Someday, Somewhere

The greatest blessing of every new year is the implicit reminder of the new heavens and new earth, waiting over the next hill, round the next bend.

In this land we seek someday and somewhere, we will see all our resolutions in black, but stamped over in gold, “Complete, and Paid in Full.”

SDG

Evil on Christmas

An acquaintance was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. In spite of aggressive treatments, she was steadily declining, but still able to get around and live life somewhat. Saturday was her son’s birthday and they had a party for him, but she was kind of out of it. Her husband gave her morphine for the first time ever that night. In the morning she was worse, so they took her to the hospital. After examining her, the doctors gave her 2-24 hours. She died that afternoon, Christmas day.

Another family that many of my friends know had a 17 year old son with a congenital heart problem and several close calls and near death experiences, which he shared on YouTube one week before Christmas. He also died Christmas day.

Christmas night, I watched the news with my folks to see three homes destroyed by fire, several robberies of some of the few businesses open on Christmas, and various shootings. And on it went.

And on it goes. Day after day.

ADVENTures Before Christmas, Week 1

Much of the information came from the web, where it has been reposted many times, so I’m not sure of the original author, but the site used is http://www.crivoice.org/cyadvent.html

Advent means ‘coming,’ so it is the time of preparing for the coming of Christ. While it is most closely associated with Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth, for many Christians it is a reminder to anticipate and prepare for His second coming.

Interestingly, the original purpose of Advent was merely a countdown to Christmas, and that’s all. However, just as no modern evangelical pastor can conceive of a sermon that isn’t three points starting with the same letter, people expect everything in a ritual to be full of meaning to bursting, so meanings began to be assigned to various parts of the celebration. As a result of this ad hoc approach to liturgy, there is actually a lot of variation in both symbols and meanings, as you will see.

Groaning in Travail

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”                                                                                                                Romans 8:22

Someone close to me is continually frustrated in his efforts to complete projects. It seems that products designed to accomplish specific tasks are always insufficient for the job. They are made too cheaply, don’t come with the right parts, the instructions are incomplete or nonsensical, fail to last a reasonable length of time—you get the idea.

I have tried to figure out if these things are so bad, why aren’t their more dissatisfied people? Are their needs different than his, so it works for them, but not for his needs? No, because he doesn’t use them (usually) outside their advertised purpose.

Is it a matter of expectation? In other words, are folks just satisfied with mediocrity, and he still has ideals set to a higher standard of performance? Maybe.

Is he just unlucky in the items he chooses to buy, both mechanical and electronic? I doubt it. I don’t know many people who spend more time researching products ahead of time than him.

As I share similar struggles to him at times (I think most of us do.), I try to understand what seems to be the problem.

One thing is likely he expects things to last, and perhaps many people are more comfortable than him with the idea that most things are disposable today.

Another idea is that he has an engineer’s heart and wants/expects things to move/work smoothly to a high degree of perfection, while others just do the best they can and focus on things with a higher priority in their lives.

I’m not issuing value judgments here either way—just trying to look at potential contrasts to see which ones fit best.

Why?

We live in a fallen world. All of us are more affected by various aspects of that fallen state than others, but we each have some key vulnerability(ies). This may be his. But whatever it is for you, me, or him, it is our reminder that there is something better out there, a hope that is calling out to us from the futility of our struggles. Pain, frustration, despair are things that call us to higher possibilities reminding us that this isn’t our true home. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain that “Pain is God’s megaphone, to rouse a deaf world.”

But, as Christians, we would like to think we are roused, so He can put the megaphone away and quit yelling at us. It is like the sleepy high school student, yelling at mom to pipe down with an irritated, “I’m up! I’m up!”

But are we? Will we fall back asleep the moment it’s peaceful and quiet in our contented lives? Or, perhaps God isn’t yelling through a megaphone anymore, and now that we are awake, we see the mess of the world on our own, and we can’t seem to get away from it, because we are still in that world.

Does it really matter which way it is? It is our reality, regardless. So the question is how are we to respond?

Whether it is a continually buggy computer, or a vehicle that makes that horrible rattle that can’t be located, or a boss or colleague that makes work miserable, or a chronic malady hampering our health, we have to deal with it.

I’m not a self-help guru, so I don’t have “three easy steps” or “90 days to a new you.” All I know to do is to talk with the Lord about it, choose what attitude to have (and ask His help to maintain it!), and keep our attention focused on the important things in our lives, not the loudest.

A friend of mine puts it like this:  “Imagine your right hand is Christ and your left is your problems. If you focus on your problems, it is like you hold your left hand in front of your eyes and your right hand at arm’s length, and your problems are big and overwhelming and Christ seems small. If however, you focus on Christ and eternal things, it is like you are holding your right hand in front of your eyes and your left at arm’s length, and now Jesus is revealed to be bigger than your problems, and they, in turn, are cut down to size.”

A little cheesy perhaps, especially to write out, but there is a lot of truth to that.

“For the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross.” Ok. That is perspective. What problems are in our lives that compare to crucifixion? That is a BIG inconvenience to one’s life (yes, tongue in cheek). Yet, He saw a joy that made that horror endurable. If our microscopic problems are so powerful that our joy is stolen, how pitiful is that joy?

Perhaps we do still need God to use that megaphone after all.

SDG

Comforting the Grieving

This fall, I’ve had a rather larger than normal number of funerals, a fact I think I mentioned in a previous post. This morning was the latest, a distant elderly relative, whose husband died about two months ago. In February, they were in a rollover bus accident while vacationing in Florida. They never completely recovered, and she finally surrendered last Sunday.

