Go Chargers!

Football season has arrived!  Honestly, I love football, both soccer style and American style.  Yet, as much as I love the soccer stuff (and I do enjoy it very much), I grew up watching the old AFL San Diego Chargers and I remain a fan of the "Bolts" to this very day.

When I was a kid, I remember how I wanted to grow up to be Lance “Bambi” Alworth and play for my favorite team, the Chargers.  I would dream of going out on a pass route and having Tobin Rote, John Hadl or the amazing Dan Fouts send me long for 6.  I loved the Chargers and watched them whenever they were on TV.

I remember many awesome games like the “Epic in Miami,” when the then blue and gold were so good that no one thought they would be stopped short of the Super Bowl.  What a game that was!  Both teams should have won, neither should have lost.  But my Chargers prevailed…my Chargers!

Football is like that.  We take a team as our team based by birth, location or many other criteria, but we take them as OUR team, win or lose!  We watch them play, we discuss their trades, we criticize the coaches and players, we love them and hate them, but we never give up on them.  We the fans may call ourselves “Number One” while our team is winning or the “Ain’ts” when they are not, but we never leave them.  We are faithful.

Unfortunately, church is not like this.  We get saved, see personal growth and align with a body of believers where God has placed us to serve, grow and help others do the same, yet we shuck church when we feel like we “aren’t fed” or “aren’t growing” or “aren’t appreciated” or “aren’t happy” or “aren’t blessed” or “aren’t the center of attention” or THEY “aren’t doing it the way we think it ought to be done.”

We ditch church (by the way, the Bible calls it the “Body of Christ”) when we get our feelings hurt, when someone talks to us, when someone doesn’t talk to us, when it gets too convicting, when it doesn’t convict, when it is too impersonal, and when it gets too personal.  We leave the fold when it seems to us that the church is full of hypocrites, losers, old people, young people, or “those kind of people” (you know what I mean).

I have come to the realization that football enjoys a more faithful following than the “Body of Christ.”  Football followers will even wear their team’s jersey WHEREVER!  I don’t know what to make of this.

May the God of all grace, love and mercy grant to us the wisdom of knowing that no local church expression is perfect, TO THE GLORY OF GOD!  And may those of us who know the King of the Universe be gracious and kind to one another as we live the truth of the church, as fragile as it may seem.

And, Go Chargers!

Blessed, Really?

"How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God."  Psalm 146:5

Why is the one mentioned above blessed?  We cannot see this God.  We cannot touch this God or hear Him audibly or use our other senses to apprehend Him!  So how can one like myself or any other person be blessed?  Is He real?  Again, what is real?  Does He really help and what, by the way, is real help?

I look at the world with all its ups and downs and am convinced that there must be something more.  No one truly changes anything in the grand scheme of the universe.  The shear immense grandeur of the world, just our world, is enough to stagger the proud heart of we humans.  If we are honest, we know we are but "dust in the wind" as the 70s rock song cries out.  Puny is an understatement.

It could follow, in my tainted logic (read here with great ironic appreciation), that I encounter this God when the "reality" of this world overruns the "reality" of my senses and I acknowledge my inability to change anything, really.  I see, touch, hear, taste, smell and know God when my abilities to order my universe are smacked into submission before the actual "reality."

I find it a singularly overpowering revelation that we tend to encounter God, and His goodness, help and hope, when we find ourselves without recourse.  When we have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, God maintains His presence, power and pardon to those who will "see" Him then.  I can hope and fear and follow in faith when my own self is prostrate before the creator, getting the order right.  The created bowing before the creator.  This blessing may not seem that welcome to those who would reject Him categorically, but to those who have experienced the nowhere of the bankrupt heart, it is cool water on a hot day.    Because I am weak and He is strong, He has my attention and I am blessed.

