Category: meditations

“A man with leprosy came to him
and begged him
on his knees,

‘If you are willing,
you can
make me clean.’”

What an attitude!

To come before Christ in humility,
knowing his position,
knowing that the decision was Christ’s,
knowing the Savior’s power to cleanse.

He demanded nothing,
But received everything.

And when I come before God in my pride,
thinking I am good,
thinking that I have control,
thinking that I am holy because of me.

I demand much,
And receive nothing.

So often we come to Christ expecting to be healed. Christ commands us to come knowing in faith that he can heal us, but sometimes we take this a few steps too far and feel that we are entitled to his healing, rather than receiving it as an act of grace – unmerited favor.

The fact is that each of us comes to Christ empty and broken. Some of us have tried to glue parts of the pieces of our lives together, but none of us come as whole people. We come helpless, missing the very thing Christ offers – Himself.

Faith is interesting. So often it stands in contrast with knowledge. Faith demands that we look at all we see and then take a step beyond pure knowledge – a step into the unknown of doubt.

That is not to say that faith is without experience. We have faith that the world will continue in the future much as it has in the past. We have faith that gravity will continue to hold us down, that the sun will come up tomorrow, and that the laws that govern the universe will hold relatively constant, at least within our ability to measure them. We cannot know any of these things for certain – the future is truly the undiscovered country, and objective knowledge about it cannot be obtained. Yet this does not stop us from believing that a future exists, and furthermore believing it will have certain properties – namely properties that resemble our present. While we cannot objectively prove these things to be true, we believe them with a fierce passion, and we have yet to be disappointed. Our experience suggests certain things about how the world works, and causes us to believe them and trust them, even though we have no real emperical basis for doing so.

In the same way, our experience leads us to believe that certain things are true about the human condition: that service is greater than selfishness, that sacrifice is greater than greed, that love is greater than hate. Logically these things make little sense. They seem to go against everything our society teaches us. But in the hearts of those who have seen charity and experienced love, faith suggests to us that there is something more to life than the endless race to get ahead – that our lives are not measured by how much we get, but by how much we give away.

Even still, true faith cannot exist without doubt. Doubt is not the cancer of faith, it is the tester of faith. It is that moment where we examine ourselves and make the choice of whether or not to believe. Were there no doubt, faith would not be a real choice. If faith were certain, it would cease to be faith, its beauty robbed. The veracity of our faith is continually proven in our struggle with the realization that the seemingly illogical sometimes turns out to make more sense than what we have been taught.

Even though we look to the unknown future through the lens of our personal experience, it is sometimes difficult to believe what we experience – love, joy, hope – is something that will last.

But in faith, we continue to believe.

“A poor widow came and put in
two very small copper coins,
worth only a fraction of a penny.”

She had a choice, you know.

If she’d only had one coin,
she could either have given

or not.

But she had two.

She had the choice
to give and still keep some
for herself.

“They all gave out of their wealth;
but she,
out of her poverty,

put in everything—

all she had to live on.”

She gave it all.
No questions.
No complaints.

Oh my God!

How much you demand,
How little I give.
How little I give.

So often I am tempted to “give” out of my riches and call it giving. Very seldom do I make a serious sacrifice for Christ.

We all are so blessed, so wealthy. We can’t begin to imagine how much we’ve been given, and it humbles me that I give so little. David writes and says “I will not present as an offering to my God that which cost me nothing.” Powerful words. We give out of our abundance that which costs us nothing, and Christ’s message of sacrifice is so often drowned out by our cultural ears.

It seems fitting now to bring back three questions Kelly asked during a talk last semester:

1. if i had to eat this week on the same amount of money i put in the offering plate on sunday morning, how many meals would i get?

2. if i was trying to develop a relationship with a significant other, and i gave to that person the same amount of quality time i’ve given to God in the past week, how long would that relationship last?

3. if Jesus looked into my heart and demanded something from me in order to have eternal life, would i walk away sad?

May we be people who honor God through our stewardship of His gifts.

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.”

Isn’t it interesting
that we have so many Ambassadors
sitting in Churches.

And
so few,
so very few
in a world
that is lost,
so lost?

“But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him?

And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him?

And how can they hear about him

unless someone tells them?”

this was post-africa, one of my first expressed frustrations at a culture that claims to be evangelistic but in practice seldom moves outside of its own walls except in defense of its own agenda.

i suppose this one hits me now on two fronts. first, there remains an agitated frustration in my soul when it comes to the prevalent hypocricy in my Christian subculture. how do we expect people to find the love of Christ if we’re not showing it to them? how can we honestly expect people to think and act like we do when they are, in fact, lost people?

but more importantly now, this comes home to me in a personal way. it is easy enough to blame my culture – there is certainly plenty of blame to go around. but i often find it more difficult to blame myself. i am the man, standing before nathan, guilty of the very thing i deplore.

may we all strive to live lives, engaging the world around us instead of sitting idly by as the ship sinks around us.

The New Year is usually an exciting time. It provides a convenient point for us to both look back into the past and forward into the future and reflect on where we’ve been and where we are headed.

Often we spend our time making lists of things we’d like to do – “resolutions” we hope to keep in the next year.

Resolved: I will wake up early and accomplish something this year.

The problem, of course, is that by March most of us can’t remember what our resolutions were, much less how well we actually kept them. Many people who have lengthy lists of resolutions are discouraged by their continual failure to ever make it a full year and being able to say they actually did what they said they were going to do at the beginning.

Perhaps part of the problem is that a year is just too long. The reality is that each day is a new beginning. We wake up each day with the ability to look both to yesterday and tomorrow – to learn from our mistakes and remain hopeful about our future – and face the day with renewed courage and commitment. Each day we rise is new and beautiful, its canvas blank and ready for the brush we apply to it. We can view life as a series of evil days where everything is going downhill, or we can seek each day to paint beauty into the world around us.