Their eldest son gave both eulogies, and it of course has been a very hard 9-1/2 months for the family, but there was a big difference in his demeanor. Last time he was sad, but would smile when visiting with folks afterward. Today, there was none of that. In today’s eulogy, he spoke a lot about asking the why questions, and there was a very slight edge of frustration and anger in his voice, and in fact, he ended rather abruptly, as if he continued another word, he would say things he’d regret. My heart went out to him and the rest of the family—though they are Christians, they have been through Hell this year, and the strain was showing.

The minister immediately got up and gave a rather canned funeral sermon talking about Jesus being the Way, Truth, and Life, and how we have hope because of Christ. All true, but completely missing the point of the family’s struggle right here and now. They are angry, and rightfully so. They need someone to come alongside and help them through their anger to see why hope is not only possible, but reasonable.

As I observed the service, I began thinking about Jesus raising Lazarus. Even though He fully knew He was going to raise Lazarus, He grieved deeply with the family. Scripture says twice that He wept, and was ‘deeply moved,’ the expression meaning that He had a physical, visceral reaction to the magnitude of His grief. He did not treat it cavalierly, “Cheer up folks, I’ll raise Lazzy and all will be right with the world.” In Revelation, John states that “the final enemy to be defeated is death.”

Do you see that? Death is an enemy. It is something to fight and rage against, to grieve when it gets the upper hand. We are not made for death, but life. Death is an insult, an attack on our very being, and is to be opposed. To treat it as anything else is not dealing with reality. My relatives are right to be angry—their enemy has gained a victory over them, and it is not fair in any sense of the word. We must acknowledge that truth and not dismiss or minimize it. We must also not let things end there.

Paul tells us to grieve, but not without hope as the unbelievers do. Why? Because while death still acts and has power, it is only for a time, and its destruction is already in motion. By His resurrection, Christ removed the linchpin of Death’s authority, and it will completely fall away at the end. We have hope because Christ has defeated death, and grief until the defeat plays itself out.

Not only do we have the hope of the resurrection, but we have the comfort of God’s grieving with us. Not only with Lazarus do we see this, but also in Psalm 116:15, where the Word says, “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints.” When something is precious, it is valued, and carries with it a connotation of tenderness, comfort, special attention. He is not distant, clucking at us for not seeing the big picture, telling us to get over it because it isn’t a big deal. He is there with us, agreeing with our pain and sharing in it.

This victory, and the comfort that accompanies it, are not just a product of the New Testament, but a central theme of the entire Bible. Job, the oldest book of the Bible, declares in chapter 19—

“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,

and he will stand upon the earth at last.

And after my body has decayed,

yet in my body I will see God!

I will see him for myself.

Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.

I am overwhelmed at the thought!

From beginning to end, the Bible comes face to face with the reality of death in our lives. It never sugar coats it or puts whitewash over it—it even slams those that try to. God is brutal in His acknowledgment of our situation, yet comes alongside to share in the crap with us, and then adamantly declares that He will bring us through death, beyond it, and in the process destroy both its power and its very existence.

We are not alone. We will have an end to suffering. We will live as we know we are meant to.

SDG

The Death of Despair

Today I attended a funeral for a distant relative. I know his daughters better than I knew him, and unfortunately, though we are the same age and grew up in the same town, I don’t know them as well as I’d like, and we talked today about rectifying that over the holidays.

In a strange way, I enjoy going to funerals, and it is a bittersweet experience, because you learn so many really wonderful things about the person that you really wish you’d known when they were alive. I am blessed to come from a large extended family where multiple generations have kept in touch, and while there are a few rascals, most everyone is solid salt of the earth, even some of the rascals, which makes for some good stories. The tragedy is that my generation doesn’t really have the bonds with each other that the previous ones do. And we are beginning to lose large numbers of my grandparents’ generation (we’re a long-lived clan)—one more probably won’t make it through tonight, literally. Her funeral is already scheduled for next weekend.

This semester, we unexpectedly lost one of the powerhouse professors in our department, and yet already things are moving forward administratively to take care of his responsibilities. His memorial service will be next weekend also, and it will be full of stories and remembrances and praises, as you’d expect, and as he deserves. But life goes on.

I found myself during the service today asking the question, “What is the point of living life, much less a life well lived?” As the Preacher, Solomon, observed in Ecclesiastes 2:12-16:

Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?

 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.

 The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness;

but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.

 Then I said to myself,

   “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?”

I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”

 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;

   the days have already come when both have been forgotten.

Like the fool, the wise too must die!

The first answer to my question that I gave myself was to look around at the packed chapel to see the lives this man impacted, and knowing there were many more that wanted to be there. The cynic in me replied that it just begs the question, putting it off and the real question was why any of us was here—the cycle of life and death is just mechanistic meaninglessness, for even the universe will one day end, so what?

But God commanded us to live and declared that our existence is not only good, but very good. If He is Good and Holy, then these two facts are of critical importance. The fact of our living, and the urge to live well of necessity flow from the character and person of God. Without that being true, the Preacher is right. Even Paul concedes that if it is only for this life that we live as Christians, then we are to be most pitied of all people. Without the reality of a good God, Life is a burden, and one that should be shucked. If the destiny of our lives is annihilation sooner or later, then it really doesn’t matter which, sooner, or later.

But, if God, then everything changes.

One of my favorite verses about mortality is Psalm 116:15: “Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints.”  What care and comfort that the Almighty Creator sees the passing of our loved ones as precious! Anything that God deems precious can never be a waste.

Is your God big enough to redeem your mortality?

SDG