100 Things I'm Thankful For

For my first post in the Gratitude Journal, I am going to focus on the people who are special to me.

1.     MY WIFE
I'm thankful for my wife, The Incredible Songstress.  The loves me so patiently and gently.  She believes in me and makes me feel 'at home' wherever we are together.  She not only loves me, but she likes me.  That God chose her for me, is the grandest blessing in my life, filling my empty gaps with her endless talent and graces.  To love her is more than easy... it's fun!



2.     MY CHILDREN
I'm thankful for my children, all three.  Elder Son who cares deeply for people and enjoys them.  He is brilliant and his intellect blows me away.  He accepted Christ at the age of five and longs to please Him every day.  Middle M, whose quirky smile and gregarious sense of humor lightens every room.  He is agile and savvy, loves God with a desire to know Him, and chases life with gusto.  Princess is strong and joyful, creative and a natural achiever with a passion for beauty.  She has eyes to see Jesus in people.  It would be nice to take credit for their strength, but the truth is that I done more enjoying of them than forming of them.


3.     MY PARENTS
My mother has immigrated to her true home in the next life, but her marks are everywhere in the people around me.  A creative soul with a wide circle of influence, she encouraged without effort and gave her best to everything she committed to.  I am thankful to have been raised by committed, caring, dependable Christians who pointed my life in the right direction.  My dad showed me faithfulness and dependability.  He expanded my view of Christian faith by challenging the box that defined (or maybe confined) my view and experience of God's grace.

4.     MY BROTHERS
Brothers don't compliment each other much, but my brothers have proven to be more of a team for me than I could have dreamt they ever would be.  Balanced, dependable, productive.  More conservative than me - evidently that's because I'm the youngest and I was coddled.  We couldn't be more different OR more the same.

5.     MY FRIENDS
Freddie, Kris, Chuck & Lizz, Chris, JeerMe, Chris, Paul, Kevin, Kerry, John, Jason, Rob & Lisa... and the list goes on.  My life has been enriched by special people and shaped by the wonderful fact that they like me and enjoy my company.   My life is savory for having shared it with incredible people.  I wish that life had afforded me the pleasure of spending every season of it surrounded by the cloud of great friends I have enjoyed, but alas, the shifting current of earthly life moves friends in and out of proximity. However, with this kind of friend, the joy they bring echoes into the farthest valleys and through every season of life.  A hone call connects us as if there had never been a gap.

Lord God of Heaven and Earth, you are almighty and personal.  I love you and I thank you for loving me with your everlasting love and I thank you for showing your love to me through these people who prove unmistakably that you do love me.  I have been so happy to share this "one another" Christian journey with these incredible people.  Thank you for the joy we have shared, the struggles we have carried together, the differences that made us stronger as we learned to continue with them instead of in spite of them, the deep thinking that we worked out...  Lord, my life is truly RICH with the blessing of the people you have put in my life.  I want to be a person who blesses you and blesses these people in return.  Grant it I pray.  Amen

"I will bless the Lord at all times.  His praise will continually be in my mouth."  Psalm 34:1

Judging in the Church - A Memory

"Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”  [Jesus]  John 7:24

When Jesus made this statement he was responding to religious people who were very perturbed with Him for not acting very religiously on the day of their weekly worshipping rituals.  In my scripture meditation this week, I came to this passage and the Lord lead me to remember fondly an experience from my past ministry in San Bernardino.  (I think my heart was already pondering my pastoral history fondly because I have been enjoying the memoirs of pastor, professor, Bible translator - Eugene Peterson.)

Each Sunday morning as we gathered to sing vibrant songs of praise, and to study the Bible together, our congregation would be full of energy and there was a buzz of friendship before and after each service.  During each service, the crowd was very generous with their expression, both in worship to God and in response to the unfolding of the Bible's truths.  Heads nodded, eyes smiled, cried, and questioned.  Fingers turned the onion skin pages of treasured Bibles.  Lips sometimes laughed aloud and sometimes whispered "amen."  Except for one spot in the sanctuary.

1/4 of the way back on the north side of the sanctuary sat a man we'll call "Ted" (not his real name).  Each week, as the music subsided, Ted would sink into the pew next to the pole right there in the same spot, 1/4 of the way back on the north side of the sanctuary.  And after the offering receptacles had been passed, Ted will sink into a silent slumber, with his head propped against that faithful pole.  Ted's wife sitting next to him and family in tow.

