A Large Tree

Their boundary went from Heleph and the large tree in Zaanannim, passing Adami Nekeb and Jabneel to Lakkum and ending at the Jordan.

It’s right there in assigning the inheritance--when the sixth lot came our for Naphtali in Joshua 19:33, it lists a large tree in Zaanannim as one of the boundary markers for their inheritance.  The tree was so large, so distinct, that it could be used as a marker. 

Sometimes God uses people we know like that.  They become larger than life, markers for future generations, showing people where the boundary is, where God’s assignment is placed so people won’t forget.  Some people show us where God’s place for life is found.

Larry and Sandy Miller were like that.  I say “Larry and Sandy” because you can’t conceive of them as two, but as one.  They were a “they” in a world of “ me’s”.  What happened to make them a "they"—these two people from painful and difficult pasts, who met singing Karaoke?

Larry and Sandy entered my life in the December of 1999.  A friend of theirs who attended our church asked me if I could do their wedding.  They wanted to get married on the last day of the millennium.  So, time was of the essence.  Normally I wouldn’t do a wedding without the required pre-marriage sessions to help them get started right, but Larry and Sandy assured me that they would follow up with ongoing classes with Darrell and Betty O’Kelly.  Then I learned about their background.  They were part of their friend’s Amway business, and there you learn a big part of God’s preparation for Larry and Sandy’s ministry:  They had learned how to apply the “3 foot rule”, and transferred what they learned from business to the King’s Business.  The “3 foot rule”?  If you get within 3 feet of me you are going to hear about what is important in my life.  How they practiced the 3 foot rule is why you all knew them so well.

But I digress—back to how they began meeting with Darrell and Betty.  Darrell and Betty were modeling ministry for them, how to be around people and pour into their lives.  And, then Darrell and Betty laid down the mantle, passing it on to Larry and Sandy.  The Millers felt they weren’t “ready”, but took on the role of being spiritual parents to many people and marriages in and outside our church.  When the church melted Marriage Ministry into community home group ministry, they led a home group. Larry, with Sandy supporting him, became enthusiastic about a men’s ministry called “Chosen to Lead” (CTL for short).  Most of you knew him for his enthusiasm for men getting their lives straight for God, making God’s Word the controlling and most influential part of life, and doing things God’s way.  They continued to pour their lives into couples and be generous to others.

Larry and Sandy were faithful, available, and trainable.  At one point they made time every other week for 6 months to review materials with me and to grow in their understanding of new directions for our church ministry.  It was a mark of their faithfulness that they learned “new tricks” and willingly adapted themselves to a new environment. 

My last conversation with Larry and Sandy was a couple Sundays before the slide.  They recounted to me how God had led them in helping move someone to another city in Washington.  I was struck by Larry’s bold directness and generosity.  He was willing to speak directly into a life at the point of what they needed, but not what they wanted, at great personal financial cost.

And now they have entered heaven before we were ready to let them go.  But then, God didn’t ask our permission.  He just made it clear that though the mountains are removed, His love is faithful still (Isaiah 54:10), and that He wants us to “let go of loved ones”, to be willing for God to rearrange our lives His way, to seek to be that kind of person so large that we are a boundary marker for where life really is, like Larry and Sandy have been for us all.

On Seeing Alike

Did you ever wonder if people are seeing things the same way you see them?  I mean, when I see a daffodil, I recognize it as a daffodil.  You see a daffodil, and you recognize it as a yellow, spring flower, too.  Only, do we see the same thing in the same way, or when I see round, yellow and points, you see square but know it as round, red, but call it yellow, or blunt ends but know it as pointed.  Do we see the same thing the same way, even though we know it as the same thing?  And, is the way you see the right way, or is the way I see the right way?

It gets even more complicated in daily conversation.  How do we know that what I mean by money is what you think of when you think of “money”?  We could be talking about different things altogether, like saving and spending are different, but both are about money.  We wind up thinking we are on the same page, when actually we are in entirely different chapters.

