Ancient History. We Hope. Before the Civil Rights Movement.

We were speaking of how an act of kindness sticks in the memory.  An act of unkindness also sticks.

A writer tells of going down a lane with a nursemaid in England when two village children ran out and shyly offered him some wild flowers they had plucked.  He remembers bitterly how he haughtily rejected the flowers and ran and took the hand of his nursemaid.  When he looked back, he saw the two children still standing and looking at him, and tears were running down their faces.  "There,"  said the writer, " I first automatically rejected the Kingdom of God."

On the other hand, a certain Black Man will not forget this:  A bus was crowded in a Southern city, and the Black section was overcrowded, so a Texan white man invited the man who was standing to share his seat in the white section.  The bus driver objected and the Black man  got up.  And then the white man in protest stood up with him, refusing to be seated while the Black man stood.  If that man doesn't remember--but I am sure he does--then I cannot forget.  that deed shines against a dark background.

It does something to you while traveling in Japan to have the train pull out to the accompaniment of music over the loud-speaker.  Then when you arrive at your destination, over the loud-speaker a voice graciously says,  "You must be tired.  We are sorry the train is two minutes late.  Please see that you have left no parcels.  Good-bye."  It makes you feel that there is something more to traveling than mechanics.  And as you wash your hands in the train lavatory, there is a bunch of fresh cut flowers, probably carnations.  These touches touch you.  A lot of it is superficial, but superficial or not, it puts a good taste in your mouth.  And then the personal contacts:  I smiled once at a little girl and boy as they came through the train in Japan, and then they came through the car again and again to get another smile--and give a bigger smile.

Paul , looking back upon the shipwreck experience on Malta, remembered on thing especially:  "The natives showed us uncommon kindness" (Acts 28:2).

Dear Father , help me today to search out someone who needs my kindness and give it and give graciously. Amen.

Affirmation for the day:  Severe with self, generous and kind to everyone, especially the unkind and un-generous.

A Life Formula

Ann LeMott

A famous writer and relatively new Christian says this:  Our preacher, Veronica, said recently that this is life's nature:  that live's and hearts get broken--those of people we love, those of people we 'll never meet.  She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes.  You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.

Travel Mercies, p 108

The Origin of Terrible Circumstances

Annie Dillard, a Christian writer says this:

''God is no more blinding people with glaucoma or testing them with diabetes or purifying them with spinal pain or choreographing the seeding of tumor cells through lymph or fiddling with chromosomes than is he jimmying flood waters or pitching tornadoes at towns.  God is no more cogitating which among us He plans to place here as bird headed dwarfs or elephant men or to kill by AIDS or kidney failure or heart disease, childhood leukemia, or sudden infant death syndrome, than He is pitching lightning bolts at pedestrians, triggering rock slides or setting fires.  The very least likely things for which God might be responsible are what insurers call "acts of God"."  So Annie Dillard takes a very strong stand against the notion that we can blame God for the bad things of life.  And I agree with her.

The Kindness Remains

(A gift of the whole booklet was mailed to me.  Here is more on the "kindness" theme. Author unknown).

We left off yesterday when we were considering the fact that Jesus can be as hard as flint at very moment He is as tender as a mother. He can be tenderly terrible and terribly tender.  A little orphaned boy was practically adopted by a soldier during the war. One day he let slip a swear word, and when he did , he looked around for the disapproval and rebuke of his adopting guardian.  But instead the soldier laughed and said, "Never mind, Sonny, say all that kind of thing you want."  The little fellow thought a moment and then burst into tears and said, "If you were my father, you wouldn't say that."  He felt he had wanted and needed something more than sentimental kindness.  He wanted to be saved by hard refusals.

With this redemptive content put into kindness we now consider our growth in kindness.  Perhaps now we can quote these lines, since we have put into kindness a higher meaning:

                                               So many gods, so many creeds,
                                                    So many paths that wind and wind,
                                                When all this sad world needs
                                                     Is just the art of being kind.