Oh, my wife and I would smile about Ted sleeping through my preaching and joke about my apparent lack of skill.  Little did I know that there were some others in the crowd who did not smile, but had some unkind words of judgement about Ted's weekly penchant for napping in church.  At one point, it came to my attention that Ted's wife had been approached by someone and within a week I was approached by someone else who was up in arms about what they called disrespect for God, the Bible, and for me.  They complained that Ted was unfaithful, and a bad example for the teens in the church.  They said that 'church' (by which they meant the Sunday morning service not the community of believers as the New Testament uses the term) should have been taken more seriously as a responsibility than Ted was taking it.

Well, long before I was approached by the person who was so concerned about Ted's example, I had spent a few evening with Ted's family for dinner.  It was during one of those dinners that I found out that Ted would regularly work all day on Saturday as a local policeman and then pick up a shift as a private security guard on Saturday nights to earn enough money to support his growing family.  My knowledge of Ted's real life situation inspired me to take this complaint very seriously.

After listening to the person express the entirety of their concern, I asked if they were aware of any others who had similar concerns about Ted.  They confirmed that they indeed did know such persons, and assured me that they had not gossiped about the topic.  I asked if we could get everyone together so that we could all talk together about this very important concern.  They agreed to arrange the gathering and I agreed attend.

At the gathering there was only one other couple in attendance.  This was a great relief to me, as I had prepared myself for a much more ominous scenario.  After they listed the other persons who could not be present for very important reasons, I very briefly confirmed that both couples we concerned with Ted's sleeping during the Sunday morning worship.  I then took the opportunity to ask the first couple if they had enjoyed their recent water skiing trip, the beach trip they took before that, the Super Bowl Party they had stayed home from church to prepare for earlier in the year and a few other events that had kept them away from church participation.  The first couple talked about their busy life quite freely, while the other couple squirmed in their seats.  After some time I explained that Ted's faithfulness to attend church so regularly came at a very significant personal cost.  I also explained that his family had been an example of putting church participation above many other potential activities.  I then asked them to recall any times they were aware of Ted's absence from church for optional activities that could have been planned around church participation.  (This was a gamble because I was aware of at least 1.)  Our conversation went on for some time and at the end, we all agreed that Ted was indeed a very good example of one kind of faithfulness.  In fact, in some ways he was a better example than we were.  One of those couples never attended another service at our church in San Bernardino.  But Ted... he was always there.  And that seemed to work out just fine for all of us.

I served as pastor in San Bernardino for a total of 12 years; 7 of them as the lead pastor in an incredibly loving and generous congregation.  It was my first opportunity to serve in the capacity of lead pastor and I needed their love and their grace.  Even in the most gracious of congregations, there can be individuals who find some kind of personal satisfaction in looking at the apparent short-comings of others with a sense of condemnation or judgement.  I have discovered that most of the time people tend to judge in others the very things that they are trying to disguise in themselves.  We, religious people, tend to look for those who share our weaknesses, but perhaps in a more obvious way, or a less socially acceptable way, or maybe in a way that is just different enough from our own struggle to seem somehow more lowly.  It is just such people to whom Jesus said, "Do not judge others or you to will be judged.  And you will be judged by the same measure that you use to judge." (Matthew 7:1)  Elsewhere, Jesus said to this same kind of person, "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." (Luke 6:37)  Condemning others does no good for the one condemned and even less for the one condemning.

A church is a communion of persons from various life circumstances, joining spirits in honor of God.  It's the joining of spirits that seems so very hard for us to do.  Yet, the joining of spirits is at the core of what makes 'church' so very important.  Let us hear and obey the angel who calls "Come let us gather together for the great supper of God." (Revelation 19:17)

Random Dissonance - One Thursday in October

It was Thursday... That's about all I remember about the date.  I do remember that it was foggy outside and that I was expecting to dread my commitment to teach a high school English class that day.

The fog on the floor of California's Great San Joaquin Valley was damp, cold, and dense.  Its the worst kind of weather we get here in the nation's salad bowl.  I have vivid childhood memories of fog so thick that my dad would have my older brother put his head out of the passenger side window to look straight down at the white line on the side of the road to protect us from crashing our car in the white blindness.  I also remember my own response to southern California meteorologists, who during my first year away at seminary warned, "The fog is dense today.  Leave for work early and drive slowly."  Then when I got out there to drive there was little more than a vague haze with a generous 75 ft. of visibility.  I said out loud in my car (as if to the drivers around me), "Pick up the pace people.  As long as you can see your hood ornament you have no reason to slow down."  It seems the world outside of my own Mayberry, USA has it's own very frail idea of what dangerous fog is.  No, to me fog is not a danger.  To me fog is an annoyance that tenaciously keeps a strangle hold on the locals who, with equal tenacity, press toward normal productivity as if sheer will can overcome the very forces of nature.

But fog does kill.  When I was a child I remember a friend was in a car wreck caused by fog on the way to school.  His mom died in that wreck...

