Doubtstorms

 

Doubtstorms

Doubtstorms - Audio/Visual

About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. In their fear they cried out, “It’s a ghost!” (Matt 14:25-26)

 There are snowstorms, hailstorms, rainstorms and doubstorms. Storms of doubt that every so often roll into our lives bringing with them a flurry of questions and gale-force winds of fear. And then, almost as soon as they’ve arrived, a light shines through the doubtstorm and it leaves – at least for a while. Sometimes the storm comes just after the evening news when I wonder why I watch the news at all – it’s thirty minutes of bite-sized tragedies where a handsome man or attractive woman in nice clothing and a pleasant voice gives you bad news. They’re called “anchors;” I’m not sure what they’re anchoring.

Sometimes the storm comes when I’m at church. Story after story of homes that won’t heal and hearts that won’t melt. Always more hunger than food, more needs than money and more questions than answers. On Sundays, I teach a church with a three-point outline in my hand, thirty minutes on the clock and a prayer on my lips. I do my best to say something that will convince the gathered that an unseen God still hears, but I’m not sure that I always connect because I’ve left worship a few times wondering if I even connected with myself.

Ever been in one of those doubtstorms? Some of you haven’t, I know. I’ve talked to you. Some of you have a “Davidish” optimism that defies any Goliath that comes across your path. I used to think that you were naive at best and phony at worst. But I don’t think that anymore. I think you’re gifted. You’re gifted with faith. You can see the rainbow before the clouds part. And if you have this gift then you can skip the rest of this missive because I won’t be writing anything you need to read. But others of you may wonder. You wonder what others know that you don’t. You wonder if you’re blind, or if they are. You wonder why some shout “Land ho,” before the fog has cleared. You wonder how some people believe so confidently, while you believe so reluctantly.

As a result, you’re a bit uncomfortable on the padded pew of blind belief. Your Bible hero is Thomas. Your middle name is Caution. Your queries are the bane of every Sunday school teacher: “If God is so good, why do I sometimes feel so bad?” “If God’s message is so clear, why do I get so confused?” “If the Father is in control, why do good people have gut-wrenching problems?” You wonder if it’s a blessing or a curse to have a mind that never rests. But you would rather be a cynic than a hypocrite, so you continue to pray with one eye open all the while continuing to wonder about starving children, the power of prayer, the depths of grace and Christians in cancer wards. Tough questions. Throw-in-the-towel questions. Questions the disciples must have asked in their storm.

All they could see were black skies as they bounced in the battered boat. Swirling clouds. Wind-driven white caps. Pessimism that buried the coastline. Gloom that swamped the bow. What could have been a pleasant trip became a white-knuckled ride through a sea of fear. Their question? What hope do we have of surviving a stormy night? Your question? Where is God when his world is stormy? Doubtstorms: turbulent days when the enemy’s too big, the task’s too great, the future’s too bleak and the answers too few. Every so often a storm will come and we’ll look up into the blackening sky and say, “God, a little light here, please?”

The light came for the disciples. A figure came to them walking on the water. It wasn’t what they expected, of course. Perhaps they were looking for angels to descend, or the heavens to open. Maybe they were listening for a divine proclamation to still the storm. We don’t know what they were looking for. But one thing’s for sure – they weren’t looking for Jesus to come walking on the water. “‘It’s a ghost!” (Matt. 14:26). And since Jesus came in a way they didn’t expect, they almost missed seeing the answer to their prayers. And unless we look and listen closely, we risk making the same mistake because God’s lights in our dark nights are as numerous as the stars – if we’ll only look for them.

A client sat in my office and we talked about his legal dilemma – his primary customer pulled out on him leaving my client with big bills and fewer solutions. What the customer did wasn’t right, but he did it anyway. The customer’s company was big and my client’s company was small; there wasn’t a whole lot he could do. My client was left with a den of hungry lions wanting six figures’ worth of satisfaction. “I called my uncle and told him what had happened. I told him I was thinking of filing for bankruptcy.” “What did he say?” I asked. “He didn’t say anything,” my client responded. “After he was silent for a long time, I said it for him: ‘We don’t do it like that, do we?”’ “‘No, we don’t,’ he told me. So I’ll pay the bills. If I have to sell my house, I’ll pay my bills.” He left and I was encouraged. Somebody still believed that if he did what was right God would do what was best. There was still some we-don’t-do-it-like-that faith in the world. The sky began to clear.

