A Sort Of Homecoming

I retell here a simple story that moves me and bears repeating.

It involves a man named Henry Morrison who returned to the states back in the early 1900s after having served for more than 40 years as a missionary in Africa.

Henry and his wife were greatly encouraged as their ship approached American soil, because they saw that a great and cheering crowd had gathered at the dock to welcome them home.

Or so they thought.

After the boat docked, the Morrisons soon realized that the crowd of people were there to greet not the missionaries but rather President Teddy Roosevelt, who was returning from a 3-week African hunting safari.

The missionaries found their way off the boat alone and hailed a cab to take them to the one-bedroom apartment waiting for them. Not a soul had been there to welcome these faithful missionaries home.

This greatly troubled Henry for a number of days, and at his wife's urging he eventually retired to their bedroom and poured out his soul in prayer to the Lord about the matter.

He returned from the room a bit later with peace restored to his face. His wife asked him what had happened, and this was his reply.

"The Lord settled it for me. I told Him how bitter I was that the President received this tremendous homecoming, but no one even met us as we returned home. When I finished, it seemed as though the Lord put His hand on my shoulder and simply said, 'But Henry, you are not home yet!'"

A sustaining peace awaits us if we accept this reminder.

Lord, I'm tired. This life has worn me out. When will it all make sense?

You are not home yet!

Lord, I feel rejected. Does anybody really love me?

You are not home yet!

Lord, I don't understand. Why did you let it happen? Why?

You are not home yet!

I let these words roll around in my mouth like fine wine.

You are not home yet!

When we finally do arrive... when we can truly say we are home...

We will indeed discover that the fight was worth it.

That we are and always have been loved.

And all our questions will be put to rest.

It Depends...

The old internet joke gets quoted in our house from time to time.

I read it on the internet. So it's true.

Maybe not, though I did read that on the internet...

[An exercise in recursion thinking, but we digress...]

But how about this one? I read it in the Bible. So it's true.

How do we as Christians react to that statement?

Well, for those who take the Bible to be a collection of holy scriptures, this statement must be taken more seriously.

There's an old evangelical favorite that pops up pretty fast in conversations surrounding the trustworthiness of scriptures.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I cannot count how many times I've heard a Christian quote this verse as proof that the Bible is true and trustworthy, from end to end.

Anyone who has read a few of my blogs will have noted that I put a lot of stock in scriptures, too. For example, my last blog ended with this:

Psalm 37:4
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Yes, Psalm 37 is an "old favorite." If 2 Timothy assures us we can trust the Bible, Psalm 37 assures we can trust God. It gives us lots of "comfort verses" — verses that reassure us that things will turn out well for us in the end.

I've been reading Psalm 37 a lot recently, so it's popped up several times in my recent blogs. Here's another passage I used:

Psalm 37:10-11
A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
   though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land
   and enjoy peace and prosperity.

Here's another chunk of Psalm 37 that I quoted in yet another blog!

Psalm 37: (excerpted)
Take delight in the Lord,
   and he will give you the desires of your heart.
The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care,
   and their inheritance will endure for ever.
In times of disaster they will not wither;
   in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.
Turn from evil and do good;
   then you will dwell in the land forever.
For the Lord loves the just
   and will not forsake his faithful ones.
The righteous will inherit the land
   and dwell in it for ever.

Then there's this one, from one final blog, and we'll stop there...

Psalm 37:20-22
Surely God does not reject one who is blameless
or strengthen the hands of evildoers.
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter
and your lips with shouts of joy.
Your enemies will be clothed in shame,
and the tents of the wicked will be no more.

These are passages of scriptures. I read them in the Bible.

Are they true? Trustworthy? As Christians we say, "Yes!"

But here's the catch.

That last passage... Psalm 37:20-22.... it's not really from Psalm 37.

It's from the book of Job. In truth, it's really Job 8:20-22.

And the guy who speaks the words quoted? His name is Bildad.

[The recursion joke arises again... the blog where I previously quoted this passage from Job is.... this blog. But again, we digress.]

Bildad is one of Job's three useless "friends." One of Job's three tormenting accusers. When God shows up at the end of Job, he has some pretty strong words for Bildad and his two unhelpful friends.