On this Thursday in October I did not hear of anyone dying.  But I came back to life.

It was a strange event.  It didn't so much happen as much as I realized that it had happened.  For months upon months I had prayed that God would life the weight of the dissonance I was feeling.  I had sought every corner of my life confessing unknown sin.  I had presented by sadness to God and asked for beauty in place of ashes (Isaiah 61:3).  I had tried to live in the joy I knew I should have, but instead of a walk in faith it was a charade parade.  I had prayed that the darkness would lift and that oppression would be defeated.  I had spoken out against evil spirits that I thought may have been around me and prayed that God would cause any of them present to be dispelled.  All for nought.  The pain of my loss friendships kept me covered in heaviness and grief.

But not this day!  Sometime during 2nd period I realized that I felt "normal."  I felt laughter at one point and it was such a foreign feeling that I took notice that it had happened without effort.  I passed out the exam to the students, gave them their instructions to work in silence and then sat at the teacher's desk to recount my day.  I looked back at my morning and realized that I woke up with out any sense of despair.   I realized that at no point in the morning thus far, had I felt anything negative or heavy.  I was not depressed.

There I sat and I prayed a prayer of gratitude and I asked God, "why today?"  I listened for an answer that never came and I recognized deep in my soul that I would not receive any answer.  God had healed me.  He had done so in His perfect timing and the best thing I could do would be to accept it thankfully.  So I did.  I accepted it thankfully and trusted that the long darkness was finally over.

"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.  His love endures forever." (Psalm 136)

And so it was.  I have often remembered my sadness and felt pangs of sorrow for the losses, not yet restored.  But the sadness no longer has a life of its own and it no longer rules my experiences with its oppressive heaviness.  Depression has not returned and I remember that "he whom the Lord sets free is free indeed." (John 8:36)

This is the conclusion of the story of my random dissonance.  Random because it was born in in events that were not unfamiliar to me.  Dissonant because I had been locked in a living countermelody that was seemingly played in a musical key that was offensive to the song that the rest of the world was singing.  This was my story.  A story of God's miraculous healing.  And I know that others had stories that are similar, yet different.  I know that in some people's story, God uses medication to break the clouds and free the captive.  This was my story.  Don't fear yours.  God is in the story and He will redeem you and your storm for good.

Responding to Grace - An Easter Sunday Follow-up

Oh to have had more time on Sunday to discuss the truth of God's grace, but the truth IS that grace is a mystery of God so deep and wide that it will take a lifetime to plumb its depths and span its width.  God's grace comes to us in moments of divine revelation that sometimes knock us off of our feet and onto our knees. And sometimes it gently nudges us as lightly as a kiss blown from fingertips.

God's grace so brightly portrayed on the cross is His saving grace.  This is the grace that He gave to lift the burden of our rebellion by forgiveness: forgiveness so generous that God not only forgives us of our wrong-doing, He takes away the eternal cost of that wrong doing.  Like receiving a pardon, God's grace restores our record and our reputation to it's pre-rebellion state.

But God's grace comes in so many other forms.  Sunshine.  I know, that sounds somewhat childlike to consider.  But wait a moment.  Think about sunshine and all the ways we benefit from it.  In hundreds of ways, everyday, we experience God's grace through the sun that shines on us and provides vitamin D for our health, photosynthesis for our fruits and vegetables, conduction to warm our planet, light to illuminate our way, and even energy to power this computer.  Sunshine = God's grace.  Thank you God for the warm sunshine that makes my light weight T-shirt so comfortable today. 

Grace is God's goodness provided on our behalf.  His saving grace.  His common grace.  His loving, compassionate grace.

God's grace restores us and our situation.  This is what we talked about this past Sunday in the experience of Peter at the Sea of Galilee after Christ's resurrection.  It takes our biggest failures and offers us transformation.  Grace takes our deepest regrets and shame and promises us a future with hope and prospect.  Grace takes our damage relationship with God and offers us a restoration which takes us ALL the way back to God's original plan for us.  That's good!

How then should we respond to grace?
1.  Be transformed.  We can't stop at being forgiven, we have to delve into the very situation that we have marked a failure and be transformed.  Use it for good.  Learn from it.  Grow from it.  Help others from it.  Put down a stake in our spirit that will anchor us for future living in God's grace.
2.  Be productive.  If God is giving us a future and purpose in that future, we need to pursue that prospective occupation.  Get educated.  Get experience under a mentor.  Get equipped by the Holy Spirit.  Get going (to the very ends of the earth to make disciples).
3.  Be close to God.  God has moved close to us.  We need to stop moving away from Him and into our own ego-feeding, pleasure pursuing, treasure hoarding activities; and start devoting time to God seeking, God honoring, God sharing life (in all of its true fullness).

