Coming Up For Air

Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6, New King James Version I've taken to scrolling through Facebook's addictive On This Day feature. There are worse priorities than getting to take the pulse of one's passions on the same day over a period of years. Today, I was particularly struck by an insight from Michael Levine gleaned in a time when the quest for parenthood dominated my perspective. He confronted, "Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.” In all probability gifted by God to encourage, nurture, and cultivate in roles other than parenting myself, I share the quote with a couple of Facebook friends whom I think parent very well. Both of them exhibit both an ongoing enthusiasm for the role as well as a reflective, self-scrutinizing adaptability. The results intrigued me. Both of them, I believe, could see Levine's point and, with me, extend it...

Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6, New King James Version "Take any doctrine and return it exclusively, "cautions a speaker whose balanced principle I revered without noting his name, "and you destroy it." Knowing that I dislike necessary confrontation and can make too much of consensus, I love when Scripture itself reconciles in one verse what can be competing doctrines of extremes. 2 Timothy 1:6 is such a verse, intermixing in the order it mentions, the blessing of disciplined, individual human responsibility, emphasis on the sovereign, unearned gift of God, and, even still, the crucial place of community for one who will live in the fullness of God's blessing. (1) Like Timothy we are blessed when we take responsibility to stir our gifts. Timothy's active part in becoming more like Jesus as he ministers in Ephesus is so crucial that Paul uses precious ink, precious paper, and,...

From Philippians 4 – 11 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: 12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 14 Nevertheless you have done well that you shared in my distress. My wife and I are venturing out to provide foster care again. The training covers the same basics of attachment we have reviewed before, but something about the presenter's phrasing really resonated this time. Tracing what she called the Cycle of Need, she emphasized, "If we don't learn to trust, we don't learn to rest." That can't be overemphasized biblically or as it plays out in relationships. Both must be learned, and relearned. The number of times trust is placed or misplaced is irrelevant. Broken faith makes more of an impression on our psyches. We wil...

From Acts 8 – 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.” 30 So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. In this week's New Yorker , Jill Lepore took the words of a revered American at a pivotal point in history to task. Reflecting on Congressman Gerald Ford's assertion that the Constitution's phrase of high crimes and misdemeanors set the standard for impeachable offense Ford said that the standard means whatever the vote of Congress says it means. That has even bigger implications than the removal of a President from office, she argues. To allow each individual to define words, "to dismiss words as meaningless," she writes, is to give up on truth." I can't question Gerald Ford's commitment to bringing together the nation in meaningful ways. By pardo...

Your people will offer themselves willingly [to participate in Your battle] in the day of Your power; In the splendor of holiness, from the womb of the dawn, Your young men are to You as the dew. Psalm 110:3, Amplified Version "Would you believe," cracks the late, great Jim Boutin in Ball Four , "the talk in the bullpen was about PITCHING?" We have a hard time with that. We are so accustomed to surface familiarity, to quick boredom that we believe there will be ennui in every opportunity, that the change of subject will be our forever quest. Maybe that's why the author of Psalm 110 let us hear the talk in the bullpen before swinging the broadcast to Christ as the game's Star. I'm frankly not comfortable with that. It's beautifully backward to my preference to want to prove my Reformed credentials by talking about Christ first in every verse before I talk about human applications. As it turns out, I want to check that box. I want to pay Him my shrivel...

The opportunity to choose the new book is a happy place for me. I'm there every several days, and I expected yesterday's crossroads to be no different. Less than 24 hours later, I can't imagine not having picked up, by the sovereignty of God, Pete Greig's Dirty Glory on the Christian's imperative to pray with consuming passion. Hoping to infect you, dear reader, I want to look at why we must pray with passion, Who the central focus of prayer with passion is, and what the results are likely to be. 1. Why prioritize prayer? Greig lays out, "If our voices are to ring out with the authority of prophetic dissonance," declares Pete Greig in Dirty Glory, "in contemporary culture, WE… MUST… DISCOVER how to pray." He had me at the word dissonance. If the healthful discomfort that happens when two ideas are at war with one another. A voice with prophetic dissonance stands out from the culture because the profit recognizes his or her authority does not com...

In the musical Hamilton , the hero's future wife, then the wealthy debutante Eliza Schuyler recalls meeting him.  Despite the differences in social station between her and the hungry-looking immigrant officer, she baubles charmingly in, "Helpless," that she looked across the room into his eyes and her heart went, "BOOM!" I can relate, even being late. I'm not a natural fit for a musical. I at least purport to be a sophisticated history major. I've known Alexander Hamilton's story arc for 30 years, and I'm the type to roll my eyes at singing or rapping one's way through it. It didn't happen. Read the hefty Ron Chernow biography on which it was based. I did, and it was good for me. From the fact that I'm quoting Eliza's surrender, you know something's changed. After a week with the musical's songs wafting through a good portion of my affections and conscious memory, I decided to explore what. I'm aware on another front o...

14 And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 16 But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. 17 I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you. From Acts 26 On the television show This Is Us , new mother Kate comes face-to-face with legalism. She is overwhelmed that her world is changing around her, and she is taken aback by the priority her neighbor puts on where the car is parked. She has her own drama. Not today, she says. But because of her self-assertion and special pleading, she hears the neighbor's story. He is...