Light number two came from a cancer ward. “We will celebrate forty-four years tomorrow,” Jack said, feeding his wife, as I read from Fox News. She was bald. Her eyes were sunken and her speech was slurred. She looked straight ahead, only opening her mouth when he brought the fork near. He wiped her cheek; he wiped his brow. “She’s been sick for five years,” he told me. “She can’t walk. She can’t take care of herself. She can’t even feed herself, but I love her. And,” he spoke louder so she could hear, “we are going to beat this thing, aren’t we, Honey?” He fed her a few bites and spoke again, “We don’t have insurance. When I could afford it I thought I wouldn’t need it. Now I owe this hospital more than $50,000.” He was quiet for a few moments as he gave her a drink. Then he continued, “But they don’t pester me. They know I can’t pay, but they admitted us with no questions asked. The doctors treat us like we are their best-paying patients. Who would’ve imagined such kindness?”

I had to agree with what I read. Who would’ve imagined such kindness? In a thorny world of high-tech, expensive and often criticized healthcare, it was reassuring to find professionals who would serve two who had nothing to give in return. After reading the article, I thanked God that once again a sinew of light reminded me of the sun behind the clouds.

Then, a few days later, another light – this time an old issue of Sports Illustrated. Larry Brown, former head coach of the Spurs, the Lakers, the Knicks, the Pistons and the Charlotte Bobcats (and now an assistant coach with the Memphis Tigers), had spent an afternoon at a local men’s store, signing autographs. He was scheduled to spend two hours, but ended up spending three. Pencil-and-pad-toting kids had apparently besieged the place, asking him questions and shaking his hand. When he was finally able to slip out, he climbed into his car only to notice a touching sight. A late-arriving youngster pedaled up, jumped off his bike and ran to the window to see if the coach was still in the store. When he saw he wasn’t, he turned slowly and sadly, walked over to his bike and began to ride off. Apparently, Coach Brown turned off the ignition, climbed out of the car and walked over to the boy. They chatted a few minutes, went next door to a drugstore, sat down at a table and had a soft drink. No reporters were near. No cameras were on. As far as these two knew, no one knew.

I’m sure Larry Brown had other things to do that afternoon. No doubt he had other appointments to keep. But it’s doubtful that anything he might have done that afternoon was more important than what he did. In a world of big-bucked, high-glossed professional sports it was good to read about a coach who is still a coach at heart. Hearing what he did was enough to blow away any lingering clouds of doubt and to leave me warmed by God’s light . . . his gentle light.

Gentle lights. God’s solutions for doubtstorms. Gold-flecked glows that amber hope into blackness. Not thunderbolts. Not explosions of light. Just gentle lights. A business-man choosing integrity. A hospital choosing compassion. A celebrity choosing kindness. Visible evidence of the invisible hand. Soft reminders that optimism is not just for fools.

None of these events were “religious.” None of the encounters occurred in a ceremony, or a church service. None will make the six o’clock news. But that’s the case with gentle lights. When the disciples saw Jesus in the middle of their stormy night, they called him a ghost; a phantom; a hallucination. To them, the glow was anything but God. And when we see gentle lights on the horizon, we often have the same reaction. We dismiss occasional kindness as apparitions, accidents or anomalies. Anything but God.

“When Jesus comes,” the disciples in the boat may have thought, “he’ll split the sky. The sea will be calm. The clouds will disperse.” “When God comes,” we doubters think, “all pain will flee. Life will be tranquil. No questions will remain.” And because we look for the bonfire, we miss the candle. Because we listen for the shout, we miss the whisper. But it is in burnished candles that God comes, and through whispered promises he speaks: “When you doubt, look around; I’m closer than you think.”

Grace,

Randy

What'd You Get for Christmas?

 

What’d You Get for Christmas?

What'd You Get for Christmas? (Audio/Visual)

When the eighth day arrived, the day of circumcision, the child was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived. Then when the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete, they took him up to Jerusalem to offer him to God as commanded in God’s Law: “Every male who opens the womb shall be a holy offering to God,” and also to sacrifice the “pair of doves or two young pigeons” prescribed in God’s Law.

In Jerusalem at the time, there was a man, Simeon by name, a good man, and a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died. Led by the Spirit, he entered the Temple. As the parents of the child Jesus brought him in to carry out the rituals of the Law, Simeon took him into his arms and blessed God: “God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised. With my own eyes I’ve seen your salvation; it’s now out in the open for everyone to see: A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of glory for your people Israel.”