This blessing, however, is not like what we human miscreants typically seek after.  It is not money, fame, power, sex or any other of our shallow desires. This blessing may be contentment, peace, confidence or balance.  The blessing could be as simple as waking to a new day glad that we have opportunity to take another breath, touch another life in hope and love, or feel the fragile nature of our body and rejoice in the basic wonder of life.  It could be a kind word given or received.  Such is this blessing.

Some may not find the above description of the blessing as that satisfying, but from the vacant, longing heart, where there is no escape, it is help and hope from the Lord our God.

Desiccated

Floating in the ocean of youth, I recall the glassy surface of a summer’s early morning.  Out in the lineup of friends, we used to sway with the ocean’s subtle movement until the crisis of an impending set of waves.  Then joy.  Sweet surfer joy!

After hours of delight in God’s greatest water park, we would notice the strangest of things. Our bare shoulders would accumulate salt.  In the sun and in between the sets of waves our bodies would begin to absorb and retain on our skin the very nature of the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the greatest desert on earth for us human beings.  Desiccated!  That is what we would find ourselves becoming.  Dried out, salted, in need of refreshment and, ironically, water.

The Christian life is like that.  We often find ourselves alone in desert places surrounded by the irony of a multitude of people.  Carrying our burdens, worries, hopes, dreams, perhaps shame, we long for refreshment in the consequence of our daily life.  Dried out, dried up, salted beyond belief, we long for the living water about which we have been told.  But we feel…Desiccated! 

The Bible (and I would suggest that this is a good place to start) has numerous citations of desert places with God’s people populating them.  They wandered in the desert for forty years, those chosen ones of Israel.  They felt like “a lonely bird on a housetop” (Psalm 102:7), the many faithful of God.  “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:37-38).  They were people “of whom the world was not worthy.”  Desiccated!

I don’t like those stories.  I want victorious and overpowering stories that are flooded with conquest and might.  I want the goodness of God “in the land of the living.”  I want to see health, wealth, fortune, success, satisfaction, consistency, opulence, good looks (mine of course) and arrival!  I want faithfulness, because there is no other choice.  And choice, what about choice…my “reformed” brothers and sisters can’t handle that, but neither can I.  Desiccated!

John 7 tells us that this “living water” will flow out of those who have trusted God, like a river.  He put it there.  He keeps it flowing.  It is not outside of us, as if we had to seek it out.  As His children, He floods our souls, from the inside out.  He is the king over the mighty flood of His love, His hope and His faith.  We are not alone, separated, castoff nor disowned.  He is our refreshment.  He commands the waters of His river to gush forth.  He is the answer to our desiccation.  If only we would let Him work!

Ironically, joy in the desert.

Love

Have you ever tried to love someone?  I'm not talking about the endeavor that leads to your own satisfaction, you know, loving someone to be loved in return.  I mean loving someone because you just love them.  It does not matter what they may say or do or express to you; you will still love them.  We don't have many examples of this kind of love around us, unfortunately.  It would be kind of awesome to have love like this going off all around us.  I do see it though.  It does happen.

When a mother cares for a sick child and finds whatever remedy she can find to ease that child's distress, no matter the cost, no matter the time required, no matter the thoughts of others, that is close to this kind of love.  I see the moms cradling their sick ones oblivious to the possibility that their sick one could make them sick and I see this kind of love.  Love like this cares more about the other than the one loving.  Love like this sacrifices the lover for the benefit of the beloved.

A mother who at all hours works her hands to the bone, as they say, giving her energy, her time, her hopes and dreams for the little ones sleeping in the next room, demonstrates the possibility that there is a love like this.  She would deny herself for the well being of her children.  She would drag herself to bed, totally exhausted from her labors of love, all for the vision of her little ones safe, warm, happy and eventually successful.  Love like this denies self for the other.