           

Think about “normal”.  “Normal” to me is conflict, criticism, and disrespect.  While I try not to engage in them, I tolerate them as normal, and put up with them, sometimes not even seeing conflict and disrespect for what they are.  However, conflict, criticism, and disrespect may be abnormal to another person.  They won’t tolerate it because it is not “normal.”  Abuse is like that—what’s abusive for our culture may be perfectly acceptable (and “normal”) in another culture (a few years ago a friend from a culture where it was normal to “discipline” the wife with a beating, “disciplined” his American wife.  The marriage dissolved because the wife, being from an American culture, didn’t tolerate it).

           

This is why when we read the Bible, we must recognize we read it through the lens of our culture.  Consequently, we skim over what was remarkable and a huge departure for the original readers.  In so doing, we miss what it really means because it is not as much a departure from our culture.  Take what Paul and Peter said about how a husband treats a wife in Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3.  Some say they were out of step with modern life because they say a woman follows.  We don’t see how out of step it was to insist that if the Holy Spirit ran your life, you would treat the wife as valuable (1 Peter 3:7) and worthy of serving, sacrificing, and even dying for (Ephesians 5:25ff).  Our culture sees all individuals as valuable and worthy of respect.  We see that as normal, but the Bible sees it as remarkable and abnormal—Spirit driven.  When seen against the backdrop of New Testament culture, what the Bible says about women is revolutionary. 

Of course, when you’ve been married long enough for the honeymoon to be over, and you start taking your spouse (husband or wife) for granted, these New Testament commands and perspectives might be just as revolutionary.  Maybe these commands are really daffodils—it doesn’t matter what we actually see.  What matters is that it is a

miracle of God!

On Missing Miracles

I’m glad I’m not writing the story.  If I were, I would miss all the major miracles and write in the minor ones.  This is because God’s timing is not my timing—I would look for the lesser miracle every time because the greater miracle brings pain.  As I read the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11), I realized that my prayers would have been for Jesus to get there just in time to heal him.  In my zeal for Lazarus, Mary, and Martha to miss the pain of Lazarus dying and the sister’s grief, I would have missed the greater miracle and the lesson about Jesus being the resurrection and the life.  My desire to help them avoid pain and struggle would have resulted in a minor miracle, not a major one that would turn the world on its ear.

It is the same with the Christmas story.  If I had been writing the story, I would have had Jesus born in a comfortable castle, or at least in the inn.  Most preachers yield to the temptation to condemn the inn keeper, not realizing that he just might have recognized that a first century inn, with a bunch of smelly men sleeping in one large room just might not have been the safest, most secure location for what must have looked like an impending birth.  Perhaps he thought the smells of a stable would have been preferable to the smells of an inn.  Or, perhaps there just wasn’t any room, and he sent them to the only place he had left—the stable.  Whatever, if I had been writing the story, I would have written in people of power coming from Jerusalem to see the baby, not mundane, shepherds who most likely smelled of the outdoors, let alone sheep.

If I had been writing the story, I would have missed the miracle of Christmas: The God of the universe entering earth in a smelly stable. 

How often I have my preferred story line for my life—called prayer.  I declare to God what I want, as if He were a short-order cook.  Only, my plan for my life, my story line, is not God’s story line.  My story line, my prayers, would lead away from pain, struggle, and problems.  God’s story line leads through the pain, struggle, and problems, because that is precisely where He will most clearly reveal Himself…  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; ^{PS 23:4}  

Yes, Jesus embraced the cross after gracing a stable with His personal presence.  His Story writes in a greater, though more painful, miracle.  As much as I don’t like it, God’s story for me is different than mine. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. ^{PHP 3:7:-11}

 I’m glad He is writing the story rather than me, because I’d miss Christmas in my life if I was the writer! As much as it might hurt, I want my prayers to be more for His will than my freedom from pain. 

The Fallacy of Peace

One of our greatest fallacies is measuring God's will by our "blessings".


We may be able to measure our health with a thermometer, but it is a fallacy to measure our spiritual temperature and whether or not we are walking in God's will by how blessed we are. Our ultimate success and security aren’t dependent on our surroundings or even our blessings, but on our obedience and conformity to God’s Word. We may find success and security absent when we leave out God’s Word and God’s Ways. We may find success present when God allows success so He can eventually reveal our self-dependence by removing our security in things or self-effort. Security, success, prosperity can be related to the flesh just as much as to the Spirit.