That kindness is important is seen by the fact that we remember an act of kindness when all events slip out of memory.  The kindness remains.  At a time when bitterness was strong between Britain and India, I found a prominent Indian wearing a white flower in his buttonhole each day.  He explained to me that when he was in Britain studying, the English landlady used to put a white flower in his buttonhole each day.  The kindness stood out like a star on a dark night of bitterness.

The Finnish people have treated me with many honors--large crowds, eager listeners--but one thing that stands out is the act of an unknown Finnish lady who ran out into the street in the snow, stopped the car and handed me a flower through the window.  That flower blooms fresh and fragrant in my grateful memory.

O Father, help me this day to do some act of kindness that may live in somebody's memory forever. Amen.

Affirmation for the day:  I cover all ugly unkindliness with the same robe of kindliness with which He covers my ugliness. 

Thoughts Generate Chemicals

An Olympic Athlete Trainer says this----

There are four negative feelings or thoughts that produce toxic chemicals in the brain.  They are Hate, Greed, Fear, and Jealousy.  To get his athletes to do better they must change these to Love, Generosity, Courage, and Praise.

He claims that service to others is one of the best ways to move into the healthy context.  Doing this has proven, he says, to be effective in producing the winning edge.

Interesting discovery.  Thoughts produce chemicals, and positive thoughts produce positive chemicals.Of course there is a time for sorrow and vexation, but they must not dominate or they will infect.

Growth in Kindness, or Kindliness

The following comes from a little very old booklet someone sent me:

We come now to the fruit of the Spirit known as kindliness.
This is a very homely virtue, homely in the British sense of belonging to the home--a very commonplace, ordinary virtue.  And yet it is ordinary as salt, and as essential.  Without kindliness there is no virtue in the other virtues.  It puts a flavor into all the other virtues; without it they are insipid and tasteless; or worse, they degenerate into vices.  Love, joy , peace, good temper, without kindliness are very doubtful virtues.  So it is no chance that this is the middle virtue of the nine, putting flavor into all the others.

So to grow in kindliness is to grow in virtues that are flavored with a certain spirit.  The spirit of kindliness pervades everything.  The Old Testament, especially the Psalms, uses the expression "loving-kindness."  A little boy explained the difference between kindness and loving-kindness:  "Kindness is when your mother gives you a piece of bread and butter, but it is loving-kindness when she puts jam on it as well."

But in the New Testament a content has gone into kindness that made adding the "loving" unnecessary.  We have quoted a passage into which the content of Jesus has gone into the worlds:  Treat one another with the same spirit as you experience in Christ Jesus"  Not merely the same actions, but the same spirit in the actions as was in Jesus.  This is the high water of morality in this universe.  Beyond this the human race will not , and cannot, progress.  This is a character and conduct ultimate.  This gives kindness a plus--an infinite plus.

And this saves kindness from mere maudlin sentimentality.  It can be very severe--severe because He loves so deeply that He often has to save us by hard refusals.  And His kindness can cut--it can cut when, like a surgeon, He insists on cutting out of us moral tumors and cancers.  But always His severity is security.  It is redemptive.  He loves us too much to let us go.

Easter Changed the World

Easter is packed with essentials:

1.  Physical life is valuable.  Life is not just waiting for heaven.

2.  There is a resurrecting presence and power around us.

3.  Dying for us is the model of ultimate love and possibly the key to resurrection.  A model for all.

4.  Every human being, in giving, caring, helping, reaching out to others, showing loving kindness is a practitioner of "dying" for others.  New Life follows that kind of dying too.  (think of the Easter model).

5.  He lives!  In us, as well as in the great beyond.  The love within us is Jesus' love.  It is giving Jesus when we love someone.

The Good Lord Heals, Repairs and Restores

We have blamed God too much!  The problems in this world are the result of human breakdown, damaged genetics, individual decision-making.  The negative happenings in life should not be referred to using the words "the Lord's will"  or "God's will".

