"To Him be glory forever": March 2018

Friday, March 23, 2018

Which Way?

"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."

Tomorrow morning I am running a marathon in countryside that many people would consider to be the "middle of nowhere." We start and finish in the town of Kayenta, AZ, but we run in the countryside west and north of town, a countryside that is largely dry and barren.

This will be my fourth time running here. The first year I was so far behind the runner in front of me that I got to a road crossing and wasn't sure which direction to go. I saw some footprints in the dirt and turned in the same direction, which eventually proved to be correct. I could just as easily have "kept walking", or in my case running, in the wrong direction.

I understand that this year they have altered the marathon course somewhat, so that we take a slightly different route back into town. In the past it was go out 13.1 miles, then turn and come back along the same route. Tomorrow when we reach the distant point we will turn-around, and as we come back towards town will turn again, and take a different way back. It could be an improvement to the marathon, but until I run it I have a bit of apprehension, as it could be a new way to get off course. "If we are facing in the right direction" presumes that we already know which direction is right. That can be a pretty significant "if."

But that opening quote, which I saw without any known author on a friend's Facebook page, has particular importance when it is applied to the direction of our lives. How often have you traveled through life on a path that was leading in the wrong direction? I know that I have, many times and for many years.

Jesus, preaching in the Sermon on the Mount, has something to say about finding the right direction. In Matthew 7:13-14, he says:

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

In life, the right direction is the one that leads in the direction of Jesus.

Life in the 21st century, and I imagine in every century previous, has many challenges. Hardship, wrong choices, illness, accidents, broken families…the list of things a person may struggle with could be virtually endless. And life in each era also offers many ways to find peace, calm, even hope in those challenges. But unless we are looking for hope first in Jesus, we won't find anything that truly brings peace to our hearts. Some of those things may look good, they may satisfy us for a while, but they will not last. They cannot endure.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said:

"The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever."

And the word of God, from Genesis through Revelation, teaches that the only right direction is the one that leads to Jesus.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The Right Place At The Right Time

"Mama rock?"

For the past six months our family has enjoyed the presence of two foster children, brothers aged 2 and 4 when they arrived. They thrive on routine. One of our routines is that Robin and I take turns staying with them in their room for a while after bedtime. The younger brother is particularly fond of sitting with Robin in the rocking chair then, and so every night, and sometimes well before bedtime, he is heard asking "Mama rock?"

When I take the after bedtime shift they are asked if they want to rock with Papa or go to bed. Without fail the younger one will say "Go bed" and climb into the bottom bunk while his brother climbs into the bed above.

Monday nights Robin is almost always gone, so on Monday the entire bedtime routine of baths, reading stories and the Bible, praying, and then tucking-in falls to me. "Rock with Papa?" "Go bed" replies the younger boy, while his brother chose to rock. The younger boy copies his brother at almost every opportunity and I asked again if he wanted to rock. He giggled and pulled his covers over his head and so I turned off the light and took the older brother onto my lap in the rocking chair.

He was quiet as the chair moved back-and-forth and pretty soon I was fairly sure he was asleep. This week is a very full one, with all of the usual things, plus an overnight trip for our family on Friday, a marathon for me on Saturday, and then a birthday party for one of the boys on Sunday.

I was sitting in the rocking chair, wondering when to put the boy into bed, thinking about studying for my sermon, or writing notes for the talk I'm giving Friday night. Or…

Or…realize that what I was doing at that very moment was the perfect opportunity for me to doing only one other thing at that moment. And that was to pray.

Pray for the boy. Pray for his brother. Pray over the situation in their family, and for our family to continue to provide them with safety, security and love for as long as they'll be with us.

The demand of the next thing can often be so urgent and insistent. Today I remain glad for the opportunity last night to just stay in that moment for a while, knowing that it was the exact place God had for me to be.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

God's Truth: Basic and Unchanging

The last few weeks in Dulce have been busy. Of course, when I think about it, in some way or another it is nearly always busy here, so perhaps it hasn’t been so much the busyness, but that the work day has seemed more fragmented than usual. Fragmented in part because of the variety of things that had a priority need to be taken care of, and then also in part because of some of the more urgent things of family life that were pressing into time I usually set aside for work. Here, late on a Wednesday, I'm glad to be at a point where I can sit and write a bit.

I've had a thought on my mind since yesterday morning, when early in the day I read Paul's letter to the Galatians, which included this sentence in verses 3-5 of chapter 1:

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen."

At the time I read that verse I could not have imagined the number of ways over the next 24 hours in which I would see evidence of the way that sin has produced what Paul calls "the present evil age." I saw it in myself, my home, the congregation I serve, and the community I live in. From things that many people might consider to be fairly insignificant, to some things any person would consider to be heinous.

