Elevator

A week ago Monday, one of my wife’s colleagues at work had to take his young wife, the mother of their only baby, to undergo a double mastectomy. We're just heartbroken for them. The next day, after sitting with a woman at the hospital while her husband had surgery, I was getting on the elevator to go home.

Trying to get on the elevator behind me was a middle-aged Hispanic woman, in a wheelchair, missing both legs just below the knees, freshly bandaged. I’d already witnessed her missing one elevator as I was walking up. She didn't have anyone there to help her get to the elevator and get on fast enough. I got to hold the door for her and something inside of me felt warmer.

As I stood in the elevator, staring at the closed door, taking the six-second ride up from sublevel 2, I thought, "I am so blessed. I have a spectacular and beautiful wife who loves me without reservation, I have two sons who still enjoy talking to me. I have a job, a roof over my head, food on my table, my health and, not least, a great dog. Everything else, I mean everything, is gravy - just gravy.”

It put all of my anxieties of the week into perspective. I said to myself, "I will love this day. I will live it fully. I will choose peace over anxiety. I will rest in Nancy's love and in the love of the Jesus who brought us together. I will not wait until all the bills are paid, until I have perfect answers to every question and absolute guarantees to all the uncertainties. I will dance in the sunlight that is mine today!"

Suddenly, the elevator door opened and I was standing two floors higher than I had started out. Not a bad day at all.

Hope

Just the other day, a baby cardinal flew into our sunroom and got trapped, unable to find its way out. We’d left the door open so Sam, our Golden Retriever, could get outside and get some fresh air. We hadn’t counted on what could get in if Sam could get out. Open doors work both ways.

Before long, we noticed Sam going crazy. We rushed out only to discover that he had cornered a baby cardinal. A beautiful bird and very tiny. A blood-red beak, canvassed against smooth, mocha-brown feathers. It had found sanctuary behind a potted plant on a plant stand, just outside of Sam’s reach, where it sat motionless, paralyzed either by fear or injury or both. Nancy had already made it clear which one of us would have to put the bird out of its misery if it came to that. I owe her one baby bird, but that’s another story for another time.

To Sam’s dismay, I cupped my hands around the little bird and carried it outside. To my amazement, it didn’t fight me. I could only imagine how frightening my massive hands wrapped around it must have felt. Yet, it was almost like the bird knew I wanted to help and, so, surrendering to my power, it didn’t struggle. It let me carry it outside and set it down in the grass where, just a few moments later, it took flight into the freedom of the sky.

If baby cardinals are hatching, Spring must be near. Easter is coming. Life always finds a way to trump death. Always.

Faith is when we stop fighting the God who has come to rescue us from death, even the paralyzing fear of it, and surrender to the same hands that were once nailed to a cross. What happens next is called hope, and the freedom to fly, our wings resurrected strong and high in the endless sky of God’s life-giving mercy and grace.

Friends

Over lunch at a steakhouse in Abilene years ago, I asked my friend Ron how he had survived the death of his four-year-old son a number of years before. His little boy had suffered from some kind of congenital heart defect and one day was just suddenly gone from Ron and Bobbie’s lives. At the time, I had two little boys of my own. The thought of losing one of them was simply incomprehensible and how a parent could endure such a loss even more so.

Ron was, and still is, one of the most mature, well-balanced, rock-solid Christians I’ve ever known. Frankly, when I asked the question, I expected his answer to have something to do with a particular Bible passage or prayer or something like that. And, I’m certain scripture and prayer played a significant role. Yet, his one-word answer caught me off-guard. I’d asked him how he had survived such an inconceivable loss and his simple answer was, “Friends.” Friends had become the presence of Christ to them, gotten under the load of an unbearable burden and carried the weight with them.

Jesus once said to his disciples, “‘I no longer call you servants . . . instead I have called you friends’” (John 15:15, NIV). Jesus thinks of me as his friend? That’s incredible! It occurred to me as I peer over the horizon into the possibilities of this new day that one of the most spiritual things I could do this week is seek to be a true friend to those with whom God gives me the privilege of sharing this journey.