God shows up to heal, repair, renew us after the breakdowns of life.  Here is an example expressed by a famous TV personality Robin Roberts after an excruciating challenge with cancer:  "I have learned more about myself  through sorrow than through joy.  I am a better, stronger, more complete person because of these trials and tribulations."----Yes that is where our loving Lord Jesus really shows up.  It is after we are hit by the freight train.:
 

Love One Another

We were speeding along in the car pool lane when I noticed a motorcycle coming up behind us.  I moved a little over to the left to allow him to pass more comfortably.  As he passed he raised the three fingers on his left hand, as he held on to the handle bars.  It was a signal of appreciation.  It was love!  That small gesture lifted my spirits for the next half hour or more. He might have been an ex-convict, or a bum of some kind.  He might have been a godless atheist.  Nevertheless he has the love of God inside him and he sprinkled a little of that love on us as he passed.

That is how easy it is to be an instrument of the Lord Jesus,  And one can be that even if he doesn't know it.  We want him to know.  But he may not be open to that truth for a while.  But he is far more than he thinks he is.

Bad and Good

Nothing bad should be blamed on God.  It all comes from our human brokenness or our failure to plan, build, prepare for storms, disaster and breakdowns.  They happen in our world.  And they are not sent by God.

Recovery, healing, creativity, beauty, efficiency, comes from God.    God is there picking us up, re-newing our broken spirits, stimulating ideas and solutions, holding the shattered together.

Disability Builds Faith

Popular opinion holds that a disabling life event is likely to destroy a person's faith.  A research project studying 26 men and women who had acquired permanent disabilities relegating them to wheelchair living revealed the opposite:
     53%  found their faith was increased by their disability.
     31%  "kept their faith" despite the challenges of disability.
     8%    found faith through their disability.
     8%  described their faith as "uncertain".
     0%   lost their faith.

Reactions of the individuals:

1.  God-believers experienced God as a "presence"-someone to talk to, to question, someone who listens.

2.  God's help was described as --providing, protecting, giving strength, endurance and patience, and understanding their struggles and caring about them.

3.  Several believe that God someohow gave them their disability but they did not feel bitter or betrayed.

4.  All indicated that "talking to people gives meaning to their lives."  They agreed that feeling lonely and different is common.

The Wheelchair:

46% (12) hate the wheelchair and want to get out of it.

31%  (8) said they accepted wheelchair living.

23% (6) were ambivalent.  They both hate it and accept it.

100%  agreed that "to walk again" is a dream that never leaves.

69%  (18) express a hopeful attitude.

8% held hopeless feelings

23% were mixed with both hopeful and helpless feelings

"Hope" means not giving up.  Hope is fueled by a faith in God.  Hope blossoms when friends and family are close, supportive and encouraging.

Merry Xmas

When I was a child I was told in was inappropriate and irreverent to write X-mas. The teachers said using the X instead of writing Christ was a way of leaving Christ out of Christmas.

Years later I learned the truth.  For one thing the letter X is not the third to the last letter of  the English alphabet, like in XYZ.  It is a Greek letter, and pronounced chi (ki).  And that letter is the first letter of the word Christ in its original Greek language.  It legitimately represented the word Kristos or Christ.

So Xmas is in fact Christmas.

The Connecticut Slaughter

Twenty-eight children and adults have been murdered.    The first priority for all of us in the U.S. is to feel that pain, actualize the sorrow, weep and be in anguish.  Jesus said "weep with those who weep".

The media is preoccupied with obviously relevant issues like gun control and mental illness.  Those must be considered, but for right now they distract us and pull us away from the heart-brokenness we must share.  The causes of this incredible massacre must be faced but for the time being this is a time of weeping and mourning.  

Getting at causes eases our pain.  Such concerns move us out of our hearts and bowels into our heads, into thinking instead of feeling.  That process should wait. It is a process of too quickly moving on and too inapprpriately cogitating instead of a letting the pain be.

The only comfort is Jesus' love for every child.  They are safe in the arms of Jesus--every one of them.  The parents would have them back in their own arms, and so would we,  but Christmas reminds us of the powerful, beautiful love of Jesus for every child.