And yet, Paul's sentence also reminded me that God's truth hasn't changed. All people with faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord have their sins forgiven and are delivered from this age. And this is all according to God's will.

The letter to the Galatians is packed with many good words to strengthen and guide a Christian's life. But it states the basic and unchanging truth early. Jesus Christ is Lord. He has forgiven sin and promised a glorious future to those who have faith in him, and this precious gift is not according to my flawed and frail will, but the will of God. To which, as Paul writes, I join in saying "Amen!"

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

The Goodness of God

This is a something I wrote for our denomination last December, published by them today.

Psalm 107:1-3

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
    whom he has redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
    from the east and from the west,
    from the north and from the south.

Devotion

The pivot point of all history is in the movement of Jesus between His death and His resurrection. In His death, the most tragic and cruel of all human acts of injustice, we also see the truest expression of the goodness and steadfast love of God.

The psalmist speaks of the redeemed of the Lord, being redeemed from trouble. Trouble like the dead car battery of last week? Or the hip that has bothered me of late? Or my adult children evacuating from the threat of an advancing wildfire? Or? Or? Fill in your own trouble, as these three of my past week only scratch the surface of human troubles. And in all truth, my particular troubles are all dealt with fairly easily. They would hardly seem to require the intervention of the Lord.

The truth of the Gospel is that every human life faces real trouble, one that is much more severe than we can truly comprehend. Our trouble is rooted in our incessant desire to be our own gods. And that trouble, eternally speaking, has a very ugly end.

Here is where the goodness of God is truly seen, in that He sends His very Son to be our substitute, someone to redeem us, someone to the pay the price that we cannot, the price that demands His very life. By faith in this act of the Son we are among those rescued from peril and gathered by the Lord as His very own.

The Lord shows His goodness most clearly in allowing His Son to be our Redeemer, and the results of this act of love, the greatest of all history, truly will endure forever.

Prayer

Lord God Almighty, Thank you for your goodness and love. Thank you for redeeming lost sinners through the finished work of your Son. Give us strength and wisdom to share the hope found only in Jesus wherever we are, as you gather in the lost from all parts of the world.

Bio

Rev. Brad Kautz lives with his wife, Robin, their youngest daughter and two foster children, in Dulce, NM, on the reservation of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and where he serves as pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Unlikely Comfort

Saturday morning I got up early to run, glancing next door at church. There was a light on inside, which wasn't unexpected. There was going to be a funeral that morning and the body had come to the church the evening before, so that some family members had stayed in church overnight.

Fifteen minutes later, as I headed out the door, I glanced at the church again and saw all the lights on, plus the side door open. "Uh oh" I thought. An open door is an invitation for Sami, our outdoors cat. She is very social around people, taking quick notice and showing up whenever anyone is out in front of church. She has often been known to find a way into the building. At a funeral last week I stayed near the main door during the time between the end of the service and departing for the burial. That day I was able to catch her three times as she came into the foyer. Seeing the open door yesterday morning I knew it was too late to do anything. I would check with the family before the funeral, and hope for the best.

When it was time to be at church to get things ready I wasn't surprised to learn that yes, Sami had been inside the building overnight. What did surprise me was that not only did the family not really mind, but that two of them found her presence to be comforting.

Sami is social, and loves to be held, something these people found eased the difficulty of preparing the bury their grandfather, who had passed away just a two days earlier. Gramps, as he was known by his family, was fond of cats and had a few of his own. His family found it easy to have a cat show up as they spent the night together. They called her the "church cat". The same cat that I find to be a bit of a nuisance on Sunday morning they found to be an unexpected, and welcome, source of comfort.

Sami, providing unlikely comfort, is like every other bit of creation in which we might find pleasure or delight. There is goodness, or beauty, or majesty, or what have you, but those things only go so far. They are created things, and ultimately, they don’t last. As we enjoy a pet, or a panoramic landscape, or our favorite meal, or any other thing, we experience something in the present that has the ability to set our gaze on something much greater, on something eternal. Those things we enjoy in life can point us towards the glory of God.

The funeral I preached yesterday was from 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, where in the last verse Paul writes:

"For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness", has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Sami may have been an unlikely source of comfort for a grieving family, but "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" is true and lasting comfort for anyone in need. May his light shine in your heart, especially in those moments, or seasons, when a struggle in your life drives out thoughts of nearly everything else.

Our favorite things are fine as source of comfort, but they only go so far. There is no end to the comfort found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Pictured is Sami, the outdoor cat, napping on our porch, where we kept her during the funeral.)