As we enter into a new year, a year full of struggles, challenges, dreams and disappointments, my prayer is that we will see each day as a new beginning – that we will resolve each day to start anew on our commitment, taking light into a dark place.

“This man who opened your eyes – Who do you say he is?”

“He is a prophet.”

“He is the Elijah who was to come.”

“Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“He is a good man.”

“No, he deceives the people.”

“We know this man is a sinner.”

“He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”

“How did this man get such learning without having studied?”

“No one ever spoke the way this man does.”

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

“We have found this man subverting our nation.”

“I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty.”

“We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

“All that John said about this man was true.”

“This man really is the Savior of the world.”

“Surely this man was the Son of God!”

“Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

“This man who opened your eyes – Who do you say he is?”

There are so many answers in Scripture for who Jesus is. It makes an interesting progression to look through and see what various people thought of Christ, and who they said he was.

While it is instructive in a reflective fashion, it is really far more practical than that. Ultimately, the most important question that each of us will answer is the one asked of the blind man.

“Who do you say he is?”

Do you schedule time for God?

Is your schedule so busy that he gets his
fifteen minute slot
among the rest of your appointments?

Does he get the best part of your day –
the first-fruits of your time?

or does he receive the afterthought prayer at night?

Does God get the best part of your day?

the leftover part of your day?

or does he get all of your day?

God have mercy on me.
God have mercy on me.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that we compartmentalize our lives in many ways. It’s become acceptable, especially in our American culture, to separate and schedule. I have friends who literally schedule every minute of their day.

I wonder sometime how frustrated God gets with that mindset. Christianity is, after all, a lifestyle. It’s not something that you can simply turn on and off. It’s something that is with you every minute of the day, every day of the week.

We’re very good about “giving God” a certain amount of time every week, or if we’re good every day.

The problem, I think, is that God demands everything. It’s not “our time” to begin with. It’s his.

I drove home on what turned out to be the shortest day of the year. As I woke up this morning at 7 to drive to a Christmas celebration, I was amazed at how dark it was. Surely it can’t be 7:00! A quick check of my cell phone and my computer showed that it was, in fact, time for me to get up.

There are places in the world where this phenomena is carried to extremes. Places in Alaska are sometimes called the “Land of the Midnight Sun” because six months of the year they are bathed in constant sunlight (though not warm, from what I hear), and six months if the year they are in complete darkness. Apocryphally, people say suicide rates are higher during the prolonged darkness than they are at other times of the year.

Sometimes we hardly notice the changing of daylight, except in huge increments, but every now and then we notice – if only for a moment – that the night is just a bit darker than it used to be.

It’s interesting that in this season of darkness, we are greeted with the arrival of the light of the world. John, speaking of Jesus, writes that, “The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. … The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was going to come into the world.”

We now wait with anticipation the Birth of Christ into this dark night. The Savior of the world is coming into the world, bringing hope and light where we have only darkness.

at the AFC blog…

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine

and puts them into practice

is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The rain came down,
the streams rose,
and the winds blew and beat against that house;

yet it did not fall,

because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Isn’t it easy to hear the words
and put them into practice

when the storms seem a long way away?

When the beach is sunny and warm
we pitch our umbrellas upon the shores of life.

Our umbrellas become shacks
our shacks houses
our houses mansions
our mansions estates

and before we know it

we’ve built our entire lives on a foundation

of sand.

But the storms are brewing.

The rain is coming.
The streams will rise
and the winds will blow.

And at that time it will not matter
how lavish a mansion we have created
how many treasures we have stored.

All that will matter

will be that left standing.

And all that will be standing

will have its foundation on the rock.

Another warning of misplaced hope. Through our lives, we build many things. We’re often proud of our accomplishments. Whether it be our belief systems, our wealth, our relationships, our social networks, our intelligence, or any other of the thousand things we build in our lives, we each have large luxurious mansions with treasures stored up. The question for us is whether we have built on the foundation of Christ.

The beach is a wonderfully attractive place. We’re lured often by the view and the serene beauty.

The only promise we have in life is that storms are coming. No matter who you are, whether you believe in God or not, your life will be pounded by storms. The issue for each of us is that by the time they hit, it will be too late to make changes to our foundation. The time to seek God is not when the storms arrive, but long before they are on the horizon.

Joy is a funny thing.

People sometimes think that it’s being happy,
but I know people who are joyous even in a melancholy mood.

People sometimes think it comes from outside of us, that the things that happen to us determine whether or not we have that joy,
but I have seen the greatest joy in people who have no earthly reason to be joyous.

People sometimes think it comes from within us, that somehow we can act our way into having joy, or if we can focus hard enough, we’ll find it,
but I know people who are great actors and can focus very well, but have no joy.

People sometimes think it’s hard to find, that we must search in many obscure places to glean even a small bit of it,
but I know people who seem to find it everywhere they go.

If joy is not from outside of us,
If it is not from within us,
then where does it come from?

I look at people who have the most joy and I am struck with one universal truth:
their joy comes from God.

And when their joy comes from God
It’s not just being happy,
and it’s not hard to find,

for God is everywhere
and in Him is all joy.

Joy is constant. Often, I think, we confuse joy for happiness. Especially in a culture that tells us in so many ways to not be content with what we have, we are prone to think of joy and happiness together in a fleeting sense – we never have enough of what we want.

Nehemiah says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” I hope my strength is not fleeing. I hope it’s something that I can depend on.

The question, really, is where we find our joy. We store treasure in so many places. We place and mis-place hope daily. Any time we place our hope and trust in something other than the Lord, we are certain to be disappointed. Whether a person, an idea or an object, the only source of true joy and peace is the Lord.