Coming Up For Air

Commit thy works unto Jehovah, and thy thoughts will be established. Proverbs 16:3, The Darby Translation William Manchester was a friend of President Kennedy, so it isn't surprising that he would write sympathetically of the man and the job in The Death of a President . His writ reaches beyond the Oval Office, though, when he notes that presidents rarely move from A to B and that multiple hats do not rest easily on a head so often in motion. That, and the graphic work picture from Pastor Matthew Sink that the word distraction comes from a French torture involving being pulled apart by horses bring me to take quick recourse in Proverbs 16:3. We aren't sure precisely what will pull at us today, what happens we will try to keep a top our heads. Yet, we know there is integrity and wholeness in that first that may not be immediately apparent in every moment of every day. We can't envision every turn the day will take. We can't list every complication that could happen under...

When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom. John 2:9 It takes a certain kind of love, McDonald's founder Ray Kroc says in David Halberstam's The Fifties , to fall in love with a hamburger bun. The servants on which the fourth Gospel reports in John 2:9 have a certain kind of love. Theirs is not Kroc's to build a business empire on mastery of efficiently satisfying consumer demands. Still, both these servants and Kroc see something greater in the daily details that go with the job title in which they find themselves. Kroc could multiply effectiveness in one transaction at one counter and see compounding dominance. Even when we can't, even when our jobs are more likely to show us if we have the heart of a servant by how we react when people treat us like one, John 2:9 entrances us to look again at the tasks the Son o...

Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life. Proverbs 4:23, New English Translation In Simply Christian , NT Wright interestingly describes the collective reaction of the flesh to the Gospel. He likens its life-giving power to a natural spring, but he says humans are quick to restrict access to that spring. We put the force of culture to work, he says, sanctioning who can come, and who cannot. Little wonder, because this sanctimonious tendency starts on an individual level with the half-application of Proverbs 4:23. We little need that Word's admonition that our hearts are fragile and need guarding. Childlike, joyous vulnerability is an ephemeral stage. We quickly figure out that others don't value our hearts as much as we do. We wall up the spring, we think, as a means to necessary self-protection. By persevering grace, however, the Spirit over time keeps us reading. We forget, though, that the wise person guards his or her heart as a means t...

Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to You. For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. Psalm 139:12-13 Three-year-old Lucy bounded into her parents' bedroom. "God knows my favorite color!" Sleepily, they responded, "How do you know?" "Because He painted the sky pink this morning," she responded with certitude. So it is that our guest theologian helps us understand the scope of Psalm 139:12-13. Grown up or grown cold, we can with some dispassion proclaim Him God of the cosmos able to orchestrate the sunrise. It takes a child's awakening faith, though, to see His personal touch in what to adults has become perhaps over-familiar. For, as the Psalmist seamlessly shifts, the God Who transverses the boundaries between light and darkness, Who, as all his readers would have known, proclaimed, "Let there be light," works with...

And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. Isaiah 53:9 My attentiveness in normal, non-literary conversation is rarely admirable. I can boost it by sifting for words of above average quality and commending them out loud. I did this when a friend used the word facetious, and he said it came with an admission. In the military, that word allowed him to be respectful and disrespectful at the same time. So often, we mine for those words and expressions which straddle respect and disrespect. We may use a refined word to express just a tinge of unrefined feeling. We may hit the right note with our phrasing, but role the eyes just a little to give vent to our true feelings, and maybe a hint to the embittered and sophisticated that we share their sense of irony. We aren't, in truth, very good at occupying both columns in the expressions we convey. Readily, Pat Conroy admits in Beach Music , bitte...

And David said to Gad, "I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man." 2 Samuel 24:14 In Greatest Showman PT Barnum approaches singing sensation Jenny Lind. She asks if he likes her music, and this time he doesn't put on a show. Barnum says her reputation precedes her, and her reputation is more important than his taste. There we are, Christian, with the Lord. David is in such a place in life's drama in 2 Samuel 24:14. Faced with the consequences of his own sin, David trusts the Lord's reputation for mercy more than David's own ability to choose consequences. Like David, even if we walk closely with the Lord, we only sample a small part of His character at any point in time. Our experience with Him is filtered through our quirks and assumptions hurt, what could accurately be described with a label no more sophisticated than our taste. Comparatively, God'...

"By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them." Hebrews 11:28, New King James Version "It's easy," writes R.C. Sproul, "to get faith into our heads. It's hard to get faith into our bloodstream." Thus I find it inspiring that the author of Hebrews 11:28 finds faith in keeping. On the other side of Passover's true meaning in the Last Supper and the cross, on the other side of everyone save Jesus missing that meaning, he won't discount the role of ritual and habit in demonstrating and building faith. The parallel, of course, isn't exact. The keeping of which Hebrews 11:28 initially speaks isn't veneration. It's risk. It's a captive people mistrusted already as a national security vulnerability marking their own doors with blood so that they stand out more to their Egyptian neighbors who are grieving and could easily be bitter and suspicious. Yet, how ar...