Job 42:7-9
After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has." So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

Yes, I just finished the book of Job and I kept having this recurring thought: "Job keeps questioning the received wisdom. His three useless friends keep quoting the received wisdom. And the received wisdom is precisely this: Psalm 37."

Let's say that again. Job's three friends spouted a lot of Psalm 37 stuff. The righteous thrive. The wicked perish. Get with the program, Job...

But Job was questioning Psalm 37. Pretty pointedly.

Job 21:27-30
"I know full well what you are thinking,
the schemes by which you would wrong me.
You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great,
the tents where the wicked lived?’
Have you never questioned those who travel?
Have you paid no regard to their accounts—
that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity,
that they are delivered from the day of wrath?"

Job is saying to the other three, "Look around you, bozos. The wicked are doing fine. It's me who's hurting! And I'm innocent."

Who's right? God sets the record straight for Job's companions. It is Job who has spoken rightly about God. His companions, in contrast, have dishonored God with falsehoods worthy of punishment.

So let's return to the question.

I read it in the Bible. Is it true?

The answer to that question might depend upon a few things.

Where you read it. When you applied it. How and why you did so.

We do God no favors when we cram unhelpful verses down unwilling throats at the wrong time, in the wrong way for the wrong reasons.

A friend of mine struggling with cancer was on one occasion assured that her cancer was the direct consequence of sin in her life. Ouch.

Most of us are not usually that callous and awful in our presumption, ignorance and arrogance.

But I have a feeling that when we stand before God's judgment seat, we too will discover to our dismay that there were times in our lives when we played the role of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

I, for one, hope to keep those moments few and far between.

iPhone Dots And Duet: A Desultory Ditty

So I finally broke down and got a smart phone. So far I've kept most of the eye candy off of it, but I do have two games now: Dots and Duet.

Both games are quite addicting, but I think I'm on the recovery path. Here's how it played out. (Pardon the pun.)

I sat down to pray this morning in my regular place, but made the mistake of checking email on the iPhone. And saw Dots.

And decided to play "just one game."

Drive: (Keep Playing Until You Win.)

A number of games later, I had begun my own personal psychoanalysis.

I was starting and restarting the game. Repeatedly.

Why? Because my experience has been that only a good starting position will get you an awesome final score.

(Then again, maybe I don't understand the game very well.)

I want an awesome final score. So I'd restart dozens of times until I got a good opener. That made the game a bit more fun.

Until I started to feel like a despairing gambler staring with glazed eyes at a well-lit one-armed bandit. This got me thinking about life.

Delusion: (If I Can Restart, That's Better!)

Most people are not born at the top. If babies were cognizant at birth and had the choice, perhaps they'd play life like I'm playing Dots.

African sub-sahara. Restart.

Alcoholic and abusive parents. Restart.

Inner-city single mom. Restart.

But in God's sovereignty, it doesn't work that way. Good? Bad?

Despair: (Is There Nothing More?)

Interestingly, Dots affords me (and the rest of the 99%) a chance to experience the despair of inherited wealth first-hand.

I read a book once, titled "Navigating the Dark Side of Wealth: A Life Guide for Inheritors". I didn't need to. I'm not in the 1%. However it fell into my possession for free (which is a big deal for us 99%-ers...)

So I read it. It's a very good book. In it, the author points out something I had never really thought about before. It goes like this:

American society is well-structured for those who are seeking to become wealthy, but it has no guidance for you once you get there.

It was worded better than that, but that's the gist of it.

Dots helps us 99%-ers because we have the luxury of hitting restart until we get a winning game. And if Dots were rejigged a bit, it'd give us a winning game right from the start, every time.

And as soon as you realize that you're always winning? Despair.

What's the point of this stupid game? It's just a bunch of dots.

Welcome to the dark side of wealth, my friends.

I know. We all sing the same chorus: "Punish me that way, God."

But reality is brutal. Once we have dots, wealth and everything else... we discover they were not enough. Is this all there is?

Degradation: (This Game Is Taking Me Down...)

So that's the morning story on Dots. But last night I was playing Duet. (Just one game, you understand.)

Duet is unlike Dots in that Duet leaves no room for excuses. Win or lose, the results are directly attributable to your own actions.

Duet is to earned wealth as Dots is to inherited wealth. For the first few days, Duet was fun. It felt good to strive, improve and overcome.

