"To Him be glory forever": December 2019

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Tragedy, Grief and Glory

In the past week I saw two very tragic stories in the news. They were stories that were similar in that they were both were Christian families who had suddenly been faced with the death of a child. They were different in the way that each family acted in the aftermath of that death.

One story involved a family in Redding, CA where a two year-old died. This family belong to the Bethel movement and my understanding of the basic response of the family and the church was to pray that God would resurrect the child. They thought that resurrection was not only possible, but likely, based on their particular understanding of the Bible. They prayed for resurrection for about five days before coming to the conclusion that resurrection would not happen. You may have heard about this. I saw a number of articles on this over the period of several days. I'll confess that I do not really understand Bethel theology. Here is a link to one story and if you are interested you can easily find others.

The second story concerned a family whose son died at the age of 15. He was born 10 weeks premature and had serious kidney issues since birth. He also had respiratory illness and 2 years ago had fungal meningitis. You can read his story here. What stood out to me as a I read this story was the trust that this family had in God, trusting so far as to believe that their son lived neither one day too few, nor one day too many. In Psalm 139:16 it says,

"Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them."

They believed these words and trusted in the God who gave them.

I would be hard put to think of anything more tragic than to lose a child. Since coming to the reservation I have done a number of funerals for children and those deaths hit the families very hard. And I stand at those funerals understanding a bit of what those families are going through, as five years ago we lost a two year-old granddaughter. There was an accident at home and by the time 911 was called it was already too late.

Those deaths are tragic, and we grieve them, as we should. But the Christian does not grieve without hope. Paul writes to the church at Corinth,

"If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."

His point it that if, as Christians, we are only hoping for the things of this world, we have our sights set far too low. He goes so far as to say we should be pitied, given that we have a glorious Savior and yet only long for the things of earth, and not the fulfillment of the promises of his return, when all things will be set right and we will see him in his full glory.

We are just a few days from Christmas, when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. His birth is indeed a wonderful thing but it not the high point of the story by any stretch of the imagination. He died, was resurrected, and then ascended to the right hand of the Father.. The high point is yet to come, when he returns in glory.

You may be approaching this Christmas with a heavy heart, having suffered tragic loss this year. Or you may be carrying grief from something that happened many years ago. But tragedy and grief are not the end of the story. The story ends in glory, glory that the Bible promises will be made very real to every person having trust in Jesus. Amen.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

What Lies Ahead?

For the past two years, as we put the boys to bed, Robin and I have taken turns staying with them for a short while after the lights have been turned off. The boys call this "rocking" although in order to make space for their furniture we had to move the rocking chair out of the room. Our goal has been to help them settle down and get to sleep. Being 4 and 6 year-old boys this can occasionally be a challenging task! Sometimes they sit on our lap, sometimes we sing a song or two. Sometimes we talk quietly about what has happened in the day that made them sad or glad. And sometimes they just drop right off to sleep.

The other night it was my turn and shortly after the lights went out the youngest asked if he could sit on my lap. I was sitting in a chair near the bed and told him to come on over. He climbed up, with a stuffed animal in his hand, and just sat there as I gently swayed to one side and the other. As he sat, I silently prayed over him.

After praying I started to think a bit. I'm 58 years older than he is. What will the world be like for him 58 years from now? That will be the year 2077. What kinds of things will he have done? What kind of person will he be? Who will be the people who are his family? His friends?

Those are questions for which the answers, at this point, are beyond my imagination. Briefly I thought back 58 years in my own life. I know much about the circumstances of my own family in 1961 but I have exactly zero memories of my life at the age of four. So then I jumped to 1977, one century earlier from that future point in Junior's life. In December, 1977, I was 20 years-old, in the US Navy, on my second deployment, spending my second Christmas overseas. But even from that reference point in my life one wouldn’t be able to predict today's answers to those same questions of me: What kinds of things will he have done? What kind of person will he be? Who will be the people who are his family? His friends?

One thing I do know is that the God whom I prayed to as I held Junior on my lap, the God who holds all things in his hands, will still be on his throne, still holding all things, still keeping every promise that he has ever made. He will be doing it 58 years from now, just as he was doing it 58 years ago, just as he has done since the moment of creation.

What lies ahead? Truly, only God knows. Whatever else may happen over the course of Junior's life, I pray that he will come to know God, through his son, Jesus. I pray that he will know and love Jesus, deeply and dearly, as his Savior and Lord.

All of our children are learning something of the language of faith as they grow up in a Christian home. And I pray that however their lives' may unfold that one day the Lord will give each of them the precious gift of faith in himself.

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Longing For The End

For the past 18 months or so I have been working my way through a series of books, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation. There are four volumes in the series, each volume being in the 700-800 page range, and as of this morning I have less than 200 pages to go in volume four. The title may not sound very exciting to the average Christian but I have found it to be a fascinating experience, reading the various statements of faith within the Reformed tradition that were brought forth through the first two centuries of the Reformation.

It has been an interesting reading project but as is my habit in such a project, I am getting anxious to finish as the end draws near. I've got the next book on tap and I look forward to beginning it. I am longing for the end of this reading project. It is a longing I seem to sense with just about any book or reading project I am involved with as the end approaches.