Have Fun at Christmas!!

It is the fashion about this time each year to begin Christmas shopping.  We may load our pockets with cash, and our hearts with guilt.  Some folks have been brought up on warnings and admonitions every time there is a time of fun. Some Christians don’t know how to have fun, unless it is sprinkled and spiced with guilt.  It is as if they must be more serious, thrifty, concerned about others.  As the Christmas season opens, writers and speakers in the Christian community say, in one way or another, like our parents did when we went out for an evening of fun, “Now be careful!”  So now it is  “Have a Merry Christmas, but not too merry, not too joyous, not too much fun.” 

Again we will hear about over-commercializing Christmas, putting Christ back into Christmas, the paganism of the Christmas tree, tinsel as the symbol of superficiality, cash registers as the symbol of what Christmas has become.  Necessary correctives perhaps, but we need more of the opposite. We need encouragement to have fun, let our joy bloom, even be foolishly full of fun, or extravagant.  Isn’t that what the heart of Christmas is, namely, “joy to the world”.

I will never forget an incident from our first year of marriage.  Linda and I were living in Ann Arbor and our lives became intertwined with a family of desperately poor people.  A mother, and four children all of school age.  They lived in abject poverty.  They had broken windows, very little money, a sickly mother, and a house that was hardly livable.  But when Christmas came the children had through odd jobs accumulated a little money and they invited us to come over on Christmas Day to see the gift they had bought for their mother.  They were very excited about it.

  So we went to their house, carrying in our minds some vague expectations of what kind of a gift they had bought for her.  Perhaps a warm coat, a new purse, or maybe an electric frying pan, or a toaster.  Instead we were knocked over with surprise and chagrin.  They had us close our eyes as they went into the next room to get the gift.  Then they brought from behind the curtain the gift.  It was a huge stuffed donkey about five feet tall!  It must have cost them $25 or $35 (1962).  They were thrilled.  We were stunned but acted like we were pleased.  In fact we thought it was a very “stupid” gift.  Of all the things she needed, that was the least.

Still, as we thought about it, there may have been something right in that kind of gift..  Here they were in their poverty hardly anything they could have bought of a practical nature would have changed their status significantly.  So why not buy something totally enjoyable just for the fun and excitement of giving it?

A little of that that has to go into the Christmas season. Instead of hand-wringing and furrowed brows about the fun we’re having when there are poor people dying on the other side of town, maybe a little reckless happiness is called for. Christians must be thoughtful and give to those other kind of concerns, but there is something bottomless about that pit.  There is a time for unrestrained Christmas foolishness, impractical fun.  Forget, the shaking fingers and historical surveys about the paganism of the Christmas tree.  Enjoy Christmas and have fun.  Christ lives! Relax and enjoy Christmas freely and fully, uncluttered by guilt.

Advent

The season of Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas.  It is the time we get ready for Jesus' birth.  A beautiful old hymn describes the ages-old sense of anticipation people embraced:

O come, O come Immanuel                                   

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice.  Rejoice.  Immanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

One of the most beautiful traditions of Advent is the lighting of the Advent Wreath.
The Advent Wreath is a continuous ciecle of evergreens representing the ceaseless flow of time and our unending hope.  The evergreens are a symbol of Christ who became man that we might have Everlasting Life, and of God who loves us endlessly.

The four candles spaced around the wreath designate the four eras during which the world waited for Christ.  Three purple candles symbolize humility.  The rose candle represents joy and hapiness.  All four symbolize hope whic fills the Advent season.  The pure white candle is the center of the wreath and symbolizes the Christ Child.

It is Sunday but Monday is aComin'

That is a very important line.  It describes what going to church is really about.  It isn't about getting things right with God, or once again focusing on our sins to get forgiveness.  Forgiveness is there.  It may help to go to church to get that reassurance but it isn't a way of earning credits with God so that he is sure to forgive us.  Jesus said on the cross as he came to the end of his suffering "It is finished."  The debt is totally paid.  No more sacrifices, rituals seeking forgiveness, crying out in desperation.  That kind of religion is finished.  Our sins, past, present, and future are forgiven. 

