The Pain of the "Haves"

This marks my 200th blog. It is amazing all that has happened in just 200 blogs but the common theme is that every event and every thought can move us back to God. So, here we go. The economy continues to worsen every day. I don't know where the Dow will be by the end of today but I have a feeling it will not be good. It struck me there is a pain to the "haves" and a pain to the "have nots". I watched Slumdog and was reminded of the horrific pain of the slums in Mumbai and around the world. It is the pain of the "have nots". The "have nots" experience a pain the "haves" do not. The pain of poverty assaults all the senses- sight, sound, smell, there is even a taste to poverty. When I have been in places around the world experiencing abject poverty the opportunities for Christians is unparalleled. When the Tsunami hit there was an unprecedented outpouring of compassion from Christians. This love was felt in very tangible ways and had a tremendous impact particularly on Muslims hardest hit. Christianity seems to shine brightest in the midst of the "have nots". It is the pain that makes the balm of Jesus so wonderful. When I watch the stock market and talk to friends there is a pain that the "haves" experience that the "have nots" are spared. There is a sense of loss, fear, and even despair. Those who have little to lose experience little pain during these times. But those who have lost the most experience the greatest pain. I guess I want to remind those of us who fall in the "have" category that pain, any pain, is where Christianity really shines. The balm of Jesus, the truth of the Gospel, is never more desperately needed, or more deeply appreciated than when we are in pain.

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire cleaned up at the Oscars. It is a fictitious story of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. A young man from the slums of Mumbai ends up on the show and makes it all the way to the last question that will make him a millionaire. For those of you who have yet to see the film I don't want to ruin it. As he answers each question the movie shows a flashback that explains how he knew the answer to the question. The flashbacks show his life as one of tremendous tragedy and hardship. As an orphan he and his brother are taken in by a terrible Indian version of Fagin (the villain who uses and abuses orphans in Dickens' Oliver Twist). It is absolutely heart rending. That is all I will tell you about the movie. But I will say this, I have been to Mumbai and walked the streets. I have seen all of the sights in the movie. I have heard the sounds and the wonderful accents of the little Indian street children. There are some terribly sad places in Mumbai. I have also walked into orphanages staffed by men and women who love Jesus. I have seen the faces of hundreds of children who have been rescued from lives of unspeakable horror. Their smiles are forever etched in my mind. Nearly every time I have left India the last thing that happens is the great and wonderful line up. All the girls of the orphanage line up on one side and all the little boys on the other. I walk down the line shaking each hand and looking squarely in jet black eyes and blinding smiles as the children thank me for coming. As I sat in my theater seat and watched Slumdog Millionaire I found myself choking back the tears. Our church has indeed done much to change the lives of hundreds of children in India. And yet there are so many more. So today I am thankful for the Oscars maybe for the first time. And I am praying for the children of India and for all of us as we try to figure out what our part is in a world where slumdogs don't really become millionaires.

Smoothies, Donuts and Sin

Every morning I get up to have breakfast. We have an assortment of breakfast cereal. It is mostly healthy stuff. I remember when I first got married I stocked up on Capn Crunch and Sugar Smacks because my Mom hardly ever bought it for us as kids and I was now a grown man and could make my own decisions. Can you say irony? Lately I have been on a smoothie kick. A banana, a slice of pineapple, some whey protein, and some orange juice and I am good to go. Today I arrived at the church and tried to stare down a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts someone brought in. I lasted about 40 minutes or so. I guess my question is not how to get better at resisting but why we have donuts in the first place. I don't mean why we had donuts at church today, but why did anyone ever invent donuts. Who decided that fruit was not good enough for breakfast and instead decided to deep fry some balls of dough and then slather them with sugar and icing? I think it is part of our sinful nature. I am serious. As creatures we seem terribly difficult to satisfy. God has fruit literally growing on trees, vegetables springing up out of the ground. We don't have to go into the laboratory to conjure up stuff that is really healthy for us. We have to go there to create stuff that is really unhealthy that will clog our arteries and make our thighs rub together. The Psalmist says that the Lord has filled my life with good things. Indeed he has and yet I go looking all the time for things that are not good. Today I want to pay attention to all the good things my God keeps trying to give me and stay away from all the stuff that keeps pouring out of the lab.
"Ho, come to the waters. Come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend you money on what does not satisfy and your wages on what is not bread? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and delight your soul with the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live." Isaiah 55:1-3