When a man once got word that his father was dying, he went back home for one final visit. This is what he told his father as he lay dying. “You have always been there whenever any of us children needed you. And, across the years, you have given us the best single gift that any parent could give – you took delight in us. In all sorts of ways you let us know that you were glad we were here, that we had value in your eyes, that our presence was a joy and not a burden to you (John Claypool, Stages, Word, 1980, p. 23).”

The definitions of friendship are hard to reduce to a simple list. I do believe that, according to Jesus’ own word, that must mean that he takes delight in us. In all sorts of ways he lets us know that he is glad we are here. We have value in his eyes and our presence is a joy, not a burden to him.

How I thank God for my friends! How I pray that I might be that kind of friend to even one person this very week!

Tiger

I’m convinced that, when observing the lives of others, there is a story we know and then there is another story behind the story that we don’t know and may never know. When a man is walking with a limp, we assume there is a childhood injury in his past, or maybe a birth defect, or, maybe he was driving drunk one night and caused a terrible accident and suffered a permanent injury himself. The point is, we rarely ever know the story behind the story. That’s why judgment is God’s business and God’s business alone. Only God knows the whole Tiger Woods story, and the story behind the story.

Besides that, it’s been my experience that, when I’m busy pointing the judgmental finger at someone else’s moral failure, I’m not paying attention to my own steps. Which means that I run the risk of stepping in the very same pothole as did the one I’m judging. Judgment is God’s business.

Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be discerning and doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have boundaries and certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold people accountable. It just means that we never know the whole story, and probably never will.

In the meantime, there is a silver lining in the cloud that will now shadow Tiger Woods the rest of his life. All of this outrage over his infidelities ought to tell us something. It would appear that, despite what we see on television or in the movies, by and large, as a culture, we still hold certain values to be dear. Like marriage instead of just cohabitation. Like marriage instead of divorce. Like staying faithful to your spouse. It would appear that adultery is not all it’s cracked up to be. Like a good habanera pepper, the first taste may be great but the painful kick on the backside just isn’t worth it.

Honestly, I’m disappointed in Tiger Woods, not because he’s Tiger but because of what his choices will mean for so many people. At the same time, my heart breaks for him and his family. He apparently made some terrible choices. I can only wonder what would have become of my life if I had been worth $1 billion by the time I was 30. Not many people ever have the maturity to handle that kind of prosperity well. Is there any chance we can learn something from all of this about the dangers of the false gods of fame and fortune that too often distract us from God?

My only job now is to let all of this serve as a reminder to pay attention to my commitments and responsibilities. All of us are, every day, only one step away from taking a step from which we could never publicly recover. I’ve got all the prosperity and responsibility I can handle. Managing my own life is a full-time job.

When Worship Just Happens

Sunday evening, after the youth Bible study concluded, we were all walking out to our cars when a car I didn’t recognize pulled onto the lot, backing up to the salt store next door. I decided to just wait a couple of minutes, let the driver get his salt and then follow him off of the lot, locking the drive-through gate behind him.

Instead, as the driver got out of his car, he walked straight toward me, asking as he walked, “Are you the pastor here?” I barely finished telling him my name when he asked, “I was wondering if I could ask you to pray for me?” Just a couple of days before, he’d been involved in a terrible car crash. The wreck was the other driver’s fault and he had died instantly. The total stranger standing before me was still visibly shaken at having seen it all, so much so that he was willing to ask a total stranger to pray for him.

Earlier that day, I’d left church feeling a little frustrated. Among other things, like asking people to “bow their eyes and close their heads” during the invitation, instead of the other way around, I had also forgotten to take my Bible to worship. I intended to read the gospel as part of my message but instead found myself standing there asking if I could borrow someone else’s Bible. Worship had not gone like I planned.

Praying with a total stranger wasn’t exactly how I planned to end the day, either. Yet, praying with that man turned out to be one of the most meaningful experiences of worship I had all day.

There is worship that we plan and there is worship that just happens. I’m so glad things don’t always turn out the way I plan them.

Tooth Fairy

If you have followed my blog, you may remember this blog from July, 2008. It continues to be one of my very favorite stories. I share it again because I can't help but think of all the people I know who need hope this morning.

