people will get up and read the headlines this morning and ask:

Is this how Christians behave?

Another lesson from the dog

I had a silly thought this morning - it involves the honest confession that my dog does in fact shed. I had told my wife that our dog does NOT shed - this was information given to me by two reliable people when we got the animal. It was noted with amazement, "And she just doesn't shed!"

Well, I got her bed out and cleaned it the other day, and there is enough brown hair all around it to make another dog. If I could spin it and weave it, I could have a nice blanket. And it was not just around the bed - as I began to widen my cleaning efforts to the rest of the family room, I found clumps of hair had begun to coalesce in corners, cracks and under furniture all over the room. And later that same day I reached down and grabbed at something that caught my eye on the floor of my truck. You guessed it - another tenth-of-a-dog's-worth of hair. Brown hair. I will need to go buy some back-up bags for the vacuum before I start cleaning out the truck - cleaning the doggy bed and the family room stuffed the last one we had on the shelf.

So - OK - my dog sheds. So what is the silly thought that this brought to my little Chas brain?

I have a desire to leave as much of a mark on my world as my stupid dog leaves. In her case it's just fuzzy wads of hair. But nobody could dig around my world and not know that there had been a brown animal living there. Nobody. So - after I pass from this world, will people look around and have a tough time knowing that I ever lived here? No, I don't want piles of Chas hair, or other cast-offs, to be the thing that reminds them I passed this way. I want something more Godly, more Christ-honoring.

I want to be so full of the goodness of God that I leave a trail of it - at least as much as the trail of brown hair my dog leaves in her wake. Is that asking a lot? We'll see.

A lot of loss

"I need to put it in gear. "

That saying is so very appropriate to me today. It is Monday, my 'day off,' and I would really love to just putter around the house: mow the lawns, do some weeding, maybe even buy a few new plants to put in the ground to make the place look a little better. But I have a bunch of broken cars and trucks to get to work on - so I'll be "getting it in gear," any minute now. Soon. Real soon.

But first a moment of private grief. Within the past two days I have lost two friends. One was a dear old saint - she would not mind me calling her dear, nor 'old.' Mabel was a wonderful lady who served God to the very last breath He afforded her, and it is my firm conviction that Mabel is in the presence of her savior right now, rejoicing.

Another friend, this one a young man with children scattered in age and geographically, took his own life. The questions we all ask ourselves at this point came immediately to mind: could I have been a better friend? Why didn't he talk to us, to me, about hitting a level of pain that would push him to do this? He had great loss in his recent history, but none of us loved him less nor would have hesitated to do whatever we could have to keep him moving on. But he is gone.

And then this morning, I opened an email and learned that my favorite aunt passed away. She actually passed a couple of months ago but my cousin has been busy with the details and apologetically just notified people now. Having lost both of my parents within the past few years, I completely understand the whirlwind of details, emotions and thoughts that can overtake a person. In fact, Pauline was the last of the siblings. In the past five years - give or take - my Mom's brother, twin sister, sister-in-law and both brothers-in-law have passed. It is the end of an era in our family - and I hope we can get all the cousins together once more before the next chapter begins to close.

But that's a lot of loss to absorb. I can't tell you how glad I am that I have family, friends, and a loving heavenly Father who are all willing to share in the pain. A real support team. Awesome.

And a set of wrenches, waiting for me to get to them. That will have to be therapeutic, and I think it might actually be.

OK - I pray for the friends and families of the loved ones we have lost. Lord Jesus: It is a sad time, it is a sweet time, it is all a part of life. Thanks for walking along with us - thanks that death is not something you don't understand. You even grieved the loss of friends while you were here on earth, and I know you grieve for the lost all the time. It is a comfort to know that you understand. Thank-you Lord. Amen.

God bless you - each and every one.

Purity

God does not abide in an unclean vessel.

I don't know what I could possibly add to that.

There came a Man...