And what about the "stupid" love of brother for brother and sister for sister, who one minute would be fighting between themselves and the next, having someone come between them to hurt one of them, join forces against the common enemy.  It doesn't have to be a physical assault.  It could be verbal, written and even a look that is out of place and brothers and sisters join forces in this kind of love.  This is one reason political solutions to many international conflicts fail.  They do not understand the connections of peoples.  The hatreds shared cease in the moment that "brothers" are attacked from outside of the family (no matter how distant that family has grown).  They would give themselves to the task of protecting the other against any perceived adversary.

Jesus said in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."  He wasn't just trying to wow the crowd.  He was trying to state a principle that transcends most life experience.  Real love, eternal love, ultimate love is best seen in the art, skill and finery of the lover casting all cares aside for the benefit of the beloved.

We talk about it, but we hesitate, often, to express it.  We know what it looks like, but we fear letting it become a part of who we are for the cost we know it implies.  We know how it feels to be the object of something close to this kind of love.  We know the warmth of the right embrace in the loneliest of times.  We know the presence of family, even in the midst of disagreement, in the coldest of life experience.  We know what it means to be loved when we don't deserve it.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, may the love of Christ which overcomes all the pettiness of the world, all the short sightedness of the human frame, all the selfishness and egocentric demands of every tongue, nation and race overcome us.  Like a storm raging against the coast, may His love devastate our conceited impudence before the most powerful force in the world.  Love.

Satisfaction

How blessed is the one whom 
Thou dost choose, and bring near to Thee,
To dwell in Thy courts.
We will be satisfied with the
Goodness of Thy house,
Thy holy temple.
Psalm 65:4

Oh, to be satisfied!  To be filled, content, to be at peace!

We strive for so much in this world, trying to fill the holes that we find in our lives.  Trying to cram whatever we feel will fit into the spaces of need that we have.  How we struggle to fill the emptiness we carry around.  We endeavor to stuff the void within of desired relationships, acceptance, love, success, attainment, friendship and even existence.  We cry out "Hey, I am here, I exist, I have worth, I mean something."  We cast out endeavoring to snag a piece of ANYTHING, the edge of the world's fabric, to complete that which only God can complete, which only God can fulfill, which only God can "satisfy."  We say that because we are not happy, even under God's most delicate and loving hand, that we must seek out that happiness elsewhere.

Lord satisfy our longing hearts, fill our emptiness and give us real satisfaction in Your peace.  Help us be satisfied with the goodness of Your presence.

Blessing God

Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation.  Psalm 68:19

How does God become blessed?  Can He who created all things, the one who is all powerful, all knowing, the every where God be blessed?  Evidently He can be blessed.  I suppose the analogy that illustrates this might be that of an inventor (or creator) who upon seeing his invention do what it was designed to do draws satisfaction from it.  It pleases the inventor to see it work like he planned for it to work.  Perhaps God is blessed with His creation when He sees it operate like He intended it to operate.  Ultimately, I suppose, He is pleased, for His will is always done.

I also see in this one little verse, that the Lord bears our burden.  He cares for the weight of this world on our shoulders as it would want to crush us, to defeat us, and He says "Give me that heavy load."  In the most awesome way, He took it all upon Himself at the place of the skull (Golgotha), where Jesus, our Lord, effectively became our Savior, receiving upon His most noble shoulders the filth and decadence of this world, our sin, and dealt with it.

Yet it doesn't just end there.  I skipped a word.  "Daily."  Our great, awesome and loving God daily takes our burden for He cares for us at all times.  I care for my family, wife, kids, grandkids, but at times I grow weary of the exercise; but our great God never does.  He never grows weary or faint!

So, as an extension, our salvation is in good hands, it is secure in the nature of our God, and gladly, not in ours.  He is our salvation.  It is not a thing to possess like a key chain or a wallet full of cash with which we cry out, "Mine, mine, mine."  Rather it is a relationship with the Creator God who cares for His creation.  One in which we assuredly have an important part, but not in locking it away, rather, in living it out.

Help us, Lord God to live our relationship of salvation with You in light of Your great care for us and blessing You in the process.