Jesus’ father and mother were speechless with surprise at these words. Simeon went on to bless them, and said to Mary his mother, “This child marks both the failure and the recovery of many in Israel, a figure misunderstood and contradicted – the pain of a sword-thrust through you – but the rejection will force honesty, as God reveals who they really are.” Anna the prophetess was also there, a daughter of Phanuel from the tribe of Asher. She was by now a very old woman. She had been married seven years and a widow for eighty-four. She never left the Temple area, worshiping night and day with her fastings and prayers. At the very time Simeon was praying, she showed up, broke into an anthem of praise to God, and talked about the Child to all who were waiting expectantly for the freeing of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:21-38)

What’d you get for Christmas? That’s a pretty common question now that the gifts have been opened and the dinner has settled. We said it as kids and today, as adults, we say it around the water cooler at work unless you’re working virtually from home. Television commercials are already talking about it – returning the things you got that you didn’t want so that you can get something else in its place. Mediums will be exchanged for larges; eggnog on sale for half price; and clean-up in full swing at home where lights and decorations will come down and trees will be thrown out. Life will be “normal” again. December’s generosity will become January’s payments, and the magic will begin to fade.

When I hear that question it reminds me of my teacher, Ms. McDonald, when she asked all her sixth graders at Esther Lindstrom Elementary that same timeless question when we returned from Christmas break. Laura was the first one to enthusiastically answer the question. She sat in front of me, which was fine with me since I liked sitting close to Laura because she was pretty good at baseball. Her answer was a Chatty Cathy doll. But then Laura went on to tell the class – in excruciating detail – about her doll to the point that my eyes began to glaze over and I started to regret my seat assignment. “Maybe the doll’s rubbed off on her,” I thought. Thankfully, I was next.

I don’t specifically remember what I said, but I know I didn’t say “a pony,” or a “real guitar.” It was probably something like a baseball glove, or trading cards or Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Then the girl behind me gave her answer. "An engagement ring!” she shouted. Now in the interests of full disclosure I must say that she’d probably been held-back a couple of times and could have been 13 or 14 years old. But this wasn’t some sort of third world country, or first-century Bethlehem we were living in. So that was a pretty remarkable disclosure which, apparently, all the girls in class understood, but the boys thought was something you got out of a Cracker Jack box.

But what if, in answer to that question, your first thought was, “I got Jesus for Christmas.” Or what if a friend asked you, “Hey, what’d you get for Christmas?” and you said, “Same as everyone else.” Bewildered, your friend looks at you and laughs, “What are you talking about? ‘Everybody’ I know didn’t all get the same thing.” “Sure they did,” you respond. “We all got Jesus.” Maybe one of the sweetest gifts God gave during his son’s earthly ministry was when Jesus was only eight days old and God gave it to two very unassuming people — a man named Simeon, and a widow named Anna.

Simeon’s age isn’t specified, but most Bible scholars presume him to be elderly in light of the phrase, “The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died,” which would be a really weird biblical footnote if he’d been a young man. Plus, Simeon’s “Okay, I can die happy now” response after meeting the Christ child (“God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you promised”) seems to imply his advanced age since there’s no evidence that he had a death wish. Anna, on the other hand, is verifiably old. That’s because she was married for seven years and had been a widow for eighty-four more. So if you do the math, and if you assume Anna married when she was around fourteen, as most Jewish girls did at the time, she was probably around 105. That’s old.

Luke, whose medical specialty could have been gerontology for all we know, explains that both of these elderly people hung out at the Temple a lot because of their devotion to God. But given their card-carrying AARP status, you can’t help but wonder if they weren’t just a little lonely, too. At their age maybe they had no one to go home to; no one to talk to at the dinner table; no one to sit beside on the couch and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Nothing in their tidy little apartments at the City of God Retirement Home to keep them company except a cat and their cataracts.

Apparently they puttered around the church every day, praying at the altar, maybe hobbling back and forth on errands for the priests, perhaps carrying boxes of candles up from the basement or carefully rubbing down each church pew with linseed oil until it gleamed. The temple regulars had grown accustomed to always seeing the white-haired gentleman wearing the high-water khakis and that nice, little old lady who always smelled like Pledge. Most worshipers probably didn’t give Simeon and Anna any more thought than they did the shiny pews or the plentiful supply of candles up front. They were old; they were fixtures; they were invisible. But then one day a teenaged couple walked in the front door of the Temple. The young husband was wearing a clean but tattered pair of blue jeans and had birds squawking in his backpack. His wife, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, was carrying what looked like a brand new baby. They both shyly approached Simeon.