Going to church is mostly about getting re-directed for the week ahead.  The loving Jesus lives in every one of us.  The weekly assignment is to find ways to let the love of Jesus out of ourselves into the lives of those around us and into our work as well. It happens through friendliness, encouragement, appreciative words, compliments, showing interest, caring touches, smiles, helping hands, "showing up".   Even if our work is not centered on people we can organize, systematize, improve and strengthen things, and the use of processes, all of which are basically here to make life better for the human race.  In doing that we are indeed making the world a better place.  That is what we are here for.

These processes and helps are what Sunday and church are about----refocusing, recovering, restoring, rethinking, being refreshed and healed.  Then it is Monday and we are back renewed in order to be  brightening the world.  Everyone can do it.  And everyone needs it.  "Brighten the world where you are."

Thanksgiving Means Gratitude

Thanksgiving Means Gratitude

After many months of silence it is time to talk again.  This is a new beginning for which I am very grateful..Speaking of being grateful, I have learned in the last couple of years that gratitude (remember it is Thanksgiving time) is not a religious activity in the old fashioned sense.  Gratitude is more like exercise, eating properly, getting enough sleep.  That is, it is a health benefit.

When we realize that steady, consistent, grateful thoughts and remembrances are like taking vitamins, or maybe even antibiotics, we then know the idea is a gift of God.  Thankfulness is a central Christian theme.  But it is not something we do to please a stern and watchful God.  No, we please God with thankfulness because God is pleased when we take care of ourselves.

The primary research about gratitude has been done at a State University, not a Christian College or University.  Dr. Robert Emmons at California State University -Davis has written a book entitle Thanks  .  It is based on the research his graduate students have engaged in measuring the effects of grateful activities.  To put it briefly the results are basically--the more you are grateful the better you will be in your daily life.

Thanks equals Gratitude

God Heals. We Walk Along Side

God Heals

(But God sincerely requests your gracious assistance)

It should be engraved on the mind and in the heart of every warmhearted and softhearted follower of Jesus that God heals the broken hearted and we do not have to try to do it.  If there is healing needed God will take care of it.  All we have to do is “show up.”

We all know those who have come back to life after being “hit by a freight train”.  Some have come through the most dreadful tragedies imaginable and now years later once again smile, laugh, dance, and sing.  It is never right away, and it shouldn’t be.  There is never singing without a deep pain in one corner of their heart.  But they do come back to sing once more.

Our place, when people are hurt, devastated, troubled or heart-broken, is to be there.  We must be with them.  There at their sides we confidently and patiently allow God to work.  God is healing while we walk along side---listening, mingling our tears with theirs, praying, hugging.  This means we must resist our impulses to try to fix them.  It means resisting our logical explanations and theological perspectives that say why this happened or how it can be softened.  We mostly help ourselves with such endeavors, not them.  We just walk along side while God heals them.      

Faith is not an Army Tank

                    FAITH IS NOT AN ARMY TANK

Helen's faith has failed.  Her husband, still young, once a successful physician, is now confined to a nursing home.  He has Alzheimer's Disease.  Over the months since his diagnosis he has grown progressively out of touch.  Today he hardly knows Helen.

She has sold their home to help cover her deepening financial crisis and is looking into selling some of her jewelry.  Her friends have distanced themselves, they feel helpless and unable to handle their own dismay.  Helen herself, wounded in spirit, is pulling back from social contacts.

Her lament to me today, however, is not about her troubles but about her lack of faith through all this.  Sorrow, anger, and frustration batter her soul.  Depression lurks at the door and threatens to take up total and permanent residence in her spirit.

God seems to be nowhere around, she sighs.  Her prayers, mere cries, feel empty and directionless.  Ordinarily a spirited, vivacious woman with an expressive faith, she appears wan and defeated.  Helen is disappointed in herself that she is so crippled by, and heartsick over, what is happening.  A person of faith should do better, she believes.  A good Christian should, she says, find her faith giving her courage, hope, and even cheer in times like this.