In Jeremiah 44, Israel in Egypt slid back into worshipping the Queen of Heaven because they used material prosperity to measure their spiritual lives. They were living in Egypt, out of God’s will, following their own ideas on how to find safety and security, thinking it was to be found in Egypt rather than in obeying God and consequently staying subservient to Babylon. The very thing they feared most, subjection to the Babylonians, would chase them down in Egypt. They were not ultimately safe and secure in their devotion to the Queen of Heaven even though they could measure their immediate success and safety by worshiping her.

We can’t find ultimate success and safety by living for peaceful feelings. I realize that this runs counter to a basic dictum of how to discern God's will. We are told to measure how aligned we are to God's will by how much peace we feel. While that may work sometimes, too often the peaceful path is cowardly, the path of least resistance. For nearly 20 years of my life I tried to live by peace. Avoiding conflict and ruffling feathers, I tried to keep the church I served happy and liking me as their pastor. I watched other friends who were pastors continually hit problems head-on, creating conflict, and saw that they bounced from church to church. So, I tried to avoid conflict, and felt that God's path was always measured by peace. After all, doesn't the Bible say in James 3:17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving.... 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

However, in avoiding conflict, by using peace and a path free of conflict as my measure of whether I was walking in God's will, led me to frustration when the people around me didn't grow. By equating peace with God's will, I ignored that Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to choose between saying what God said and saying what the people wanted to hear. Jesus, the great Peacemaker, was continually in conflict with those whose hearts had become hard. Few of the Bible’s leaders were able to measure God's will for them by how much peace and material prosperity it brought into their lives. After all, Jesus, the perfect Son of God, did not have a place to “lay his head”—materially, He would not have been declared a material success, and certainly, none of His disciples found safety from death. Rather, by following Jesus, they found eternal security, but not temporal security.

God's will, which runs counter to man's best ideas (Isaiah 55), often brings conflict. We can almost measure God's path for us by asking, "Which path is the hardest, most difficult, and will require God to show up the most or I'm toast?" Certainly, we can learn from Israel in Egypt: choosing peace and prosperity by following our own path or the best path of human reason ("We'll be safe in Egypt") just might lead us straight into what we fear the most--missing out on God's best for us because we have chosen to use our thinking rather than His.

No, the best measure of whether we are walking in God's will is to first measure our behavior choices by the written Word of God and then choose what the Bible says to do. That's the path to find His will. Sometimes heading straight into the jaws of immediate conflict is God’s way to ultimate peace.

Snowball

Snowball was my pet goat. She was white, perhaps even an albino with pink eyes, or maybe that was just what a goat was. Snowball is difficult to remember, but never forgotten. Snowball entered my life in the summer of my 10th or 11th year. She was my pet, not a family pet. And I took care of her. Snowball was a goat--she couldn't live in the house. The barn had collapsed under the snow--so there was no barn. Goats didn't belong in the hen house or the woodshed. So, Snowball slept and stayed in an abandoned car near where the old barn had stood, near a blackberry patch, which provided some snacks for Snowball, who, being a goat, liked bushes and leaves and didn't mind the briers.

Life was good, and Snowball grew. However, that winter there was a cold snap. Snow was on the ground. I went out to check on Snowball, and found her....dead. She was stiff, frozen in the cold.

I was grief-stricken, and felt very guilty, like I hadn't taken appropriate care of her.

Years later I realized that when an animal dies, it naturally gets stiff from rigor mortis, not necessarily from the cold or my negligence. So, I felt a little less guilty.

If my parents had thought the old car wasn't appropriate shelter, they would have told me about it; That they didn't meant that they were as blindsided by Snowball's death as I was. This was another reason to feel less guilty. However, none of those things were on my ten year old mind. I just felt I was responsible.

We buried Snowball on the edge of the field past the hen house. I erected a cross on the top of Snowball's grave

Let me summarize some of the impact that Snowball's death had on me and the things I learned from it.

1) I never wanted a pet after that because pets die and I didn't like the feeling.

2) I never wanted a pet again because I felt responsible for a pet, but couldn't control conditions and keep them safe.

3) Pets were about me--I didn't see that God gave them to accomplish something in me. Instead of asking "What did I learn from Snowball?" I just shut off the experience as much as possible.