My bible reading plan brought me into Revelation this week. So far I've read from the beginning through chapter 11. There are many symbolic and confusing parts to the last book of the bible, but one thing that we glimpse along the way, and is made clear in its final chapters, is the glorious ending God will one day bring to this world he has created and the people who have lived in it who have had faith in his son, Jesus. Part of the glory is the setting right of all the things that, right now, are not as they should be because of the presence of sin. In Genesis 3 we read of the sin of Adam and Eve, a first sin that has had terrible consequences. Some of these consequences we can see fairly easily and others reveal themselves over time, often tragically so.

Right now Robin has a dear friend suffering from the what is, at root, the downstream consequences of that first sin. Her ordinary state of health has virtually disappeared, without warning. One day everything was as it always was and two days later there are no guarantees as to how things will turn out. Not only is Robin's friend suffering, but also her family and friends.

Robin's friend is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. She has faith in Jesus and while everything else about her situation may be uncertain one thing that she can trust is the faithfulness of her Savior. He holds her and will never let her go. He holds her and nothing will ever take her from his hand. Don't take my word for it. God put those promises in his word, in Romans 8 and John 10.

Thinking about Robin's friend brings up in me a longing for the end. Not a longing that I have to finish a reading project, or a longing for Robin's friend's illness to resolve, but a longing for that day when God will bring all things together and draw all his children to his very presence, where they will worship and enjoy that presence forever. Amen.

Monday, December 2, 2019

Coincidence Or Providence?

I took a bag out to the trash this morning and found that all our trash cans were full. All five. Three of the 55 gallon variety, with their lids off, and two others, slightly smaller and never having lids since we moved here. It was curious. We left town a week ago Sunday and our trash usually gets picked up Tuesday and Friday. Where did all this trash come from while we were out of town? Then I remembered that the church gym had been rented twice while we were away. The groups usually take away their own trash but one of them must have left theirs in our cans instead. Recently the transfer station closed their 24 hour access and so I can understand why the choice between leaving the trash in the back of a pickup overnight, easy picking for crows and loose dogs, and leaving it in the cage and cans at church would be a no-brainer.

When I saw how full the cans were and thought about our garbage pickup being at least a day away, given that the garbage crews would have more to pickup after a holiday weekend, I figured that the best thing to do would be to load the garbage in the Pastormobile and take it to the transfer station myself. An hour or so later, when I knew the post office would be open and I could pick up the package waiting for us there, I got out the Pastormobile and loaded the garbage.

Picking up garbage in Dulce is an old-school process. Most of the work is done by crews of 2-4 people, driving a crew cab pickup that has been modified with a cage on the back. The crew gets out of the truck, picks the bags up from the cans, heaves then over the top of the cage, and then moves on to the next house. They have a hard and dirty job, and so I try not to make the bags too heavy. As I loaded the Pastormobile some of the bags were very heavy. Because of all the absent lids and the recent snow a number of bags were also frozen to the cans and to each other. I was glad to have a pair of work gloves in the Pastormobile as I got things loose and loaded. Then it was off to the transfer station.

Drove to the main building and backed into the bay with a chute down to a waiting dumpster. Got out of the car to sign-in and a man came out to help me unload. It was a man I haven’t seen for quite a while, the better part of a year, but someone I had been hoping to run into. Late this summer he had called the house several times, leaving me a message and asking for a call back to his number. Unfortunately I neither had his number, nor does our phone give numbers on incoming calls. Once I asked a husband and wife if they knew where I might find him. Their response was along the lines of "We don’t run with that kind of crowd."

The man and I talked briefly, including his saying that "I need to get my life turned around." I know parts of his story and those words were music to my ears. He asked how long I was planning to stay as the pastor in Dulce. That was a surprise, as we met shortly after arriving in Dulce in 2013. I told him I'm not planning to go anywhere in the next year. He also said he'd be in church this coming Sunday. I hear that a lot, often without follow through. But I know that God acts powerfully in single moments, and perhaps this coming Sunday will be one of those moments.

Or perhaps this morning was one of those moments. I could look at the various things I wrote about my morning and how they brought me face-to-face with a friend who needed some encouragement, and chalk it all up to coincidence. Nothing more than a series of random events coming together in one event that from my point-of-view seemed to have meaning.

But coincidence denies the existence and work in the world of an active and personal God. Coincidence is how the god Baal works as his prophets have their showdown with Elijah in 1 Kings 18. Yeah, he's a god, but he isn't always available, or very interested, in what is going on down on earth, even among the people who worship him.

The God of the Bible is a God of providence. He know all things and has a purpose for all things. He coordinates even minor details, even unlikely events, to serve his purposes. He reveals his purposes on his timing. His eye is never off of those children who love him, even when they are doing things that are against the very faith they profess. The God of providence is the God Elijah worships, and Elijah sees him coming through, again and again and again.

The God of providence is the God of the Old and New Testaments, the God who has drawn me to himself and the God whom I pray is at work in my friend's life. May you see him working in your life, especially in those seemingly random, seemingly coincidental moments. When it comes to God, there are no coincidences.