1 Timothy 4:12-5:2 – 12 Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, and conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. 13 Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. 14 Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. 15 Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. 16 Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. 1 Do not rebuke an older man, but exhorting him as a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters with all purity. Virgil Abloh reflects in this week's New Yorker profile by Doreen St. Felix on his college major in architecture. "It's a way of thinking. It's a way of problem-solving with a rationale. You can apply that rationale to building the buildin...

From Psalm 37 – 1 Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. 2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and whether as the green herb. 3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit Your Way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and he shall bring it to pass. 6 he shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. 7 rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. 8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret – it only causes harm. 9 For evildoers shall be cut off; but those who wait for the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. 10 For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; indeed, you will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more. Unusual circumstances yester...

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6 CS Lewis's pronouncement in The Weight of Glory is so famous as to be part of the Christian's intellectual wallpaper, initially novel but thereafter largely ignored. Still, we need to listen from time to time when he proclaims, ""If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the reward promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. We are far too easily pleased." Therein, Lewis provides an interesting rephrasing of the principle of Hebrews 11:6. The author of that epistle won't let the concept of faith drift into the ether of good intentions. Right belief, that writer insists, is rooted first in ...

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:17 When the rich young ruler wants to know which of the Commandments apply to him, Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightfully expresses disgust. In The Cost of Discipleship , the indignant exemplar, eventually obedient himself unto death, pounces. "Which? The devil lurks beneath this question." Indeed, but, error according to JD Greear reminds us in his book Gospel that error, even this serious one, is just Truth stretched out of proportion. We, Christians, can affirm the preciousness of the whole Word of God like the rich young ruler didn't want to do. We can do this, and still reclaim the richness of which. In fact, the often overlooked authority of God's Word commands us to carry particulars into life's battles beyond just giving the Bible as a whole our general assent. WE Vine picks up on this in the Greek for Ephesians 6:17. We hear the equating of the sword of the Spirit...

From Philippians 4 – 4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God; 7 and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus. 8 finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things. In the March 4, 2019 issue of TIME magazine's Belinda Luscombe profiles Ray Romano. Luscombe notes Romano's success and zeros in with a follow-up question that is both perceptive and brave.  How someone making $1.7 million an episode at the height of his sitcom's fame can continue to convincingly portray characters for who...

And it shall be, when your children say to you, "What do you mean by this service?" Exodus 12:26 Blues legend Buddy Guy is profiled in this week's New Yorker . Appropriately for one tasked with carrying for the genre's fragile legacy, Guy turns and points to those who came before him, especially to the impact Guitar Slim had on Guy as an adolescent. Slim could play behind his back, and between his knees in ways later made famous with Jimi Hendrix. Guy resolved on seeing Slim, "That night I made a decision. I want to PLAY like BB King, but I want to ACT like Guitar Slim." Our impressions are multifaceted. So is our testimony. Visuals matter along with proficiency and technical obedience. How much enthusiasm and creativity comes through in what we do? How much gratitude is conveyed for the opportunity to do it? Or, by sheer routine, have we long since stopped relating that THIS is the day that the Lord has made, a day in which we have an individualized opp...

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance. Psalm 33:12, New King James Version "If you are in Christ," proclaims Tony Marida, "you not only have a new identity, you have a new community." So it is that the Psalmist in Psalm 33:12 can proclaim His people a chosen inheritance rather than one dictated by physical boundaries or genetic happenstance. We are blessed by identity in Him which outshines our demographics. What's more, He preserves us from the pride which is the enemy's next play because we have a new birth and a new understanding which many of our momentary neighbors on Earth do not. Christ has exercised His prerogative to snatch a person from this tribe and from that tongue as His, but He has not left us isolated. He has formed us into a nation more united than any polity. We are united in being aware in Whose image we are made and remade. We are united in each being called into His service, no...

"Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, and conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity." 1 Timothy 4:12 Dr. J. Rufus Fears says if we feel good about history, we have probably learned the wrong lesson. There might be a rough biblical equivalent. If we feel too good about ourselves, we have certainly learned the less challenging lesson. I should of had this in mind when my men Bible study encountered the verse at Chick-fil-A this morning. And I nearly simultaneously watched with rapt fascination as a toddler "helped" her mother pushed the highchair across the restaurant, I was feeling pretty good about my invulnerability to despising the young. The little one's pure, unburdened eagerness was my inspiration to keep pushing in work and ministry. After all, the best and strongest Parent was sure to supply the actual power. The glow of self-congratulation lit my way into next week. I work with college students, and I'm co...

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1 Casting Crowns asks in "Stained-Glass Masquerade" if they are the only ones to trade the altar for the stage. I wish they hadn't. The impression from the stage, at some distance, is maximized to be flattering. Those with a one-way ticket for the altar have given up on the importance of impression. Time on stage is limited. Time on the altar is limited also, but not by one's own choosing. We are on the altar until Sovereignty outside our own volition decides what to do with us. Paul speaks to the limits of stage presence in the opening of 1 Corinthians 13. Eloquence in life's impressive moments, he knows, is not enough. The tongues of men and angels, he says, are undermined if they do not flow from a life of steadfast love. Any music we might have made with our chosen words is dissonant with the real character that sh...