Healing For the Broken

Since my last blog there have been several things that have happened. I have had numerous people want to know how to explain suicide to their kids. The big question is whether someone who commits suicide goes to heaven. Here is the short answer. It is not a sin that keeps us from heaven. It is the lack of a Savior. Jesus either pays for all of my sin or none of my sin. He does not pick through the pile. There has been a great and wonderful exchange. He went to the cross and took all my sin and then gave me his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). There is nowhere in the Bible that it says I have to be all confessed up in order to get into heaven. If that was the case then my forgiveness would be based on my sensitivity to sin and promptness of confession. So, that is the way I have been responding. On Sunday I received a call from the family of Dennis May. They asked for me to come over and lead them in a small family memorial for him. I went over and met them for the first time. They are wonderful people and their faith and love for Jesus filled the home. I went over to try to be of some comfort and came away blessed for having been with them. Before I left the two sisters took me aside to tell me something. They wanted to tell me if I ever had the chance to talk to the family of the boy who brought the charges to tell them they bore no ill will. They were praying for the boy and his family. It was an amazing and very healing thing to do so close to the tragedy. I did not know the identity of the boy but had been praying for him since he is now the focus of some anger and confusion from other students. I went back to the church and my assistant handed me a note from a woman who dropped by to ask if she could talk to me. The note said," I am the mother of the boy who is connected with Mr. May". I called her and we met. I was able to help her I think. I got to tell her what the sisters had asked me to convey. Her eyes filled up with tears. She said something about it twice before she left. She also told me that a week ago Saturday she visited our church for the first time. I guess I am still amazed how God continues to work in the midst of the brokenness of this world. He continues to make his way deeper into my brokenness and yours. Sometimes you can see him coming and sometimes he is quiet as a mouse, but make no mistake, he comes.

One Minute

Dennis May took his own life early yesterday morning. Dennis was a teacher here in Hudson. He had been accused of viewing a pornographic website with a middle school student. Dennis was a member of our church. He served on our worship team. On Thursday evening he came by church after worship practice and a half dozen men gathered around him to pray for him, love him, and tell them they were with him no matter what. It is exactly the way I want our church to respond. Dennis has a message on his cell phone from me assuring him of my prayers and asking if we could meet just to talk and pray together. I am not sure he ever received that message. This morning the story is in the paper. The story says that Dennis had confessed to looking at the website with the student. It also says the viewing lasted about a minute. One minute! One decision, one minute and many lives changed forever. I guess I just want to remind all of us how important a minute can be. Please take a minute now and pray for all the people who have been impacted by this. Pray for the May family. Pray for the students. Pray that God would protect us one minute at a time in every decision we make.

A Bigger Fish

As a pastor I am a fairly public figure. One of the things I love about our town is its size. It is a quaint mid-western town. It's not too big and it's not too small. Like Goldilocks, I feel like I have found something that is just right. Now, our church is pretty big which means when I go out into the town it is not unusual to see several people from the church. I saw a half a dozen at Yours Truly this morning. Now there are quite a few people who come to our church that I don't know by name. Since I am the one up front they tend to recognize me but I may be a little fuzzy about them. I have gotten used to seeing people look at me and make some sort of gesture that indicates that they know me. Actually I feel like I am an expert at seeing those people and being quick to nod and acknowledge and give the friendly,"Hey, how are you doing? It is good to see you" while both of us know I don't really know them but they seem ok with it. I don't really have much of a choice. At times I can feel a little the part of a small time celebrity. Anyway, I was in Carabou the other morning and a man walked in with his wife. He looked at me a little too long, the dead give away that he knew me so I just nodded and smiled and did my pastor thing. I was with Jim Colledge so I asked him, "Hey, do you happen to know that guy?" Jim looked at me and said, "Yeah, that is Congressman Tom Sawyer". Scripture warns, "Do not think more highly of yourself than you ought". There I was in Carabou congratulating myself on being such a celebrity only to find myself on the other end of a "Hey, how are you doing?" from a guy who was sure I knew who he was. The truth was that neither of us had a clue. So, for all of you big fishes out there, be careful. You may not be as big as you think.