God is offering...

I like this hymn.

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee. 

(Frances R. Havergal, February1874)

Click here to hear the Easter message, "A Guy Named Peter"

Random Dissonance - Color

"Depression is something that makes you lose your sight."   Michael Schenker

Spring is one of my favorite times of year.  Since one of the things that helps me feel centered and balanced is gardening, it makes sense that I should enjoy the blooming season.  This Spring, for the first time ever, I have successfully produced a crocus bloom in my garden.  (I really live in the wrong region for crocus to flourish.)  But the elements worked together in perfect harmony with the dna of the crocus bulb to produce a flurry of early Spring purple near the front walk of our home. 

As I sit typing today, Spring is nearly in full swing.  My Mayberry, USA is an agricultural town surrounded by fruit and nut trees.  And for a couple of weeks each year we are swathed with the pink and white blooms of almond, peach, nectarine, and cherry trees.  I have often wondered if from above, it might appear that our town is floating in a pond of blossoms. 

With a deep sense of admiration for blooming trees, I have planted 2 in my front yard, and planned the timing of their bloom to last into the early mid Summer.  Even our larger shade tree, which does not bloom, begins it's leaf season in a blaze of bright red infant foliage.  Spring color is in one sense the reward for a yard carefully planned, consistently cared for, and attentively nurtured.  Looking out the window into our yard, my vision is today bathed in blue, purple, pink, white, red, yellow, and coral.  Happy Spring to me.

Last Spring, deeply entrenched in the barrage of my emotional tempest, this visage of color had no affect on me.  Every bloom felt grey or brown.  Just as nearly every experience of my very blessed life had seemingly been reduced to it fundamental operation, Spring had been reduced to the change of temperature, which would mean little more than changing the household thermostat and needing to mow the lawn with more regularity in order to prevent my suburban castle from being "that house" on the block.

Realizing then that my life had become a colorless landscape of brownish greys and greyish browns, I considered a serious breech of my previous commitment to hide my malaise at all cost.  I began to think that the convergence of causes for my depression had surrendered to physiology.  There is a saying in psychology that I have not forgotten since my college days.  "Neurons that fire together, wire together."  A purposely obvious play on the axiom about family prayer, the saying points out that in the human brain, stimulus that is repeated over time creates a well-worn pathway in the brain, which will replace the previous "normal" pathway for brain functions.  In other words, if you do (or feel) something repeatedly for a long enough period of time, it becomes your new normal.  This is how we form habits.  (It is the key to breaking habits too!)  But it has a more insidious meaning for those who experience depression.  If you stay depressed long enough, those emotional pathways in the brain will become your new normal.  Your brain will travel those neuron highways regularly and you will suffer what is called "clinical depression."  I was taught that a person who has a normal depression that lasts for 6 months is in the risk zone for becoming medically depressed and needs the help of pharmaceutical therapy.  It had been nearly 15 months for me and I was ready to call the Dr.  It seemed that a life on prozac, lithium, or celebrex couldn't be any worse than the colorless post-storm life that I had settled into. And truthfully, it would have been better (should it have come to that).

This for me was a deeply humbling moment.  I had lost.  I had reached the end of me and had found myself wanting.  In a world where I had always had a way out and a vision of the vibrantly colorful "good" that hovers just below the surface of every dark and colorless challenge or struggle, I had become color blind.  My stiff upper lip, my determination to muscle my way through it alone, my rehearsed prayers, my desperate prayers, my self-diagnosis:  all the best of my efforts came to nothing.  They came to nothing, and I admitted defeat.

This experience is not new to me (reaching the end of myself...).  I had a similar experience when I met my wife.  My beautifully crafted plan for finding God's ideal woman for me seemed perfectly logical and attainable given the right amount of effort, accompanied by doses of prayer and wise counsel on my part.  At 25 I was at the end my efforts again and gave up.  THEN, THEN, God brought the beautiful wife of my youth into my life.  Though I had been a close friend of her  brother for nearly a year, been in her home on many occasions, met every other member of her family, it was not until I had admitted defeat that God opened the door of His will to me.

And so it was with the storm that turned my technicolor life into sepia.  No matter how well I prayed, no matter what effort I put into the healing process, no matter how strong my self-will, I would not receive God's healing until I had come to the end of myself.  And so it was one Thursday in October.  When I had reached the end of myself, God was there!  And like Dorothy landing in Oz, color!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones. (Proverbs 3:5-9)

(Take some time and read all of Proverbs 3 - There's a lot of incredible wisdom and spiritual insight recorded there.)