That’s when the young man cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but can you tell us where to go to give God an offering on behalf of our new little boy?” Simeon immediately put the mop down and took a deep breath to steady himself. Then he reached his gnarled hands toward the new mom and asked her gently, “May I hold him, please?” Mary nodded and handed the newborn Son of God to Simeon. He cradled the pink-cheeked Messiah for several minutes and then began to sing a praise song he’d written many years before but had never actually sung out loud.

Anna, who’d been in the women’s restroom the whole time refilling the paper towel dispenser, was shuffling back toward the sanctuary when she heard Simeon’s warbling baritone voice. “What’s that old goose up to now?” she thought. And as his voice rose in pitch as she wobbled her way to the sound, her feeble heart skipped a beat because she didn’t realize that the sound was Simeon singing; she was afraid he’d fallen down, broken his hip and was screaming in pain. That was until she turned the corner and saw her dear old friend’s enraptured countenance. Then she saw the baby in his arms and, realizing immediately the miracle that was taking place, ran toward them with the speed and agility of a track star.

Day after day, year after year, Anna and Simeon accepted and appreciated the little joys that came their way: a place to go to volunteer and feel useful; a friend with whom to share stories and prayer requests; maybe even free Wi-Fi in the Temple lobby. It makes you wonder if their willingness to recognize the sweet, little gifts God blesses us with each and every day are part of the reason why God chose them to be recipients of the same incomparable surprise present he gave the shepherds wandering in the fields that special night only a week earlier. Good news and great joy — the Savior of the world wrapped in an ordinary blanket.

The long and patient faithfulness of Simeon and Anna is a beautiful example for those of us who, like them, are waiting for the Lord’s return. But unlike Anna and Simeon, we’re not left to wait alone. Paul told the struggling Gentile believers in Colossi, “Christ lives in you, the hope of glory!” (Col. 1:27) And when you think about it, Christ grew in Mary until he had to come out. And like Simeon and Anna, Christ will grow in us until the same occurs. He will come out in our speech. He will come out in our actions. He will come out in our decisions. Every place you live will be a Bethlehem, and every day you live will be a Christmas.

So what’d you get for Christmas? I got Jesus.

Happy New Year!

Randy

Mangy Manger

 

Mangy Manger

Mangy Manger - Audio/Visual

 

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:8-12)

Have you ever heard the expression, “Were you born in a barn?” I did a little research on the subject and found that there are two prevailing theories regarding the origin of that phrase. The first was from a blog by Amanda Thomson who suggested that it was originally, “Were you born in Bardney?” Bardney is the site of the Tupholme Abbey in Lincolnshire, England. Apparently, years after the King, Saint Oswald, was killed in 642, his niece, Osthryth, moved his bones to the abbey. Unfortunately, the good monks at the abbey refused to have the King interred there since, although known to be a godly man, he was from another province and thus a “foreign king.” During the night, however, a pillar of light shone from the cart carrying the bones of Saint Oswald up to the heavens convincing the monks that Oswald was indeed a saint and that they’d been wrong to shut out the cart carrying his remains. Legend has it that forever thereafter the monks left their gates open wide. As a result, the phrase that developed, “Were you born in Bardney?” meant that you’d left the door open.

It’s also possible, of course, that the phrase’s original question was, in fact, “Were you born in a barn?” Long ago it was custom to leave barn doors open in the early morning to let the cows out to graze in the pasture, and they would stay open all day until the cows were herded back into the barn for milking again in the early evening. Hence, leaving the door open.

I first heard the phrase when I tracked mud in the house.

 My youngest son, William, was born in what they called a “birthing suite.” He had the good fortune of being born at a time when birthing suites were just coming into vogue. Maybe you’ve been in one, or have at least seen one before. It’s one of those comfortable, clean, warm and brightly lit rooms where the entire family can be present for the birth, surrounded by the latest medical technology. It was exactly the sort of place where you'd want your baby to be born.

But Jesus? Not so much. He wasn’t born in an immaculate birthing suite. He was born in a barn and laid in a manger – a place where they feed animals. And the question is, “Why?” Of all the places he could have been born, why was he born in a barn with a manger as his cradle? I ponder these things, especially during this time of year. Maybe it’s because I was born in a barn.

But it got me to thinking. Maybe Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger to fulfill the scriptures. You know, the prophecies in the Old Testament predicting his coming? The problem is there are no prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah being born in a barn. There went that idea.