Luke 1
The Birth of John the Baptist

57When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. 58Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

59On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, 60but his mother spoke up and said, "No! He is to be called John."

61They said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who has that name."

62Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. 63He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone's astonishment he wrote, "His name is John." 64Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. 66Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, "What then is this child going to be?" For the Lord's hand was with him.

I have thought often of John. Life for John was so very different than most - he lived in the wild, and ate wild things. God called him to be an outsider, and God provided a life and a living for him as he answered that call. Can you imagine being called to live outside and apart from all of society, to be utterly dependent upon God alone, and to then be used to prepare the way for Jesus Christ?

Well - we don't have to imagine. We are called to do that. Perhaps we will not eat locust and wild honey, or wear animal skins, but we ARE called to make the way clear for Jesus. And that, by it's very nature, will assure us a place as an outsider to most of society today. Are we answering God's call?

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their coutnry, and PRAY.

I have been following three very different 'news' items lately - two young women who are sailing single-handed around the world, and the health care bill.

I'm not going to get into the health care bill at this time, but suffice to say that I am not encouraged by recent votes and activity.

However, I was challenge by a simple thought which occurred to me this morning as I glanced at the blogs and updates from my two mariners: they simply updated the people who are following them about how fast they are currently sailing, where they are, and things like that. The very same things that they have been doing for weeks, months. They even offer encouragement to one another, even though to a certain extent they are competing to be the first to do what they are doing.

It was an encouragement to me. Their exploits seem to be larger than life to me - what an amazing thing for a young woman to take on - but the ocean is a tough mistress, and if they take their eyes off of what they are doing right now they could end up in serious trouble. At the very least, they could go off course and have many miles to make up getting back on course.

It seemed a fitting metaphor for us as a country: we need to keep our eyes focused on the true source of everything we need in our lives, and that most certainly is NOT the government. It is God.

So as our young friends give us this simple example of maintaining focus, I would call us as believers to maintain focus: keep praying for our country, for the unborn, for our leaders, and keep our eyes on God. HE is the author and perfecter of our faith, and the source of everything we need to live.

Keep praying.

Paid in Full

I heard a preacher just the other day say something which I believe to be wrong. Not Biblical. It is a generalization, so there is a way of looking at it which could be loosely construed as 'true,' but look close and you will find that it is not only error, but it can be a sign that the person saying it does not fully understand the concept of Jesus' work, done for us on the cross.

The phrase goes something like this:

"I have been justified by grace - that means it's 'just as if I'd' never sinned."

But the problem I have with that is simple: when Jesus died on the cross for you and I, it was to pay the price for our sins. That's quite different. In case I'm not making sense to you, let me put it in the form of a story:

Let's imagine that you walk into a restaurant and order a big meal, but just then you discover that you don't have your wallet. You apologize to the waiter, ask them to cancel your order and get up to leave. No food came to the table, things like this happen, everyone is gracious, you leave, the table is quickly offered to the next patron, and nobody is really out anything other than the fact that you didn't get a meal. That would be "just as if it never happened." But...

What if you walked in, sat down, ordered everything on the menu, ate all you could to the point of pain, ordered lots of expensive specialty drinks, dessert, and even some food to-go. Then you got up and announced that you didn't have a dime with you. You would have committed a crime, but set that aside for a moment - imagine that some other patron observed the scene. Somebody with whom you are not in any way acquainted. That stranger steps up to the manager, and quietly hands them the exact, precise amount that you owed the restaurant. Even a perfectly calculated tip for the waiters. To the penny.

Now - is it 'as if it never happened?" It happened! People saw it happen, you know it happened, you did wrong and tried to get away with it. No - it is as if it happened but the price was fully paid. Perfectly paid. Completely paid.

THAT is what Jesus did on the cross - he paid for my sin and yours. He did not somehow turn back time and erase the sin. He did pay for it - in full - perfectly. It is as if the debt was covered, handled, paid in full.

Big difference. Makes me want to be sure that I don't create more debt for my precious savior. How about you?