No Army Tank.  I talk to Helen about her faith.  I tell her that having faith is not like riding in an Army tank, protected on every side from the onslaughts of life, rolling smoothly over every pothole and obstacle in the path.

Faith is, rather, like walking with little protection into a war zone.  You're hit from all sides and wounded, but you continue on with a Companion at your side who is injured every time you are, but still holds you. Like many people, Helen seems to believe that faith is separate from the person. The individual may be bludgeoned, but faith should keep thriving, untouched..

Reality teaches something different.  When life hammers it’s inevitably harsh and sometimes savage blows, we are knocked down--faith and all.  Staggered and bloodied, we and our faith, struggle to get up again, to go on, to endure, to recover.

Helen can't possibly expect her faith to be healthy and robust; she's been "run over by a freight train."  She is wounded, deeply wounded.  Her world has collapsed.  She has lost her security, her dreams, and her husband.  He is like a stranger, and years of worsening distress lie ahead for them both.  How could she go through this any differently than she is?  How can she expect of herself resilient, normal, wonderful faithfulness in a time like this?

No Guarantee.  Helen is suffering.  Suffering brings serious pressure on a person and her faith.  That is what suffering is, a painful disruption of one's whole life--physical, social, emotional, spiritual.

There is no easy solution to Helen's pain.  The healing capacity put within her by her Creator can eventually restore her.  Nevertheless, she has no guarantee she will emerge from her struggle better instead of bitter, deeper instead of more shallow.  The support of the community of faith around her is her greatest hope.

Perhaps we can inoculate future Helens against the same kind of spiritual despair over faith's failure.  We can do so by modifying the conventional image of faith we pass on to our children--by dismantling the Army-tank model.  This model sets everyone up for disillusionment--or it prepares them to see faith as the denial that anything hurts.

Faith, we need to see--and to teach--is not the capacity to eliminate pain.  It is not a spiritual strength that makes life's heartaches hurt less.  Faith is not a spiritual superiority that lifts one above the ordinary tears and grief of life.  It is not immunity from disease, failure, or loss, and it is not armor against the perplexity, despair, and confusion these troubles usually bring with them.

Quite the opposite--faith is freedom to enter pain, to feel it for what it is.  Faith is the capacity to experience life at full strength, to mourn personal and global threats and losses, to enter--as raw-nervedly as mere people can--into our own and others' diseases and agonies.  Faith, at it's core, is essentially the ability to suffer.

Rather than a power model of faith that makes us think we can and should be super-persons, we need a weakness model.  God has revealed himself to us as one who has the courage to hurt, not as a hero who shrugs blows off.  God, in Jesus, entered our condition, our pain, our humanness.  He did not stride valiantly above it all, he agonized.

Faith is an awareness that God is alongside us in all circumstances.  God has been there, and God is there with us, all the way, come what may.  "If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there...even there your hand will guide me."  (Ps. 139:8-10).

We need to equip ourselves and our children with this more biblically realistic teaching.  Otherwise we promote and practice Christian faith as another self-help technique that denies the actualities of life in this broken world.

Life is difficult.  The storms will be there.  We will be knocked about.  Christian faith grants no immunities.  We have only the knowledge of the presence with us of He who accepted no immunity.

We may not feel His presence when earthquakes shake, tornados destroy; or when we're ripped with sorrow, anger, or fear.  We will only be able to remember it.  He hurts with us and weeps with us.  He is taking every blow we get.  He is with us, holding us.

God seems to stress far more his suffering with us, his entering into our circumstances, than he does his power over everything.  "The weakness of God is stronger than man's strength," says Paul,  stressing this point (2Cor. 1:25).  And God says, "My power is made perfect in weakness." (2Cor. 12:9).

The Christian life of faith is thus an invitation to humanness, an invitation to walk accompanied by our suffering Lord, unprotected, feeling the pain that life brings.  Then, and then only, do we gain the potential for abundant living.