But last night a gnawing feeling arose in me: "This is pointless." Dots and Duet had taken me to the same place by different routes.

Speaking for myself, No matter which game I play, I end up feeling like a slug. Like my soul needs a bath.

I was supposed to be praying this morning. Half an hour later, I have only this to say: "There went 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back."

Last night I could have been praying or reading a good book. Half an hour later? "There went 30 minutes of my life I'll never get back."

There is always a place for little mindless Diversions and Distractions.

The problem is, here in America we treat Dessert like it's Dinner.

Deliverance: (Returning to a Life of Prayer)

What am I trying to say? I guess it's this. Video games and other forms of entertainment consume whole lives here in America, leaving slugs on sofas to mark what never happened.

Prayer, on the other hand, rarely consumes whole lives. But when it does... oh my! Life in close communion with God is rich and fulfilling beyond what words can express.

Ironically, that's most of us want. But our choices take us far astray.

How sad that in search of excitement this morning I turned down my best option (prayer) and chose instead the shortcut to despair.

Tomorrow, I hope to choose more wisely.

Denouement...

No deep conclusions here. Just a reminder to myself to not let Dots, Duet or other Distractions get in the way of my Devotions.

Psalm 37:4
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Doing 50 MPH In A Parking Lot

Imagine yourself in a car...
Doing 50 MPH in a parking lot...
A parking lot with many parked cars you want to avoid hitting...
You want to slow down...
But the brake seems a bit beyond the reach of your toes...
And the brakes aren't responding well anyway...
Is that a cop car over at the end of the parking lot?

Does this scene seem fun to you?

Not to me either.

And yet variations on this scene are my repeated experience.

At night when I'm dreaming.

It doesn't take the wisdom of Joseph to interpret this dream.

God have mercy on this soul.

Who doesn't want to be a danger to himself.

Or others.

And yet cannot seem to bring his life into safer orbit.

Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on me.

A sinner.

The Widow's Offering: A Postscript

In a rather obscure (but all agree, the oldest) version of Mark's gospel, there are some verses at the end of chapter 12 that are not included in Bible translations commonly used today.

I think the extra verses are important and so here present the two passages together, included as one.

The Widow's Offering

Mark 12:41-44 (NIV Translation)
41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on."

=========================

(newer manuscripts do not include verses 45 through 49.)

Mark 12:45-49 (Textus Incepticus)
45 And Andrew spoke unto Jesus, saying, "Look, Lord! One of her mites missed the opening to the receptacle and rolled into a corner and fell into a deep crack between two stones." 46 And Jesus replied to him, "That does not concern me. I do not care about the money." 47 And the disciples were amazed at him. "Lord," Peter asked, "why then have you chosen to sit here and watch people as they give?" 48 And Jesus replied, "Are you still so dull? My father in heaven owns all things. 49 But I care for these people, and what they do with their money reveals their hearts to me. These others love very little. But this widow loves very much."

A confession: There is no Textus Incepticus. I made verses 45 through 49 up myself one day, while reflecting on the difference between money itself, what we do with it, what happens to it, and how we feel about it.

I hope this fictional postscript conveys this word of grace: What matters most is not what happens to money after we give it away.

Obviously we do want our gifts to make a difference. To be used well. To serve the Lord's purposes. This should indeed be our goal.

So we make every effort to invest the Lord's resources wisely.

But what matters most to God is that we give with a right spirit.

I hope this thought will prove an encouraging one for those of us who have seen money "fall into the wrong cracks" after we gave generously to the Lord's work with the best of intentions.

Having seen more than a few of my gifts fall into some very dark cracks, I certainly did need the encouragement.

Dispute Between a Man and His Book: Part 2 of 2

...Continued from Part 1

So my young son is well-versed in Ancient Near East culture.

In my first part of this reflection, I reveled in the sheer lunacy of it, making him out to be a closet scholar precocious beyond his years.

Reality is a bit more complicated, and not quite so humorous.

My son knew this ancient word Ba because he had been reading books from a certain genre. I knew that Rick Riordan had brought the Greek gods to life (witness the popular Percy Jackson movies) but was unaware that he also has a series of books set in ancient Egypt.

My son drank deeply from that well. While I wasn't looking.