From Psalm 108 – 1 O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. 2 Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn. 3 I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples, And I will sing praises to You among the nations. 4 For Your mercy is great above the heavens, And Your truth reaches to the clouds. "A Christian whose soul is in a healthy state," connects Spurgeon in Morning and Evening, "will come forward joyously, and say, 'I will speak, not about myself, but to the honour of my God." Spurgeon flies the first example as a banner, proclaiming for his delivered Everyman, 'He hath brought me up out of an horrible pit.'" It is with this sense of resolved declaration that Psalm 108 seems to begin. I hunt in vain for a prequel to the first verse. I know the trials of the psalmists, and their heirs, and how often difficulties seem to prick them to pick up their pens. I know, likewise, how rarely I would be pronouncing the steadf...

Harvesting from Facebook's On This Day is one of my rituals. Since much of what I deposit there are notes to my future self on what I'm reading, God can use this habit to remind me of aspects of His glory or my depravity. Nothing new under the sun, these tend to remain largely consistent from year to year. I was especially struck by a note I made on Alex Haley's Roots . He commented that there is nothing slave children like better than to enact the role of master and slave. Catch that. Children haven't felt slavery's full weight, yet they are preparing themselves willingly for its most horrible aspects. They are close enough to its demonstrated depravity to know even in their tender years that it is wrong, yet they take it to their bosoms as a plaything. Do we not do the same thing, Christian, with the most insidious and coercive of the world's systems? Let's look at three reasons why our interactions tend to borrow from slave and master as the world r...

Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you… 2 Timothy 1:6, New King James Version I remember camping, sort of. As with most rites of passage, my experience was different. Camping in a wheelchair would be expected to be. Camping with kids across the spectrum of disability, well, that we kept at all is a gift of grace. The adventure was loaded. With promise and perplexity enough. The counselors at the special camp where I went in the summers from the ages of 12 to 15 didn't need the campfire to add to their challenges and distract their attention. With the chance to spark inspiration into flame in the lives of real humans, they didn't need to prove they could strike two rocks together and suddenly produce a roaring blaze for marshmallows. They didn't. The area where we camped for one night session was well-stocked with fuel to ignite the campfire and to maintain it. I remember being slightly disappointed that help ward new supplies were only a golf cart...

37 The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38 Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour). John 1:37-39, New King James Version Christ has positioned me as the world's most unlikely entrepreneur. All the while, He is supporting me with so many visible demonstrations of His watchcare and affirmation that even I cannot quaver or quibble with. Meanwhile, there are reasons not to pour the sap of this season into more conventional and familiar options just now. I am, in a sense, forced to walk by faith.. I'm starting something new, and the flock I'm ministering to is very small. Scriptural principles like he who is faithful in will be faithful in much, and sit at the end of the table and wai...

Keith Craft divides, “I think the church has done a pretty good job at reaching the 'down and outers' but not a good job at reaching the 'up and outers.'" This reality gives me yet one more reason to be amazed at the persevering level of Jesus. Let's look at His work in the lives of James and John. In choosing James and John among His first followers, Jesus was risking His reputation on His ability to root in them a love for Him which was stronger than their habits of entitlement. The habits of entitlement didn't start with 21st century technology, but the grip the flask had on James and John gives us an idea of the idolatry which can easily be set us. Jesus chose to command obedience from those accustomed to being obeyed. Mark 1:20, "And immediately He called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went after Him," shows the visible beginning of an amazing transformation. Jesus calls, and James and John p...

On a YouTube video reflecting on her role as Lady Cora Crawley on Downton Abbey , Elizabeth McGovern noted the difference in emotional between her American-born character and the character's husband. She said Robert, bound by years of aristocratic tradition, had emotions but had a more difficult time reaching them. Rarely are we in relationships with those with the same depth and timing in their willingness to reach emotionally. Here are three factors that can help us deal graciously with the less expressive: (1) The common humanity in the misreading or ignoring our emotions can evoke our empathy. Jesus, weeping over Jerusalem, says in Luke 19:42 that the culture as a whole does not know what makes up its peace. The distance between Christ as Counselor and Discerner of hearts is vast. Some of that distance is increased by the choices we make. Yet, He weeps empathetically. As we realize the difference Christ covered, as we, by grace, experience in ourselves the mind which is in Him,...

49 For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. 50 And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.” John 12:49-50, New King James Version Melvyn Bragg got my attention. In his The Adventure of English , he was noting how liberally the masters of the American South co-opted the vocabulary of their slaves. He comments with deserved acidity at the masters figured they owned the words as well as the people. I could repent all day in paragraph after paragraph for the evil hypocrisy of those Americans who purported Christian convictions right alongside the right to own another person. In this space, I would rather go an inch or two toward setting the descendants of slaves and masters truly free. The Bible makes clear that all of us were slaves to sin.  We still are if we have not instead become slaves to Jesus. Bound by Satan, ...

In The Screwtape Letters , the master demon coaches a junior tempter actually sees advantages in some kinds of Christian fellowship. He suggests that the "patient" in the book be guided toward a pastor in his particular town who flip-flops in his preaching between contradictory extremes. Fr. Spike in his vacillations, Screwtape reveals, is serving Hell's, common aim, "Hatred." "He cannot," rejoices the demon, "bring himself to preach anything  which is not calculated to shock, grieve, puzzle, or humiliate his parents and their friends". That reality beyond the pages of speculative fiction is why I want to dwell for a day on a little four letter word at the end of 2 Timothy 1:5. Paul uses the word also to connect Timothy's faith to that of his mother and grandmother. There is beauty there because faith in the young or the or the reorienting adult convert can so quickly acquire a distinctness that borders on defensiveness. As a new Ch...