4) I learn something about myself: I tend to take responsibility when it is not my responsibility. While I couldn't deny my part, I couldn't blame myself entirely for what happened. I was not alone--my parents played a part. Plus I can't control the weather.

5) Death is a part of life--accept it and go on

Faith in the Fire

"Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand." (Jeremiah 18:6 NIV)

 The Bible is very definite. God is shaping us into the image of His Son and His tools for shaping us are the circumstances that enter our lives through His hands of protection and love.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:28-9 NIV)

• Knowing that God was at work in the circumstances of his life enabled Joseph to see his brothers' treachery as an instrument to move him from his comfy existence in his father's family in Canaan to the upper reaches of the Egyptian government. Genesis 50:20  
• Knowing that God was at work in the circumstances of his life enabled David, while running from Absalom, to stay faithful to God when cursed by Shimei . 2 Samuel 16
• Knowing that God was at work in the circumstances of the coming cross enabled Jesus to continue his trip to Jerusalem (Luke 18:31)

 Confidence that God is in charge of the circumstances that enter our lives and that they are His tools to shape us into the image of His Son converts the bummers of this life into gold. This confidence that God is at work in me (Philippians 2:13) transforms my view of the vicissitudes of life into seeing them as part of God's master plan. Let's face it, when the courts don't rule in our favor, when the other party gets away with leaving us in the lurch, when we are abandoned by those closest to us, we are just beginning to look like Jesus.

Yes, this is not the popular, "trust Jesus and everything will turn out wonderful" message that we often hear from our pulpits. We hear our pastors tell us that God will be a pillar of fire and cloud to protect us, so we should expect Him to show up in our boldness and courage. However, the lesson of the cross is that God will just as often show up in the pain and trial of life, when those around us or circumstances tend to squeeze the life out of us. Boldness and courage, yes, but to offer the sacrifice of praise (Heb. 13:15)--thanking God when the hard stuff of the universe impacts me along with those close to me--that's faith!!

The sacrifice of praise is described in practical terms in Romans 8:28-39--believing that God is at work in spite of the painful trials that come our way, and thanking him for the spears, the nails, the cross--because we know God is doing something good in them, even though they hurt!!!

Jump The River

“Jump the river, Grampa,” Jaxon says as he jumps across the crack on the sidewalk.

Yesterday I had a gloriously special time with Jaxon, 4 ½, in Everett, walking round the blocks several times near Rucker Hill. He often would run ahead of me, like he was racing, looking over his shoulder from under his orange stocking hat, wondering if I’m keeping up. I call out, “Stop”, but he keeps running until he comes to a driveway, then he stops on a dime and waits. He even took Grampa’s hand to help keep him (Grampa) safe when we crossed at a corner. Then we were walking along a street near a ravine and saw a trail switch-backing down to the tiny stream at the bottom. The sign said it was “FORGOTTEN CREEK NATURE AREA”. So, we took the path to the bottom, winding down, across log bridges, to the board walkway atop the marsh at the bottom. Then we turned around and went back up. That's when he identified which of the letters on the sign he recognized.  When the big dogs came barking to the fence and gate, he held on a bit tighter and our pace increased until we felt safe again.


What a glorious day! And, it ended with Jaxon saying “My legs are tired, Grampa!” and he consented to a piggy back ride, rare for those little legs; he usually wants to be independent! What a special pleasure to have him ride piggy-back!!!

Waiting at a coffee shop, Jaxon asked for a treat, so I sprung for a snack, even though there was a snack in the car (we weren’t in the car).

How like this is to walking with Jesus! He leads us in exploring new territory in our lives, taking us to places full of wonder, although sometimes we just wonder about the places He takes us. We run ahead, and, in concern for our safety, He speaks through His Word to tell us to stop in dangerous places. He smiles when we recognize something special we have learned.  When the places are frightening, He allows us to hang on more tightly, reassuring us that He is there right beside us to take care of us. And, when we are too tired to go on, He carries us. At the middle, the beginning, and the end, He provides refreshment for us. This is the picture of Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

He must take as much pleasure in the walk as I do, if yesterday was an accurate picture of my walk with Him. Sooooo glad that He encourages us to “jump the river” and walk with Him. Soooo glad for the special afternoon with Jaxon!