In another time and place, right before the children were to go on stage to perform their spring musical, another little boy inadvertently elbowed nine-year-old Ben in the mouth. Pain aside, Ben was so very disappointed that the elbow also knocked one of his teeth loose. Ben screwed up his courage and sang the entire musical anyway.

When he got home, Ben stood over the bathroom sink to finish the work the elbow had only begun. As bad as it had been, it did open the possibility of leaving something for the tooth fairy. Then, just as he worked the tooth loose it fell into the sink and down the drain. Ben was horrified! His dad, Scott, who is not a Master plumber but who is a master father, decided to see if he could rescue the tooth by removing the drain trap under the sink. In the process, he got the trap loose but not without breaking another pipe that would require calling a real and very expensive plumber. Now, both father and son were so very disappointed.

The plumber came and, while fixing the broken pipe, discovered something else askew in the plumbing that required climbing under the house to repair. While there, he discovered something more ominous. It was a water leak that had been dripping for some time onto a gas line that runs beneath the house. The leak was just about to corrode a hole in the pipe that would have soon started causing a very dangerous gas leak.

The rest of the story involves older sister Corrie coming to Ben’s rescue. The missing tooth was never found. So, Corrie offered Ben a souvenir. It was a fossilized shark’s tooth she’d had for some time, a prized possession. She gave it to Ben telling him that he could put that under his pillow for the tooth fairy. Ben was aghast. “I can’t put that shark’s tooth under my pillow. The tooth fairy will think I’m a vampire!” His sister’s good intentions persisted and Ben decided to use the shark’s tooth anyway. Just to be sure, he wrote a personal letter to the tooth fairy explaining all that had happened and, what started out as one disappointment after another turned into something very wonderful.

Which is meaning of the tooth parable. Had Ben not been elbowed in the mouth and lost his tooth in the sink causing the plumber to climb under the house, well, none of us would like to think about what could have been had the gas leak not been discovered. The icing on the disappointment turned hope cake was that all of this created an opportunity for big sister to prove her compassion.

One of the greatest and recurring themes of God’s word, from cover to cover, is the promise that what can at first cause us to be so very disappointed can, if we will let the grace of God have its way, come to be seen as nothing more than a painful way hope finds its way into our lives. Sometimes life can be so very disappointing. Even so, we also have this eternal promise from God’s word. “We . . . boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us . . ..”

Hope never disappoints because disappointment is just hope’s doorway into our lives.

God Knows

In a moment freeze-framed only in the electrical synapses of memory from nearly twenty years ago, I’m standing beside a professor’s desk at John Brown University in northwest Arkansas. The professor was giving his new pastor the nickel tour. Just above his desk, already overcrowded with work from the new semester, hung a plague that quietly whispered above the clutter, “Happiness is someplace to belong, something to do, someone to love.”

I’ve never been big on theology or politics that can be reduced to a bumper sticker or a plaque. That day, though, I was reminded yet again that something doesn’t have to be complicated or sophisticated to be true. Common sunsets and tiny green-breasted hummingbirds’ wings, the loving sparkle in my wife’s eyes and the joy in a friend’s voice, all announce the presence of incomprehensible and creative love, any day I’m willing to look, or listen.

Jack Dorsey never dreamed that his simple e-networking brainstorm with a very common name, Twitter, would, be worth $1 billion, only thirty-six months after his first tweet. All he’s done is find a way of marketing a product designed to address a need as old as creation. By the millions and counting, people are tweeting and facebooking proof that, no matter how big or complicated our world becomes, the greatest of human needs include belonging, doing and loving.

In the very first book of the Bible, just barely above the din of creation itself, God’s sentiment is poignantly stated in only nine little words. “It is not good that man should be alone.” Centuries later, Jesus’ response to the dilemma of human isolation was what is now commonly known as the “church.” Some have given up on the church because it’s too human, as though it could be anything else, as in “non-human.” Yet, despite all of its failings, that’s what keeps me coming back, the voice of Holy God speaking hope right into the middle of all of this humanity. Even my creator knows that I need someplace to belong, something to do and someone to love. That’s what keeps me coming back, specifically to the church. I know God knows that. I know God knows!