It Takes One to Forgive One

I confessed some time ago that I watch Celebrity Rehab. There is something about watching people who are addicts. I think it is because of the study I have done on the Greek word "epithumea". "Epithumea" is usually translated "evil desire" in English Bibles but the direct translation is an "over desire". It is wanting something too much. The Bible says we are all drawn away from God by our epi-desires. We are all addicts of sorts. Some of us are addicted to obviously harmful things like my friends on Celebrity Rehab. Others of us are addicted to our work, or our families, or our children, or any number of other things that are not as immediately destructive. An epi-desire is anything we use to fill ourselves with or to give us self-worth. Anyway, I was watching my buddies on Celebrity Rehab and they have moved to a half-way house and so the show has changed to Sober House. Steven (the drummer for Guns and Roses) smuggled in heroin and went off the first day. He was so out of control the house mother had to call the police. Steven did not go quietly into the night. He was a mess and he made life miserable for the house mother. Well, Steven got sober and came to ask forgiveness of the house mother. He was very repentant. The house mother looked at him for a long while and then she reached out and hugged him, forgave him, and offered him a second chance to come back in the house. She looked at the camera after the scene and explained it like this, "when I saw myself in Steven, I knew I had to forgive him. My heart went out to him". That is exactly the way Christians are supposed to be. She had been an addict herself so she knew she had acted just like Steven at times and she had needed people to forgive her. Most people think of Christians as being judgmental. If I really understand the Gospel then there isn't a single person I meet that I cannot see some of me in them. The Gospel is the greatest power in the world. It allows me to admit to myself how deeply flawed I am but also look at the cross and be reminded of how deeply loved I am. I know some marriages would have been saved, some relationships would have been healed, if people had just be able to see themselves in the person who had hurt them so deeply. So, go with grace today. Carry it with you and look hard in the eyes of the people around you. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Their eyes may be a window into your own soul.

The Baby In You

Today we get to babysit our grandson Liam. He is very close to 3 months old. He is a cutie. It is an interesting study in human nature right now though. He seems to only have two states. He is either satisfied or terribly dissatisfied. When he is satisfied, he really doesn't have very many ways to demonstrate that satisfaction. He simply looks content and is quiet. Sometimes he gives a little baby chatter but he is still pretty manly in his use of verbiage which means it is pretty limited. When he is dissatisfied, he has an even smaller repertoire to communicate his feelings. He has the preliminary to the cry which is pretty cute until the noise begins. His face begins the exaggerated down turn, which is really quite impressive. Sometimes I wish I could still do that. It would scare people around the office if I showed my displeasure with that face. And then the sound comes and there is no doubt as to how Liam is feeling about life. He doesn't like it and if things don't change soon someone is going to have a headache. Imagine if screaming till your face looked like a tomato was your only way to express displeasure. You would be sitting in traffic and as far as you could see in your rear view mirror there would be blood red faces all puffed out. The last guy in line would just be beginning the scary pre-cry face. I have no doubt that Liam is just a normal baby. Normal, in the negative categories and way above average in the good categories. Liam's human nature is without any pretense right now. He has no way to mask his self-centeredness. He has no skill in manipulating people subtly. He is just out there for all the world to see. Deep down I would suppose at times I am very much like Liam. I am more subtle in expressing my dissatisfaction. I think the more self centered I am the more like Liam I become. I tend to be quietly content and loudly dissatisfied. I think one of the things Jesus comes to do is help me reverse the natural tendency. Jesus said,"I come so that you might have joy and have it to the full". Today I encourage you to work on reversing the tendency. Let joy flow out and your contentment be loud and let your discontentment be a little quieter. I find the more I look to serve others, the more I look to serve Jesus, the easier it is to be a real grown up.