Realizing that he was probably not the only one who had been reading these books, I asked my oldest daughter if she knew what a Ba was.

She did.

This is the daughter for whom school-related memorization of "boring historical facts" is an enormous and terribly unpleasant chore.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this.

On the one hand, I'm glad the kids are reading.

On the other hand, I am disquieted by what they are reading.

In one sense, perhaps my disquiet is misplaced. These are all dead gods. Gods that passed from the scene about 2,000 years ago.

In another sense, I'm a bit apprehensive as to how successfully these gods are making a resurgence in today's culture.

Now realistically speaking, I am not concerned that my children will come to believe that the Greek gods or the old Egyptian gods are real.

But I am a bit concerned that by taking these gods so lightly, even in book-land, we invite a nonchalance about all religious systems, treating them as good for entertainment, and not much else.

Religious systems make for dangerous playgrounds, but we as a culture have forgotten that simple truth. The situation I blogged just a few days ago was, in hindsight, entirely predictable.

We now have teachers and educators who have lost all sense of mooring and who therefore give blasphemous homework assignments without even realizing the nature of the offense.

Parents for their part are likewise blind — and voice no complaint.

If I had not spoken up, that homework assignment would have proceeded without a hitch. The only problem, so to speak, was me.

I am reminded of a passage from Nehemiah:

Nehemiah 13:4-8
Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God. He was closely associated with Tobiah, and he had provided him with a large room formerly used to store the grain offerings and incense and temple articles, and also the tithes of grain, new wine and olive oil prescribed for the Levites, musicians and gatekeepers, as well as the contributions for the priests.

But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Some time later I asked his permission and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room.

Nehemiah had helped to restored the temple to its proper, holy state... only to see a non-Israelite take up residence in the temple as soon as Nehemiah left town. It happened with the priest's blessing.

When Nehemiah returns, he throws Tobiah back out. But I can almost hear the priest Eliashib muttering under his breath.

"The only problem here is Nehemiah."

Maintaining purity in this world is a task of constant gardening.

In our culture today I see few gardeners. Even among our priests.

Anyone looking here for final conclusions about those Rick Riordan books will come up disappointed. I'm not sure where I'm falling on this. The kids did nothing wrong in this matter, and I'm not even sure the books are of the sort I should ban from the home. I read fantasy books as a child, too.

I'm just putting pen here to my disquiet, my growing dis-ease.

Dispute Between a Man and His Book: Part 1 of 2

I was being scholarly. Reading through the Old Testament at a snail's pace, supplementing my reading with commentary from a commentary that provides obscure background information on Old Testament readings that are obscure enough without the additional help.

Having just finished Esther, I was soldiering through a small prefatory article covering the "wisdom literature" books that were coming up next... Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.

As I said, I was being scholarly.

Or attempting to be.

I turned a bit school-boyish, however, when I got to a comment about there being similarities between Ecclesiastes and (among other things) an ancient Egyptian text from that period titled The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba.

Ba?

Now I cannot speak for others, but I found the word "Ba" pretty funny, given the context. Rather un-scholarly. It almost sounds like the name a child would give to his security blanket.

After chuckling for a moment over this silly book title, I read on, expecting to find out what a Ba is.

My smile quickly faded from my lips. No definition.

Seriously?

You're going to give me a book title like that? With no explanation?

Yep.

So what began as The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba quickly turned into A Dispute Between a Man and His Book.

I began to write a tart comment in the margin.

"No, wait. Don't tell me what a Ba is. I want to guess."

While I was still writing these very words, my early-rising 9-yr old son wandered into my basement office.

He still sleeps with Blue Orsor (his title for Blue Oso, a blue furry blanket with a teddy-bear head in one corner).

He ought to know what a Ba is.

So I showed the book title to him, figuring he might find it funny too.

My son looked up at me after reading the words and said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, "Isn't Ba an Egyptian word for a spirit?"

I must have looked a bit dumbfounded, because he quickly clarified himself.

"Yeah, and when a man goes to sleep, it wanders around in the form of a chicken or something."

Not so long ago I was reading this child Ba, Ba, Black Sheep.

Apparently he's moved on.

It's good to have a scholar in the home at times like these.

Just for backup, you understand.

This reflection continues in Part 2...