Then I thought that since Jesus is called the “Good Shepherd,” maybe he was born in a place cut out for shepherds. Now, it's true that shepherds would often take shelter out in the fields, like in a stable, to avoid the elements. But that kind of place was usually a cave of some sort, and shepherds didn’t live there – they just took shelter there. And they certainly didn’t give birth there. Shepherds may have been religious and social outcasts, and among the poorest of the poor, but even a shepherd wouldn’t be born in a barn. Sorry. A manger.

And then it came to me. The obvious answer is provided by the story itself: Jesus was born in a barn and placed in a manger because there was no room at the inn. That’s it, I thought. It wasn't something that was planned – it was just an accident. Jesus must have been a preemie. But then I got to thinking that in the life of Christ there were never any accidents – everything was planned. Down to the last detail kind of planned. Planned before the beginning of time. So why the manger then?

Well, if you take stock of a real manger a few things stand out. First, a manger can be cold. And if you subscribe to Jesus being born during an Israeli winter, it’s that damp sort of cold that chills you to the bone. Further, the only heat source would have been the body heat coming from the cows when they came in to feed, including their breath. But in winter, their breath would have made for a cloud of steam that, given the right conditions, could have frozen  in mid-air.

Also, a manger is dark. In fact, most mangers were located underground in a cave, or below the house that it served. So even when the sun is shining, it's dark in a manger. And perhaps stating the obvious, a manger is filthy – it’s full of slobber, drool, mud, dust, cobwebs and other stuff. It smells bad, too. There's no such thing as a clean or hygienic manger.

At Christmas time, however, we tend to romanticize the manger. We turn it into something beautiful and heavenly – a first century birthing suite of sorts. But a real manger isn't like that. The truth is that Jesus was laid in a place that was cold, dark, dirty and smelly. But again, why? Because if Jesus was God Incarnate, God with skin on, Immanuel, couldn’t he have picked a better spot than a filthy feeding trough – a mangy manger? Maybe it’s because Jesus is always born in a manger.

You see, when Jesus comes into our lives he’s born in a manger of sorts because the human heart is just like one. Our hearts are cold because we don’t know the love of God; our hearts are dark because we don’t have the light of Christ, or the hope of salvation; and our hearts are dirty because we are stained and soiled by sin. But the miracle of Christmas is that Jesus is willing to be born into hearts just like that. No matter how cold and dark and dirty our hearts may be, Jesus is willing to come in and be born – born in the manger of our lives.

His birth, and where he laid, reminds us that Jesus always meets us at the manger. He encounters us in that place where we feel utterly lost, hopeless and helpless. He meets us in the darkness of our grief and sorrow, and he meets us in the blackness of our despair. He comes into our lives when we feel unloved, unlovable and alone – when inside we feel cold and half frozen to death. Jesus meets us in all the mess and filth of our sin – even those sins which we think are unforgivable.

As you may have heard, Anne Rice passed away last week. She was a famous novelist, and her books have sold over 100 million copies the world over. Most of her books dealt with the occult and vampires, like Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, both of which were the subject of film adaptations. Tragically, her mother died when she was still very young and, as a result, Anne grew up afraid of the dark. Later on, she got married and gave birth to a baby girl named Michelle. But when Michelle was just a few years old, she died of leukemia. Crushed, Anne began drinking heavily and sank into a deep depression. As her means of therapy, Anne began writing about vampires because vampires, so they say, are able to live forever.

Her novels brought Anne unimaginable wealth and fame, so much so that she bought a huge mansion in New Orleans and entertained her many guests with lavish parties. But then a strange thing happened. Anne began reading the Bible again, including a number of Christian books. And even though she hadn't been to church since she was a little girl, she felt a strange longing to take communion. Then, in 1998, she renewed her faith in Jesus Christ, and in 2005 decided that she would no longer write about vampires. Describing that moment she said, “I was in church, talking to the Lord, saying, ‘I want everything I do to be for you.’ Then it hit me: ‘It will be for you. All of it. Every word.’” So, it should come as no surprise that when her autobiography, Called out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession (2008), was released, it rocked the publishing world; it was bordering on the inconceivable that Anne Rice, the queen of the vampires, was a renewed believer in Jesus Christ.

Then again, maybe that shouldn’t surprise us after all because Jesus is always born in the manger of dark, cold and dirty hearts that long to be called out of darkness into light. Out of bondage into freedom. Out of fear and into joy. Out of self and into Christ.

Maybe being born in a barn isn’t so bad after all.

Grace,

Randy